Circle of Shadows caw-4

by Imogen Robertson

  ‘Crowther, we must get help.’

  ‘A moment, Mrs Westerman. What do you mean, Swann?’ Crowther took him by the shoulders and shook the man. A little sense flickered into Swann’s eyes again

  ‘I serve the secret superiors. We obey. For the greater good.’

  Crowther snapped his fingers in front of Swann’s swimming gaze. ‘For God’s sake, Crowther,’ Harriet hissed.

  ‘Why did you summon her last night, Swann?’

  His voice was becoming slurred. ‘There was no meeting. We did not meet.’

  ‘Crowther! Now!’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Westerman! Go, fetch help. And Manzerotti.’

  Harriet set off across through the hedges and back towards the palace at a run. Crowther let Swann slump against him. He could hear Harriet calling out, her shouts bouncing off the cold stone and amazing the statues.

  Swann was half-carried into his chamber by Crowther and one of the footmen while Harriet followed with his cane and flask. As they let him fall onto the bed Harriet heard the clip of heels on the wood floor and Manzerotti appeared in the doorway; he paused there a moment to take in the scene.

  ‘My dear Mrs Westerman, Mr Crowther, what on earth have you been up to?’

  Crowther disentangled himself from Swann’s flowing cloak; Harriet saw him flinch as his injured shoulder jarred. He turned first to the footman. ‘Salt, water, a basin. Now.’

  The man turned to go, but Manzerotti put a hand out. ‘First, give me your gloves.’

  The servant looked amazed, but stripped them off and handed them to the singer before running for the door.

  ‘He was distracted, but able to walk and speak some fifteen minutes ago,’ Crowther said. ‘Then his speech became slurred and he was no longer able to stand unassisted.’

  Manzerotti nodded.

  ‘This fell from his pocket,’ Harriet added, and handed Manzerotti the flask.

  He took it, now wearing the footman’s gloves, unstoppered and sniffed it. ‘Nothing obvious.’ Harriet undid her cloak and began to undo the buttons at her wrist. ‘Keep your gloves on, Mrs Westerman,’ Manzerotti said sharply. Harriet became absolutely still, remembering the mask for the first time. He set the flask down and bent over Swann’s body. He was murmuring and his lips were a little blue.

  ‘Your assistance, Mr Crowther.’

  Crowther managed to lift Swann into a seated position while Manzerotti removed cloak, hat and wig. Harriet took the Chancellor’s hands and pulled off his black gloves. It was awkward, the hands loose, but still twitching from time to time, her own fingers made clumsy by her gloves. They came away. The skin of Swann’s hands was mottled and red.

  ‘Gentlemen.’

  Manzerotti and Crowther paused to turn towards her. Then looked at each other.

  ‘It may be a symptom rather than the cause, but he must be washed,’ Manzerotti said. Crowther nodded. The footman returned and Crowther began to mix salt and water. His hand hovered over the glass by the Chancellor’s bed.

  ‘A different glass,’ Manzerotti said to the servant, ‘more water and flannel.’

  Harriet shifted to begin unbuttoning Swann’s waistcoat. She noticed that it was beautifully made, and on each button, a half-shade lighter than the black velvet that covered them, was embroidered the arms of the House of Maulberg.

  The footman was back again. ‘Shall I get the physician, sir?’ he said.

  ‘If you must,’ Manzerotti snapped. The footman backed away, bewildered, then, noticing the gloves and cloak on the floor, bent down automatically to pick them up. Manzerotti’s arm shot out. ‘Don’t touch them.’

  Crowther put the fresh glass to Swann’s mouth and forced the contents down his throat. Almost at once his stomach began to heave and Manzerotti sprang out of the way. Harriet managed to get the basin under Swann’s head almost at once. It started to slip in her hand and she felt Manzerotti’s fingers round her own for a moment to steady it. Swann vomited up liquid and bile, and she heard Manzerotti tut as his sleeve was splashed. Then he moved Harriet out of the way as he took Swann’s forearms and plunged his hands into the other bowl of water.

  Swann groaned. Crowther tilted his head against his own chest and poured more of the salt water down his throat, and at once new shudders ran through Swann’s body and Harriet gripped the bowl. Crowther took a cloth from the stack that had been brought in and wiped the vomit and spittle from Swann’s face.

