Deadly Peril (44 page)

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“I do not understand… That cannot be true!”

It was General Müller. And he was incredulous, and thus angry. He was standing on the opposite side of the wide table, that had spread out across its surface a detailed map of Herzfeld Castle and its fortifications, knuckles leaning on the table but gaze firmly on Alec.

The General, Alec, and Prince Viktor were the only occupants in the cabinet room, with its view of the parade ground. Medieval weaponry adorned one wall, another was covered in floor-to-ceiling pigeon-holed slots which held rolled parchments of maps, old and new, of Midanich and surrounding electorates. Central to the room was the great map table.

The Prince’s generals and advisors had been dismissed. The excuse given was that the hour for the wedding ceremony was fast approaching and the groom should have some time alone with his male attendants to gather his thoughts and his mettle. Truth told, Alec needed no encouragement. He couldn’t wait to be up before the Reverend with Selina, but what he had to confide to the Prince and Müller had everything to do with their military assault on Herzfeld, planned for the morrow, and thus was for their ears only.

The Prince, who had been biting his thumb in concentration and peering at the map, eyes tracing the outline of the star castle’s northwestern walls that ran parallel to the shoreline, glanced up at General Müller’s outburst. He said quietly,

“Alec Halsey does not lie, Herr General.”

Müller immediately came out of his angry abstraction and muttered an apology, which Alec accepted with good grace, but just as quietly. When the silence stretched, the Prince took his gaze and his concentration from the map and looked from his mother’s husband to her former lover, smiled to himself and crossed his arms in their shirt sleeves across the front of his gold-threaded silk waistcoat, with no thought to the meticulous dressing by his valet, and the delicate gold thread embroidery. A matching frock coat, just as dazzling, was draped over one of the high-back chairs, and beside the chair stood the Prince’s valet, ready to attend to this article, and anything else required of him to ensure his royal master was at his sartorial best for the wedding. Also in the room was Hadrian Jeffries, standing to attention just three chairs along, and with similar charge over Alec’s frock coat and a small velvet box containing two gold wedding bands, and with his ears very wide open to the conversation. That the valets were privy to a very private conversation between a Prince, a General, and a foreign nobleman was not even considered worthy of notice by the former; they were, after all, lackeys. Yet, more than once, Alec glanced over at Hadrian to see if he was paying attention. He did so now, before shifting his gaze to the Prince when addressed by him.

“Please, Herr Baron, would you repeat what you just said, and then elaborate further. I admit to being astounded, though I do not disbelieve you.”

“Of course, Highness,” Alec replied evenly. He cleared his throat, removed his eyeglasses, and repeated what he had not told a living soul since escaping Midanich ten years ago. “I did not escape from the dungeons at Herzfeld. By force, magic, or any other means at my disposal. There are only two ways of leaving that—
place
. One is death. The other is to be set free. Fortunately for me, the latter applied, and it was Leopold who came to my rescue. And it was Leopold who put it about that I had orchestrated my own escape through cunning and derring-do.”

“Why?” Müller asked, still skeptical. “Why perpetuate the myth that you escaped? Why allow this myth, that a foreigner was able to find an escape from a dungeon that for a century at least was supposedly—and now we discover quite rightly—inescapable?”

“I can only think it gave false hope to the families of those who had loved ones interned within its gruesome walls, that they had some chance of escape, which they did not,” Alec replied without hesitation. “It was a cruel hope, but hope nonetheless. But that was not Leopold’s reason for doing so. He needed a plausible explanation, one Ernst and Joanna would accept, for my escape. One that did not implicate him, or the Countess.”

“And why would Margrave Leopold go to so much trouble on your behalf, Herr Baron?” General Müller asked, though he had a good idea he knew the answer. Still, he wanted to hear Alec Halsey say it.

When Alec hesitated to respond, Prince Viktor did so for him, because he sensed Alec was embarrassed to state the truth in his company, and that he did not wish to elicit the ire of the General. It had everything to do with the Countess Rosine. But his mother had never kept anything from him. He knew all about her affairs and her open marriage with his elderly father. And he knew that Alec Halsey, when a young English diplomat, had been his mother’s lover and that he had made her happy; just as he knew General Müller loved his mother, and made her happy now. But he also sensed that the General was just that little bit, though quite needlessly, jealous of the history this handsome Englishman shared with the Countess.

