Franz was also there, lounging against the wall, looking at his feet. He wore a hangdog expression, as if he knew that someone was guilty of something and feared that he might be guilty too.
Like Father, he was carefully arrayed. It must have taken his valet an hour to tie that cravat.
'Your father is displeased with you, Maria,' said Lady Adelsheim. 'As too am I. I wonder if you can imagine how very, very disappointed we are.'
Maria could feel herself colouring. 'May I . . . know why?' she managed to ask.
'I cannot believe that you do not already know why.'
When Maria did not answer, she went on.
'I had thought it was plain to you that your father and I consented to your going to Mainz because we were growing concerned about your conduct, which, as I told you myself, was less than it should have been from the sister of our dear Albrecht. I had been concerned in particular to hear that your name was becoming linked in gossip with that of a certain foreign officer, of whose bearing and conduct you well know my opinions.
'Yet directly – directly – upon your return, when you had led me to believe I might leave you safely at this house, I find that you took yourself to visit this man in his barracks, at an hour and in a manner that you know could not possibly have been countenanced if we had been aware of it. Do you have an explanation for your father, Maria?'
'I . . . Is it my father who so accuses me?' she said, and met her mother's eyes.
Mother waited an instant, looking coolly into Maria's stare. Then, deliberately, she said, 'August?'
Maria swung appealing eyes on her father. But he did not look up.
'Displeased,' he growled.
'Your father is ashamed of what you have done,' said Lady Adelsheim. 'And you have as yet offered no explanation for your conduct – to him, or to me.'
Maria looked at the figure of her father, slump-shouldered and sorrowful. She willed him to look at her, to see that it was her, Maria, who loved him and stood there. But he would not.
She must have been at him all morning, Maria thought. She had been coaching him and instructing him against his daughter, while the servants dressed him like a doll! She had been trying to poison him against her!
It would not work! She would not allow it!
'Mother,' she said, as evenly as she could. 'I remembered that an acquaintance of this officer had given me a memento for him – a picture. I had agreed to deliver it . . .'
'Indeed? But such a thing could have been sent. There was no excuse for you to see the man yourself.'
'As I say, I remembered it late in the evening, and was angry with myself. I did not recollect the hour, it is true. But I was accompanied, and I did not remain above fifteen minutes.'
'So I have learned from the coachman and the maid. Nevertheless it was very wrong of you, as you know. And do not proffer us your "fifteen minutes" as if it might excuse what you have done. It would have been too much, as well you know, even if the man you called upon were honest. But I have spoken to you of this one already. He is the basest and most treacherous man in all the city. One minute in his company is too much. There will be no more.'
Maria felt herself losing control. 'Indeed, Mother,' she said with a lift of her chin,'I think you are unjust!'
'That is quite what I imagined you would think. I am told you have spent this morning reading letters from your brother. You should be ashamed to have touched them, and yet I feel sure you are not. I can only conclude that you are utterly blind to the fact that you have disgraced his memory by your association with that man. Blind, Maria! I knew that man was vile the first moment I saw him. Now Major Lanard has confirmed it to me.'
Lanard? Lanard?
What had he to do with all this? And what could he have said?
'Mother,' she said. 'Lanard and Wéry are enemies after all.'
'Once again you are mistaken. You have no wit in these matters. Lanard was quite reluctant to oblige me, I assure you. But I remarked some words that passed between them when they happened to be in my coach together – and I sought an explanation. Now he has sent me this.'
She held up what seemed to be a printed pamphlet, folded to comprise several pages.
'When your father has dismissed you, you will go to your room and read it. If you want to know who is responsible for Albrecht's death – who is truly responsible – this will give you the answers. I wish you then to reflect on what you have done to your brother's memory. His letters will be removed from your room until I judge your conduct to be more becoming for his sake. And you will no longer wear mourning, Maria, for it is plain that you no longer honour him as you should.'
