The Lightstep

by John Dickinson

  Oh, that laugh! And the punch to the shoulder that had made all men equal. Whenever things had been at their worst – hunger, sickness, mud, some stupid quarrel about fodder in the horselines, then: Hey, you fellows!

  Hey, Michel!

  The voice was fading. It dwindled in his mind as the surprise of the portrait receded. He was looking at paint, and that was all: just a thin layer of paint on canvas, spread there by an artist cunning enough to catch the spirit of his subject, even as he observed all the formalities expected of him. And now the artist was gone, and the man he had painted was gone too.

  Wéry turned his back on the portrait. He spoke to the air.

  'My horse needs attention.'

  The servant bowed and withdrew.

  III

  Fall of an Empire

  Maria von Adelsheim was happy – happier than she had been for a long time, because there was peace at last, and her brother would come home.

  She was sitting on one of the long settees in the library of the house at Adelsheim. At her back a great window let in all the light that the dull day would allow. Around her, bookshelves reached up to the high ceiling. Over her petticoats she wore the grey-green dress that her mother had chosen for her that morning. Its skirts spread widely around her. Her hair was piled and powdered, and there was powder on her skin, for she and her mother were receiving a caller today.

  Maria did not give a fig for the caller – the elderly, fat, black-clad, self-satisfied Carl Joseph Baron von und zu Löhm, who had travelled out to Adelsheim to pay court to Mother because of Mother's influence with her cousin, the Canon Rother-Konisrat. But Maria did not have to entertain him herself. Her task was to look decorative, and to read aloud to her mother's pet poet, Icht, because there must be poetry in the air before Mother would breathe it.

  Lady Adelsheim was at her desk, a tiny figure dressed in warm pinks, which stood out artfully beside the greens that she had picked for Maria to wear. Her hair, like Maria's, was powdered white and piled high above her head; there were letters before her and a pen in her hand. She was discussing religion and politics with the Baron Löhm. The Baron understood well the kind of talk that best pleased his hostess. Even so, he did not have her undivided attention. For Maria knew her mother was also following her reading, and might choose to correct her at any moment. At the same time she was directing her secretary, Müller, in undertones. And in a second or two she would turn to deal with fat, old, frock-coated Tieschen, who had bustled in from the front door with something he needed to tell her.

  Löhm, Icht, Maria, Müller and Tieschen: Lady Adelsheim dealt with them all, and all at once, as though she were the Emperor in Vienna surrounded by the ambassadors of Powers and Princes, by subject aristocracies and even lowly citizens of the Empire, all demanding attention. She dealt with Maria in French (which she considered the superior language), with Löhm in French laced with Latin, with Müller and Tieschen in German, and with Icht in either French or German depending on the subject, because Icht's poetry was written in German and she would adopt that language whenever she was telling him how she thought he might improve it.

  Thus (in French): 'My dear Löhm, you astonish me. One would think you and your kind would usurp the very place of the Church!'

  'I will not deny, my Lady,' said the Baron, 'that to teach men to be holy and good, in their own interests, is the aim of Christianity itself. But these days the promotion of virtue is actually hindered by the structures that were created in its name . . .'

  (Lady Adelsheim simultaneously, in an undertone and in German, 'No, the letter from Holz, Müller, I told you so quite clearly . . .')

  '. . . not within a generation, to be sure, but far more surely than by feats of arms. Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem. Long before the first Pope took his seat, the ancients were hewing their own paths to virtue, as you will know.'

  'I believe they hewed a very maze, my Lord. Quot homines tot sententiae. For the whole truth was not revealed to them . . .'

  And Maria, reading aloud in French, emulated the voice of a man, 'Sing me your song.' And in the plaintive tones of a woman who loved, she answered, 'I sing. But you do not hear me!'

  'Maria,' said her mother immediately, 'even for a heathen concubine, that is too much. Icht will tell you that you must maintain a certain distance from the work even as you appreciate it.'

