Dorchester Terrace (14 page)

“Who are you afraid of?” she whispered.

Serafina’s eyes filled with tears, and one hand closed over Vespasia’s, her thin fingers desperate. “I don’t know. There were so many. I’m not even sure which ones matter anymore. And half the time I don’t know what I’m saying!” Tears filled her eyes. “I’m not sure who is allied with whom these days, and if I make a mistake, they’ll kill me. I know too much, Vespasia! I thought of writing it all down, and letting everyone know that I had, but what good would that do? Only the guilty would believe me. It’s all so …”

Vespasia held Serafina’s hand with both of hers. “Are you certain there are still secrets that matter, my dear? So much has changed. Franz Josef is a relatively benign old man now, broken by tragedy …”

“I know. And I know what that tragedy was, more than you do, Vespasia.”

“Mayerling?” Vespasia asked with surprise. “How could you know more about that than what was public information? They burned the place to the ground, and all the evidence with it.”

“Not all,” Serafina said softly. “I know people. I’ve only lost my wits in the last year.” She searched Vespasia’s eyes. “But there are other secrets, older ones. I know who shot Esterhazy, and why. I know who Stefan’s father really was, and how to prove it. I know who betrayed Lazar Dragovic.” The tears spilled down her tired cheeks. “I’m so afraid I’ll forget who I’m talking to, and say something to give it away.”

Vespasia realized that Serafina was frightened not only of letting the secrets slip, but also that whoever was involved would fear the revelations enough to kill her before that happened.

Today she knew what year it was, and she knew Vespasia. But when Adriana Blantyre had been there, Vespasia was uncertain whether Serafina had truly been aware and was only pretending to be confused, or whether she had actually believed it was a different time. Remembering the look in Serafina’s eyes, the blank helplessness, she feared it was the latter. Anyway, what purpose could there be in trying to mislead Adriana?

“Perhaps it would be a good idea to see fewer people for a little while?” she suggested. “It might even be possible to make sure the ones you do see are those who would know little of such things anyway, so even if you mistook who they were, what you said would be incomprehensible to them. I know that could be terribly boring, but at least it would be safe.”

Serafina understood that and sadness filled her face. “Perhaps it would be smarter,” she agreed. “But will you come back again? I …” Embarrassment prevented her from finishing the request.

“Of course,” Vespasia assured her. “We could talk of whatever you wish. I would enjoy it myself. There are too few of us left.”

Serafina nodded with a smile, and sank back into the pillows, her eyes closed. “And Adriana,” she whispered. “Take care of her for me.
But …” She gulped and her voice choked. “But perhaps I shouldn’t see her again … in case I say something …” She stopped, unable to finish her thought.

Vespasia remained a few minutes longer, but Serafina seemed to have drifted into a light sleep. Vespasia moved the sheets a little to cover her thin hands—the old get chilled very easily—then she walked softly from the room.

She went down the stairs and asked the maid in the hallway to send for Nerissa so she might express her good wishes and take her leave.

Nerissa appeared within moments, her face shadowed with anxiety.

“Thank you for coming, Lady Vespasia,” she said a little stiffly. “I’m sorry you had to see Aunt Serafina so … so unlike the person she used to be. It is distressing for all of us. You will know now that I was not being alarmist when I said she is sinking rapidly.”

“No, of course not,” Vespasia agreed. “I’m afraid she is considerably worse, even in the few days since I last saw her. I think it might be wise, in view of her … imagination, if you were to restrict her visitors rather more. I suggested to her that it might be a good idea to see only those who are young enough to know little or nothing of the affairs with which she used to be concerned. She was pleased with the suggestion. It will ease her fears. And of course, as you say, it would be very sad if people were to remember her as she is now, rather than as she used to be. I would much prefer not to have it so, were I in her position.”

She was uncertain exactly how to phrase Serafina’s request regarding Adriana.

“You might gently turn aside Mrs. Blantyre, if she calls again,” she began, and saw the puzzlement in Nerissa’s face. “She is of Croatian birth, which seems to awaken particular memories and ideas in your aunt,” she continued. “You do not need to give explanations.”

