Another Scandal in Bohemia (55 page)

I wish I could have torn the scene in half, like an artist’s canvas, to keep the King’s craven bullet from winging toward Godfrey.

I could only watch, clutching Allegra’s hands, while the true King snored softly in the corner of the carriage.

The smoke dissipated from the King’s gun-barrel. Godfrey, to his own apparent amazement remained standing, remained unshaken. He stood in the classic duelist’s posture, his side to his opponent, his arm extended with the death-dealing weapon at its farthest reach.

He had only to pull the trigger.

And did not.

No one had considered this, that Godfrey would choose not to shoot.

The King lowered his pistol-arm, which trembled like an autumn leaf. He was helpless, no more than target. His head turned for aid from his cohorts, from Tatyana, and met stiff silence and no motion.

And Godfrey did not shoot.

“Fire!” a woman’s voice screamed.

I glanced at Irene, but she was a statue of silver ice, only her ostrich feathers trembling in the faint breeze.

“Fire!” Tatyana screamed from the opposite camp.

Godfrey’s head recoiled from that bloodthirsty scream. His pistol began to lower, and the entire scheme, the exchange of Kings, the resolution of Clotilde’s unhappiness, the plans of princes and plotters, was unraveling on Godfrey’s rightful repugnance for his opponent and his opponent’s mistress.

I saw rather than heard Irene’s mouth move, and she said but one word.

Sound and fury barked from the end of Godfrey’s pistol, along with a clot of smoke.

The false King met it head-on, yet stood unshaken.

Then he clasped his shoulder and melted slowly to the ground like a large, bloody pool.

In the nearby woods, fog still performed a silent minuet among the trees. A small thick patch of it was fading like an apologetic cough. Behind it lurked a figure in an ox-blood tunic. I thought I glimpsed the shape of a pistol before the apparition merged into the convenient morning mist so obligatory for duels.

Men from both sides converged on the fallen King, only Irene and Tatyana keeping their places at opposite ends of the glade. White on green; red on green. They watched each other, not the dark clot of activity in the center of the board. They were armed with something other than pistols, and neither of them forgot it for a moment.

“I am a doctor!” a voice declared in English. “He must be taken out of the damp and off his feet.”

Allegra sprang out the carriage door to the ground before I could open my mouth. “Here, sir! My companion has worked as a nurse.”

I suppose tending fevered charges as a governess qualifies as nursing of a sort. I would be loath to think that Allegra was so ready with an outright lie.

In moments the men had buoyed the stricken King and rushed him to our conveyance. They lifted him inside while I helped from within, easily hiding the real King behind my caped bulk.

“We will disrobe him, gentlemen, with some privacy.” Allegra insisted, leaping in behind him and firmly shutting the door behind her while I snapped the curtains shut.

I heard them milling without, but was entirely too occupied to worry about what they thought.

Undressing an unconscious man in the semidark of a closed carriage and attiring another in his clothes, and vice versa, is an exercise whose difficulty beggars the imagination. That two men and two women utterly filled the carriage compartment was bad enough; that two of the men were of exceptional size was an additional burden.

The King, bestirring himself, actually deigned to remove his rival’s boots, but this only resulted in more elbows being jammed into more ribs and eyes.

The sounds of desperate scuffling that emerged from the carriage must have been truly enigmatic, and the poor vehicle swayed on its springs before we were through.

“Only a flesh wound,” I shouted once to the supposed crowd outside, and continued wrestling with a phalanx of military buttons on the King’s wretched uniform jacket.

No soldier suffered more in the performance of his duty. Perspiration actually streamed from my person, though luckily in places where it was not readily observable.

Allegra grunted like a navy, and what the half-conscious false King muttered is not reprintable in even as private a medium as a diary. Allegra and I learned more of men’s dress that day than unmarried ladies should know, but in the end we had our charges changed in their outer aspects.

“How is the King?” the doctor’s voice demanded. A German duet indicated the Doctors Sturm and Drang from our previous stay in Bohemia were also on the scene and eager to attend their royal patient.

“Ah... well,” Allegra answered, stuffing a makeshift gag of pungent stockings down the poor wounded fellow’s throat. “If you would like to see him, Doctor—” She nodded in the dim interior at Willie.

Clasping his left arm, he began to struggle through the welter of bodies to the door.

I caught him firmly by the ear (Oh, how many years I had longed to do such a thing!) and stopped his roar of protest by moving his hand from his right shoulder to his left, the true site of the wound, as indicated by a convenient bloodstain.

Looking horrified at his near gaffe, the King nodded his understanding and staggered out of the carriage.

“A mere crease,” I heard him dismissing the wound in German as he hit the ground with the impact of a sack of potatoes. “No need of doctors. Get away. I wish peace and quiet, not idle fussing.”

How quickly he sounded like a King again, I thought.

Allegra and I peeked out.

The crowd surrounded the King’s tall head as he stalked back to the field of honor. We were forgotten as the main figure in the drama resumed his role.

The King marched up to Godfrey, who still stood his ground, and looked him up and down in a most arrogant manner.

“You have fought well, Englishman,” he announced in our language. “I should have shot in your place too.”

His next look was at Irene. He regarded her in silence for a long while, then turned on his heel, his entourage flowing into his wake, the German doctors still fussing at his fringes, and moved toward the gathered carriages.

The Red Queen did not move, only stared at Godfrey, who watched the wounded King depart in a kind of daze. I am certain that he had never shot a man before, or been led to believe that he had. Irene went to Godfrey, twined her aim through his, and they walked slowly to the carriage, ignoring Tatyana as if she were a phantom of the fog.

The woman turned in a swirl of red velvet and vanished into her carriage.

