The Florian Signet

by John Burke

  If any face, any smile, could have cheered me at that dismal moment, here it assuredly was.

  Jan Sieghart had returned from London.

  *

  Little knots of tittle-tattlers had formed by the churchyard wall and on the street corners, pretending to be absorbed in everyday discussion but all slyly watching our group of mourners. In front of them all Jan took a step to meet me, bent low over my hand and kissed it. Then he turned towards Dominic, gravely shook his hand and expressed his condolences. Dominic nodded stiffly, and there was dark resentment in his gaze as Jan, after speaking to my mother and father and being introduced to Mr Warrington, returned to me and offered his arm.

  ‘My dear Miss Talbot . . . Leonora . . . I read the terrible news and I come as quickly as I can.’

  He had gone to Ely and then hurried here to Wisbech – ‘So that I may be with you, if you wish it, or act for you in any way you wish. Please, if you need me.’

  This immediate response, dropping all his own concerns in order to dash to my aid, was immensely comforting. His presence in Ely during the next few days went beyond that: beside me, he was a living defiance, a denial of rumours about Dominic and myself. Without saying a word on this score, Jan interpreted the whole situation instinctively, just as he had done when playing an attentive role before Dominic and Caroline. He was shrewd and tactful and impeccably in tune with my moods and uncertainties – and charming.

  Once or twice, confused by the violence of recent events, I ungratefully mistrusted this skill and charm; asked myself twisted questions about it, just as I was forever catechizing myself about Caroline and what sense might be made of her still unexplained death. Earlier nagging thoughts returned: was it conceivable that Jan had sought us out on Florian’s express instructions? But if so he ought surely to have been frank with me, of all people.

  Had Caroline, challenged, denied Anton to him just as she had denied Anton to me; and had he then been instructed by the jealous Anton to kill her?

  At such a time one could talk oneself into taking seriously almost any grotesque theory.

  Jan himself was the best assuager of my fantasies. By patience and the most delicate attentiveness he both soothed me and gave me the courage to hold up my head in the street, out-facing the malice and ill-will I encountered.

  I was dismayed when, without warning, he declared that he must soon return to Bohemia.

  Should I ask in some roundabout way if the name of Florian meant anything to him; and then, warily testing each inch of the ground, tell him as much as was necessary to get a message to the Count without imperilling his freedom?

  No. Even now, much as I was coming to rely on Jan, I held firm to my promise.

  Still I was worried, undecided, groping for a sure hand-hold. It was Jan himself who offered the chance of a solution.

  ‘My aunt is in London.’ He announced it when taking tea with my parents and myself one afternoon.

  Mother’s eyes brightened. ‘The Countess Lomnica? Oh, but this is wonderful. She must come to see us.’

  ‘That was her intention. But in a time of such grief she cannot dream of intruding.’

  ‘We shall be delighted to –’

  ‘I planned on bringing her when I returned here from London. Then we read the terrible news, and we know this is not correct.’ His tone brooked no argument. Mother’s face fell. ‘But we talk, we make a plan, and she leaves it to me to decide. I think it is good. Now I have seen Leonora I think it is very good.’ Very correctly he turned to consult my father. ‘Canon Talbot, my aunt wishes your Leonora shall visit Bohemia once more. She will take personal charge of your daughter on the journey, and from Fasanenburg perhaps with your permission we also visit my home in the hills, in the Böhmerwald.’

  In the Böhmerwald: not too far, it might be, from the place called Svetlik which he had once mentioned in passing – a casual mention which continued to resonate in my memory.

  The blacksmith of Svetlik . . . a place she will not have forgotten.

  Father looked uneasy. ‘It’s most kind of you, but I really don’t think this a suitable time for Leonora to be turning her back on our unsolved problems.’

  ‘It will be good for her,’ said my mother. ‘It is what she needs after all this unpleasantness.’

  ‘It will look as if she has something to hide, running away from what you call unpleasantness.’

