The Red Queen did not move, only stared at Godfrey, who watched the wounded King depart in a kind of daze. I am certain that he had never shot a man before, or been led to believe that he had. Irene went to Godfrey, twined her aim through his, and they walked slowly to the carriage, ignoring Tatyana as if she were a phantom of the fog.
The woman turned in a swirl of red velvet and vanished into her carriage.
“It has worked!” Allegra embraced me in the shelter of our coach. “Dear Nell, you and I have accomplished a hidden miracle, but we shall get no credit, more’s the pity.”
“The best deeds go unnoticed,” I said sternly, removing her arms from my neck.
“Whatever shall we do with... him?” she asked next, eying the hapless man in the comer of the vehicle. His shoulder bore but a scratch, though his masquerade was mortally wounded, and Tatyana was forever out of his grasp.
“Whatever Irene decides—” I began... and was rudely interrupted.
Our carriage door flew open. The unattractive face of the odious man from the ball leaned into our midst.
“Wilhelm von Ormstein the Second, I presume,” he said in his perfect English, eyeing our captive. “We will relieve you of him.”
“Who—” I began indignantly.
“What—?” Allegra demanded.
A second man leaned in to assist the first. Dr. Watson.
In moments they had wrestled our charge from the carriage.
The man in the monocle tipped his top hat at us. “Most obliged, ladies,” he said with a slight smile.
And they were gone.
Allegra and I regarded each other. We sat alone in our once-crowded carriage, with nothing to show for our labors—and our triumph—but....
I leaned to the carriage floor and plucked up a single fallen brass button.
Chapter Thirty-seven
CZECH MATE
Three days later, we were all summoned to Prague Castle for an audience with the King.
Neither Allegra nor I had seen much of Godfrey or Irene during the interim. One would think they had been sequestered in his rooms, refusing to emerge.
We two had been forced to rely upon each other for entertainment, which was not a burden. Together, we had seen more of Prague than Irene and I had managed in our lengthy previous visit. Allegra was most impressed by my tales of Rabbi Loew’s hidden crypt, but of course I dared not escort her below.
She begged and pleaded and finally prevailed upon me to visit the fortune teller again, whom I recognized from Irene’s and my previous consultation.
This wrinkled old woman seized upon my hand and predicted that I was about to go “on a long journey.” (Not difficult to anticipate: I would return to Paris shortly.) She also predicted that I would “commune with my heart’s desire.” (Easy enough to do if one possesses sufficient imagination and few desires.)
Nevertheless, I enjoyed my holiday with Allegra, and even continued to allow her to call me “Nell.” That would teach Irene to leave us languishing while she was about her surreptitious business.
We four returned to Prague Castle in style two days later, Godfrey looking positively Grand Operatic in his diplomatic morning suit via the Rothschild tailor, Irene a symphony in scintillating periwinkle blue, Allegra sweet in sincere lilac, and I the model of modernity in yellow-and-brown plaid.
The King wore his usual elaborate uniform, and greeted us alone in his throne room.
“I owe you this rather ornate chair,” he told Irene, gesturing to the rococo gilt affair that squatted on a dais at one end of the marble-floored chamber. “Before I resume it, I humbly beg your advice.”
I would have suspected the King of a sense of humor, or even one of irony, had I not known better.
He led her to the chair in question, glanced at Godfrey, then seated her in it. ‘Tell me what you require.”
Irene laid her gloved hands along those gilded arms and lifted her head on her swanlike neck. She looked every inch a queen.
“First,” she said, “you must repair your damaged alliance with the Queen. Clotilde has been nobly faithful to your substitute, despite much provocation. You swim upstream with her, Willie, but you have the stamina, and it is worth your future.”
He bowed his head.
“Second,” she went on, “you will admit that I have been somewhat important to your current status.”
He sighed and nodded, like a faithful servant.
“I believe,” said Irene, examining her garnet bracelets, “that you owe me some small recompense.”
“Which is—?” He no longer sounded so humble, for it had come down to common commerce.
“I had developed a... fancy for certain of the art works in your Long Gallery—oh, nothing relating to your family and forebears. Merely some... insignificant pictures I found pretty. I fear I am sentimental. I desire a souvenir of my last stay in Bohemia.”
Irene with her head cast down, looking through her lashes, was a sight to beware of, but King Willie did not know that.
“If the works are obscure, you may have them, with my blessing,” he said.
Obscure they were, for I then recalled Irene conducting me past them and identifying hidden Old Masters among the family portraiture. This alone was a coup to pale her capture of Queen Marie Antoinette’s diamonds.
“Another matter,” she said. “The... disposition of the misguided maid who aided in your father’s death.”
“I have inquired. She has been kept below these eighteen months.”
“To forgive is the divine right of kings, Willie.”
He balked. “She slew my sire! She was part of a foul plot by Bohemian patriots to ruin the von Ormstein rule.”
“Which superseded the native Bohemian rule only in latter-day times. She was a mere tool, as was your recent replacement.”
The King frowned. “What has become of him, by the way?”
“He has,” Irene said airily with a wave of her gloved hand, “been wafted to a better world. Do you release the girl, or not?”
