The Pierced Heart: A Novel (28 page)

When Causton is gone Maddox sits for a while, pensive, but the day is warm and some time later he starts awake to a knock at the door. It’s Billy, who hands him a telegram and then hovers, shifting from foot to foot while Maddox reads it.

“Very well, Billy,” he says eventually. “That will be all. You may bring tea, if you would.”

“Right you are, Mr Maddox.”

The old man lifts himself a little in his chair, stiff after his sleep, and it’s only then that he realises that little Betsy is sat on the floor at his feet, with the scrapbook on her knees and the pictures strewn haphazardly on all sides. Maddox smiles. “You like looking at the people, Betsy?”

She looks up at him and nods, in that over-strenuous way little children have.

“Dis one,” she says, pointing a slightly sticky finger. Maddox edges forwards in his seat and looks down. It is another daguerreotype, but this time the girl pictured can’t be much more than eight. She is sitting on the lap of an older woman, clearly her mother, and both are in their Sunday best, the little girl with her hair ringletted and ribboned, and the woman in a heavy gown of some sombre unreflecting colour. She is heavy-set and dark-haired, the woman, and neither is smiling, though given the immense period of time they would have been required to sit, unmoving, for the portraitist, that is not, perhaps, so very surprising.

“Could you pass it to me, Betsy?”

The child crawls across to the picture on her hands and knees and presents it in a charmingly formal fashion, to the old man. He touches her golden hair a moment then whispers, “I think I can hear your mother calling.”

You might wonder how he knows this, since Nancy is at this very moment two floors below them, behind the closed kitchen door, and
the little girl (whose hearing must, surely, be more acute than his) has showed no signs of noticing anything, but Betsy does not seem perturbed by such considerations, and merely smiles, retrieves her doll from the sopha, and skips off happily downstairs.

As for Maddox, he sits staring at the picture in the silence, his left hand fluttering a little as it does when he is tired, or distressed. And then he turns again to the
escritoire
at his side, takes a sheet of paper and his pen, and begins, slowly, to write.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
 

“L
UCY!
”
CRIES
C
HARLES, HIS
voice hoarse with anxiety, seizing the handle of the carriage door. “
Lucy!
”

But when he throws it open all he finds is an elderly lady in a black silk mourning gown with a fat pug dog on her knee, frowning at him over her
pince-nez
. And then Sam is at his side, and the man in the tall hat is striding round the coach towards them, his face irate. “What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing? Who are you? How dare you approach my mother in this insolent manner?”

“Metropolitan Police, sir,” says Sam quickly, as the pug starts up yapping and growling. “Case o’ mistaken identity. Our apologies.”

Then he’s pulling Charles away, and hauling him back towards the railway station, hissing, “What do yer think yer doing? You’ll get us both in ’ot water at this rate. We’ll just ’ave to wait, Chas. We knew ’e probably wouldn’t be ’ere this early. We’ve jus’ gotta be patient.”

“No,” insists Charles, frowning. “Something’s wrong, I know it.”

He looks back to where the man in the tall hat is now presenting his documents at the foot of the gangway, and the elderly lady is being wheeled up onto the ship. “I’m going to board. I think Von Reisenberg’s given us the slip—gone another way. I think he asked about
Folkestone deliberately, knowing full well that we would question Williams. If I take this crossing I could be in Paris by the early hours—I can get a train to Vienna from there.”

“But Rowlandson said we weren’t to go any furver—”

“Yes, I know he did, but that only applies to you, not me—
Causton
is my client now. I have every right to pursue his interests, in whatever way I see fit.”

“So what am I supposed to do in the bleedin’ meantime?”

“Wait to see if he comes for the five o’clock boat and then send a message by it to the telegraph office in Boulogne. They can wire me at the Gare du Nord. If you have him, I will return at once. If not, I will change trains and go on at once to Austria.”

Sam starts to object but Charles is not listening. “And wire my uncle as well, will you—he’ll worry, else.”

And with that he’s striding towards the foot of the gangway and fumbling in his pockets for money and his passport, not noticing that Watkins is toiling up from the office, waving a piece of paper in his hand.

“A wire for you,” he calls, half out of breath, “from a Mr Maddox, in London.”

But the steamer is blowing its horn now, and Charles can do nothing but seize the paper and stuff it into his pocket, before racing up the swaying plank to the ship, and the sea.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 

I
HAVE BEEN
here now, two days. This room high in his castle, and low under the sky.

The crossing from Dover to Ostende took more than twelve hours, and as the day drew on the weather worsened, and we were soon pitching in heavy seas. He locked me in my cabin, telling me to sleep and be still, and I lay there, as the waves rolled beneath us, and the tears rolled down my cheeks onto the rough cotton pillow.

When we reached port, it was some time before he came to summon me, telling me, once more, to shield my eyes before he led me up through the empty decks. And despite the shadows I walked in I could tell, as I stepped gingerly down the walkway to the dockside, that the sky was darkening and the rain falling. The quayside was almost deserted by then, with but one cab waiting, which took us through the wet and dreary town to the railway station, where a man in livery was awaiting us. His own servant, then, I thought, my heart sinking, as I realised at last—as I should have done hours before—where it was he planned to take me. In my present state of
weakness my mind quailed at the thought of so many miles alone with him, so many, many miles in the closeness of a railway compartment, but in this, at least, my fears proved groundless, for he handed me into a compartment alone, then drew the blinds down and closed the door, and a few moments later the train jolted heavily into motion.