  Mother, for once, continued openly to oppose him. ‘The police have said there are no further questions for Leonora.’

  ‘Even so . . .’

  One part of me wanted to stay and fight it out and face the truth about Caroline, whatever that might prove to be. But there was nothing I could do, nothing I could get to grips with. Not here. If there was an answer, it was somewhere in those pine forests, on those granite crags. And still, inescapably, I felt this gnawing responsibility towards Count Anton Florian. Was I making an effort to live up to his flattering opinion of me – or had he truly known me better than I knew myself?

  I said: ‘I would like to go.’

  It tugged an immediate smile from Jan. And from my mother: I fancied she was already dreaming of the splendid snub to be administered to the gossips – of her daughter proving a complete lack of any involvement with Dominic Warrington, acquiring a handsome and respectable husband of fine European family, embarking on a new and happier life.

  ‘To get away,’ she said placatingly to my father, ‘for a little while. It will be so good for her. And I know she will be well looked after.’ She smiled fondly at Jan.

  Jan looked not merely pleased that I had fallen in with his generous plans but in some way greatly relieved: as if he could not have endured being rejected, nor giving up what it was he had set his heart on.

  My pulse quickened. Whatever unpredictable adventures were waiting in Bohemia, I knew that Jan would not be far from my side. Perhaps, from this day on, he would never be far away from me.

  The main fear in my mind as we left was that I might be summarily recalled for a trial, as a damning witness. If there should be a trial. No charges had yet been brought; the police had come up with nothing conclusive. And if, for lack of positive evidence, no one was ever brought to book, how could any of us ever be sure of the truth? I recalled Dominic’s lowering face at the inquest and the funeral, suffused with the pain of a dozen humiliations; and I was frightened – for him, or of him?

  I carried the Florian signet back to the country whence it had come, determined to follow at least one strand of the sad, perplexing story to its end.

  Chapter Nine

  Countess Lomnica was most attentive to me on the journey. Indeed, she was almost too attentive. She talked incessantly about the countryside and villages and churches, about the railway stations and even at great length about the train itself. One would have thought I was a backward child from some lonely island, needing to be instructed in every tiny detail of a world strange to me. She was more agitated in her manner than before: agitated not by wide, impulsive gestures like my mother’s but by an incessant inner tremulousness. Perhaps the responsibility of watching over me, this time without my mother in attendance, affected her more than she had anticipated. She set herself fussily between Jan and myself, allowing him little chance of speaking to me alone. Or maybe her inconsequential chatter was designed to come between her true self and me. There was certainly something odd about her, something edgy and disquieting.

  On one of the rare occasions when Jan and I were alone together in our compartment, he smiled ruefully and said: ‘You must forgive my aunt. The journey to England must have tired her more than I thought. She is tending to ramble on, is she not?’

  ‘She feels it her duty to keep my mind occupied.’

  ‘And tires out not only herself but you. I will speak with her.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ I said. ‘It’s just that she’s being over-conscientious. When she reaches home we will all be more at ease.’

  In fact, her eagerness and obvious impatie
nce as we approached Fasanenburg were mingled for some reason with a growing apprehensiveness.

  I was shown to the room which I had occupied on my last visit, and found a plump little maid waiting for me. Her dark features, with an Oriental touch about the eyes, appeared all the darker in contrast with the whiteness of her newly laundered blouse. She hardly dared to smile at me, but covertly looked down at the hem of my coat and the tips of my shoes.

  ‘This is Betka,’ said the Countess. ‘It is difficult to find a suitable girl here, you understand, but I am assured she is a good girl. She is willing, she will do all she can.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Betka,’ I said. Then I tried: ‘Guten Tag.’

  She managed a sweet but uncertain smile.

  Countess Lomnica said: ‘She is a Slovak, and more used to Magyar than German. But she will work hard. For the Slovaks there has always been hard work.’ Then she excused herself. There were domestic matters to be attended to. ‘I must make sure the place has not been neglected in my absence. You must be made comfortable.’