“She was a pawn,” he said, grumbling, “but she will try nothing like this again. I will release her.”
Irene nodded.
“Is this all?” he asked, sounding impatient.
“Not... quite.” Irene glanced at Godfrey and myself. “During my travels in Prague, I could not help but note that the National Theater mounts Mr. Dvořák’s Spectre's Bride. You may recall, Willie, that I was... abruptly compelled to desert an earlier production of this enchanting opera by... forces beyond my control.”
“I remember,” he growled.
Irene lifted her head, her voice, her entire aspect. “I wish to sing this role that was taken from me. Within the week. I wish an exclusive audience: Mr. Norton, and the Misses Huxleigh and Turnpenny.”
In the silence that followed this decree, only I had the nerve to speak.
“Irene! You are out of practice. Even you cannot sing such a taxing role with only a week’s rehearsal. This is mad. Give it up.”
“You will see for yourself, will you not, Nell?” she asked, as implacable as Cleopatra on her throne with an asp in her hand. “I wish a private performance of the work entire, for my friends.”
“Of course,” the King answered. “Mr. Dvořák will be ecstatic. And may... I attend?”
“No,” Irene said, quite definite. “This is not a royal command performance, but a prima donna’s command performance. I may have whom I wish attend, and you are not among my favored audience, nor is even your admirable wife, Clotilde.”
He bowed his head and said only, “Is that all?”
“For now,” she responded, rising from his throne like a cat getting up after a long and profitable nap.
He stepped before her, barring her way, one foot upon the dais. “May not a humble king seek a boon?”
Irene’s eyes glittered like her bracelets. “He may seek, but he may not find.”
“I request... one last waltz.”
At last Irene’s por
celain-smooth composure chipped. “Is that all?”
Then her eyes twinkled and sought mine. “My dear Nell did mention the unlikely possibility of my taking a gallop around the ballroom with the Golem of Prague.”
Her eyes next moved to Godfrey beside me, not so much seeking permission as requesting one last act of patience with her plunge into past business.
“It would be most amusing to prove her wild surmise correct,” Godfrey said.
I couldn’t restrain myself as I glanced around the elegant but empty chamber. “You have no music.”
“Ah,” said the King in a tone of nostalgia that I felt must grate on Godfrey. “Irene makes her own music.”
“I would be happy,” she told the King with another wicked glitter, “to have you dance to my tune.” And she held out her arms in the proper position.
“Again,” he amended, sweeping her down the dais and across the polished marble floor that mirrored their motion in foggy reflection.
Irene began to hum some lilting air in perfect pitch and time as they waltzed around the floor, the handsome couple that they had ever been.
In dawning horror, I recognized the tune as “The Emperor Waltz.” Irene was providing music fit for even more than a mere king.
I eyed Godfrey beside me. He was as still as Irene had been when the false king challenged him to a duel, and when the equally false Tatyana had dared him to dance. I could read nothing in his face or in his figure but iron control and a kind of concentrated yet hidden alertness.
At least the King held Irene at a decent distance as he smiled down at her. She was not unaware of her partner, but lost in her own music, her own role, as if she were on stage.
And then her improvised melody ended. They stopped swaying and moved apart, and both broke suddenly into laughter at the ludicrous nature of the situation. Even Irene’s laughter was operatic, an irresistible arpeggio that bubbled up from her diaphragm and chest and throat. She fanned her fingers over her mouth to contain it, to no avail.
The King stepped back from her, guffawing in his hearty German way, slapping his hands on his thighs, until tears pooled in his ice-blue eyes.
In that moment, self-delusion, prickly and pricked pride, power and rivalry dissolved under the soothing balm of a finally achieved mutual respect.
Beside me, Godfrey’s breath eased out in a not-quite-inaudible hiss. “It’s over.”
“It has been over for a very long time,” I said. “Now it is finished.”
Irene moved to join us, among commoners again and glad of it, from her expression. She turned back to the King for a last-minute boon.
“One last wish. I would like to see your Queen. Have you visited her since your captivity?”
“No,” he admitted with sudden sobriety, wiping away the last traces of his mirth. “She was... somewhat temperamental.” He turned to direct a lackey to invite the Queen to come and see some “old friends and His Majesty, a new one.”
We waited in that room redolent of royalty; we waited for the one woman who held more sway over the King of Bohemia than even Irene did. We waited for the Queen.
She arrived, living up to her title, a vastly changed woman, one worn by fate into harder stuff than she was born for. She faced this man in the image of the one who had humiliated her to the bone, and said nothing.
He eyed her, and indeed he now had something to eye.
Clotilde was nothing like the pale imitation of a woman Irene and I had met in Paris, nothing like the portrait we’d ignobly sniggered over in London months before. She had suffered, and she had been educated in the School of Irene Adler. She was a completely different woman, an utterly different Queen, than the one the false Willie had known and spumed. In addition, Irene’s cosmetic magic had made her into a credible likeness of a lovely woman.
