“Of course,” he said, sounding not at all certain of that. What more would have been said, I cannot speculate, for at that moment a knock on the door ended the discussion.
A maid brought us a note, a communication from the castle. That was the second appalling development of the day, a day whose events soon made me ache to return to the Jewish cemetery and desecrate the rabbi’s grave as a far better occupation.
Irene opened the heavy cream stationery—the Queen’s personal stock—and read the brief message within, aloud and with perfect diction:
Come at once! An event of ghastly import has transpired. Clotilde is prostrate. You must insist on seeing only the Queen. I remain with her to preserve what sanity I can. Try to maintain a serene demeanor when you arrive. No one must suspect anything!
Allegra
We decided that Godfrey should remain behind to make arrangements for the flowers. Actually, Irene decided, in the autocratic manner that was becoming all too common to her since we had returned to the picturesque and cursed kingdom of Bohemia.
“The egg is worth almost as much as my Tiffany diamonds,” she told Godfrey. “You must find a safe place for it. I suggest a bank, or the hotel safe if the banks are closed. Then, you must find some suitable deployment for the floral excesses. Whatever has happened at the castle, an innocent visit from a pair of ladies will not aggravate the uproar. I fear, Godfrey,” she added a trifle severely, “that whatever effect you have had upon Tatyana has somewhat compromised your role in this intrigue.”
“I did nothing!” he protested, quite rightly, “save follow your suggestions.”
“Sometimes one must stand one’s own ground, and follow one’s own instincts for self-preservation!”
On this note she left, with myself in her train. I will never forget Godfrey staring perplexed at his ring of floral tributes, looking more alarmed than a civilized English gentleman should have to.
The sun was setting by the time Irene and I were ensconced in a carriage bound for the Hradcany. Every spire in Prague was tipped with liquid gold. Taverns and shops beamed a rosy glow of twilight commerce as our conveyance passed and began climbing the winding route to the pinnacle of the city.
Prague Castle, sprawling on the hill it commanded, threw a dark and forbidding silhouette against the lowering crimson curtain of the sunset. Our horses’ hooves clattered to the private entrance far from the overwhelming public gate.
No one contested our request or right to see the Queen. Even the servants betrayed an indifferent contempt for what the Queen wished or did not wish. They deferred to whatever another said of her wishes, rather than ascertaining her will.
Irene, who had been grim during the entire journey, was no less optimistic as we followed a knee-breeches-clad lackey through those elaborate halls until we reached the Queen’s chambers.
One of the double doors was opened by a pale-faced Allegra.
‘Thank heavens!” she cried, sweeping the door wide for Irene and myself.
“Where is she?” Irene demanded on entering.
“In her bedchamber, but she expects you. In fact, she has been wailing for you for hours. I fear she has little confidence in one of my years.”
“Yet you had the wit to write, and apparently quickly.” Irene paused in the bedroom’s antechamber to remove her gloves while she and I assisted each other out of our short capes. No servants came to relieve us of our outer things, so Irene tossed them cavalierly on a lounge chair.
“What is the mishap you write of?” Irene wanted to know next.
“It may seem a trivial matter, but ‘mishap’ does not describe its effects. Look around you. Do you see what is missing?”
Irene’s glance was as swift and sharp as carrion crow’s. “The Worth mannequins are missing. Did Clotilde not like any of the gowns, after all?”
“Quite the contrary! We had a delightful afternoon examining the new arrivals and the old, and then—”
“Then? Allegra, surely you have not called us to the castle on some trifling matter involving the Worth mannequins? We have left Godfrey back at the hotel in a situation of grave danger.”
Allegra was a charming, well-brought-up girl, but she possessed an imperious streak at least a quarter as wide as Irene’s. She drew herself up and answered stiffly, “I cannot say what peril Godfrey faces, although I am sure that he will overcome it, but you must judge the Queen’s case for yourself.”
With this she knocked at the coffered doors leading to the Queen’s bedchamber, a room we had never seen.
A smothered “Come” was not an encouraging invitation.
