He found three small dogs cowering in the corner of one closed room and carried them to safety despite their struggles when they smelt the fire and felt the smoke in their eyes.
As he laid them down, he felt a hand on his arm.
He turned to see Katharina staring at him with a distraught expression on her lovely face.
“Richard, help me. I have just remembered something,” she cried.
“What is it?” he enquired.
“The Czar!” she answered. “He is in there!”
She pointed in horror towards the burning building.
Amid the snow-covered roofs there rose dense clouds of smoke and one wing was already ablaze, its windows glowing with the brilliance of the flames leaping against the darkness of the sky.
Even as Katharina spoke, there was an explosion and part of the wall collapsed, disclosing a room crammed with treasures and masterpieces of art.
“The Czar?” Richard repeated. “But he did not come tonight. He is at the Hofburg.”
“No, no!” Katharina shouted. “He was coming here after we had left. It was arranged that he was to go up the secret staircase to the same salon where you went.”
As she spoke, a sudden fear seemed to stab Richard.
“What do you mean?” he asked harshly. “Who was he meeting there?”
Katharina’s face was very clear to him in the light of the flames and he knew the answer to his question long before she could force the words to her lips.
Without a word he turned and ran towards the Palace.
“Richard! Richard, be careful!”
He heard Katharina’s despairing cry, but it did not check the speed he was running at.
He sprang into the smoke and flames, which made the main entrance already a small inferno. Blinded and choked, for the moment, he thought they would overpower him and then he saw his way through them.
The marble stairway was as yet untouched. He sprang up it, running with all his speed down the long corridors which instinct rather than knowledge told him led to that part of the building where the Czar would be.
He had only once been in that room, which Count Razumovsky kept as a convenient meeting place for those who wished to be secret and incognito, but fortunately his bump of locality was good and, with only a few moments’ hesitation, he found himself in the quieter less ornate part of the Palace, which the flames had not yet reached.
He burst open the doors as he went, a bedroom, a small sitting room containing a delightful collection of Fragonard’s pictures, a gallery decorated with statues, several more bedrooms and at last, when he had almost begun to despair, a room which he recognised as soon as he opened the door.
For a moment he thought that it was empty until, with a feeling of terror such as he had never experienced before in his whole life, he saw Wanda lying on the floor.
He thought she must be dead and then, as he knelt down beside her, he saw that she had only fainted.
Her face was very white, but her body was warm and her heart was beating.
He bent to pick her up in his arms and as he did so she opened her eyes. For a moment she stared at him and then she gave a little convulsive cry,
“You’ve come! You’ve come! I felt so sure – you would.”
She turned as she spoke and hid her face against his shoulder. She was trembling all over with a violence that was almost frightening.
“It’s all right, darling,” he said to her. “I am here and I will take you to safety.”
“Don’t let him – touch me! Don’t let him – touch me!”
For a moment he did not understand.
Then he noticed her torn dress and, raising his eyes, saw the cushions on the sofa dented with the imprint of a body.
His lips tightened for a moment and there was an expression of murder on his face and he drew her even closer to him.
“No one shall touch you,” he said. “I promise you that.”
“I am so frightened – save me!”
It was the cry of a child, the cry too of a woman who had been terrified beyond endurance.
Very tenderly Richard rose to his feet, lifting her in his arms.
“We have to escape from here, my darling,” he said quietly. “The Palace is on fire.”
“So that is what they were crying out,” Wanda whispered. “Thank God you came before – before – ”
Her voice broke on the word and suddenly her whole being was racked with tears.
They were the tears of relief, tears too, that could wash away, at least for the moment, the sharpness of her terror.
For a moment she sobbed convulsively and then, as Richard started towards the door, she gave a little cry.
“Put me down, please put me down.”
He did as she asked of him.
“We must hurry,” he urged, still keeping his arms about her.
She looked up at him. Her eyes, glistening with tears, were very large in the white oval of her face.
“I do not – understand,” she stammered. “I thought it was you – at first. It wasn’t – and yet I had seen you so often and believed – ”
“Never mind about that now. I will explain everything later. The Palace is on fire and I have to get you out of it.”
He would have picked her up again, but she stepped away from him.
“I will walk,” she said. “It will be easier. Explanations do not matter now you are here and it was not – you who was – with me – just now.”
Her lips trembled for a moment and he knew what she was remembering, then, taking her by the hand, he pulled her along.
“Come quickly,” he commanded.
They ran along the corridor, but, as they reached the top of the main staircase, the billowing clouds of smoke surging towards them told them that it was already impassable.
“We can’t get down that way,” Richard exclaimed.
“Why not the staircase through the panel?” Wanda panted, but he shook his head.
“Unless the servant is on duty at the foot of the stairs, which is unlikely now, there is no way of opening the door except by the key which he and he alone holds.”
“There must be another way!”