“Because my mother asked it of my father, Henrik,” the Prince stated quietly. “But you knew this, as you do everything about the Countess and the Herr Baron. Just as you are aware that was all in the past and will remain there. The Herr Baron is marrying the woman he loves in less than two hours’ time, and the woman
you
love, my mother, will give birth to your son in less than a month; God willing in a country finally at peace.”

Alec was all admiration for this young man’s self-possession, and he knew at that moment without reservation that in Prince Viktor, the people of this small margravate on the outer reaches of the Holy Roman Empire had a worthy successor to his father, the Margrave Leopold. General Müller knew it too, had known for months, if not years, and he was suitably contrite.

“Forgive me, Highness,” General Müller agreed, a bow of his head to the young prince. Then, in a gesture of conciliation he bowed his head to Alec. “Please accept my apology, Herr Baron. You have only ever been fair and reasonable. And I have been unjustly envious… I will not again doubt you, or your story. Please continue, Herr Baron.”

Alec inclined his head and did as requested.

“The myth about my escape stuck because no one dared question Leopold. If he said that was what happened, that was that. All that mattered to him, though, was that Ernst believed it. And if Ernst believed it, then so, too, would Joanna.”

“Everyone did believe it, Herr Baron,” General Müller stated. “Your escape from Herzfeld became the stuff of legend, and you a hero in the eyes of many, particularly the disaffected amongst our people who were sick of our country being a thoroughfare for foreign powers and who had rallied against what they saw as the Margrave’s capitulation to foreign interests.”

“A metaphor, if you will, of the impossible overcoming the probable. Alec Halsey was Midanich, the Herzfeld Castle dungeon the yoke of foreign invasion, his escape, a miracle which we all craved.”

“Just so, Highness,” Müller agreed with a rare grin. “So how did you did manage to escape the castle, Herr Baron?”

“Leopold came to the dungeons to see me,” Alec explained, unable to stop a heightened color to his lean cheeks. All this talk of legends and heroes did not sit comfortably with him. “He had with him one of his personal attendants in heavy disguise. We swapped places, this attendant and I, and I left with Leopold, in this disguise. He led me through the warren of casements to an iron grate. This he unlocked and showed me a set of stairs leading down to the drains deep below the casements. He then gave me directions, a taper, and the documents I presented to you, Herr General.”

Alec put his glasses back on to look closely at the map, and put a finger to a point along the northwestern shoreline.

“Here. That is why I mentioned this wall that faces the ocean. At low tide the entrance to the drain is visible, but few see it, as you would be required to be in a boat on the ocean at that particular time of day. While the mouth to the tunnel is not above a crouching man’s height, once inside, it opens up so that even the tallest man can easily walk its length. And it is wide enough that a party of twenty men would not feel cramped. At low tide the sluices remain in the center channel, leaving the side paths dry. With adequate tapers, your soldiers would have no trouble navigating the drain right through to the iron grill. This you cannot miss, for there is a stair.”

“You propose that I take a force into this drain and penetrate the castle in this way?” General Müller asked.

“No. I will lead the force into the drain,” Prince Viktor stated, attention back on the map.

He ran his finger diagonally across the detailed outline of the castle from the northwest outer wall, and the General and Alec followed. His finger went through the center of the palace buildings and on out across the moat, and then out across the southeastern defensive wall, to the small township of Herzfeld. Here he stopped and tapped at the small cluster of buildings.

“Our soldiers overran the town some weeks ago, before the snow, and are now bivouacked here, with cannon and muskets, awaiting orders.” He looked at Alec and then at Müller. “We should have a contingent of men, no more than a hundred, made ready to storm the castle, but only after you are granted access. And once inside and in a position to do so, we will open the front gates and simply let them in.” He chuckled. “We shall take a leaf out of my father’s book, and create our own myth of how fewer than a hundred soldiers stormed Herzfeld and brought us victory, and the war to an end.”