  She hurried away, leaving me to my own devices – and Betka’s.

  Communication was going to be limited to sign language and a few smiles and mumbles. But the girl was, as the Countess promised, willing. She set herself to unpacking my clothes and hanging them up, unskilfully but with the greatest care, like a shy apprentice whose whole future depends on making a good first impression. For a moment or two she lingered over my green taffeta overskirt, stroking it and making little admiring noises; yet the intricate peasant embroidery at the throat of her simple blouse was far more beautiful than anything I possessed.

  When I went downstairs, the Countess had still not reappeared. Jan stood before a blazing log fire in a large salon which, so far as I could recall, had not been in use on my previous visit. He was lost in thought, frowning over some worry of his own, and did not become aware of my presence until I was in the centre of the room. Then he started, forced himself out of his preoccupation, and came towards me with hands outstretched to take mine.

  ‘So my aunt is at last tactful enough to let us spend a few minutes together!’

  I thought of the hours we had spent together walking about Ely, and the comfort of his easygoing companionship; and I wondered if it would be the same, or richer, in this utterly different country.

  I said: ‘I fancy she may have shut herself away in her boudoir, to savour the peace of being safely home.’

  ‘May I, then, perform some of her duties by showing you around the building?’

  I was soon able to point out, not without some smugness, that I knew the Schloss better than he. Twice he took a wrong turning in a gloomy corridor, and led us half-way up a decrepit staircase which petered out against a bricked-in arch.

  ‘You have spent time here more recently than I,’ he admitted, as I took charge and led him back to the arcaded courtyard. ‘And, Leonora, you lead a man on most skilfully.’

  I glanced at the quirk of his lip and decided the remark was best not pursued.

  We climbed the tight spiral of stone steps to the battlements and looked out over a countryside which had chilled and hardened in my absence. There was a scattering of snow on the higher ridges, and a few white runnels down exposed slopes below the woodlands.

  Jan’s hand lay on mine, pressing it gently down on the could stone. ‘You don’t find our landscape too strange?’

  ‘I’m surprised how clearly the details come back, as if I’d never been away.’

  ‘You will fall in love with Southern Bohemia. I insist you will fall in love.’

  It came too soon after the recent tragedy. I was not ready for it. In England he had been a shield against malicious tongues and against the shock of that brutal death itself. Here, he was already being transformed from defender to attacker. It was an attack which soon I might welcome; which I had expected even as we set out from Ely; but for which I needed just a little time to adjust.

  Then I felt a twinge of shame. Having put myself in his hands and led him to believe that I was coming to Bohemia mainly for the pleasure of his company, and what that might lead to, I was at the same time deceiving him. Patience, I silently entreated him – while impatient myself to meet another man.

  One day, when it was all over, perhaps I would be able to tell him the truth, when there were other more important truths to outweigh it.

  I drew my hand away and walked slowly to the corner bastion, with its incongruously perky little conical roof.

  Behind me he said: ‘I don’t think we can get out that way.’

  ‘Yes, it’s all right. There’s a walk along the other side, overlooking an inner courtyard.’ I reached the door in the tower and turned the heavy iron ring. The door would not open. ‘But I know I came through here last time.’

  Jan stood beside me. He indicated a wide crack in the outer rampart, and a hummock of dusty fragments below.

  ‘The masonry’s crumbling. Very wise to shut off the decaying sections.’ He touched my arm to turn me back the way we had come. ‘This whole place is in sad condition. I shall be happier when I can introduce you to Kirchschlag.’

  ‘We mustn’t hurry away too rudely,’ I said. ‘Your aunt’s in need of a few days’ rest before she accompanies us any further.’

  He frowned. Was he as impatient to be in his own home as the Countess had been: impatient, it might be, to have me on territory where he felt more securely in possession?

  And I, too, was really anxious to be away and on my journey.

