The Florian Signet

by John Burke

  The Countess said: ‘I do not know when I shall see him again. But one day he will come home. He will come, I am sure.’

  She sounded far from sure. And to me Michael was once more a shadow; and Dominic was still real, far too real.

  On the day before that which was set for his wedding to Caroline, I went for a walk down into the village. A path strengthened at intervals by granite slabs was a rougher but quicker route than the road forking to the left and spiralling away below the gateway. I trod carefully, stopping every now and then for breath and to contemplate the changing hues of rock and forest. The sun was warm until I reached a point where the towering ridge masked it, and a cool damp clawed up from the earth.

  A man emerged from the trees on the opposite slope of the valley, and stood for a moment staring down. He shielded his eyes against the sun, for him still high and bright. Then he raised his arm and waved. I nearly waved back; but the signal could not have been meant for me.

  The village consisted of two parallel streets linked by a steep hill which went on down beyond the houses to narrow pastures and the bank of a stream. At one end of the higher street was a church, at the other an open space with a small shrine, garlanded with flowers.

  Two elderly women with red kerchiefs about their heads watched my progress along the street. A hen stepped out of an alley and, ignoring me, pecked its way across the square. There was a smell of dust and of some unidentifiable, over-sweet fruit.

  As I paused by the shrine to read the dedication to St John Nepomuk, a man hurried from the stream and into the square. At the same time there was a faint jingle of horse’s harness and an impatient shuffle of hoofs from behind a corner house.

  ‘Gnädiges fräulein . . .’

  He was young, with a ragged beard, and wearing leather breeches and a frayed lumberman’s shirt. It occurred to me that he was the same man who had stood on the hillside and waved. He must have raced down at a perilous speed. He was still moving fast, coming towards me so purposefully that I took a step back.

  And then he said: ‘Fräulein . . . Talbot?’

  I had never seen him in my life before. I was taken aback by the urgency in his eyes. Then he slackened his pace and peered at me as if in disappointment. Perplexed, he shook his head.

  ‘My name is Talbot,’ I said. Then I repeated it in German.

  Again he shook his head. In halting English, with a curt little bow, he began: ‘I think I do not remember. You are not –’

  He was cut short by hoofs clattering suddenly into motion. Two uniformed horsemen wheeled round the corner and bore down upon him. He stared; held his ground for an interminable moment; then turned and ran.

  He stood no chance. They converged on him, the one to his right making a sharp turn across the exit from the square. A sabre was raised, he put up an arm to take a blow which did not come, and then the horses were jostling him against the wall of a house.

  The rider with the sabre turned towards me and shouted a question, in an accent so guttural that I could not understand a word. When I began to ask in German what he wanted, he shouted again. I guessed rather than heard that he was demanding where I came from, and I waved towards the castle on its peak. For a moment he stared as if disbelieving me; then turned his attention to their captive, and began to shout again.

  The young man answered slowly and clearly. I was sure the words were designed for my benefit as much as for theirs. In the most meticulous, carefully enunciated German he told them I had nothing to do with him, he had merely passed the time of day with me. That was not yet a crime in the Empire, was it? And then he plunged into Czech, and from the rasp of his tone I would have said he was deriding them, and one man cuffed him across the head and snapped it back against the wall.

  I tried to protest, but received only a peremptory wave in reply. The two horsemen prodded their captive away from the wall and urged him towards the road. He still went on and on in Czech, but they growled orders at him in German. When I added English to it for good measure, putting on my haughtiest voice and ridiculously hoping the riders would be awed by it, the closer of the two again flapped a hand at me and indicated that I should return to the castle.

  They drove the poor, stumbling young man ahead of them, up the slope into the woods and out of sight.

  I looked round for advice, at the very least; for some reaction from the villagers. Why had nobody intervened? Why was there not even an inquisitive knot of spectators?

  There was not a soul in sight. The two old women who had appeared so settled on their doorstep and so watchful were no longer there. Every door was closed.

  I felt shocked and a little sick at the violence of the episode. Not that there had been a thoroughly savage outburst of brutality – but the feeling was there, the presentiment of viciousness ready to break through the surface: once out of my sight, what would happen to that prisoner?

  There was nothing for me to do here in the village. It went against the grain for me to obey that bully on horseback, but I made my way back to the castle.

  Countess Lomnica was greatly distressed by my story.

  ‘I should not have let you walk out alone. But I thought that in my own village there was no harm. I did not know there would be an . . . an incident.’

  ‘But what did it all mean?’

  She spoke quickly and evasively, so that I gleaned only a few references to dissidents, an intensification of police activity, too much fuss and too many hotheads. She wanted to dismiss the subject as brusquely as possible.

  I persevered: ‘How could that man have known my name?’

  ‘Perhaps in speaking to him you –’

  ‘He knew it when he approached me.’

  ‘Oh, but it is not too surprising. Everyone will know your name and know that you are my guest. We are the family, after all. Our comings and goings, and those of our guests, are all that they have to interest them in the village.’

