Circle of Shadows (34 page)

He sighed deeply and put down his pen. Surely there was no sensible man alive who would believe this nonsense. And yet … If it were revealed little by little, dressed up with the proper ritual, and when people encoded their letters, they seldom allowed themselves any great, persuasive flights of rhetoric. Perhaps these rather bald statements could be made to sound glorious in the words of a skilful orator. But could there really be, as Pegel’s master suspected, members of the Minervals in positions of real power in Europe? He started on the third sheet, and the neat little groups of letters unfurled into a name, then the name of a town and a title, then there was another … He had his answer. His master had been right.

Pegel got up from his chair and checked that the lock was turned in his door. He was returning to his chair when he changed his mind again and dragged a stool in front of it as well. As he sat down he noted that his fingers were shaking. There were Minervals in power all across the Empire – and he had the list of their names.

H
ARRIET LEFT CROWTHER TO
guard Swann while she went to greet Daniel and tell her friends of Swann’s illness. Their discussions were interrupted on numerous occasions by court officials knocking lightly on the door to offer their congratulations to Clode on his return and express their pleasure in seeing him. When she asked if Clode, Rachel and Graves might watch over Swann, they responded with such enthusiasm Harriet suspected that the continual exchange of polite platitudes was having as severe an effect on their tempers as it had on hers.

‘You were right to say that Clode would not want to leave until this business was cleared up, Mrs Westerman,’ Graves said. ‘We suggested to him that we could leave at once and he was most emphatic in his refusal.’

Harriet and her brother-in-law exchanged glances. Daniel was looking better than he had two days before. There was some colour in his face and he had lost a little of his hunted look.

‘Harriet,’ he said. ‘What you have told us … I – this madman did not collect my blood also?’

She put her hand on his sleeve. ‘No, I think not, Clode. He seems to be after the blood of these individuals alone.’

Daniel smiled briefly. ‘I find that oddly comforting.’

Harriet had on her lap the product of her friends’ work in Castle Grenzhow. There were a number of sheets in Rachel’s neat handwriting, each one carefully dated with a series of visits and meetings. ‘Lord, Daniel, you kept yourself well-occupied here. I assume if anything had appeared to you that was particularly strange, you would have mentioned it by now.’

‘We have written down everything, and I see nothing suspicious,’ Daniel said.

Harriet began to read more carefully. ‘You saw something, Clode. Something that made you seem a danger to this creature and his plans. I wish we knew what we were looking for.’

‘Murder will out, Mrs Westerman,’ Graves said, and stretched his arms. ‘I am going to rest for a while if Mr and Mrs Clode will take the first part of the evening at Swann’s side. Fine way for you to celebrate your reunion.’

When Rachel and Daniel entered the chamber of Chancellor Swann to relieve Crowther, they found he was not alone with the patient. Herr Kupfel had arrived at last. Clode and Crowther were still shaking hands, with great warmth on both sides, when Kupfel patted him on the sleeve.

‘I need things.’

‘What can I do for you, sir?’ Clode asked.

The Alchemist rattled off a list of equipment and ingredients in a mixture of French, English and German that made Clode’s head spin. ‘I shall do my best,’ he said doubtfully and Kupfel rolled his eyes and shuffled back towards the bed again, where he stood, staring down at Swann’s sweating, sleeping form.

‘Don’t worry, Daniel. I think it best if I go. They know me in the kitchen and gardens,’ Rachel said, a little wearily.

Kupfel turned to her with a look of deep suspicion. ‘You remember the list?’ he said at last. His accent in English was heavy, as if the words had to be spat out individually like rocks.

Rachel repeated it back to him. ‘Would you like the Creeping Jenny fresh or dried? It is just coming into flower, but I know the cook has a store from last season. She takes it for her cough.’

‘Creeping Jenny?’

‘
Lysimachia nummularia
.’

‘Fresh.’

Rachel simply nodded. Her husband and Kupfel watched her leave, a little open-mouthed. Crowther smiled.

Evening, and Harriet found herself once more changing her costume. To listen to music in the court, it seemed, required a different standard of dress than was thought seemly during the day. It was lucky that Dido had been insistent about the proper number of dresses, gowns, gloves and jewels that were necessary for residence at a foreign court. Harriet said so, and Dido grinned. ‘It is a pleasure to dress you up nice from time to time, Mrs Westerman. You’re never out of riding dress at home, and before then, of course, it was the mourning clothes – such dull colours.’ She put her hand over her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry, madam.’