  'Oh indeed,' said Icht, the poet, who was sitting bolt upright in his seat because he could never let his spine touch the back of a chair in Lady Adelsheim's presence. 'Indeed, my Lady. And yet it is a work of passion, there is no doubt of that. Some passion must be allowed.'

  'Passion impedes the mind,' said Mother. 'It is not possible to be truly virtuous if one is also passionate. Maria knows that quite well. Baron, you contrive to sound most reasonable. Yet the Abbé Barruel will have it that your kind were secretly responsible for the Revolution itself. Am I to suppose that this was an error?'

  'I sing,' Maria read, 'but you do not hear me'.

  'You have read that already,' said Mother. 'I heard it quite distinctly.'

  'It is an error of the Abbé, no doubt, my Lady,' said Baron Löhm. 'Although you will forgive me if I do not wholly understand what you mean by "my kind".'

  'Pish! You know quite well what I mean. You are an Illuminatus and a freemason. A most terrible man indeed. The church abominates you and all your like.'

  'If you perceive this, my Lady,' said Löhm, looking more satisfied than ever, 'then doubtless you will also have perceived that an Illuminatus is not in fact a freemason.'

  'I have perceived that they are the same thing, only worse,' said Lady Adelsheim, with a brilliant smile. And: 'Ja, Tieschen?'

  Tieschen did not speak at once, but took a step forward and bent to whisper in her ear. And because he did so, everyone else stopped saying what they were saying and craned to listen. Tieschen finished. There was a moment of stillness.

  'Impossible,' said Lady Adelsheim.

  'My Lady, he did say it was urgent, and most grave . . .'

  'Quite impossible, Tieschen. I am occupied, as you must surely know. He must come back another time, or write. Continue, Maria. I am sure Icht is most interested.'

  Maria lifted her book again, holding it up to make the most of the sullen light from the window behind her. Despite the grey skies and the tap of the rain on the windows, her spirits were high. This was one of her favourite pieces: an allegory composed of a dialogue between a prince and his concubine, set in some far Arabian land where the air was warm and scented, where clothes were light and the flesh beneath them throbbed with the blood of desire. It was a favourite because Albrecht had introduced it to her the last time he had been home, pointing out the references to the power of liberty and the impending death of tyranny, which pleased both her and him. It reminded her of him now, so that she even imagined that the face of the Prince in the story was his, and that she herself was the concubine, who in another time and place might have thrilled with love for him.

  And soon they would be seeing him again. He was well. They knew he was well, because they had just had a letter from him – one of those letters that had come every few weeks during the long months of waiting, strengthening her and reassuring her like lamps on a dark journey, to tell them all the ridiculous things that had been happening to him in his regiment on the Rhine, or wherever the campaigns had taken him. And at last there was peace! Although Maria was sorry that the war should have ended in defeat, she was glad that it was over. She suspected it had never been necessary. It had taken him away. Last year, when the French had marched deep into Germany, it had even driven the family into exile in Bohemia, to find refuge on the estates of their distant cousin Count Effenpanz. And while Adelsheim had survived in their absence, many other estates and families had suffered. Now it was over, and Albrecht would come home at last.

  That was what lit her heart, as she sat in the library with the cold fingers of the rain tapping at the window behind her; and the piece she w
as reading reminded her of it, in case she could possibly have forgotten.

  'Scatter roses!' she ordered, in the voice of the Prince. And as the concubine: 'But you do not see them!'

  'Tieschen,' said Mother once more. 'I have said that it is impossible.' And Tieschen left to deliver her sentence to whomever it was that had been applying to her.

  By chance, Maria caught the Baron's expression. He seemed more satisfied still. Of course he would not have welcomed another demand on his hostess's attention. And yet his brow had also lifted a fraction in surprise. Lady Adelsheim would normally have accepted any caller she thought capable of intelligent conversation, and of appreciating her intelligence when she bestowed it on them. The Baron, Illuminatus (or not), abominated by the church (or not), was wondering what this particular caller had done to offend.

  So did Maria, a little.

  For a moment Wéry could not believe he had heard correctly.