  Down at heel the castle and its apartments might be, but still the Countess retained her feudal arrogance. Perhaps that was all she had to interest her.

  The thought of the man who had accosted me receded into the background that night and the next day. For this was Dominic’s wedding day. First thing in the morning my mother threw up one topic of conversation after another – anything, she must have thought, to keep my mind off the ceremony – but then completely reversed her tactics and went off to some far end of the castle so that I might be left entirely to myself.

  I lived through every moment of the service, knowing its wording off by heart and visualizing each movement, hearing every resonance, in the cathedral.

  In the late afternoon a horseman rode up to the castle and spent some time with Countess Lomnica. She then came to find me and, agitated, asked if I would mind meeting the visitor and answering a few questions.

  ‘It is an unpardonable intrusion, but these people . . . they have their job to do, it is best to treat them with as much civility as can be mustered, and let them go on their way.’

  She took me to her little drawing-room overlooking the courtyard. The man, middle-aged, in a jet black suit whose jacket buttoned tightly up to the neck as if it were a uniform, rose to greet me. His voice was civil but his eyes were cold.

  He suggested that the Countess might care to leave us for a few minutes, such a very few minutes. But this she rejected. It would not be proper.

  ‘And this young lady is my guest. From England,’ she said firmly, as if that settled every possible dispute.

  She seated herself close to me.

  The visitor apologized stiffly for troubling me, and then very clearly, as if aping the young man who had expressed himself with such care yesterday, said:

  ‘How did your acquaintance in the village come to know your name?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘He did address you by your name, though?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everyone in the village knows every coming and going up here.’ The Countess re
peated her explanation for his benefit. ‘My servants knew Mrs Talbot and Miss Talbot were coming. The whole village would know.’

  He nodded. ‘And you have no idea, Miss Talbot, where he came from?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Or what he wished to discuss with you?’

  ‘He simply passed the time of day. He was given no chance to do more than that,’ I added tartly.

  ‘Perhaps our officers were too quick to relieve you of his importunity. We might have learnt something if he had confided in you.’

  ‘But what should he wish to confide in me?’

  The man shrugged. ‘We have no idea. And he claims he has nothing to tell us.’ His mouth set hard. ‘I think he lies. If there is anything to be told, we shall hear it in good time.’

  He evidently decided that I was telling the truth and had no help to offer him. On the way out, he paused for a minute half-way along the echoing corridor, and I heard him murmuring to Countess Lomnica.

  When she returned, ready with more apologies for this distasteful business, I could not restrain myself. I said:

  ‘Countess, I am a guest in your house. And grateful for your hospitality. In a foreign country, one does one’s best to accommodate to the laws of the land. But I do think I am entitled to some explanation – if only to satisfy my curiosity about things you and my mother’s friends talk about . . . or do not talk about.’

  I was seated by the window. She moved her chair to face me; and sighed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ Her gaze wandered off, turning for a while towards the sombrely magnificent landscape beyond the battlements. Then she made up her mind. ‘Just over twenty years ago,’ she said, ‘I was in Prague when Windischgrätz bombarded it. Terrible. So many deaths, and so much destruction. All because of young agitators with heady ideas of what they called freedom. The freedom to bring trouble on the heads of others. We want no more of such disasters, do we?’

  I was as ignorant as most young Englishwomen about European history since the French Revolution, apart from tales of the Crimean War brought home some years ago by my eldest brother. There were headlines in our newspapers from time to time about Austrian and Italian conflict, and Russian threats to the British Empire, and of course there had been controversy over the Prussian defeat of Austria only a couple of years ago; but on the whole it was shadowy and incomprehensible.

  Countess Lomnica’s crackly, plaintive voice sank from one sentence to the next as if she feared being overheard by some lurking enemy.

  ‘So much revolution. Since 1848, nothing but unrest. The Magyars attempted a revolt, and failed. The Czechs were quickly suppressed. But after the shame of Sadowa, Hungary did wring concessions from the Emperor and is now an equal partner in the Empire. So of course the Czechs must also demand independence. But what would one do with this independence if it were won? Cannot we be content with what we have?’

  She waved at the sparkle of the half-hidden stream far below, and the red tiles of the village against the base of the rock.

  ‘Always they must be plotting. The Old Czechs call for constitutional reform, and do no harm. The Young Czechs are full of old legends and noisy aspirations – attending congresses in Moscow and ranting about Slav brotherhood. The Tsar does not know what he encourages. Soon there will be anarchy because of a few idle young men with a taste for terrorism.’

  ‘Idle?’ I queried. It seemed an odd word in such a context. ‘Surely there’s little danger from idlers.’

  ‘They are the worst. Too much time on their hands. Encouraged by professors and intellectuals of every kind. The ordinary people know we are better with the Emperor than with other masters we might have to serve under.’

  ‘So the police’ – this, after all, was what had started us talking – ‘go about rounding up dissidents.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Yes, that unfortunate incident.’ Countess Lomnica leaned forward to emphasize that I must not misinterpret what I had seen and heard. ‘I am sure it is for the best. The troublemakers should be kept out of mischief for a while.’

