The Lightstep

by John Dickinson

  Now they were in the final pattern. She parted with one candle, placed both hands on the other, and followed the line – two-three and one-two-three and a final one-two-three and up to make the crown of lights above the group. The music ended. The crowd applauded. Maria brought her candle down, and looked at it. Then she blew it out.

  'Oh, Maria!' cried someone. 'Why did you do that? Didn't you want him after all?'

  'He's dead,' she said absently, and gave her candle to the footman. Then she slipped away into the crowd.

  They knew. They all knew something was happening. She passed someone who was talking hurriedly and low about something the soldiers were doing. Another man was saying to his wife that they should go home, and his wife was protesting that it was impossible to leave before His Highness appeared. She threaded her way onwards. Her feet carried her up the red-carpeted stairs to the gallery. Wéry, she saw, had gone from his place. She was glad, because she did not want to talk to him now. The door to the west corridor was open and shadowed like a cave. There was a footman standing by it.

  'Are you lost, my Lady?' he asked. 'May I help?'

  'No,' she said, and walked past him with her head high.

  Down the long corridor she went, moving in a rustle of silks that grew louder and louder as the babble of the ballroom was left behind. The air was cooler here, away from the lights and the press of bodies. She felt it on her skin. Her breath was coming in quick gasps. She tried to steady herself. It was important, very important, that she did not think too much about what she was doing.

  It was the fourth door, Gianovi had said. The door was tall and dark and, unlike the others in that corridor, it was slightly ajar. There was a light burning inside. There were secretaries in there. How was she to pass the secretaries? She raised her fist to knock, then withdrew it. A distant memory dropped into her mind, of old Tieschen at Adelsheim, begging to explain that it had not been his fault that Wéry had tricked him.

  Instead of knocking, she pushed the door violently open and leaned on the doorpost, breathing hard as though she had been running.

  'Help!' she gasped.

  There was only one secretary in the room. It was Adhelmar Fernhausen-Loos, whom she knew slightly. That was good.

  He was staring at her, pen in hand.

  'The First Minister!' she exclaimed. 'I think he's having a fit!'

  'What!'

  'He's in the ballroom! He's saying the most dreadful things!'

  'What's he saying?'

  She waved her arms helplessly. 'About the Prince. About the army! I thought he was only angry to begin with, but he's sick! You must come quickly.' She spoke urgently and low as if to conspire. And she spoke with all the force of her will, knowing that if she believed it enough Gianovi would be there, reeling and spouting the Prince's darkest secrets among the horrified crowds on the floor of the ballroom.

  Fernhausen snatched a watch from his desktop and peered at it. 'Damn!' He leapt to his feet. 'Who is down there?'

  'No one!' she hissed helplessly. 'They've all gone somewhere!'

  'The old . . .! He's doing it deliberately! There'll be the devil to pay for this!' He hurried round the desk and out into the corridor. He looked left and right. There was no one there.

  'Come on!' she exclaimed, picking up her skirts and beginning to stride down the corridor. He caught her sense of panic, went with her, and in a few paces was ahead. She started to run. He ran, too.

  She let him get a little further ahead, then turned back as silently as she could and slipped through into the empty antechamber. In a moment, just a few moments, he would realize what had happened. She crossed the antechamber quickly. The door to the inner chamber was shut. She turned the handle without knocking and went straight in.

  For the first time in her life she stood in the office of the Prince-Bishop. She had an immediate sense of space – great space, in dark blues and golds, stretching away far beyond the walls and up above the high ceiling. Vast, winged figures hung there, shadowy in the dim light. There were curling drapes and naked torsos. Saints in gleaming haloes pointed upwards, up to the very crown of the ceiling where, in a dull sunburst, a figure sat among battlements upon a high throne. And many eyes were on her, from above, from all around. They brought a verse from the Scriptures leaping to her mind. So great a cloud of witnesses surrounds us . . . Was this what the writer had meant?

  Out in the corridor a man was running. Fernhausen had realized he had been tricked. She dragged her thoughts from the paintings and looked at the man at the desk. He had risen from his seat. He was watching her with a bemused expression.

