Of the many scenic delights found in journeying by rail through Belgium and Austria I have written before. The avid travel reader can consult a guide-book, if needed, of which great numbers abound.
Although I enjoyed pointing out sights to Godfrey—particularly the commendably upright telegraph poles alongside the railway (in France, the same poles lurch like drunken toothpicks)—neither he nor I were easy enough in mind to sit back and enjoy our lengthy excursion.
When our route required an overnight stopover at some railway hotel, I most appreciated Godfrey’s escort to and from the train, and his fluid French, which accomplished our purpose where English did not.
I had been too greatly distressed on my mission to rescue Irene and the return flight by rail to much remark the accommodation along the route. This time I noticed. I found the mattresses piled so high on the ancient bedsteads that one required a ladder to get into bed; despite such lofty ambition, and although I had no pretensions to princesshood, the mattresses seemed pea-infected. Perhaps I mean ‘flea.’ Certainly I was thankful for the sensible night-dress that covered me from chin to knuckles to toes, and a nightcap as well.
The common bathing areas were the subject of much embarrassed negotiation between persons of the opposite sex, or even those of the same persuasion who were unknown to each other.
By the second night, I wondered why on earth Godfrey and I should hurl ourselves like battered dice in a rattling wooden box to such an outpost as Prague on no more cause than a banker’s insecurity and Irene’s insatiable curiosity.
And the food at the hotel dining rooms left much to be desired, unless one is fond of lumpy soups with anonymous inhabitants, tough veal drenched in grease-laden breadcrumbs, and the inevitable vanilla ice accoutered with a wafer having much in common with cardboard. Apparently the French nation’s greatest rivals in abysmal cookery are the Germans.
It was over another uninspired dinner that I spied the odd gentleman. I believe the city was Cologne, or perhaps Frankfurt or even Nuremberg. From a train one city is much like another.
“Godfrey, that gentleman at the window table has been regarding us all evening.”
He managed to drop his napkin in a nonchalant manner that Irene would have applauded (and I would never have managed), then turn to look where I indicated.
“Ordinary enough chap,” Godfrey pronounced on drawing his chair back to the table and attacking his wiener-schnitzel with the gusto all men seem able to apply to even the most mediocre food.
“What of the blue-tinted glasses?”
“Eye trouble,” he suggested tersely before excavating a pile of sliced potatoes attired in a loathsome yellowish sauce.
I used my fork tines to push my potato mound to the rim of my plate. “I have seen him in the train stations as well.”
“He may be traveling to the same destination that we are.”
“Is that not suspicious?”
Godfrey stopped eating, reluctantly, to give my questions the full attention they deserved. “We are not the only persons with business in Prague, Nell. As for the gentleman’s regarding us, he probably has as little to occupy his mind on this trip as do you, which is why you noticed him in the first place.”
“He has a great amount of facial hair.”
Godfrey managed another discreet survey of the man under discussion. “So do German professors, Nell. That is precisely the species I think you have uncovered. Look at the thickness of the book that he has set beside his plate.”
Then why is he not reading it, instead of looking at us?”
“I don’t doubt that we are more interesting than it is.” A tone of exasperation had entered his voice, which I recognized from my own governess days when dealing with an unquenchable child. “Perhaps he is a Masher,” Godfrey added with sudden inspiration. “The only way to discourage his regard is to pay him no mind whatsoever.”
I sighed. If I was not to be suspicious of strangers, I would have nothing better to do than to attack the unattractive dinner. I bent my gaze and my fork back to my plate. Beets, I noted mournfully, a great quantity of beets leaking carmine liquid and—my fork withdrew from my mouth too late for me to do anything but chew and swallow despite myself—cold! Cold beets for dinner, can it be imagined? Prague, I reflected, had been a great mistake the first time as well.
Although Godfrey pooh-poohed my apprehensions all through that despicable dinner, when we rose to leave he turned to inspect the now-deserted dining room.
“The object of your speculation has left his book,” he noted, leading me past the table we had noted.
