The Great Game (33 page)

Friends should be preferred to kings.

—Voltaire

             
For connoisseurs of the palaces, chateaux, and other residences of Europe's nobility,
Weisserschloss,
the royal chateau of the hereditary princes of Rumelia, was a visual feast. The Principality of Rumelia must not be confused with Eastern Rumelia, which was currently part of Bulgaria despite Serbian protestation and a brief war; or with Great Rumelia, the European slice of the old Turkish Empire, which was now subdivided into Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace.

             
The principality was made up of the Duchy of Lichtenberg, the counties of Parmetz, Yucht, and Constantine, and a vast bog known as the Great Eastern Marsh, and had been a satrap of the Holy Roman Empire, now the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for the past thousand years, give or take a century. It had been ruled by the Juchtenberg Dynasty since Karl the Bald had claimed the throne in 1164, ousting Heinrich the Skewer, who had the unpopular habit of impaling people he disliked three at a time on a specially constructed lance.

             
Weisserschloss
sat on a hill overlooking the capital city of Spass, and boasted a formal garden that had first been laid out by Agricola Germanica sometime in the first century A
.D.,
when he had briefly served as imperial governor of the area. The earliest royal residence had been a fortified castle: walls, keep, moat, drawbridge and all, which was first begun in the twelfth century and gradually added to until it collapsed during extensive structural alterations in the sixteenth century.

             
By the early seventeenth century it was clear that stone walls might a prison make, but they weren't much use against siege artillery, and Alfred III of Lichtenberg began construction of a royal chateau up against the outer wall of the ruined castle. Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who liked the stag hunting in the nearby forest, offered to pay part of the cost if Alfred would make his new chateau big enough to hold the imperial hunting party, and thus the foundation stone for the two hundred-room
Weisserschloss
was laid. Shaped like a U facing the formal garden, with a broad circular driveway, a facade of white marble from the Neander Valley, and interior fittings carved, painted, embossed, and decorated by the finest craftsmen in Europe, it was indeed a chateau fit for an emperor's visits. Books had been written about the social history of the building, and who had supposedly crept along what secret corridor to enter which bedroom in the middle of the night; about the carvings and frescos in the grand hall and the collection of oil paintings scattered elsewhere about the building; and about the ghosts that were said to inhabit the drafty passages of the imperial wing.

             
Now, 280 years later,
Weisserschloss
was becoming something of a white elephant, requiring a staff of eighty just to stay even with the cleaning and repairs, not counting the personal staff of the prince and princess, which increased the number another eighty or so when they were in residence. But the income of Ariste Juchenberg, the current crown prince of Rumelia and duke of Lichtenberg, was up to the strain. His ancestors had acquired wisely, and his father and grandfather had conserved well.

-

             
Almost two weeks had passed since Paul Donzhof's sister had visited him in prison. It was a little after one in the afternoon when Moriarty, in his guise as Alexandre Sandarel, and his companion Madeleine Verlaine left the train at the
bahnhof
at Spass and threw their two small traveling bags into a fiacre waiting outside the station, its canvas top pulled up to protect the passengers from the slight but chilly drizzle. Moriarty helped Madeleine clamber onto the seat. "Take us to the
Weisserschloss,
driver," he told the skinny, wizened, red-nosed man hunched over in the driver's seat with a thick blanket wrapped around him.

             
The man turned around and touched the brim of his oversized leather hat.
"Yessir!
Which entrance?"

             
Moriarty climbed up and took his seat. "What are our choices?" he asked.

             
"Well, lessee now, there be the trade entrance, which I don't see as you'll be wanting, and the servants' entrance, ditto, and the imperial drive, which be used when the emperor be in residence, which he never has been, at least the current one. I do believe his grandfather used to come for the shooting on occasion. It be also used for visiting nobility, but the prince usually sends his own carriage for them." The driver paused for breath and wiped his face with an oversized handkerchief. "Then there be the private entrance and the public entrance and the visitors' entrance and the guest entrance. And there be the regimental entrance, for when the troops are paraded. And there be a couple or so of others, but I don't know
nothing
about them."

             
"We're here to request an audience with Prince Ariste," Moriarty told the driver.

             
"Ah!" the driver said, twisting even further around in his seat to get a better look at his passengers. "Audience day be Thursday, but you must put your name on the list on Tuesday. So, since this be Friday, I'll be taking you to the
Hotel Herzogin Theresa,
that being the hotel suitable for persons of your caliber."

             
Moriarty screwed his monocle into his right eye and stared up at the driver. "Let us assume that the prince will see us today," he said. "If that were so, which entrance would you suggest we arrive at?"

             
The driver refused to be responsible for assuming any such thing. "T'aint my place to be suggesting," he said, shaking his head as though he'd never heard such madness, "but 1 suppose if t'were me, I'd place myself at the private entrance. Unless I got you figured wrong and you be trying to sell something; then it's the trade entrance for you."