“It has worked!” Allegra embraced me in the shelter of our coach. “Dear Nell, you and I have accomplished a hidden miracle, but we shall get no credit, more’s the pity.”

“The best deeds go unnoticed,” I said sternly, removing her arms from my neck.

“Whatever shall we do with... him?” she asked next, eying the hapless man in the comer of the vehicle. His shoulder bore but a scratch, though his masquerade was mortally wounded, and Tatyana was forever out of his grasp.

“Whatever Irene decides—” I began... and was rudely interrupted.

Our carriage door flew open. The unattractive face of the odious man from the ball leaned into our midst.

“Wilhelm von Ormstein the Second, I presume,” he said in his perfect English, eyeing our captive. “We will relieve you of him.”

“Who—” I began indignantly.

“What—?” Allegra demanded.

A second man leaned in to assist the first. Dr. Watson.

In moments they had wrestled our charge from the carriage.

The man in the monocle tipped his top hat at us. “Most obliged, ladies,” he said with a slight smile.

And they were gone.

Allegra and I regarded each other. We sat alone in our once-crowded carriage, with nothing to show for our labors—and our triumph—but....

I leaned to the carriage floor and plucked up a single fallen brass button.

Chapter Thirty-seven

CZECH MATE

Three days
later, we were all summoned to Prague Castle for an audience with the King.

Neither Allegra nor I had seen much of Godfrey or Irene during the interim. One would think they had been sequestered in his rooms, refusing to emerge.

We two had been forced to rely upon each other for entertainment, which was not a burden. Together, we had seen more of Prague than Irene and I had managed in our lengthy previous visit. Allegra was most impressed by my tales of Rabbi Loew’s hidden crypt, but of course I dared not escort her below.

She begged and pleaded and finally prevailed upon me to visit the fortune teller again, whom I recognized from Irene’s and my previous consultation.

This wrinkled old woman seized upon my hand and predicted that I was about to go “on a long journey.” (Not difficult to anticipate: I would return to Paris shortly.) She also predicted that I would “commune with my heart’s desire.” (Easy enough to do if one possesses sufficient imagination and few desires.)

Nevertheless, I enjoyed my holiday with Allegra, and even continued to allow her to call me “Nell.” That would teach Irene to leave us languishing while she was about her surreptitious business.

We four returned to Prague Castle in style two days later, Godfrey looking positively Grand Operatic in his diplomatic morning suit via the Rothschild tailor, Irene a symphony in scintillating periwinkle blue, Allegra sweet in sincere lilac, and I the model of modernity in yellow-and-brown plaid.

The King wore his usual elaborate uniform, and greeted us alone in his throne room.

“I owe you this rather ornate chair,” he told Irene, gesturing to the rococo gilt affair that squatted on a dais at one end of the marble-floored chamber. “Before I resume it, I humbly beg your advice.”

I would have suspected the King of a sense of humor, or even one of irony, had I not known better.

He led her to the chair in question, glanced at Godfrey, then seated her in it. ‘Tell me what you require.”

Irene laid her gloved hands along those gilded arms and lifted her head on her swanlike neck. She looked every inch a queen.

“First,” she said, “you must repair your damaged alliance with the Queen. Clotilde has been nobly faithful to your substitute, despite much provocation. You swim upstream with her, Willie, but you have the stamina, and it is worth your future.”

He bowed his head.

“Second,” she went on, “you will admit that I have been somewhat important to your current status.”

He sighed and nodded, like a faithful servant.

“I believe,” said Irene, examining her garnet bracelets, “that you owe me some small recompense.”

“Which is—?” He no longer sounded so humble, for it had come down to common commerce.

“I had developed a... fancy for certain of the art works in your Long Gallery—oh, nothing relating to your family and forebears. Merely some... insignificant pictures I found pretty. I fear I am sentimental. I desire a souvenir of my last stay in Bohemia.”

Irene with her head cast down, looking through her lashes, was a sight to beware of, but King Willie did not know that.

“If the works are obscure, you may have them, with my blessing,” he said.

Obscure they were, for I then recalled Irene conducting me past them and identifying hidden Old Masters among the family portraiture. This alone was a coup to pale her capture of Queen Marie Antoinette’s diamonds.

“Another matter,” she said. “The... disposition of the misguided maid who aided in your father’s death.”

“I have inquired. She has been kept below these eighteen months.”

“To forgive is the divine right of kings, Willie.”

He balked. “She slew my sire! She was part of a foul plot by Bohemian patriots to ruin the von Ormstein rule.”

“Which superseded the native Bohemian rule only in latter-day times. She was a mere tool, as was your recent replacement.”

The King frowned. “What has become of him, by the way?”

“He has,” Irene said airily with a wave of her gloved hand, “been wafted to a better world. Do you release the girl, or not?”

“She was a pawn,” he said, grumbling, “but she will try nothing like this again. I will release her.”

Irene nodded.

“Is this all?” he asked, sounding impatient.

“Not... quite.” Irene glanced at Godfrey and myself. “During my travels in Prague, I could not help but note that the National Theater mounts Mr. Dvořák’s
Spectre's Bride.
You may recall, Willie, that I was... abruptly compelled to desert an earlier production of this enchanting opera by... forces beyond my control.”

“I remember,” he growled.

Irene lifted her head, her voice, her entire aspect. “I wish to sing this role that was taken from me. Within the week. I wish an exclusive audience: Mr. Norton, and the Misses Huxleigh and Turnpenny.”

In the silence that followed this decree, only I had the nerve to speak.

“Irene! You are out of practice. Even you cannot sing such a taxing role with only a week’s rehearsal. This is mad. Give it up.”

“You will see for yourself, will you not, Nell?” she asked, as implacable as Cleopatra on her throne with an asp in her hand. “I wish a private performance of the work entire, for my friends.”