And so it was that the journey was conducted. We changed trains at Cologne, and again at Leipzig, but there was no stop, no stay, and it was scarcely more than a day since we left Ostende that I awoke before dawn and lifted the corner of the blind to see the outskirts of Vienna. It was weeks since I had seen full sun, and my eyes were weak as a newborn’s, smarting at even the thin grey light then streaking the eastern sky. At Vienna, we were met by a carriage emblazoned with a coat of arms, and for one long last day I sat opposite him in the carriage, drifting in an uneasy slumber in which the sounds outside mingled with words half-heard and faces half-seen. And then suddenly I was awake, and the wind was whipping the coachman’s cloak against the carriage, and the rain pattering on the roof, as we started up what I could tell at once was a long steep slope, the horses straining and the wheels slipping on the wet cobblestones. Then the carriage came to a halt and when the door opened it was to darkness, and the glow of moonlight on ancient lichened walls, and I knew that I had entered the Baron’s domain.

And all at once he was changed. It was as if the passing of his own threshold possessed some supernatural power, for his demeanour became at once gentle and gracious, even conciliatory. He sat me by the fire in his great dim echoing hall, and had servants bring me tea and hot
apfelstrudel
. My throat tightened then, not just at this kindness unlooked-for, but at these reminders of my childhood, for my mother used to make
apfelstrudel
, even though she was an Englishwoman, and I remember my father’s assistants saying that no-one made such light sweet pastry as she did, not even their own grandmamas.
He watched me as I ate, then rose and took a seat closer to mine.

“I know that these last weeks have been a trial to you. That you have thought my conduct harsh, even cruel, and condemned me for heartlessness. But there has been a reason behind every action I have taken. The hours you have spent in darkness, the food and drink you thought was poisoning you”—I started at this, but he continued as if he had not perceived it—“all these things are come now to readiness, for tomorrow, tomorrow we will at last begin our great work.”

There was a flush in his hollow cheeks as he said this, such as I had never seen before, and a light of fervour in his pale eyes, but before I could ask him what he meant he had risen from his chair and was gone.

A man then appeared who introduced himself as a Herr Bremmer, and gestured me to follow him. He was a small man with small eyes made yet smaller by the thick glass of his spectacles. We went up a flight of stone steps, and then another and another, until I was breathless, clutching my side. He halted and waited respectfully until I was able to continue, and we made the final slow climb to the room he said was to be my own—a room shaped as an octagon, and lined with books, with no windows, and the lamp turned low. There was another chamber leading from it, with a carved four-poster bed, and heavy iron shutters closed and bolted. The man bowed and retired, and I dragged myself in relief to the bed, where I fell at once into undreaming sleep, without staying even to remove my clothes.

When I woke I saw that a meal had been laid in the little sitting-room, and the air was filled with the smell of new bread. I ate hungrily, wondering if it was breakfast or supper I was consuming, since I had no way of knowing what time it was. I was just finishing the last of the hot sweet coffee when there was a knock at the door and I received my summons. Herr Bremmer conducted me down to the gallery, and thence to a small door, set centrally on one side. This he opened and gestured that I should go up the steps. I looked at him,
suddenly apprehensive, but he did nothing but repeat the same gesture, and so, my heart beating hard, I complied.

The stairs circled up and up and I found myself at last in a vast space, wide and tall. But I sensed that, rather than saw it, for the room was entirely dark—so dark not the slightest glimmer reached the eye. If there were doors they were curtained close, and indeed the air felt close and smothered, as if all the walls and windows were muffled. But such places were no longer strange to me. It was just as it had been in the apartment in England, and as my senses sharpened I perceived I was not alone. There was no movement—no step—but I knew he was there. I could smell his body; I could hear his breathing.

“There is nothing to fear.”

I turned back, towards the voice, and then I felt him come up behind me and take each of my wrists in his hands. Perhaps he felt the hard throb of the pulse, for he said again, “There is nothing to fear. This is where our work begins. Our great and marvellous work.”

And then he led me forwards, three steps, four, five, before lowering me slowly into a chair. I found there was a table before me now, covered in some heavy, deadening cloth that had the soft touch of baize. I heard a movement, as of a long curtain drawing to, and then the table began to rotate beneath my hands. I started back, and I heard him say, “Do not be alarmed. All I require you to do is place your hands on the objects that will appear before you. Place your hands upon each one and tell me what you feel—what you see.”

“But—”

“Trust me, Lucy. Do as I say.”

There was the sound of a little silver bell then, and the table came to a halt. I put out my hands, and felt the touch of metal. Smoothly polished and cool, no doubt, to the skin, though not to mine, for a prickling warmth spread at once from my fingertips and I saw my hands reflected in a sudden flaring glow.

“I’ve seen it before—this colour—”

“What colour?” he replied quickly.

“Red, a dull red.”

“And how does it appear?”