They ran back down the passage, looking for a side staircase, but when they found it, they saw the flames already licking their way up the wooden banisters.
“We will have to risk the main entrance,” Richard decided. “Do you trust me?”
She smiled at that and for a moment they stood looking at each other as if there was no need for haste, no need for anxiety.
“You know I do,” she answered.
“And I love you.” He knew it now. “I love you with all my heart and with all my soul. I have never loved anyone until this moment.”
“I love you, too,” her lips were raised to his and then, as he kissed her, he gave a sudden triumphant laugh.
“We are not going to die yet. Come, I know what to do.”
He ran into the nearest bedroom, seized a blanket off the bed and soused it with an ewer of water from the washbasin.
Heavy and sodden he draped it over his own head and then over Wanda’s as he lifted her in his arms.
“Hold tightly, keep your face hidden and pray, darling, as you’ve never prayed before,” he told her.
He felt her arms go around his neck and her lips touched his cheek.
Then she buried her face in his shoulder and the blanket enveloped them both.
The smoke, dense at the top of the stairs, cleared a little as he went lower.
Wanda weighed very little, but he could not go quickly for fear of stumbling and hurling them both into the flames that leapt crackling towards them as they consumed the beautiful inlaid furniture and brocade-covered chairs.
It was hard to see and yet he knew from the way the flames were blowing that the front door was open.
It was only a question of passing through the river of fire, vivid and glowing, that lay between them and safety.
Slowly Richard descended the stairs. It was now or never, he knew that. They must be the last people left in the Palace and there was no chance of help.
They must save themselves or perish.
He took a deep breath and, as if she knew what was happening, he felt Wanda’s arm tighten round his neck.
“God help us!” he muttered and it was perhaps the most sincere prayer that he had ever offered in his life.
And then he was dashing into the fire. He could feel the great heat of it scorch his face.
He felt an agonising pain in his legs and heard the hiss and siss of the flames against the wetness of the blanket.
The smoke blinded his eyes and filled his nostrils.
He could not breathe, he could not see and then suddenly, as he fought against suffocation, he knew that they were through.
He could feel the coolness of the air and felt his feet stumble on the gravel.
Then there were hands to support him, to prevent him from falling and the chatter of a dozen voices.
Someone took the heaviness of the blanket from off his shoulders and they would have lifted Wanda from his arms, but he shook himself free of them.
“We are all right,” he muttered. “I can manage.”
He carried her away from the heat of the house and onto the shadows of the formal garden. He could see the little crowd of dinner guests standing where he had left them, watching the burning Palace, every detail of their white strained faces clear in the firelight.
Beyond them, kept back by sentries and servants, a huge crowd of spectators was assembling.
They were coming in great hordes from the town, the brightness of the flames against the sky a beacon to guide them to this new excitement. But where he and Wanda came to rest beside a little pointed cypress tree, they might have been in a deserted garden, for no one noticed them.
They might have been alone too as far as they themselves were concerned.
Gently he set her down and with a tenderness somehow new to his nature, he noted her dishevelled hair and the way her hands went quickly to the crumpled bodice of her dress.
“We’ve done it!”
The words came triumphantly from his lips.
“Who are you?”
Her eyes were on his face, looking at him with an almost pathetic bewilderment in their expression,
“I am Richard Melton, an Englishman.”
“You pretended to be the Czar?”
“Yes, I pretended to be the Czar.”
“But why?”
“Because you were working for Metternich.”
He saw the colour flush her cheeks before she raised both hands as if to hide it.
“Do you know? Does it matter?” she whispered. “I am so stupid, I might have known you would guess.”
“My darling, I didn’t guess and don’t let that worry you. There are so many other things to talk about.”
She raised her eyes to his and her lips were parted.
“I am ashamed,” she said. “I wanted to tell you the truth, but he wouldn’t let me.”
“Who wouldn’t – Prince Metternich?”
“Yes. I promised him. It was for Austria, you see.”
“And I too wanted to tell you the truth,” he smiled.
“And you are not an Emperor? Not anyone important?”
“Do you mind?”
“I am glad – so terribly, terribly glad.”
“My little love!”
He reached out his arms at that and she was close to him. For a moment her face was hidden and then she raised it to his.
“I love you,” she whispered. “Is it wrong to tell you so?”
“Wrong? No! Right! Say it again, my darling!”
His lips were seeking hers, but even as he bent his head he saw someone coming towards them.
There was no mistaking the tall figure and the majestic bearing of the man who always seemed to carry an invisible crown on his head.
As Richard stared, he felt Wanda stiffen in his arms and knew that she had seen who was approaching.
The Czar came closer.
It was a moment of tension, a moment when Richard experienced again the murderous anger he had felt as he looked on those dented cushions.
Slowly he clenched his fists.
As the Czar reached him the two men faced each other.
There was a sudden silence and then the Czar burst out laughing.