             
"Perhaps we should try the private entrance," Moriarty said, "and I'll restrain any impulse to engage in trade."

             
The driver looked at Moriarty curiously, but then turned to the front and snapped the reins. "Come, Kneidl," he said to his horse, "we take this crazy man and his beautiful friend to the
Weisserschloss."

             
Twenty minutes later Kneidl trotted down the wide driveway that formed a great U as it passed in front of the chateau, and stopped at a pair of doors about midway along the left-hand wing. Less elaborate than the Great Entrance they had passed, the gold-framed great oak doors still would have shamed many a cathedral. The doors opened as the carriage stopped and a footman emerged holding a large umbrella and stood respectfully by the carriage door shielding them with it as Moriarty climbed down and helped Madeleine down after him.

             
Moriarty took an embossed visiting card reading, "Alexandre Sandarel—London, Paris" from his sleeve and wrote "concerning Benjamin Barnett" on the back of it with his traveling pencil. He combined it with one which his companion produced from her small clutch purse, which read merely "Lady Madeleine Verlaine," and placed the pair of them on the small silver tray held by the footman. "We would like to see the prince," he said. "We have no appointment, but I believe His Highness will grant us an audience."

             
The footman nodded his head sharply twice. "Their Highnesses are out riding at the moment, but they will return soon. This way, please." He led them to a small waiting room to the left of the doors and disappeared within the building. Two pikemen guarded the hallway to the interior of the chateau. Moriarty noted that, while their ceremonial uniforms were two centuries out of date, their pikes were sharp.

             
Three-quarters of an hour later the footman returned for them. "Please leave your baggage here," he said, "and your stick, sir, and follow me." He escorted them to the door of a small drawing room somewhere in the interior of the vast building. It was guarded by two burly men in black uniforms, one of whom ran his hands over Moriarty's jacket and looked inside Madeleine's small purse before allowing them to enter. "Sorry, sir, ma'am," he said, "but the prince's life has been threatened, and we must take precautions."

             
A tall, handsome man in one of the many ornate cavalry uniforms available to Austro-Hungarian nobility stood before a small elegant writing desk inside the room. By his side, seated in the carved wood chair that was companion to the writing desk, was a slender, blond woman with delicate features and intelligent eyes. She was dressed in a simple, full-skirted riding costume. A maid was just removing their raincoats and wide-brimmed hats from the room, testifying to the haste with which they had come to this meeting. "I am Prince Ariste," the man said, "and this is my wife, Princess Diane. I apologize for the unseemly precautions, but my guards insist upon it with strangers."

             
"
Your
Highnesses," Moriarty said, inclining his head slightly in what might have been mistaken for a bow. "We understand and we take no offense." Madeleine curtsied gracefully.

             
"We have come directly from our afternoon ride without taking the time to change," Prince Ariste said. "Anyone who invokes the name of the Barnetts will gain an immediate audience with us. But I trust that you have something to say that warrants our attention." He looked at Moriarty sharply. "You are Alexandre Sandarel. I believe I've heard the name. You're some sort of charlatan, are you not?"

             
Moriarty chuckled. "Alexandre Sandarel has been so described," he admitted. "I must say that I don't agree with the description."

             
"Perhaps the Barnetts sent him to us," Princess Diane suggested, looking up at her husband. "I hope he is amusing."

             
"Is that the case?" the prince asked. "Did the Barnetts send you to us? They're due to arrive here any day now, you know."

             
"I understand your English is excellent," Moriarty said, switching to that language. "Let us continue the conversation in English, as there will be less chance of our conversation being understood if we are overheard."

             
"You mistrust my servants?"

             
"In matters of importance I mistrust everybody. Those who are not venal are thoughtless. Can you vouch for all your servants, Your Highness?"

             
Prince Ariste thought it over for a second. "No," he said, "I suppose not. There are so many of them."

             
"English is an acceptable language," Princess Diane allowed. "Besides, I've been told that my accent is charming, in English."

             
"And so it is," Moriarty agreed.

             
"Now, about the Barnetts—"

             
"I believe that their arrival will be delayed," Moriarty said. "Benjamin Barnett and his wife Cecily have been kidnaped by a man who calls himself Graf Sigfried von Linsz and are being held in a twelfth-century castle on a large estate apparently owned by him near the town of Uhmstein outside of Vienna."

             
"Kidnaped!"
The prince clutched at the back of the chair his wife was sitting in. "How do you know this, and why did you come to us? Have you notified the authorities?"

             
Moriarty shook his head. "There are reasons why that would be unwise."

             
"Unwise?" Princess Diane asked. "How can it be unwise to notify the police?"

             
"I will explain," Moriarty told her.

             
Prince Ariste reached down and took his wife's hand. "How
am I to know this
is the truth?" he demanded. "Do you claim to know this by some sort of clairvoyant trick? Do you expect some sort of reward?" The words rushed from his mouth as the ideas were formed.