  Still there were the everyday formalities to be observed. Conventional politeness and pretence dictated that we should talk of anything but the matters closest to our hearts, and observe a leisurely timetable which we both wished to tear up but dared not.

  We went back to the salon.

  The heavy, ornate furniture seemed out of place in this classically austere room. The cool pastel shade of the walls and the delicate rondels and medallions of the vaulted ceiling were dulled by the gloomy varnish of a carved secretaire, a table with gross claw legs, and several hulking cabinets and cupboards. These intruders would have sat more complacently in the town residence of some prosperous merchant or banker. I remembered my mother’s bland dismissal of the Countess’s late husband as a mere Finanz Baron.

  At that moment the Countess rejoined us. Her whole bearing had changed. As she entered the room she was radiant: still fussy and fluttery, but now like a delighted little girl savouring a very special treat.

  She stopped in front of Jan. ‘Thank you.’ It was shaky and breathless.

  When he smiled, his eyes for once were not smiling. They seemed almost to be warning her. ‘Aunt Sophie,’ he said smoothly, ‘we must not trespass too long on your hospitality. Do not make too many preparations. We will move on to Kirchschlag and make ourselves comfortable there.’

  Shadow fell instantly on her happiness. ‘But I need a few days. Please, there must be a few days here.’

  ‘This region Leonora has already explored. She will find new scenes above the Moldau.’

  I could not bear the mute suffering in the Countess’s face. Echoing what I had said earlier, I burst out: ‘Oh, but I have all the time in the world. If you have the time to spend on me.’ He did not know what to answer, and I hurried to finish: ‘After that dreadful time in England, and after the journey, the thought of a few days’ rest is an appealing one.’

  Jan stood very stiff, on the verge of protest. Then he shrugged, and laughed, and nodded.

  ‘I must let you set the pace,’ he said.

  The following day he took me for a drive. After the experience of the train journey I had half expected the Countess to continue her surveillance and insist on accompanying us, but she looked positively elated at the idea of being left behind. Was it all part of a romantic plot hatched between them, each chapter carefully calculated in advance?

  We took a road signposted Marienbad, and were soon pleasantly lost in little vales with occasional farms and rare, tiny ham
lets. Concentrating on each twist and turn of rutted lane, Jan was at first silent apart from a commanding whistle or click of the tongue at the mare. I was content to sit and contemplate the changing scenery without comment.

  When we settled to a steady pace along a road with an unimpeded view, Jan shifted his weight and let the reins lie more slackly across his fingers.

  ‘You prefer to drive,’ he asked, ‘or to be driven?’

  ‘I’m perfectly happy to be lazy today.’

  ‘Ah, but here you are the guest, and it is right. In your own country, in your fascinating fenlands, do you not prefer to take the reins?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Frankly, I do prefer to be driver rather than passenger. Then whatever may present itself, I am the one who takes the decisions.’

  ‘And that is what you like?’

  ‘Most of the time, yes.’

  ‘You sound so sure of yourself.’

  ‘And you consider that unladylike?’

  ‘Leonora, in your company such a word has no meaning. Liebchen . . . whatever you do, in everything you say, in every movement, you are so much the woman, you . . .’ An abrupt curve swung us over a precarious wooden bridge. I clung to the seat. ‘You think’ – the conversation veered as abruptly as the road – ‘you soon become used to driving here, in our country?’

  ‘For the time being I think it’s safer left to you.’

  ‘For the time being, yes. But eventually you hope to be in command – here as in England?’

  ‘Even in England,’ I fenced, ‘I’m always prepared to relinquish the reins to anyone better qualified.’

  We were nearing a widely splayed fork in the road. When we were thirty or forty yards away, Jan said: ‘A decision, please?’

  ‘I don’t know where I am. I’ve no idea of the right direction.’

  ‘Nor I. But one of us must decide.’

  He did not slacken the mare’s steady trot. The fork was very close now.

  ‘Left!’ I said.

  With the faintest flick of the whip he swung the horse to the right.