“Richard! My dear Richard!” he laughed. “Have you seen your face? It is black, my poor fellow. Black as a coalman’s!”
Chapter 12
Richard had felt Wanda stiffen in his arms with fear as the Czar advanced towards them.
Now he knew, as the Imperial laughter echoed above the flames, that she was angry.
But before either of them could speak, with one of those swift changes of mood that made the Czar so incomprehensible to his friends and enemies, the laughter ceased and with a very different expression on his face, he said,
“I owe you an apology, Comtesse. I had not the least idea, when I left you alone a little while ago in the Palace, that there was the slightest danger to you personally. I imagined the sounds I heard were intruding merrymakers and only when I returned to the Hofburg did I learn the terrible truth.
“If I had entertained the least idea that the Palace was on fire, I would have endeavoured to rescue you with the same gallantry as has, I know, been shown by my friend, Richard Melton.”
There was no doubting the Czar’s sincerity and, as both Wanda and Richard knew, he was no coward when it came to physical action.
But, while Wanda might be bewildered at the Czar’s inability to hear what was being cried so loudly in the passages, Richard knew the reason only too well.
It was a closely kept secret of the Russian Court that the Czar was deaf in one ear. Shortly after he was born he had been taken away from his mother by the Empress Catherine the Great, who wanted to bring up her grandson to be a Spartan fully equipped to stand the physical strain that must fall upon the Ruler of a militarised Empire.
In most ways the physical training that Alexander was subjected to proved beneficial but, in order to accustom him to the roar of guns, Catherine had him housed in a room at the Winter Palace where the windows faced the Admiralty.
The child was forced to hear at close range the cannonade, which took place at the Admiralty on every festive occasion and festive occasions were very numerous.
Although Alexander became accustomed to artillery fire, the membranes of his ears proved too weak to sustain continual noise and the result was a deafness in one ear, which was to remain with him for the rest of his life. His vanity made him ignore his disability and no one in his entourage was ever brave enough to refer to it.
“Will you forgive me for deserting you?” he asked now of Wanda.
The pleading in his words, the expression on his face and his almost magnetic charm made resistance impossible and, almost despite herself, Wanda found her antagonism melting away.
It all seemed an ugly unreal dream that this man should have attempted to rape her and that only a timely fire within the Palace itself should have saved her.
Before she could say anything, however, there was a sudden vibrating crash from the Palace behind them and the floor of a magnificent gallery, decorated with statues by Canova, gave way.
A groan went up from the vast crowd watching the flames and in the brilliant light of the conflagration their stained faces and wide astonished eyes gave them almost a macabre appearance.
The white smoke-covered gardens, the bare branches of the trees crested with frost, the marble fountains with their frozen water, made a strange yet at the same time beautiful background for the burning Palace.
In the parts of the building where the fire had not yet penetrated, people were now flinging pictures and statues wildly into the gardens and court.
If they escaped destruction by fire, they were often shattered to pieces on the flagstones or saturated w
ith jets of water and slush, which had already converted the ground into a quagmire.
Several battalions of infantry, which had arrived with the Emperor Francis of Austria at the head of them, were doing their best to preserve order and striving to prevent the progress of the flames. But the breeze was rising and it looked as if by the time morning came nothing would be left of one of the greatest treasure houses in Europe.
It was as if the spectacle was too much for Wanda, for with a little cry she turned towards Richard and buried her face in his shoulder.
“The Comtesse is tired, Sire,” Richard said. “Have I your permission to take her home?”
As he spoke, he lifted Wanda in his arms and with the light of the fire full on both their faces, the Czar and Richard faced each other.
Their rank or lack of it was forgotten, they were just two men with a woman dividing them.
The expression on the Czar’s face was defiant. He resented that his overtures of friendship had gone unanswered.
He was, also, for one fleeting second, jealous of the penniless young Englishman he had befriended.
Then it seemed as if he saw himself through Richard’s eyes, saw the shallow, contrasting elements in his character of Christian humility and pompousness, sensuousness and spirituality, kindness and resentfulness.
And because he was afraid of what he saw, he fell back on the one great asset he knew himself to possess, his extraordinary art of knowing the right way to approach other people and his remarkable ability to charm the hearts of all with whom he came in contact.
His lips curved in a gentle smile.
“But of course my dear Richard,” he said. “The Comtesse should be taken away at once from this scene of destruction. My own sleigh is at your disposal, take it with my blessing and, when the Comtesse is in a fit state to listen, convey to her my most sincere thankfulness that she is safe and unharmed.”
Was it possible to withstand such magnanimity?
Murmuring his thanks, Richard carried Wanda swiftly across the garden and through the crowd of spectators to where the sleighs with their champing frightened horses were waiting for their Masters.
Tenderly he lifted her into the comfortably cushioned seat and then, settling himself beside her, allowed them to be covered by the heavy sable rugs that the Czar had brought with him from Russia.
The Enchanted Waltz Page 17