“My dear Queen,” said the King, coming to her. “My dear... wife. I must beg your pardon in front of these friendly witnesses—” He eyed us with a certain distaste. “I was... drugged. I have not been in my right mind for months, but the target of a foul plot. Only now am I myself again. The hazard to my own life this scheme cost me during that ill-advised duel has made me see the light. If you are willing to continue your role as my Queen, if you are willing to consider making that role a reality, I should be the happiest man on earth.”
He went down on one knee to her, most prettily.
Irene beamed upon the happy couple like a delighted, and demonic, duenna.
Clotilde eyed the repentant King. She clasped her gloved hands and lifted her milk-white chin, which seemed more determined than it ever had.
“That is for time to tell, Your Majesty. Certainly I am inclined to do my duty, no matter the circumstance. If you wish something more... pleasant than that, you will have to earn my trust.”
The King gazed up at her. Perhaps he saw that she was indeed attractive enough when she was not miserable and mistreated. Certainly his eyes traveled the intricacies of her dress, á la Irene, and judged the assured self-confidence that was also due to Irene.
He was a King, but that did not mean that he required a subservient woman; indeed, he had shown tastes to the contrary in the past. Clotilde was wounded enough, and now woman enough, to give him the merry chase that he required to feel kingly.
He smiled at her, expecting ultimate concession.
She smiled at him, expecting to extract her long-overdue due.
The Worth wardrobe was even now in the making. He would have little spending money for such fripperies as mistresses in future. They were a match made in heaven—and the separate hells to which they had been so recently subjected.
Irene beamed upon this marriage of true minds, not to mention bloodlines, then came to take Godfrey’s arm and withdraw.
“Such an extraordinary thing,” Godfrey said, uncorking the champagne himself with the panache of a waiter to the white towel born.
We had returned to the suite I now shared with Allegra. Irene and Godfrey had occupied his cramped single chamber since the King’s rescue, and had never complained of the accommodation, though Irene’s trunks remained in the suite.
“During the duel,” he went on, filling four glasses to the brim, “I had this astonishing sense that I could not fail. No fear, no anxiety, simply an uplifting conviction that I was invincible.”
“As so you proved,” Irene noted over the rim of her champagne flute. “To what do you attribute this surge of confidence?”
‘To my brief time with the Rothschild fencing master,” he said promptly, “and to a little practice with some really first-rate weapons. I must resume these lessons on my return. Do you ladies realize how incredible the event was? I, a novice, struck my man with one shot, while he fired early and still went wide? I have an unsuspected talent for these affairs of honor.”
“Still, we are not anxious for you to risk your life again soon,” Irene purred, sipping champagne as delicately as Lucifer attacked his bowl of country cream.
“Risk? When a man has such phenomenal luck, combined with a modest skill, risk does not enter the picture.”
Godfrey froze, contemplating a less exuberant insight. “I could have killed him, I suppose; and while that wouldn’t have been any loss to me, or you—poor Clotilde would have regarded herself a failure.”
“Now she is a Queen indeed,” Irene noted, “a Queen of Hearts, which is all the power most women covet. Had you not... preserved the King during the duel, you would never have seen that he is no threat to you, and never was.”
“No, I would not have seen that for myself.” Godfrey went to link arms with her as they drank a toast from each other’s glasses.
I didn’t know where to look. I cannot understand how two individuals can turn such a harmless convention into a most embarrassing moment for innocent onlookers, even though they are married—the toasters, I mean, not the onlookers.
Allegra linked arms with me and leaned close to whisper in my ear, “Oh, dear Nell, do not be embarrassed. Such moments a
re hard-won, as I believe that you will see for yourself in the not-too-distant future.”
“What you do mean, you minx?”
She merely dimpled, which is a young woman’s ploy for evading the question and soon wears thin, even on young men.
I ached for a moment alone with Irene, for I had many questions to ask her.
Yet she was now involved in a flurry of rehearsals for her private performance of The Spectre’s Bride. When she was not billing and cooing with Godfrey, she was trilling and ooohing with Mr. Dvořák at the National Theater.
This gentleman was truly delighted to see her again. I had not missed the moisture that had sprung to his eyes when he had been told of her plan to sing in his cantata at last. Then he had grown stern and predicted an onslaught of practice and rehearsal.
Mr. Dvořák proved to be such a taskmaster that I was forced to confront Irene in her dressing room two days later, when Godfrey was escorting Allegra on a promised tour of the Prague beer gardens—I was given nothing to say about this departure from good form.
“You are not to peek, not to overhear a single note,” Irene admonished me when she found me there. “It will ruin the surprise.”
“Irene, I can live with not knowing about your performance until it occurs. What I cannot tolerate is not knowing where the false King has gone. After all, Allegra and I were responsible for him, and I should be as loath to lose his life as you were the serving maid’s.”
“Ah! Is that all, Nell?” Irene slapped her perfect features with a powder puff and beamed amid motes of flying dust, her eyes prudently closed. “ ’Tis simplicity itself: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson spirited the false king away for interrogation by the British Foreign Office, which is most interested in Russia’s ambitions in Eastern Europe.”
“Then the obnoxious gentleman was Sherlock Holmes?”
“That I cannot swear to, Nell,” Irene said. “It depends upon which obnoxious gentleman you mean.”
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 41