Allegra pulled down the rococo lever and we entered a room of shining marble floors scattered with Aubusson carpets and a testered bed as soaring and stately as any altar- piece. It seemed odd to find a self-declared Virgin Queen ensconced in such luxury; perhaps the irony of her situation only goaded the Queen more.
She was prostrate, as advertised, but not upon the royal bed. She lay crumpled like an abandoned doll on the upholstered chaise longue near a pair of Louis XVI chairs by the tall windows.
When she looked up to see who had arrived, I was struck dumb. Clotilde even in full bloom was a pallid and spiritless blossom. Clotilde after hours of hysterical weeping was a sorry sight indeed.
Her large blue eyes (her best feature) were tear-swollen. While her eyelids were always pink around the lashes, like those of a white rabbit, now her entire eye-whites were tinted unflattering scarlet.
Her pale skin was mottled with red blotches; even her satin length of silky blond hair seemed dulled by the damp in which she had wallowed for so long.
Irene rustled over to her with the efficient concern of a crack nurse.
“Your Majesty has had an unsettling day!”
“Oh, don’t call me ‘Your Majesty,’ ” Clotilde replied as testily as a sick and sleepy sobbing child. “I am queen of nothing but my own misery! Please, I wish I could go home and be just Clotilde. Call me Clotilde and I shall feel as if I am among my dear s-s-sisters again! I wish I had never heard of Bohemia or its King.”
Irene’s face took on an odd expression: half utter sympathy and half rueful agreement. She sat gingerly on the small comer of the chaise that Clotilde had not dampened with her weeping.
"Come, now. It cannot be as bad as you think. We are here to help.”
“There is no help,” Clotilde wailed, putting her pale head on Irene’s silken shoulder nevertheless.
I pay a keen tribute to Irene’s self-control when I mention that she did not even wince as fresh tears baptized the rare changeable mauve silk of her gown.
“Tell her; tell them,” Clotilde commanded Allegra, her tone pleading rather than imperious.
“It was dreadful,” Allegra began, her voice taking on that indignant tone that Irene delivers so well at her most melodramatic moments. “We were in the antechamber, deciding among the gowns. And—oh, Irene, you should have seen the latest shipment. They were superb! Monsieur Worth only gets better. I so long for my first Worth gown,” she added meltingly.
“Time enough to think of that after you have finished your testimony,” Irene said smartly, patting Clotilde’s heaving shoulder and watching saltwater stains seep into the delicate silk’s subtle pattern.
Allegra began to pace. “I cannot tell you what a shock it was; what a pleasant, innocent afternoon we were having. I have never known a Queen so well,” she added a bit self- importantly. “We were getting on perfectly. Then the King came in.”
‘The King?” Irene sounded puzzled.
“Indeed. He entered without knocking, simply burst into the room, this huge man bristling with moustaches and mutton chops. And then he took the dolls.”
“The King came and took the Worth mannequins? Personally?”
“No, of course not. He had three lackeys cart them off. But first he strode about and stormed.”
“What did he storm about?” I asked. The sudden and thunderous appearance of the tall King had
reminded me in an unpleasant way of glimpsing the giant Golem in the streets. Perhaps these two larger than life figures had a certain anger in common.
“The mannequins. He accused Clotilde of not knowing her mind, of not—” Allegra glanced to the Queen’s bowed head and stopped.
“You must tell me whatever the King said,” Irene encouraged her in a quiet tone, “exactly what the King said, no matter how painful.”
“He accused the Queen of... of not even having a mind, and said that she had dallied with the dolls like a child, and would have them to toy with no longer. That is when he snapped his fingers and the lackeys appeared to cart them away. Even while the servants were present, he said that the Queen had no taste, no opinion, no sense. That... that Tatyana wished to choose some gowns for herself, and must be kept waiting no longer.”
Allegra took a step toward us and lowered her voice, as if hoping that only Irene and I would hear. “That is when I noticed that vile woman waiting in the outer chamber— waiting for Clotilde’s mannequins! Then the King swept away with Tatyana, the lackeys, and all the mannequins. I have never witnessed anything so perfidious and cruel in my life. I cannot believe, dear Irene, that you ever saw anything in the King. He is a monster!”