Godfrey paused to pick up the tome and riffle the gilt- edged pages. “A commonplace treatise on the city of Prague. I will return it to the gentleman in the morning.” The moment I opened my mouth to protest, he forestalled me. “We may learn something of the gentleman from his book.”
So he saw me to my door and retreated with the mislaid volume under one arm. I itched to peruse it, but dared not say so; lost property was not common goods.
The next morning, Godfrey arrived at my door to collect me at the pre-arranged time, cane in one hand, book in the other.
“Well?” I demanded.
“An ordinary travel guide. I will leave it with the concierge.”
But that reliable depository of lost articles and general information was of no help at all. She insisted that no gentleman answering to our description had recently resided at the hotel, even overnight.
We left burdened by the stranger’s book. Godfrey shrugged off the incident.
“If we spy the man again, he may have his book back.”
“If we spy the man again, he may be a spy!”
“For whom?”
“The forces in Prague that the Rothschilds fear, or even—”
“Yes, Nell?”
I lowered my voice. “The King.”
“He does employ spies, like any modern monarch,” Godfrey admitted, “but I doubt he would waste them on us. We have been troubled by no sign of the King’s interest since Irene and I left London six months ago.”
“True... except—” I was thinking of Irene’s and my accidental encounter with Queen Clotilde. Had it been mere happenstance, as it seemed? Could the unknowing Queen have been sent to the House of Worth to encounter Irene and lure her back to Prague and the King although Irene had dismissed the idea of such a plot? I was sorry to see Godfrey frowning at me worrisomely.
“Except what, Nell? Has the King shown some awareness of our new address in Neuilly that I am unaware of?”
Now I would have to produce a plausible excuse for my unguarded turn of phrase! I hated to mislead Godfrey, especially in the middle of a public hotel lobby.
“Except—oh, I don’t know what I was thinking, Godfrey! Of course the King has not found us.” Inspiration struck so suddenly that I did not even consider the ethics of such a wild story. “Except, as you pointed out when the mysterious box with Quentin’s medal arrived at our Neuilly cottage, it could have been sent by that murderous heavy game-hunter, Colonel Moran, rather than Quentin himself. And that monster spied for the Russians. If he sent the medal, he knows where we live, and he could be employed by the King of Bohemia now. Or by his enemies.” By now my fairy tale seemed all too alarmingly possible, even to me!
“Nell, Nell, Nell!” Godfrey chidingly shook my gloved hand. “You have been infected by an overdose of Irene’s imagination. It is far more sensible to suppose that Quentin himself sent the medal, that he survived his apparent death. And you know that there is no danger at all in Quentin Stanhope’s knowing where we live. For one thing, he has already been a guest there. For another, he wishes us no harm; quite the contrary. You mustn’t see ghosts and spies behind every pillar and pair of tinted glasses. I begin to fear that this return to Prague is likely to be as harmful to you as it may be to Irene.”
Now I had worried Godfrey in my attempt to weave a tangled web from odd pieces of truth and pure conjecture! I nodded in guilty shame,
which he took for meek agreement. He squeezed my hand for courage and led me into the bustling street, which smelled of old cabbage and fresh bootblack. Shortly after our luggage was brought down, we were ensconced in a carriage for the brief ride to the station and the final leg of our trek to Prague.
Perhaps Godfrey was right that I saw danger in disguise behind every eyeglass and saw a mask in every mutton- chop. Yet the odd gentleman vanished after that night as if cued by Godfrey’s and my discussion of him, and I had learned from Irene the uses and techniques of deception. I peered around the crowded terminal in Prague, but spied not a single pair of tinted glasses. And we remained in undisputed possession of the travel guide to Prague.
Chapter Fourteen
FEET OF CLAY
The city of Prague straddles a sharp bend in the river Vltava, whose nine bridges fan like spokes between the Old and New Towns on the east bank, and the Hradcany fortress and lesser Quarter, or Mala Strana, on the west.