  'An unexpected assassin,' he said mildly. 'Or am I mistaken?'

  She had never seen him like this. He was not wearing his wig. His hair was short, black and grey, and his head was very round. His cheeks and eye bags were heavy semi-circles of flesh, and there was stubble on his chin. If ever he had been planning to attend the ball that night, he must have changed his mind. He wore no powder, no doublet, no finery. His shirt was rumpled. His skin had a yellow hue in the light of the lamp on his desk. He looked very tired.

  One hand was out of sight, in a drawer of his desk.

  'I am no assassin, Godfather,' she said evenly. 'And I beg your pardon for my intrusion. I have come to ask for justice in the name of your godson, my brother.'

  Steps sounded in the antechamber. Fernhausen appeared at the door, angry and flustered. She ignored him.

  Very slowly the Prince-Bishop of Erzberg closed his drawer and resumed his seat.

  'It is Maria, isn't it? And your brother was Albrecht von Adelsheim. He was a very fine young man. What justice may I do him?'

  'That you act on the charges laid against his commanding officer by the Inquisitor of Erzberg.'

  'Yes, I see. Of course it is very important to you that the officer in question should be punished. And that is why you have chosen this moment to come rushing up to see me?'

  'I had heard, sir, that the charges against Count Balcke-Horneswerden are to be dismissed.'

  He nodded wearily. 'That is true.'

  'May I ask why, Godfather?' She could not keep her voice from shaking.

  'Ah. That is the question that at the moment I do not feel I can . . .'

  'Your Highness!' broke in Fernhausen.

  The Prince glanced at him, sourly.

  'I beg your pardon, Highness,' said Fernhausen, looking pale. 'I – I had not intended that you should be interrupted so. But I believe you would think it wrong of me if I did not now inform you that the courier whom the dragoons rescued in the incident was none other than Lady Maria von Adelsheim.'

  The Prince's eyes swung back upon Maria.

  'Truthfully? I had no notion. Not the slightest. Well . . .' he paused and looked down at his papers, as if debating something with himself. 'You place me yet deeper in debt to your house. Very well. Perhaps in that case it is right that I . . .'

  Instead of finishing his sentence, he picked a broad, buff coloured sheet from his desk and peered at it in the light of the candle.

  'This unprovoked and murderous excursion . . .' he read. 'Mark how they will not admit they were on our territory . . . demonstrates beyond all doubt that you persist in your hostile and malicious intent towards the Republic of France, despite all our patience and forbearance. Under these circumstances, the Republic has no option but to insist upon the following conditions for a lasting peace. That you shall . . . Well, I do not think I need go into their terms in detail. It is signed by their General Augereau, and was delivered this morning. You will see that, notwithstanding what has gone before, it is difficult to part at this moment with the most senior and experienced officer left to Erzberg.'

  'I – hardly understand you, Godfather. Are you saying something has happened because of me?'

  He frowned, thoughtfully. 'I did not mean so. I think it is no more about you than it was ever about my unfortunate godson d'Erles. No, I suppose it is, and always has been, largely because of me. They
know well that I hold their revolution to be among the worst things men have invented and that, peace or war, I feel it my duty to oppose them as I may. So now they mean to be rid of me.'

  'And what will you do?'

  'I must surrender the city. Or I must strengthen myself in every way I can, and appeal for help to the Emperor. What would you have me do?'

  It sounded – surely it could not be, but it sounded as though he truly wanted her advice. She hesitated. Huge things, finely poised, seemed to be revolving around her. She could put out her hand and change them, if she chose. But to what? To what? The eyes of the painted witnesses were on her, like a pressure in her skull.

  'It would be easier,' he said, 'if we knew the consequences of our choices before we made them. We cannot. But you at least have been in the Rhineland. Tell me. Should I surrender the city?'

  Memories tumbled in her mind, hopeless and incoherent. The Liberty Tree. The litter of pigs in hiding. The face of Madame Kaus. The face of Emilia, as the soldiers roared at her man in his study.