Irene’s face became a mask of alarm, for Allegra’s outburst alluded to her own prior acquaintance with the King, but the sobbing Queen was immersed in her own distress and didn’t hear, or understand, the allusion.
“A monster,” Irene repeated in a hollow voice. “It would indeed seem so.” She sighed, then tugged lightly on one of Clotilde’s lank curls.
“It is time to stop mourning what cannot be changed,” she suggested, her voice a sweet yet seductive tool she used with equal doses of sincerity and artistry, “and to decide what we will do about it.”
Clotilde responded despite herself to that voice that had enchanted thousands. Her lifted face revealed even redder eyes, but one word in Irene’s sentence had encouraged her. “We?”
Irene nodded. “I am sure that between you and Allegra a splendid decision was reached on the gowns. You no longer need those silly dolls; you have made your choices. Now you must order.”
“But they are gone—” Clotilde threatened to drizzle again.
“Do you think that Monsieur Worth has not kept track of every design, every frill, on each model sent to you? He is like the Great Creator in his own little way. Not a furbelow is dispatched to Prague or Vienna or London that his eye is not upon. You and Allegra must sit down now— while your thoughts are fresh—and list everything you wish to order. Worth will fulfill it.”
“But... Madame Norton—” The Queen sat up and began pushing damp flaxen strands of hair away from her ravaged face. “You do not seem to understand. The King entered my very bedchamber, as he has not done at any private time, and publicly ordered my... my mannequins into that woman’s care and consideration! I do not wish to state the obvious before such genteel women as your sweet sister and Miss Huxleigh, but obviously this Tatyana is a personal interest of the King’s who outranks me in his regard. She is his....”
“Mistress,” Irene said plainly. “Of course. Kings have ever had such things. They are as common as crowns, among kings. Our own Prince of Wales... my dear, he has had many mistresses.”
“How does the Princess of Wales endure it?”
“With dignity, and, I should imagine, a certain distaste. Yet that is her lot in life; to be a loyal and good wife to a King too spoiled to rein in his every appetite. Even the mistress has her role; to cater to the spoiled child inside every King or wealthy man.
“Think what such a woman must put up with. Not only his fickle regard, but she, poor thing, must receive him in her bedchamber. This is not always a consummation devoutly to be wished, no matter what the fairy stories say about kings and princes.”
Clotilde nodded slowly. “You advise me to reconcile myself to my lot. I confess that I do not desire the King’s presence... personally; only I do wish to provide the heirs I am obliged to, and thought that children might console me for the emptiness of my role.”
“Perhaps they will,” Irene said with a smile. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
“How can I have children, Madame, when the King shows no inclination to visit me; when the very sight of him repels me now that he has shown his true nature?”
Irene shrugged, a seemingly callous gesture at such a charged moment. Sometimes her grasp of the larger drama was so great that she failed to ache for the heartbroken minor character.
“Things may not be as bleak as you think. Certainly they will seem better if you order some Worth gowns. I myself find such purchases most uplifting to the morale. In fact, given His Majesty’s high-handed appropriation of your mannequins, I believe that you will be safest simply wiring Monsieur Worth and telling him that you will take everything he has sent, and if he believes a certain model to be particularly flattering to you, he must make it up in two or three of your best colors.”
“But, Madame Norton! That will cost a veritable fortune!”
Irene smiled angelically. “Yes, I rather imagine that it will. And imagine how the King will feel when he sees the bill!”
“He will be furious, even though he first urged me to visit Worth. He will stalk into my rooms again, raging and towering.”
“And—?” Irene inquired lightly. “What will he do about it? What can he do about it?”
Clotilde blinked, banishing a glaze of tears on her baby blue eyes. “He can do nothing,” she said in a hushed tone, “if I am not frightened of his blustering. He will have to pay.”