She looked at Pirenne. Obediently, the maid crossed the room and took the paper from her hands. Lady Adelsheim turned her shoulder. Speaking now to the air, she said, 'I can do no more for you but write to my cousin Rother and arrange your marriage as soon as possible. August?'
Father gathered himself and frowned into the space before him.
'Go,' he said.
There was nothing Maria could say. In the icy air she accepted the paper from Pirenne. She looked her mother in the eyes. She looked at Franz, who hung his head. She looked at her father, and then she left them there.
Her feet carried her heavily up the stairs. She was dazed and miserable. She might have been ready for a confrontation with her mother. She had almost expected it. But Mother had known that. That was why she had brought in Father – so that Maria could not reject her without rejecting Father as well.
And as Maria climbed, she began to understand that her mother had taken revenge on her in the most wounding way possible. For Father would not forget, now, that Maria was in disgrace. She would be reading to him, or talking to him or sitting with him, and she would see that hurt and puzzled look cross his face as he remembered, once again, that Maria had done something that was not to be forgiven. He would not remember what it was, or when it had happened. But he would remember that it had. Maybe he would remember for the rest of his life.
Mother had stolen him from her.
No, it was not the late hour. It was not even Wéry. It was because Mother had sensed that one day, one day soon, Maria would defy her. That was what had made her do this, using Father, and Albrecht. And Albrecht, Albrecht, Albrecht – she was stealing Albrecht's memory too, taking his letters, denying him to Maria. She was making him into something he hadn't been.
She was stealing both of them!
When she reached her room, Pirenne was making the bed. Maria did not speak to her. She could not. She was shaking. Her fingers gripped the paper in her hand and made it crinkle. She looked down at it. She did not want to read it. She did not want to do anything that her mother directed. She wanted to burn it without looking at it and then to tell Mother what she had done.
The top sheet was headed, in French: BRABANT HAILS THE CHAMPIONS OF LIBERTY.
The lower line of the title ran: A copy of a speech given by Delegate Wéry of the Revolutionary Club of Brussels to members of the Jacobin Club in Paris on 11th Nivoise, in Year One of the Revolution.
She read.
Free citizens of France, I, a delegate of Brabant, salute you! We are your brothers in the struggle for liberty. Like you we have sought to throw aside the yoke and rid ourselves of the ancient abuses of those who would be our overlords. In this we have been inspired by your example, and we are inspired once again as we take up arms to return to our homeland.
Citizens of France! You are like a light that pours out far beyond your borders, into every cranny of oppression and obscurantism. Nowhere is there a country that has not heard of your doings. Nowhere is there a people that does not yearn to be free like you . . .
Maria sat down, scarcely aware of what she was doing. She remembered prints of the revolutionaries making speeches, in those early days when all the news had seemed to be of excitement and hope. She could imagine him, speaking in those crowded rooms with the eyes of Paris on him. But to see his words! What dreams he m
ust have had – and the chance to realize them!
. . . there is no space left between the rightful demands of the people for liberty, and the bayonets of the princes who oppose it. The choice for you, citizens of France . . .
She turned the page.
In the margin in a hand that she knew as well as her own, her mother had written one word: WARMONGER.
. . . is of action, to sustain the lights of liberty that glow beyond your borders, or, if you believe the princes will be content to leave you undisturbed, of inaction, to see our lights extinguished and only yours left alone. Which will you choose?
WARMONGER, barked the word at the side of the page, written so deep that the pen had dug a black rent in the surface of the paper.
Citizens of France, I say only this. That my countrymen know your honour, your spirit, your fraternity. You are our hope. And that if you choose action, yes, a thousand, perhaps many thousands may die. But you will work such a great good in the name of liberty beyond your borders that it will never be forgotten, but continue, like a river of light down the years and the generations to come.
Citizens of France, in the name of Brabant, and of all who love liberty beyond your borders, I thank you.