  'Sir,' she said, agonized. 'I – I do not believe I can advise you.'

  He sighed. 'I am sure that is a wise answer. It is not your choice, and I do wrong to lay it on you. In any case . . .' he glanced to a long-case clock, decorated with angels, which stood in the shadows by the door. The hands stood very close to ten o'clock.

  'Now, I have been frank with you,' he said. 'I hope you 'will be frank with me. Who was it you were talking to, before you came up here?'

  She hesitated. But indeed he had been frank, even if he had given her nothing she wanted.

  'My choice to come to you was my own,' she said. 'And if I have done wrong, may it be upon me. But the man I was speaking with was your First Minister.'

  'My Italian fox. I suppose he meant to remind me of the costs of the choice I have made, just as he did with poor d'Erles. And now . . .' His voice trailed off, and he turned his eyes to the clock once more.

  He had misjudged it. The pendulum ticked and ticked reproachfully. They waited, listening to each second as it slipped like a last chance beyond their reach. Then the mechanism whirred and the light, bright chimes sang in the shadows of Heaven.

  'I think you should go back to your mother,' the Prince said. 'Tell her, if she will listen, that I too grieve for Albrecht. But whatever you say, see that she goes home. Evidence of a conspiracy has been laid before me, and I must pursue it. I fear some of my guests will be inconvenienced tonight. However, so long as she comports herself properly, she will not be one of them. She will not be impeded. Somebody among my servants seems to have protected her. I am glad, for otherwise I should have had to do so myself.'

  There seemed to be nothing more that could be said. She dropped into a slow curtsey, and left the painted room. Fernhausen pulled the door shut behind her.

  'I am sorry,' she said to him. 'It was wrong of me.'

  'It doesn't matter,' he said curtly.

  But he still came to the door of the outer chamber to watch her make the long walk down the corridor to the gallery.

  There were armed guards at the end of the corridor now, where the servant had stood earlier. And down in the shocked and murmuring ballroom, the first arrests were beginning.

  XXX

  A Turning in the Road

  For the next ten days the Adelsheims kept to their house in the Saint Emil quarter. There was no guard at their door (as there were outside the houses of Jenz and Löhm, further down the same street), but Lady Adelsheim resolutely acted as if she too were under arrest. She kept to her study, morning and afternoon, writing letters of petition to the Prince and the Countess on behalf of her neighbours, on behalf of her cousin Canon Rother, imprisoned in the citadel, and even for Doctor Sorge, who had been caught by the frontier dragoons on the road to Nuremberg. She also wrote more widely, to influential acquaintances in the city and in neighbouring states, telling them that the supposed threat to the city had been fabricated to allow the Prince to rule like a dictator, and urging her readers to offer him no comfort. Maria knew what the letters contained, because her mother read them to her before sending them. She had never done such a thing before.

  'But what if the French truly are preparing to take the city?' Maria ventured.

  'Pish! It is lies. He lies about us and he lies about the French too. It is all to win himself more power. He gulls the Ingolstadt set with stories of invasion, so that they do not protest as he builds up his strength. But soon he will move against them also. He is devious. Do you know whom he has made jailor to my cousin? That man Wéry – now Colonel Wéry indeed! Commander of the citadel! And Gianovi is Governor of the city, I hear. Fanatics and foreigners, you see. He can find so few honest Erzbergers to back him.'

  'Even so, is it wise? What if the Prince came to hear of what you say?'

  'I am not so stupid, child,' said Lady Adelsheim. 'Our own people will carry these and will see that they arrive safely.'

  Maria was in agony. However loyal the messenger, there were risks to any message – as she knew well. And there was also the danger that the next Ingolstadt canon that she addressed might simply hand her letters over to the palace. Moreover, she remembered her talk with the Prince in the Painted Room. She remembered, very clearly, the hunted look in the man's eyes as he had lifted the buff sheet of paper from Wetzlar. She did not think he had been lying about the French. And if they came . . .