  Harriet set the bowl on the floor and staggered back towards an armchair, suddenly aware of her own laboured breathing and the thudding of her heart. Manzerotti glanced towards her. ‘Mrs Westerman, if you would be so kind?’

  She nodded and struggled to her feet, then took the bowl in which Manzerotti had washed Swann’s hands. He began to dry them with another cloth. She knelt and removed Swann’s shoes.

  ‘Well?’ Manzerotti asked.

  Crowther had tilted Swann’s head back and opened his right eyelid with thumb and forefinger. Harriet could hear the Chancellor’s breathing. Heavy, rasping. It made her own lungs sore just to hear it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Crowther replied. ‘He’s not dead yet. There is nothing obvious in the vomit. If some substance has been ingested through the skin, perhaps it can be sweated out.’ Harriet retreated again and the two gentlemen manhandled Swann under his covers. She noticed that Manzerotti lifted out Swann’s hands and laid them on top of the sheets. Crowther banked up the fire. Then they took seats either side of her and all three watched the figure in the bed.

  ‘It is Swann’s habit to walk in the garden every day at this time for an hour or so,’ Manzerotti said; his light high voice sounded almost soothing. ‘It is usual that he ask not to be disturbed.’

  ‘He asked to see us.’

  ‘Lucky that he did. He would most certainly have died otherwise.’ Manzerotti stripped the footman’s gloves from his hands and threw them in the fire as he spoke. Without further comment Harriet and Crowther did the same with their own. Harriet watched hers burn with regret. She had intended to give them to her maid when they returned to England. The fire caught and crisped the leather, making the fingers curl together. Then they waited in silence for the court physician.

  V.9

  By the time Georg had come back with another man, a bedsheet taken from his own house, a wide plank and a number of ropes, Michaels had cleared the rest of the earth away from the body. Her legs were curled up under her dress. He laid the donated linen over her, and then tried to push it into the soil below. The colour of the earth around the body was changed, darker, thicker somehow. The body rolled back into his arms like a lover sleeping and he found himself staring into a death’s head. There was a leathery skin clinging to parts of the skull. The long dark hair was loose, seemed unattached to the skull, but rather laid over it. The dress was thin and stained dark along the length of the body. Michaels held himself still. He thought of what the boy had told him, tried to make her alive again in his mind, laughing at simple magic tricks, worrying a system of magic of her own out of the library of the Alchemist. They had taken their chances, she and her sister. Now her sister had a house with a library in it and a reputation to protect, and this girl’s path had led her into the forest and the earth. He saw the glint at her neck, the little gold cross Mrs Padfield had told him of. He lifted the remains up in his arms, placed them on the board and folded the cloth around her while the priest continued to pray. He hoped she’d died quick, and not known the blow was coming.

  Harriet did not have long to recover herself from the shock of Swann’s collapse before the Duke himself arrived. She, Crowther and Manzerotti stood and the Duke nodded to them, remaining just inside the door with his spaniel in his arms and with Colonel Padfield and Count Frenzel at his side.

  It was Frenzel who spoke first. The skin around his mouth was white.

  ‘Who has done this?’

  The Duke looked at him askance. ‘I rather think you have stolen my line, Count,’ he said. ‘However, I feel sure if our
guests knew, they would tell us. Reymen?’ His personal physician scurried past him to the bed and took Swann’s wrist in his hand.

  ‘Weak, sire,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Will he live?’ the Duke asked. The physician looked hopefully at Crowther and Manzerotti. Neither man moved.

  ‘I do not know, sire.’

  The Duke studied Swann’s thin form on the bed for a long moment. ‘Time will tell, I suppose.’ Then he turned on his heel and left smartly. Half-crouching, the physician followed him and his advisers.

  ‘What are we to do?’ Harriet said, then caught her breath, realising she was now including Manzerotti in the we she spoke.