Nerissa bit her lip. “I can’t ask Mrs. Blantyre to call less often, or to leave earlier. She is an old friend. It would be … very discourteous. I couldn’t explain it without causing offense and saying more than I know Aunt Serafina wishes. But of course I shall do my best to
discourage anyone from staying very long. Tucker is already helping greatly with that. She very seldom leaves my aunt alone. Thank you for your understanding, and your help.” It was final. She was not going to accept any advice.

“If there is anything further, please call me.” Vespasia had no choice but to leave the matter.

“I will,” Nerissa promised.

Vespasia walked down the steps to her carriage with her feeling of unease in no way lifted. Serafina had seemed so sure that she did not want to see Adriana again, but for whose sake? There had been a tenderness in her when she spoke the younger woman’s name that was deeper than anything Vespasia had ever seen in her before. And Adriana, in turn, had seemed to care more than casually, more than a mere act of kindness would require. Was it simply because they were fellow exiles, with a love of country, or something else?

Vespasia was in her carriage and more than halfway home when she suddenly changed her mind and rapped her cane against the ceiling to draw the coachman’s attention. He stopped and she asked him to take her instead to the home of Victor Narraway.

As she had expected, when she arrived Narraway was not in, but she left him a note asking him to call her at his most immediate opportunity. The matter was of some urgency, and she required his advice, and probably his assistance.

N
ARRAWAY CAME HOME IN
the late afternoon, tired from the boredom of having sat most of the day in the House of Lords listening to tedious and exhaustively repetitive arguments. Vespasia’s note gave him a rush of excitement, as if at last something of interest might happen. Never in his life had Vespasia disappointed him. He put through a telephone call to her, even before taking off his coat. Her invitation was simple, and he accepted without hesitation.

He found himself sitting forward a little in his seat in the hansom as he watched the familiar streets go by. His imagination raced as to what it might be that concerned her to this degree; there had been a haste in her handwriting, as though she were consumed by a deep
anxiety, and the tone of her voice on the telephone had confirmed it. Vespasia did not exaggerate, nor was she easily alarmed. His mind went back over other tragedies and dangers they had been concerned about together, most of them involving Pitt. Some had come very close to ending in defeat; all had held the possibility of disaster.

As soon as he reached her house he sprang out of the cab and hurried up the steps. The door opened before he had time to pull the bell. The maid welcomed him in, took his coat, and showed him to Vespasia’s peaceful sitting room, its windows and French doors offering views of the garden.

“Thank you for coming so promptly,” she said, rising to her feet. It was an unusual practice for her. He noticed that she did not quite have her customary composure. There was something almost indefinably different in her manner. She was as exquisitely dressed as always, in a blue-gray gown with deep décolletage, pearls at her ears and throat, and her hair coiled in a silver crown on her head.

“I presume you have not eaten? May I offer you supper?” she asked.

“After you have told me what it is that troubles you. Clearly it is urgent,” he replied.

She gestured for him to be seated, and resumed her own place beside the fire.

“I visited Serafina Montserrat again today,” she told him. “I found her considerably worse; her mind has deteriorated a great deal—I think.” She hesitated. “Victor, I really do not know at all quite how much she is losing her wits. When I first arrived she seemed lucid, but her eyes were filled with fear. Before I had the opportunity to speak with her for more than a few moments, Adriana Blantyre called.”

“Evan Blantyre’s wife?” He was startled. Blantyre was a man of considerable substance and reputation. “Courtesy, or friendship?” he asked quietly.

“Friendship,” she answered without hesitation.

He watched the deepening anxiety in Vespasia’s eyes, and noted the presence of another emotion he could not read. “Perhaps you had better tell me the heart of it,” he said quietly. “What is it you fear?”

Vespasia spoke slowly. “As soon as Adriana came into the room,
Serafina seemed to begin rambling, as if she had no idea what year it was. Adriana was very patient with her, very gentle, but it was disturbing.”

“What year does she imagine she is in?” Narraway was beginning to feel the same intense pity he knew Vespasia was feeling, even though, as far as he was aware, he had never met Serafina Montserrat.

“I don’t know,” Vespasia replied. “Possibly the fifties, or early sixties, not very long after the revolutions of ’48.”