  'But – but did you not give her my message? I must speak with her about her son!'

  A frown flickered on the servant's face. Perhaps he did understand that this stranger had something to say about young Albrecht, who was away with the Prince-Bishop's little army. But it plainly could not matter any more, because the Lady had said he must leave.

  'I regret, sir, that the Lady is not able to receive you today.'

  'Then I must speak with the Knight.'

  'The Knight does not receive visitors.'

  And there he stood, like a fat old sheep in the track, too stupid to do anything but bleat the same old bleat in the face of a world that was changing.

  'I do not believe you can have delivered my message correctly!'

  'Indeed I did, sir. But the Lady is not able to receive you.'

  'Why in Heaven not? I have come all the way from Erzberg, and with very important news. What is the matter – is she sick?'

  'Sir!'

  If the Lady of the house was not able to receive visitors, it seemed, that was enough. It was not permitted to ask why. Wéry towered over the small servant. He was nervous and angry. He had come leagues to be here, when his duty lay somewhere else. He was not going to start a brawl in this house, but . . .

  He puffed his cheeks to show his frustration.

  'Very well,' he said. 'Very well. Please have my coat and gloves brought to me. And let the stable bring my horse to the door.'

  The little servant turned impassively, strode to the foot of the stairs and clapped his hands to summon help. And Wéry stepped lightly into the hall behind him. One, two, three paces were all he needed. He was heading down the corridor opposite, from which the man had come.

  'Sir!'

  'Don't be a fool!' he snarled over his shoulder, and shook the fellow's hand from his arm. Clop, clop, clop went his heels on the wooden floor, echoing along the walls like the guns of invading armies.

  At the end of the corridor a door was half-open, and a woman's voice murmured from beyond.

  The etiquette of Lady Adelsheim's salon did not permit Maria or Icht to take part in conversations between Lady Adelsheim and someone like the Baron, but it did permit the Baron to step down and join in whatever was going on between his hostess and the lesser persons present. Now he was offering them his views on the famous romantic writers of the day, referring largely to The Sorrows of Young Werther for examples to support his argument.

  '. . . So are we to suppose that passion – a passion so great that the possessor of it ultimately destroys himself – should be in some sense held up for admiration? Surely this is beyond any reason? And if we admire it, do we not deny the faculty of reason in ourselves?'

  'But my dear Löhm, to go – as you say – "beyond reason" is precisely what the man Goethe and his fellows would do! For them Reason is a cage to the spirit. If you do not appreciate that you cannot appreciate what they have achieved.'

  'You said yourself, my Lady, that it is necessary to maintain a certain distance even as you appreciate.'

  'And so I do. I remain within reason, and beyond reason, at the same time. It is merely a matter of existing in two places at once. Continue, Maria. Perhaps Klopstock – it is Klopstock, is it not? – has some further light for us. Although in truth I find allegory in all forms most tedious.'

  Maria dutifully returned to the point at which Baron Löhm had interrupted her.

  'My love!' she read in the concubine's voice. 'Your steed neighs to carry you to battle. And yet your heart trembles. What is it you see? A spirit of the dead?' And in the Prince's voice she replied. 'Not a spirit of the dead, but . . .'

  'But a hussar!' interjected Lady Adelsheim, in a tone of mock wonder.

  Maria looked up.

  Standing in the doorway was a tall man, a complete stranger, in the uniform of a captain in the Prince-bishop's hussars.

  He was indeed very tall, and he had that leanness about him – the hollowness of the neck, the prominence of the cheekbones – that Maria associated with men who had been on the campaigns, where food always seemed to be so scarce. His shoulders and upper spine stooped a little, as if he were forever having to bend to hear what people shorter than he were saying. His eyes were dark, his brows bushy, his nose long and blunt – there was something of the raptor in his look. His forehead was round and high, and might have been creeping higher still into the beginnings of baldness. His hair was light brown, unpowdered, and cut short.

  Fat old Tieschen in his frock coat was at the man's elbow, looking agitated.