  The singer stood and bent over the bed to examine the hands. They looked as if they had been burned. ‘I think it was the gloves.’ They still lay on the floor by the bed, looking both dead and malevolent. ‘We cannot leave him unguarded. Whoever poisoned them may try again as soon as we leave. Your sister is something of a healer, I think, Mrs Westerman?’ Harriet stiffened, and though Manzerotti did not turn round he must have felt it. ‘No, we have not been gossiping and swapping receipts, madam. Colonel Padfield mentioned it.’

  ‘She makes and sells some household remedies in our village,’ Harriet said at last.

  ‘That must be excuse enough. Let her come, her husband and Mr Graves. They will make less convincing nurses, but better guards. He must not be left alone.’

  Harriet nodded.

  ‘We should also send for Herr Kupfel. Though I doubt he will come willingly,’ Crowther said. Manzerotti turned and raised one beautifully groomed eyebrow. ‘It is likely that the drugs that disorientated Clode and rendered the victims passive came from his collection of receipts. Where there are instructions for the creation of two dangerous drugs, there are probably instructions for the creation of several more.’

  ‘I agree. Where are these papers now?’

  ‘Stolen at some point. With some of the elements needed to create them, and a number of volumes on alchemy and magic ritual. Kupfel might know some manner to ease the workings of whatever did this to Swann.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Manzerotti drawled, studying the frayed flesh on Swann’s hands. ‘That is a collection of papers I would give a great deal of gold to see.’

  Harriet shuddered and she stood to hide it. ‘I will go to Swann’s offices. Perhaps he has left some sign of what he meant to tell us. I assume it will be given out that the Chancellor is merely indisposed.’

  ‘You should not curl your lip, Mrs Westerman. It does not suit you. Yes, I imagine so. Do you think they will let you rifle through his papers, dear lady?’ She could hear the smile in Manzerotti’s voice.

  ‘The Duke has asked us to look into these matters. I go with his authority.’

  ‘But you speak German so badly … Still, perhaps it is better that Mr Crowther and I keep vigil here and you give yourself some other occupation round the court.’ He looked at her, his head on one side. ‘We would not want to ruin our present good understanding by spending too long in each other’s company, now would we?’

  She had no answer for him and turned to leave the room. As she went she heard his low laugh and felt her cheeks burn.

  V.10

  The pane rattled once, then again. Pegel shut his workings into his notebook and put the originals into his jacket before going to the window. He saw Florian below, looking up at him from under his thick blond hair, shielding his eyes, and smiled. He opened the window.

  ‘Come on up!’

  Florian waved and trotted off to the rear of the building, and Pegel had plenty of time to place his notes and papers behind one of the loose tiles of the roof slant before unlocking the door and taking his seat again. The stairs creaked, and Frenzel was in the room, smiling a little shyly with a paper-wrapped parcel in his hands.

  ‘That for me?’ Florian nodded. ‘Do I get to keep it this time? Hand it over then.’

  As Jacob ripped off the paper Frenzel said, ‘Where have you been? The Professor keeps asking for you.’

  ‘The Wealth of Nations! Very nice. I didn’t know it had been translated.’

  ‘A friend of mine.’

  Pegel hobbled across to his own bookshelf and pulled a number of papers from between the books.

  ‘Give the Professor this, with my compliments. It hasn’t been published yet, but Laplace is a friend of mine. He explains it all pretty clearly.’

  Florian took it a little doubtfully. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just working on a little idea. As you know, you can’t ask a man to discuss it when he’s in the midst of a new idea. Might all just dissolve in front of me if I do.’

  Florian shrugged in the direction of the door. ‘I suppose I should …’

  Pegel looked at him, poor little rich boy in search of a friend. He suddenly knew what he would ask for if his idea for the codes worked.

  ‘Sorry, old boy! Don’t go.’ He stood up and put a hand on Florian’s shoulder. ‘Just a bit out of sorts today. Got a letter from my father. He says my mother is ill and wants me to come home and settle down. Take up the law and all that.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your mother, Jacob. Is there any danger?’

  ‘She’s always ill. The old man just wants me where he can disapprove of me eye to eye is the meat and measure of it. Come and sit for a bit. You never mention your family. You get along?’

  They took their seats side by side on the worn settee. ‘I hardly know my father,’ Florian said at last. ‘I remember my mother a little. She died when I was five. My father never had anything to do with me when I was a child, then he sent me away to school. He married again, a kind woman but she died too, soon after giving birth to my little brother.’