At the bottom of the page, Mother had written her own verdict.
Such words have brought more deaths than those of Nero against the Christians.
Maria put the pamphlet down slowly and stared into space. She barely saw Pirenne drop her final curtsey and make to leave the room. She barely heard the soft knock at the door, Pirenne opening, the low murmur of servants' voices.
Pirenne returned into her line of vision. Expressionless, the maid went to Maria's dressing table, gathered up the pile of Albrecht's letters and left the room.
Still Maria stared at nothing. And she thought that all the world was mad.
If men were not mad from within, like Father, like Franz, then the world crowded on them and drove them into madness of another sort, like Maximilian Jürich – and like Michel Wéry. And Alba had died because of it.
In her mind she saw again the black guilt for his death broken out and out and passed to thousands and thousands of his murderers, whose fingers took it in little black crumbs and put it to their lips, and their lips swallowed it, and it was gone. And one of them was Michel Wéry.
In a moment she would burn this pamphlet on the low fire in the grate: a small, useless act of defiance against her mother. But her heart was already ash.
PART V:
THE DOORS OF
HEAVEN
January–March 1798
XXVIII
Candlemas Ball
In mid-January the world learned the Emperor's price for Mainz. French troops withdrew suddenly from Venice. Imperial forces moved in to occupy the ancient city and its territories. The Doge was not restored. After eight hundred years of independent history Venice was absorbed into the territories of the Empire. The Venetian republicans, who had overthrown their oligarchic rulers with French help, were abandoned to the mob and to the mercy of the Austrians.
Wéry paced to and fro in his room, raging. Why couldn't they have learned from what happened to us? Had they really believed that they would not be betrayed? There was just one thing to be sure of in the huge, callous calculations of powers. Whatever they said about liberty, honour, or generosity, they would act in fear and selfishness. It had happened in the Lowlands, Italy, Mainz and Switzerland. Could not the republicans of Venice have seen it coming to them?
Perhaps they had. Perhaps they had suspected that they too would be doomed. But they had been trapped, powerless; their only choice had been to flee or wait helplessly for the end.
In his fury he wept, and bit his hand.
A week later French troops moved into Holland to support a republican coup. And on the Rhine, twenty leagues upstream from Mainz, shots were fired and men killed when the French forces seized a fortress on the west bank opposite Mannheim from the German militia that held it.
Two days later they invaded the canton of Vaud, after uprisings there.
But in Erzberg, January passed with no sign of an attack, except for the constant reports of French cavalry trespassing freely in neighbouring Hanau and Isenberg, and all the way up to the border. Wéry cursed, and racked his brains for new ways to find out what was happening at Wetzlar.
'Here,' said Bergesrode, in one hurried dawn meeting. 'You had better look at these.'
'These' were a sheaf of papers from the city police. The first was a report to the effect that Doctor Sorge had been in the city and had been followed. There was a list of houses at which he had been received. Wéry scanned down the names. Adelsheim was among them.
'These are not republicans,' he said shortly. 'These are damned fools.'
'Is that not always the case? Look at the rest.'
They were copies of letters, all written in the same hand and signed 'Nestor'. They were addressed to colleagues called 'Memnon' and 'Diogenes', and described the writer's doings in a number of cities, all with Greek names such as 'Sybaris' and 'Syracuse'. Most of them commented unfavourably on the rulership of these cities and in particular on the church – yes, clearly, and despite the classical names, the modern Catholic Church was meant. One letter contained a report of a continuing attempt to recruit someone by the codename 'Atlas'. Wéry looked up.
'What are they?' he asked.
'Discarded drafts taken from Sorge's office. It's the Illuminati, of course. The Bavarians found letters just like these when they broke Weishaupt's ring.'
'Has he been arrested?'
'Not yet, but he will be. That's not your concern. What I want to know is when I'm finally going to receive your report on all this.'
'These far overtake what I had.'