  'I am astonished,' said Lady Adelsheim, still in French. 'Is this a hussar officer?'

  A lady, on introduction to a gentleman, should offer him her hand. The gentleman should take it and bow over it as if to kiss it, although his lips must not actually touch her skin or glove. The gentleman might then be introduced to any other company present, and conversation might proceed, upon any topic that society considered suitable.

  Mother had not offered her hand. She was looking at the newcomer as if he were an unexpected diversion, such as an owl flown in from the woods or a bailiff come to report on a disagreeable matter from one of the estates. And under her gaze the man did indeed seem to feel out of place – even flustered.

  Of course, thought Maria. This must be the caller whom Mother had said she would not see. And he had made his way in despite that! Goodness!

  'Madame, I beg your pardon for this intrusion,' said the newcomer, bowing. He spoke French – native French, and his voice was surprisingly soft for a man who looked so gaunt. 'I do not know if my message was correctly reported to you. I am Capt—'

  'It is not an intrusion at all, sir,' said Mother. 'I believe a hussar is exactly the thing we most wanted at this moment.'

  'Madame, I . . .'

  'No, come, sir. We are discussing heroism, and hussars are heroes to a man – or so I am assured. You are a hero I hope, sir?'

  'I . . . I am a staff officer, madame,' said the man in surprise.

  'No, sir, you will not be modest. I will not allow it. See there, Baron. A hero stands before you. You should question him.

  Demand why it is that Reason, which may make Man a god, must yet be an encumbrance to any hero of romance or tragedy.'

  Again the tall man tried to speak. But he missed his chance and it was gone.

  'No doubt, dear Löhm, you will tell me that, had our heroes been possessed of more capacity for thought, they should have been more successful in this wretched war than they were,' said Lady Adelsheim. 'But to be a hero, these days, is to be a slave to passion, I believe. It is merely a question of which passion one is slave to. Which passion are you slave to, Captain? Is it anger? I declare that you look as if you might be angry. Pray be unheroic for a moment, Captain, and control it. Maria, you must continue. I am sure that Icht is most interested.'

  The tall man was indeed becoming angry. He had understood that he was being made a plaything. His cheeks were going crimson as he stood there.

  Why had he come?

  'Maria?' Mother repeated. 'Are you dreaming
, child?'

  'What is it you see?' Maria read quickly. 'A spirit of the dead?' And in the Prince's voice she answered herself, 'Not a spirit of the dead, but the dreadful spirit of Liberty. Where is the power that . . .'

  'Observe, Baron,' Mother was saying. 'Our hero has perceived a heroine, and is now rapt in a vision of beauty.'

  Maria's tongue stumbled. 'The power that – that can hurl it back into the depths from which it came?' She was cringing inwardly, for her own sake and for the sake of the man standing in the doorway. Really, this was outrageous! What must he think? 'Who will dare . . .'

  'No, Maria. I believe our hero must now read the Prince, and you the woman only. Pass him the book. There is not another copy, I believe. I hope not. It is a most inferior work . . .'

  'Madame!' the man exclaimed.

  No one spoke to Mother like that! Maria froze.

  She froze in the act of offering the book to the stranger, with her finger marking the place and her face forming a reassuring smile. She felt that smile fix itself on her face, as though her muscles were suddenly a mask that was no longer a part of her.

  'Madame,' said the newcomer tightly. 'I think you will permit me to tell you that your son is dead.'

  'This is impossible.'

  Mother did not even seem to pause over his words.

  Maria was still looking up at the man, still holding out the book to him, and trying to smile at him because he and she were to read aloud together and be teased and criticized for it, and – and . . .

  As if in a dream she could see nothing but his face, his hawklike profile as he glowered down at Mother. She saw it very clearly. There was a tiny spot of light reflected where his shining forehead rounded back to his hairline. She had been going to do something – say something or give him something – but she could not remember what. Inside her something was screaming Alba! And something was answering: Impossible. She felt as if she had swayed and almost fallen, and had only been saved by the sound of mother's voice, firm and decided, pushing her back into balance.