  But if she were to say that, then in the eyes of her mother she would have joined the Prince's party. It would mean another quarrel. Perhaps, after all that had passed between them about Albrecht, it would be the final one. And she knew this was why Lady Adelsheim was subjecting her to these letters: it was to test her loyalty, and to force her to choose her mother's side. For it was not possible to listen to the things her mother had written and yet remain neutral. If she did not oppose, she must acquiesce. She did not want to do either. She wished only that none of this was happening, and that she and her father and Anna at least were all safely away at Adelsheim.

  At nights she woke up in fear. And then she thought that her mother was afraid too. But what mother feared was not punishment or siege but the loss of control. The world would no longer obey her, and she knew it. Under her wilful and confident manner, she was becoming less certain. Perhaps that was another reason why she called in Maria to hear what she had written and confirm her in what she had to say.

  Damn her! Damn her!

  But nothing seemed to come of the letters. Soldiers tramped the streets, with their long muskets sloped at their shoulders. They never stopped at the Adelsheims' doors. Maria watched them pass, wondering where they had come from. Most of them would indeed be honest Erzbergers, whatever Mother said. And soon they might have to level those muskets, and fire on thousands and thousands of oncoming Frenchmen. And their bodies would be exposed to French fire. And what would become of them?

  'Well,' said Lady Adelsheim, putting down a letter at breakfast. 'He will take us. But what a fool he is!'

  Franz, Anna and Maria looked up. Father went on burrowing over his food as if nothing had been said.

  'A fool, Mother?' said Maria warily.

  'See for yourself, if you wish.'

  It was from Effenpanz, the butterfly-collecting Count with whom they had stayed in Bohemia when Erzberg had last been threatened by French armies. The Count wrote, in his own cramped hand, in reply to a letter Lady Adelsheim must have sent him very soon after martial law had been declared.

  Of course, it said, he would shelter his dear, brave cousins. How much he admired them! What a noble thing it was to stand firm in the face of threats from these terrible revolutionaries! He only wished that the Emperor, so ill-advised by the spineless men around him, would gather such courage as was shown by the city of Erzberg. Surely with the example of Erzberg to inspire them, the soldiers of the Empire would be irresistible. He himself was now spending many hours a day in preparing his militia. But his home would for ever be open to those who could make such a coura
geous choice . . .

  Anna was looking at her inquiringly. But instead of handing it on, Maria lifted it to her eyes again. The thought of that distant, peaceful Count leaving his butterflies to see his peasants in boots and straps and muskets was very strange. He had no doubt where the right lay. So little doubt, it seemed, that he could hardly have read Lady Adelsheim's letter closely.

  She wondered if he remembered to wear his wig on his parades.

  'I think we shall accept his invitation all the same,' said her mother dryly. 'I no longer wish to weary myself with this town.'

  Maria put the letter down slowly.

  'Why, Mother?'

  'Why?' repeated Lady Adelsheim sharply. 'I have said why.'

  'Mother, if you weary of the city, perhaps you should go to Adelsheim. I see no cause to go to Bohemia, unless we truly fear invasion.'

  'Maria, you are impertinent. To go to Effenpanz is merely prudent. I will not debate it.'

  He mother's tone was final, of course. It always was, especially when there was something that might indeed be debated. Maria felt her skin tremble slightly as she drew breath.

  'I do not wish to go,' she said.

  For a long moment Mother looked at her. They all looked at her – Anna, Franz, Johann the footman, poised at Mother's shoulder. Only Father muttered and chomped on over his food.

  'What concern is it of yours?' said Lady Adelsheim. Her face was very white.

  Maria did not know. She had not thought. She had not prepared for this moment. Yesterday, if she had been offered the chance of leaving the town, she might have cried for joy. But . . .

  'I believe Effenpanz misapprehends us,' she said.

  'Why should that sway me in the slightest?'

  'If we were indeed as he sees us, we would not flee to him at all. We would remain here.' We would face the siege, she might have said. But Mother had not yet admitted that there would be a siege – although it was plain now that she believed it.