  ‘You have a brother?’

  He shook his head. ‘Born dead. Mostly I lived with my aunt and uncle after that.’

  ‘What sort of place is it, your father’s?’

  ‘Old. It used to be a nunnery. It has a cloister still and the dining room is where the church once was.’

  ‘So you were brought up in a nunnery!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry, nothing. Sounds very grand.’

  ‘Very cold. Courtyard after courtyard and not a room in the place of a convenient size. But fitting, I suppose, for an Imperial Knight.’

  Frenzel talked for some time, and listening to his stories of the children he played with, the landscape, the gardens, Pegel let his mind rest. He was happy. Florian was the son of an Imperial Knight. Pegel’s work would lead to a number of arrests, but if Florian could be got out of the way … Off the lists. Off lands where the Duke’s word was law. Even if his friends gave his name, it would be easy to bluff his way out of it. Yes, Pegel could save Florian from himself — if his master would let him.

  Crowther watched Manzerotti bending over Krall’s hands for several minutes. The fire had been banked up and the room was becoming oppressively hot. Crowther’s thoughts were growing foggy and thick, and a thin layer of sweat was beginning to burst out of his pores. He felt like an old creature, cornered. He stood and crossed to the window and found there, like a cold movement in the fug, a whisper of healthier air. He placed his hand into it, letting the draught slice over the pulse in his wrist.

  Crowther felt that he was growing old. He had dedicated his youth, his maturity, to study and to the avoidance of other people, but he believed now that the only work of any real significance he had accomplished had been in the company of Mrs Westerman; had been done since she had dragged him out of his study and thrown him among other people. The ghosts of his own past had glowered over him for thirty years; in her company they were exorcised. He smiled, feeling the cold air over his wrist. He had tried this winter, perhaps fearing that Mrs Westerman wanted to return to her domestic concerns, to rediscover his zeal for his own private study. The readiness with which he abandoned it at her request was demonstration enough that he had not been particularly successful. He did not mind the years he had wasted; rather he was
glad, even as he felt the pressure of his age, that he had not wasted them all.

  Now Manzerotti was watching him. The castrato looked as comfortable and composed as ever. The drama of Krall had left Crowther feeling ragged, and he envied Manzerotti’s ability to retain his poise so completely. Crowther wondered if it was a result of being stared at for his entire adult life. Perhaps he had developed some thicker skin that allowed him to ignore both the adoration and the suspicion with which he was regarded. An animal adapting to its environment. Perhaps the poise was trained into him from his earliest age, just as the music was.

  ‘Did you submit to the operation willingly?’ he asked as the thought formed in his head. For the first time he saw something like a spasm of emotion cross the castrato’s face, but so fleeting and slight was it, a moment later Crowther could not swear to having seen it at all.

  ‘No. I did not. I come from peasant stock, Gabriel. My family were as ignorant and mean as the rocks from which they tried to drag a living. I sang at church with the other children, the priest recognised my talent and suggested to my parents that there was money to be made. They leaped at the chance to make some easy gold from one of their brood.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  Manzerotti looked up at him and smiled briefly. ‘How strange — I believe you are. But you should not pity me. I am terribly rich now, you know, one way or another. How nice it is to chat, Gabriel.’ He dropped his eyes. ‘You realise, we are not very different, you and I. If what I hear is to be believed, and my information is usually very good, it is the sins of your family that made you a recluse. Thus you are a man with no sons to follow him, just as I am.’

  Crowther turned away slightly.

  ‘My friend Johannes volunteered for the operation. He was eager. He saw it as a chance to serve God. Then when his voice failed, he chose to serve me.’

  Crowther recalled the last time he had seen Johannes, Manzerotti’s assassin, heard the crow-crack of his mangled voice. It had been in a room as hot as this but in a hovel, not a palace. He had stuck a knife into James Westerman’s belly, then Crowther had in turn left him to be torn apart by a mob. Crowther did not shy away from the memory, and he felt no shame about letting the man be murdered. Nevertheless he found himself speaking. ‘He died proclaiming your escape, your invulnerability, Manzerotti. He said you were his voice.’