“And who does she believe Adriana to be?” he asked, puzzled. “She cannot be more than forty, at the very outside. I would have thought less.”

“That’s what makes so little sense,” Vespasia answered. “Serafina took her for a Croatian patriot, which is not completely divorced from the truth. But she was rambling. Her eyes were far away, her hands clenched on the sheets. And then when Adriana left, I remained behind for a few moments, and suddenly Serafina was completely herself again, and the fear returned.” She took a deep breath. “Victor, she is afraid that someone may kill her in order to prevent her from revealing the truths she knows. She spoke of betrayals, old grudges, and deaths that cannot be forgotten, but as if they were all current, and there was more violence to come. She mentioned Mayerling.”

“Mayerling?” He was incredulous. “But Serafina was living here in London at the time, wasn’t she?” he asked. “And she must have been well into her seventies and surely not privy to the inside circles of the Austrian court anymore. Vespasia, are you sure she isn’t … romanticizing?”

“No, I’m not sure!” Her face was full of grief. “But her fear is real, that I have absolutely no doubt of. She is terrified. Is it possible that there is something for her to fear?” Her voice dropped. “Something apart from loneliness, old age, and madness?”

He felt the pain strike him; to his shame, not for Serafina Montserrat, but for Vespasia, and for himself. Then the instant after, it became pity.

“Probably not,” he said quietly. “But I promise that tomorrow I shall begin to look into it. I had better do it discreetly; otherwise, if by
any wild chance this is true, I shall have given whoever she fears more to fear from her.”

“Yes, please be careful.” Vespasia hesitated. “I am sorry if I am asking you to waste your time. She seemed so sure, and then the next moment completely lost, as though she were alone in a strange place, searching for anything familiar.”

Narraway brushed it aside. He did not want her to feel obliged to him. He told her the truth, startled at how simple it was for him to confess to her.

“I’m glad of something to do that is a challenge to my mind rather than my patience,” he told her. “Even if it should prove that Mrs. Montserrat has nothing to fear, as I hope it will.”

Vespasia smiled, and there was amusement in it as well as gratitude. “Thank you, Victor. I am grateful that you will do it so quickly. Now that that is decided, would you like some supper?”

He accepted with pleasure. It would be very much more enjoyable to share the evening with her than to eat alone. Before the O’Neil business, before going to Ireland with Charlotte on that desperate mission, he would have considered dining at home a peaceful end to the day, and the idea of company would have been something of an intrusion. Solitude, a good book, the silence of the house—all would have been comfortable. Now there was an emptiness there, a deep loneliness he was incapable of dismissing. No doubt it would pass, but for the moment, Vespasia’s quiet sitting room held a peace that eased his mind.

N
ARRAWAY GAVE VESPASIA
’
S REQUEST
a great deal of thought as he sat quietly in his own chair by the hearth, after midnight, still not ready to go to bed. Was he afraid of sleep, of nightmares, of waking in the dark in confusion, for an instant not knowing where he was? Or perhaps for longer than just an instant? Would that time come? Would he be alone, pitied, no one remembering who he used to be?

Physical changes were part of the tests of life, and they included loss of the senses and perception. It was not pathetic to lose some of one’s awareness of the present and slip back to happier times.

He could recall his own youth with sharper detail than he had expected: his early years in Special Branch, long before he was head of it; when he was only learning, newer than Pitt ever was, because he had not had the decades of police experience. He had had authority, and traveled to some of the most exciting cities in Europe and beyond. He smiled now at the memories. They seemed happy and exciting, looking back, even though he knew he had at times been lonely then. And there had been failures, some of them quite harsh.

Now he thought of Paris only for its grace, the old quarters steeped in the history of revolution. In his youth he had been able to stand in the Cordeliers with his eyes closed and imagine that if he opened them he would see the ghosts of Robespierre, the giant Danton, and the raving Marat, hear the rattle of tumbrels over the stones, and smell the fear. The passion haunted the air.

He had been gullible then, believed people he should not have believed, one beautiful woman in particular, Mireille. That had been a mistake that had nearly cost him his life. He had felt a starry-eyed pity for her that had bordered on love. He had never been so stupid again.