'I thought you would say that. Which leads me to wonder what it was you did have – if anything. The important question is whether there's a French hand in it. Don't forget you yourself told us the Illuminati had a highly-placed agent.'
'Maybe. But we are jumping at shadows.'
Bergesrode slammed his hand down flat upon his desk.
'And what if there's something in the shadows? You don't know until you've looked. So look hard. You've three days – until the Candlemas Ball!'
Three days? He would hardly be able to achieve much in that time. Bergesrode was demanding the impossible – again. Wéry smiled grimly, and looked at the papers once more.
'"Sybaris" is Erzberg, is it?'
'That's what the city police say. But pay no attention to that.
You work it out for yourself, and see if you come to the same conclusions. And make sure you bring them to me personally and to no one else.'
'If you say so,' said Wéry, conscious of Fernhausen at the further desk, who was studiously not paying attention to their talk.
'Now, another thing.' Bergesrode picked up what appeared to be another list of names. A look of exasperation crossed his face. 'You have not replied to your invitation to the Ball. I know you have been keeping to barracks, but this one you will accept . . .'
'It is shameful of him,' said Lady Adelsheim. 'It is quite shameful.'
'Yes, Mother,' said Maria.
The two women sat opposite one another in the drawing room of the Adelsheim house in the Saint Emil Quarter, waiting for Franz, whose cravat had failed Lady Adelsheim's inspection, to reappear. Then the three of them would take the coach for the short journey up to the Celesterburg to attend the Ball. The women's hair was piled high in styles that had taken hours to prepare, set with jewels and covered in powder. Powder was thick upon their skin and their great silk ball dresses swathed out over their seats. There would be no new styles tonight – no feathers in the hair, no drapes gathered like Roman pillars in high waists beneath the breasts. Tonight the old order, braced with hoop and decked with ribbon, would sweep across the dance floor, perhaps for the very last time.
'He should have decided before this! It has been almost a month since the War Commission made
its judgement. Did he imagine we would forget?'
'Surely he cannot have done, Mother,' said Maria automatically.
'Oh, you say so. But I know him. He is a fox, this Prince. He will hide wherever there is a bolt hole. But tonight we shall dig him out. Tonight we shall. And then we shall have justice on that man Balcke-Horneswerden at last.'
'Yes, Mother.'
In the past few weeks Maria had said as little as possible to her mother, and had agreed with her whenever she could. It did the least to provoke her and kept the conversations short. She would not risk another confrontation. It was better to sit with her eyes down, and loathe her, and pray quietly for the day that she would die.
'That man should be executed for what he did to Albrecht,' sighed Lady Adelsheim. 'But I suppose it will just be disgrace.'
'Yes, Mother.'
That particular act of submission cost her nothing. Albrecht was lost and Mother was a monster. But Maria could at least agree that the murderous Balcke-Horneswerden should be punished. He was a part of the world that had done all these things to her. And the thought of him, still unjudged so long after Albrecht had died, made losing her brother (the one sane and good man who had ever lived) even harder to bear.
Now it was her turn to sigh. She was going to a ball – one of the great balls of the year and her first since she had put off mourning – and she could go with no sense of joy in her heart.
He was dressing in his office in the barracks and they were calling him from below.
'Wéry! Hey, Wéry! Are you not ready yet? We're waiting!'
'A moment,' he bellowed in reply. He looked down at his boots. The shine on the left still plainly did not match that on the right.
'Once more,' he muttered to the valet. 'And quickly!'
The man knelt before him for the fourth time, and busied himself with his cloth.
Wéry was late. He knew that. The other hussar officers were impatient. But he could not attend the Ball with his boots in this state. He wanted to curse the soldier at his feet and tell him to hurry. But he knew it was his fault and his alone that he had run out of time. He had spent most of the afternoon over with the city officer of police, comparing notes on Sorge's list and trying to identify who really lay behind the Greek and Roman names the man had used.
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