Harriet shook her head. ‘Don’t worry, Dido. They
were
dull colours. James said so himself when I wore them for my father.’

‘I wish I’d known the Captain better, madam,’ she said. ‘Everyone is full of stories about him at Caveley. He sounds like a good man.’

Harriet looked at herself in the mirror. The dress was cut quite low and showed off the length of her neck and the paleness of her skin.

‘He was, Dido, and much loved by his family and his friends.’ She turned and smiled at the maid. ‘But it is just as you said before, my dear, about travel. We must make our own stories now.’

Harriet met Crowther in the concert chamber. He raised his eyebrows when he saw her and nodded in approval. Having enjoyed that minor triumph, Harriet wondered where to begin. Most of the faces in the room were strangers to her. She thought of Mrs Padfield: perhaps she might be able to offer some insight into old stories that could have driven someone to wreak a terrible revenge. Tomorrow morning, she would return to the Al-Saids’ workshop and see what other threads they could offer. She and Crowther joined the Colonel and Mrs Padfield as the company began to take their seats. They shook hands and Harriet was glad to notice the Colonel looking at his wife with affectionate admiration.

‘Lord, what a crush!’ the Colonel said, a little loudly. Mrs Padfield put her arm on his sleeve and he blushed and said more quietly, ‘So many strangers here for the wedding.’

His wife was looking around the room. ‘Yet I do not see Glucke, do you, my dear?’ The Colonel shook his head. ‘Strange,’ Mrs Padfield continued. ‘He is such a lover of music.’

Harriet smiled. ‘That is the gentleman who keeps cats, if I remember rightly.’

‘Indeed. But he is almost as passionate about opera. He helped design the Opera House, and I have never seen a man so delighted as the day he heard that Manzerotti was coming here.’

They found their places but, frustratingly, Harriet found herself next to the Colonel rather than his wife.

The Duke entered, alone apart from his dog, and once the room had risen to greet him and all had taken their seats again, Manzerotti strolled out on to the stage and bowed. Seeing him on stage was somehow worse than sitting with him in Swann’s chamber. The leader of the opera band played a shimmering clamber of notes on the harpsichord, the violinists began a rhythm, dance-like, neat and tripping, then Manzerotti began to sing. It was as beautiful as ever. Light, dancing over the air rather than through it, a thing as perfect and fleeting as the glimmer on the crystal chandeliers. Harriet felt her lungs compress. It seemed so very wrong to take pleasure in his music, but her body simply ignored her objections as she was lifted and fell with it. She raised her fan to cover her eyes. What would it be, to know such perfect lightness?

The aria ended to the usual storm of applause, and with a bow to the Duke, Manzerotti made way for the dancers. Crowther saw something in Harriet’s expression and turned his head towards her, saying softly, ‘You cannot blame yourself, Mrs Westerman, for the effects Manzerotti produces.’

Colonel Padfield, who was seated on her right, was obviously one of those gentlemen who saw instrumental music as an invitation to general conversation. ‘Amazing thing, power of music, isn’t it, madam? And the fairer sex are particularly prone to it, I believe.’

‘Indeed?’ Harriet said, steadying her breathing and wishing him in Hades.

‘Oh yes,’ he said comfortably. ‘There was a woman here at the court some six years ago, before my time, you know, who was so taken with some Italian violin player she made quite a fool of herself. Apparently the Duke was on the point of putting her under his protection, but she couldn’t resist her passion for the fiddler. Had to leave court under a cloud, of course, and her son was taken away from her. Then the sovereign’s eye landed on Countess Dieth. There was quite an amusing anecdote about it. When they told the Duke what the lady was up to, apparently he said, “But I have estates in Italy, and I play the flute very well!”’

‘They removed her child from her?’

‘Lord, they had to! She was the widow of one of the officers, and the son was a godson of the Duke. Couldn’t let him be raised by such a woman.’

One of the dancers was lifted across the stage in a series of leaps that seemed designed to show off her form rather than advance the drama to any degree that Harriet could understand, but the general applause provoked drew Colonel Padfield’s attention back to the stage once more. Harriet closed her eyes briefly and thought of her son and daughter at Caveley. She knew what she was capable of if they were under threat. She wondered.