  ‘For a while?’

  ‘I am sure that they are not ill treated.’ She said this with a desperate fervour. ‘Better for them, for their own sakes, to be kept out of the way until their passions cool.’ She turned away from me once more and studied the highest ridge of the twisting valley. Her eyes were moist. ‘It is the impressionable who listen most readily and talk too wildly . . . and suffer most.’

  She got up, putting an end to the conversation. From the end of the corridor we heard footsteps. My mother was coming in search of us.

  ‘You are lucky, Leonora,’ the Countess concluded. ‘In your country, you are well removed from such problems.’

  I wondered where her son was and what all this might conceivably have to do with him.

  So far as she was concerned the lecture was ended. But within a short space of time she had, for me, added a new dimension to the picture. When the sun went down that evening on Fasanenburg I fancied I detected a new menace in the landscape. Old demons and old hatreds must lurk in those dark woods. The hills closed in. At nightfall one could envisage a hundred secret enemies crawling through those miles of forest, invisible marksmen taking up positions on the crags, centuries of oppression turning sour and beginning to reek across the land.

  She was right. I was lucky. None of it had anything to do with me.

  *

  At the end of our week, Countess Lomnica took us back to Carlsbad when she went in for her usual promenade. Dominic and Caroline must be safely married by now. I was deemed to be out of danger, over the worst. Not a word was said about it, and my mother even managed not to show the strain of not saying a word.

  The Countess and my mother indulged in tearful farewells. We had in fact had a most quiet and uneventful week – apart from that one disturbing encounter with the young man in the village, I had lived through it in a state of unrelieved numbness – but now that we were parting there was a great deal of talk of the wonderful experience, the happiness, the need to start all over again. Countess Lomnica insisted that we return whenever we wished. As soon as possible, please. She would miss us so, her home would be so empty.

  ‘And next time, perhaps,’ she said to me, ‘my son . . . who knows . . .?’

  I didn’t know quite what she was promising. But we kissed, and I was glad it was over, but glad that I had been there and that the dreadful week had gone and there was now nothing to be done but go home and face what had been accomplished in our absence.

  Father showed a marked improvement. He, at any rate, had profited from our time at Fasanenburg. He had had word of another chaplain coming out to combine a mild spa regimen with officiating for the Anglican community. We could make preparations for our return.

  Dominic and Caroline would be on their honeymoon now.

  The day the new chaplain came to see my father and discuss the transfer of responsibilities, I went out for a protracted walk, taking in all the places I had come to know so well during these recent months. It was hard to credit that the slopes and gullies would be out of my reach by this time next week. There would be no tree-capped hills to shield the horizon. I was climbing this track for the last time.

  One treacherous thing I had discovered about the hills: they hid the weather which was coming. This very day, far above the town, I watched a summery mist steam up from the river; and then felt it turn chill against my cheek. The dark line of the ridge became darker as a long, rolling cloud surged up behind it and broke over into the valley. The rain came on at once.

  I dodged under the trees, and stood in gloom for fifteen minutes until the branches themselves began to drip. Then I made my way along a narrow track in the hope of reaching one of the hillside cafés or at least a forester’s hut.

  There was a noise like the slow beating of surf overhead. And the intermittent crackle and squelch of my footsteps as I passed from a carpet of brittle twigs to an exposed, damp clearing.

  And something l
ike an echo – other footsteps, faint at first, bearing down on me between hazed pillars of spruce and fir.

  I stopped. The sounds came closer. I quickened my pace; and they quickened theirs.

  We met in a clearing, one side of it marked by a wooden signpost which I could not decipher. The place was unfamiliar. I had lost my way. When the man appeared to my right and hurried towards me, I thought of that other open space, where there had been houses and people and then secrecy and violence. Here there were no houses in the first place; and no people, none but the two of us.

  He slowed his pace as if to reassure me, and smiled. He was young, just as that other stranger had been, and with a beard; but the beard was trim and better kept, and although his clothes were travel-stained he wore them with an undoubted distinction.

  When he spoke, I fatalistically felt no surprise.

  He said: ‘Miss Talbot?’

  ‘Why do you pursue me?’ I managed. ‘You, and that other man – what do you want with me?’

  ‘Please, Miss Talbot.’ His English was too precise to be natural, but there was no hesitation in it. ‘I mean you no harm. I ask just one question, and if the answer is “No” then I go away. Please.’

  ‘The answer is “No”,’ I said.

  ‘But please, you must listen. Talbot – there are many Talbots in England?’

  ‘It’s not an uncommon name.’

  ‘But I think not many come to Bohemia. It is too great a coincidence. Tell me . . .’ He took a deep breath and stared beseechingly at me, as if he could not bear to ask the question and get the wrong answer. He was more afraid of me than I of him; or afraid, at least, of what I might say. ‘Carolina,’ he said. ‘You are a relation of Carolina Talbot?’