Prague is a pleasant city, situated neither high nor low, and famed for its “hundred towers,” though they no doubt number more by now. The city is often likened to Venice (for its cluster of water-threaded islands near the National Theater) or Vienna (for its lavish Baroque architecture with its heaped-on plasterwork and gilt that amounts to nothing more than architectural marzipan).
Had my associations with the capitol not been so unhappy, I might even have experienced some nostalgia at a return.
Godfrey had reserved rooms for us at the Europa Hotel in the New Town, a splendid modern hostelry that nevertheless hinted at the city’s Baroque past. From the balcony outside our rooms (bed and bath suites that were needlessly luxurious), one could see the late afternoon sun winking off the glassy river and dying the red tile roofs of the Mala Strana an ox blood color. Godfrey and I stood on our separate but adjoining balconies, eyeing the spectacle of Prague spread before us like a picnic on a gentle green blanket.
Godfrey was squinting at the appropriated travel guide in the dimming light. “Where would this Golem-creature show itself?”
I pointed to the northeast behind us. “One cannot see the Josef Quarter from this direction, but it is nearby.”
“A veritable tangle of rooftops and towers,” he noted of the town below us. “Some of those distant byways look hardly wide enough to accommodate Jack Sprat, much less a massive, seven-foot-tall man-monster.”
“The Josef Quarter is most congested,” I agreed, remembering an ill-conceived outing there with Irene, “and full of dark passages and queer signs in strange languages. I would not wish to go there."
He nodded absently, paging through the thick guidebook in the waning light, then lifted his eyes to the horizon. “And that. What is that? Surely more than a church.”
He pointed to a long, high ridge to the West, behind which the sun shrank like a guttering candle. I had forgotten how this massive architectural cliff-face dominated Prague’s unambitious profile, or how the light glanced from its long lines of windows so it looked like a treasure chest studded with cut-steel.
“The spires belong to St. Vitus Cathedral, a Catholic church,” I added unnecessarily while avoiding the true issue.
“Ah, here it is—‘St. Vitus Cathedral at the heart of the Hradcany fortress...’”
I tautened at the sight of the church’s three serrated Gothic towers looming like spearheads over the long low bulk of the building that surrounded it.
“Hradcany,” Godfrey repeated uncertainly. “Is not that the site of Prague Castle? Nell?”
“Yes, Godfrey?”
“Is that where you and Irene stayed with the King?”
“Yes, Godfrey.”
“Why did you not mention it sooner?”
“I... forgot it. Truly I did. I was used to seeing the city from its windows, not to viewing it from a distance. It is most imposing.”
“Indeed,” he said indignantly, “but for all its vast mass, rather unimaginative.”
I couldn’t help but think that he was comparing the structure with its master. “The outer walls are eighteenth century,” I explained. “Inside are bits and pieces of older architecture dating to the ninth century, so I was told. Parts of the interior are Romanesque and Gothic, and quite interesting, particularly the row of tiny medieval houses within the castle, which is called Golden Lane and once housed guards and, later, it is said, alchemists. Do you suppose the alchemists had anything to do with the Golem?”
“I have a perfectly adequate guidebook, Nell. You need not regale me with the odd detail.” Godfrey sounded a bit out of temper. “How far back does this Golem date?”
“Medieval times.”
“And the King’s direct ancestors; how far do they extend into the mists of history, I wonder?”
“There you have me. Earlier rulers of Bohemia include Charles the Fourth, who was also Holy Roman Emperor, and Rudolph the Second. I am not so sure that the current King Wilhelm is descended from either of those distinguished gentlemen. Prague and Bohemia passed back and forth between waxing and waning empires for some time. No doubt the King’s family tree bears several transplants and truncations.”
“No doubt. Certainly I am not fond of my own family tree, and my disillusion goes back only to my father. Imagine what a train of scallywags a King with a proper pedigree might find hanging upon his ancestral branches.”
“I need not imagine faults for Wilhelm von Ormstein, Godfrey.”
“No. It has grown dark, and I cannot read this useful volume any longer. I suggest that we repair to dinner and plan our next moves. Thirty minutes, then?”