Kupfel received the basket from Rachel with a suspicious eye. He rifled through it, then placing it on the floor by the fire, said only, ‘Good.’

Clode took a seat next to his wife.

‘Rachel, how did you ever manage to gather all those things in an hour?’

She yawned for she was tired now. ‘I made some friends among the servants, and learned something of their cures. The nobility thinking you a murderer gave me the opportunity for some study.’

Clode removed his hand from her arm and Rachel bit her lip. She was becoming as outspoken as her sister. She glanced at Herr Kupfel. He was on his knees in front of the fire with the basket at his side. He was quite still and Rachel realised, with a slight shock, that he was praying. It had never occurred to her to pray before she started similar work. Kupfel brushed something from his eye, then picked up the saucepan and the crock of milk.

Manzerotti began his second aria. Harriet let it carry her. She did not know the piece, only that the music seemed to rage as it rose, then in a moment became slow, thick and open, grieving alongside the hautbois before becoming a battle again. His audience applauded and the Duke rose and walked to meet him on the stage. Manzerotti went down on one knee to kiss his hand.

‘Revenge and love from
Flavio
! Most appropriate.’ The Duke looked pleased. ‘That is the opera you will be giving us tomorrow, I believe.’

Manzerotti got to his feet and bowed. ‘It is, sire.’

‘An opera that touches on the responsibilities of ruling a kingdom.’ The Duke turned to the audience. ‘Even musicians have the opportunity at court to lecture their sovereigns and be paid for it.’ There was a ripple of sycophantic laughter.

‘I will do all in my power to give you pleasure, sire,’ Manzerotti said. Harriet heard a woman sigh lustily behind her.

‘Very good, songbird.’ The Duke removed a large diamond from his second finger and handed it to him. ‘See that you do.’

Kupfel had left as soon as he had completed his work, his head lowered. The remnants of his cure lay scattered where they fell. Rachel had tidied them as best she could. Now she and her husband sat in silence watching Swann sleep.

‘He seems a great deal easier,’ Rachel said at last. ‘I wish I knew what Mr Kupfel was about.’ She crossed to the bed and checked the bandages wrapped around the Chancellor’s hands. They were greasy with the preparation Kupfel had made over the fireplace. She had watched him cover the skin with egg-whites, then his strange custard of herbs, milk and oil.

‘Rachel …’ She turned towards her husband. He looked very young. ‘Why did he choose me – whoever did all this? I don’t understand what I did.’

She returned to him and sat at his feet. It was how she used to sit with Harriet when they talked late at night at Caveley. She realised even as she settled that she had never sat by his side in this way before.

‘I hope the answer lies somewhere in those notes we have made. Harriet will work it out. She has that fire in her eyes. I feel myself as if we are lost in some magical tale.’

‘What do you mean, my dear?’

‘Do you remember Jocasta Bligh’s cards, the ones she uses to tell fortunes?’

‘Of course. When last we met, she threatened you with five children.’

Rachel laughed softly, and felt Daniel’s hand on her shoulder; his touch was tentative, unsure. She reached up and took it in her own, lifting the back of his hand to her mouth and kissing it before laying it back in its place.

‘I think this man is a poet, of sorts,’ she went on. ‘I mean, these deaths, these death scenes are like little horror plays. And everyone circling round this seems like characters from Mrs Bligh’s pack of cards. The Page who found Mrs Dieth; Kupfel is a Hermit if ever I saw one. Perhaps Harriet is Justice now! There is even an Emperor in the shape of the Duke. Is it not strange? When you begin to look for such things in the world, they appear everywhere.’

‘I think each one of us tries to make a story for ourselves. To understand the pattern of life.’

‘You are right. Daniel, I hope the story we make will be a happy one.’

‘From this time on, Rachel.’ He was silent for a moment, and she looked up at him, the line of his jaw beginning to shade with stubble, the shape of his throat. ‘And what of me? Where am I in this fairytale of yours?’

‘I thought of The Fool, the first card in the pack. The beginning of things.’

‘My costume? Of course. Do you think that might be why he chose me?’ Daniel said, breathing out. ‘That was all? Because I looked like the illustration on a pack of cards?’