Alec understood at once. “The victory will be stage-managed. It will occur only after you have secured the castle from Ernst. A bloodless coup if you will.”

“Precisely. That is what must happen. Enough brotherly blood has been shed, and I want this war over with before winter truly sets in, and men on both sides of the conflict begin to freeze to death in their respective encampments. General Müller will front up at the castle gates with several of his men and you as his hostage. Ernst has no idea his colonel is a traitor to his cause, so no one will be suspicious and he will gain instant admittance. And while you are brought before Ernst, the men with you will quietly slip away to the casements, and open the grate to allow me and my men entry into the castle. Once the soldiers with me are secure throughout the palace, and castle grounds, I will find you, be assured of that. What is required then, is for the Captain of the Guard to capitulate. When he does, the entire palace guard will do so, and with Ernst left defenseless—he must and will surrender.”

“How do you intend to get Westover to do so, Highness?” General Müller asked. “All our intelligence suggests he is a doggedly loyal captain of the guard to Ernst, as he was for Margrave Leopold.”

Prince Viktor glanced at Alec and said, “If the Herr Baron plays his part well, Westover will have no choice but to surrender. His eyes will be well and truly opened.”

General Müller’s brows lifted in surprise. Yet he knew to what the Prince alluded. He addressed Alec. “You think you can do what no one else has yet managed to do? Bring the Princess Joanna out of the shadows while there is an audience?”

Alec gave a lop-sided grin and said flippantly, “I have wrought a miracle before, by escaping the inescapable, so why not again?”

“Ha! By the use of conjury?”

“If one is to bring forth the devil from the shadows, yes.”

“I have never… I have never
seen
Joanna,” the Prince admitted soberly. “I have only Müller’s word for it—and yours, Herr Baron. I believe you both, and so does my mother. But you will forgive me if I voice my skepticism. I still find it difficult to believe the truth of her existence, of what she truly is. Can you understand why?”

“Perfectly,” both men said in unison and, surprised, inclined their heads to one another with a smile.

“I believe Leopold knew almost from their cradle his twins were out of the ordinary,” Alec said quietly. “And as they grew older and closer it became impossible for him to separate them, to do anything about their singular attachment to each other. And then, when Joanna became ill… By then it was too late. By then all your father could do was hope that with time, Ernst might be able to shake her influence, at least enough to govern. But then… Ernst’s obsession with me, and Joanna’s jealousy of our friendship… It clearly showed Leopold that Ernst was never going to be cured.”

“But Margrave Leopold was stubborn, Highness,” General Müller said, agreeing with Alec, addressing the Prince. “He refused to acknowledge he had spawned such a creature. He woke every morning believing that today was the day Ernst had finally banished Joanna. It did not matter that his Court Chamberlain and Ernst’s closest friend—me—told him differently. It did not matter that the evidence was there before his eyes when he went to visit Joanna’s apartments and saw his daughter for himself. She dressed in all her magnificence, surrounded by her mute attendants, slaves trapped in her apartments with her. She would be entertaining—torturing—some poor sot of a male, brought to her by Ernst to be used as her plaything, and who would be dead by morning, because the truth could not out. Those men did not matter, their deaths an unconcern, because they were found amongst the lower orders and their disappearance was of concern to no one.”

The General took a breath and forced himself to be calmer. Neither the Prince nor Alec interrupted, though they shared a glance, which surely indicated they both realized Müller was speaking from personal experience—he had witnessed it all. It was as if he read their minds, or caught their glance, because he confirmed their suspicions, saying quietly,

“There were only two instances when Joanna allowed herself to be persuaded by Ernst to show herself outside her apartments. Once, with me. Fortunately, I had already had my suspicions and so did not react, and more fortunately, a fire had broken out in rooms not far from Ernst’s apartment, and she was forced back into the shadows when attendants burst through the door to alert the Prince of the danger.” He looked at Alec then. “The second occurrence was with you, Herr Baron. But she was far more cunning with you—”