“Yes.” Irene’s expression was seraphic. “He will have to pay, a good deal for a long time to come.”
She turned that smile on Clotilde, coaxing its pale imitation from the Queen. “And you will have a splendid wardrobe. You see what they mean by ‘poetic justice’?”
“I do,” the Queen said, nodding, “but it is a rather sad triumph.”
“That is what most women have to settle for, particularly when they consort with Kings... but, for you, my dear—”
Here Irene’s voice became an uncanny duplicate of the gypsy woman’s we had first visited eighteen months before, as she took the Queen’s hand to examine her palm. “—for you I see a dazzling triumph of a moral sort, a humbled King, and many astounding revelations. You sit at the center of a complex web, and while your dilemma is tangential to the whole, it also forms the heart of the entire problem. Rest easy; be hopeful, the future will be better than you think—and, I predict, you will get a sublime Worth wardrobe out of it that will be the envy of an Empress.”
By now even Clotilde was smiling. “I am not as convinced as you evidently are, Madame Irene, by the power of a new set of clothes.”
“Trust me,” Irene said in her unabashedly portentous gypsy accent. “I know my Kings, and I know my clothes.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
TOMBSTONE TERRITORY
One would think that rescuing her cherished husband from a flood of flowers and consoling the Queen of Bohemia would be enough accomplishment in a single day for any woman.
Alas, Irene was never so easily satisfied. We returned to the Europa to find that Godfrey had disposed of the bouquets by the inspired expedient of donating them to the National Theater and a local mortician.
The Fabergé egg he was less inclined to donate; Irene, after some jousting between feelings of jealousy and her natural acquisitiveness and practicality, had to agree. A rare objet d’art was an objet d’art, after all, and eternal. Brazen hussies, even those who might be inclined to pursue her husband, come and go.
After a subdued dinner—Godfrey mused upon his unanticipated admirer, Allegra upon the Queen’s dilemma, Irene upon Godfrey’s unanticipated admirer, I upon all my friends’ problems—Allegra was sent to her bedchamber for the night while we three consulted in the salon.
“I am not pleased by today’s turn of events,” Irene said by way of introduction. “The puzzle tu
rns vicious. We must attack it from another angle.”
“Paris?” I suggested hopefully.
She eyed me with disdain. “You know very well what my next plans are, Nell. We must beard the rabbi’s tomb.”
“What tomb?” Godfrey wanted to know.
“That of the rabbi who raised the Golem. His tomb is a local landmark. I fear that it is also the key to much that troubles this city.”
“Surely,” I said, “you do not hope to unearth the Golem?”
“That is exactly what I wish to do, and at the precisely right moment, which is the intricate part.”
“Can there be a ‘right’ moment for unearthing the dead, or for uncovering a monster?”
“My dear Nell, there is a always a right moment for everything. I think tonight is your moment juste for an after-dark adventure.”
‘‘What are you saying?” I glanced at Godfrey in alarm, but although he looked mystified, he was no help whatsoever, and moreover seemed somewhat distracted. I suppose that, having survived trial by Tatyana and her invasive flowers, he was willing to see me put to some new and unsettling travail in my own turn.
“I only propose,” Irene said, “that Godfrey and I don discreet black tonight and investigate the rabbi’s tomb. I also believe that you should accompany us.”
“Indeed I should, if you toy with desecration of a graveyard, no matter the creed.”
Irene eyed me up and down in a most disparaging manner. “I am afraid that petticoats and petit point will not do tonight. I wear my best black trouser-suit; you can do no less.”
“I? Dress as a man? I think not.”
Irene made a moue of resignation. I would have rested easier had not a twinkle of calculation also dawned in her eyes.
“I feared that you would object... so—” She rose from the sofa and bent to withdraw a large cardboard box from beneath it. In a moment she was lofting the contents.
“You see here, Nell, a most respectable bicycling toilette for the active woman: black wool-and-silk bloomers; black sailor’s-style blouse; black stockings and walking boots. Even black gloves. The most elegant lady could not object to such an ensemble.”
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 30