His voice came from the descending dark—a good voice: crisp, quietly carrying, and thoroughly English.
“Yes,” I said, hearing his shoe pivot on the balcony stone as he left.
I remained in the almost-dark, hanging over the city with which I had such brief but gloomy acquaintance. Bells began tolling from the hundred-some towers as they had for centuries, each in its own distinctive voice. Irene, with her instant musical recall, could name every bell-note, I knew. I heard them with tone-deaf ears, yet their vibrations touched the harp strings of my memory, and I was sorry to be here again.
Did Queen Clotilde high on Hradcany hill lift her head to listen? Did the King pause in his regal pursuits to remember the bells? When he sat in the National Theatre to attend an opera, did he hear Irene’s unforgettable dark, rich voice echoing? Did the resurrected Golem in his cramped and hidden byways halt at the sound so blessed to me, yet cursed to him—Christian bells tolling an assault upon the Jews of Prague; alarum bells of warning to Jews; avenging bells of holy war to Christians?
Who in this city of sublime music and ancient hatreds, of beauty and beastliness multiplied to the seventh power, heeded the bells? Who would heed us, or Irene, now that we were coming back?
The very civilized hotel dining room eased my primitive fancies and fears. Peach-colored linen dressed round tables set amid the warm gleam of wood paneling. Candlelight polished leaded glass insets and burnished the gilt figurines holding fresh flowers that decorated the salon.
If only the food had matched the decor! My national pantheon of atrocious cooking became an unholy trinity: roast pork indifferently done; a slick lumpy offering the size of a croquet ball, and about as tasty, called a dumpling; bleached shoe-strings of cabbage served hot in vinegar. Not only was the meal tasteless, but colorless as well. In terms of untouchable cuisine, from now on it was Rule, Bohemia!
Godfrey eyed the undemolished condition of my plate. “This does not suit you, Nell? What did you eat at the palace?”
“Very little. I was most worried about Irene and had no appetite. Then, when she detected poison as the method of the old King’s death... I had even less appetite.”
“And did Irene’s theories affect her own digestion?”
“Hardly! Irene is as deaf to good food as I am to true notes. She will happily eat anything, and a good deal of it. I cannot understand why her figure remains so slender.”
“Injustice, Nell,” he said with relish, attacking the dumpling with knife and fork so it should not escape his plate. “Irene is the embodiment of cruel injustice, the model by which the rest of us fall short.”
“Is that why you have saddled her return to Prague with the company of young Allegra?”
He smiled angelically. “Even Irene must have a cross or two to bear, not that Allegra is other than a delightful girl. Still, it will temper Irene’s adventurous instincts to have an innocent in her care. Besides, the young woman was bound and determined to visit us. She shall get her wish, and then some.”
“She cannot have easily obtained her family’s permission,” I added.
“Oh.” Godfrey grinned, and there was nothing angelic about it. “I doubt that she has bothered to ask them.”
“And you have compounded the situation by inviting Allegra to Prague!?”
“Where else can we keep an eye on her? What else could we have done but shipped her back to her family in disgrace?”
“Allegra is a well-brought up girl,” I continued, most distraught. “How could she have done anything so ill-considered as to undertake a trip abroad under false pretenses?”
“I said from the first that she reminded me of Irene.” He smiled and set aside his napkin with a satisfied air. “I wonder how Irene will like having a younger, more impetuous version of herself on her hands.”
“This scheme of yours may recoil upon you, Godfrey.”
“Why?”
“Schemes generally do; even Irene’s.”
He lifted the pale wine provided for our dinner. “In this case, let’s hope the schemes of the schemers we are here to hunt prove more vulnerable than our own.”
“Amen,” said I, toasting before drinking from my glass of the only Bohemian consumable I found palatable—water.
After a dessert of heavy torte I only picked at, we repaired to Godfrey’s sitting room. (As a delegate of the Rothschild interests he would be expected to have grand accommodations, he explained.)
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 15
