Magic Flutes

by Eva Ibbotson

  ‘She didn’t stand a chance. They just climbed into the back to unpack and then grabbed her.’

  ‘We tried to stop them and they went for us. One of them had a sort of staff and he clouted Stefan.’

  ‘They took her through that iron door there.’

  Witzler turned pale. It had happened then. He had been half-expecting it, but why here for heaven’s sake? Guilt stabbed him. If only he had let her have the leave she had asked for . . .

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said heavily. Only what could he do if she had run away and was in trouble with the police?

  On the gatehouse the griffin flag climbed slowly up the mast and fluttered gaily in the breeze. It was a sight the staff of the International Opera Company perceived without the slightest sign of pleasure.

  ‘Nothing will go right now,’ said the junior carpenter gloomily. ‘Not without Tessa. You’ll see.’

  7

  The great hall at Pfaffenstein, two storeys high, with its columns of agate-coloured marble, its statue-packed niches and ceiling frescoes by Tiepolo, was reached from the main courtyard by a set of massive double doors. Opposite this another set of doors, emblazoned with the Pfaffenstein arms in hammered gold, led to the ballroom which looked over the lake. At the far end, however, to the right as one entered, the hall ended in that apogee of baroque ceremonial: the grand staircase. It was at the foot of this staircase with its wide balustrade, its stone griffins, its famous jewelled corona lit by a hundred and twenty lamps, that Guy now stood with Nerine beside him to receive his guests.

  The aunts had advised on the maximum of formality for the reception preceding the opening ball. Even relations they had dandled on their knees were to approach in order of rank, to be announced, and introduced by them to Pfaffenstein’s new owner. Later, they had suggested, Guy could follow his own inclinations but if a foundling, however gifted, intelligent and rich wished to establish his lady with the nobility, he would do well to call on all the protocol that was available. Guy himself, always and only concerned for Nerine, had concurred in their arrangements and had further heightened the theatricality of the occasion by remaining out of sight until this moment, instructing David and Thisbe to see to the welfare of his guests.

  Now, standing on one side of the dais made by the wide sweep of the lowest step, he looked down at the assembled throng, concealing his amusement.

  If the most potent scent in the room was not of the ladies’ perfume or the men’s pomade, but of moth-balls, the massed effect was nevertheless most spectacular. The men in crimson and light blue and felden green with their gold epaulettes, their braid and rows of medals, were the most impressive, but the ladies in their brocade and lace, wearing those of their jewels that still remained unpawned, were no mean sight either. Only a professional grouser would have pointed out the piece of astrakhan apparently chewed out of the aged Prince Monteforelli’s frogged tunic, or the streaks of oil on the satin train of the Countess Waaltraut as she pushed her gout-ridden mother’s decrepit bath chair closer for a look at Farne.

  For the new owner of Pfaffenstein was undoubtedly a surprise. The munificence of the entertainments laid on for them, coupled with the tasteful arrangements made for their comfort, had already deprived his guests of the hope that the Englishman would provide good sport by being vulgar and uncouth. A man whose secretary could provide accommodation for the Archduke Sava’s bear and persuade the Archduchess Frederica, who was outranked only by the Princess of Pfaffenstein, that a move from the State Bedroom would benefit her health, was clearly a man to be reckoned with, and the rumours at first discredited that he was engaged in some kind of cloak-and-dagger business with the Chancellor on Austria’s behalf were fast gaining ground. Not that he was handsome – but in the dark evening clothes which contrasted so strongly with the glittering uniforms of the men, he had an air of undoubted distinction, and the slight look of arrogance on his sombre face did him no harm in the eyes of his audience. As for the fiancée, men and women alike saw no mystery there. Here was beauty, unquestionable and absolute – the reward since time began for power, achievement and wealth.

  Guy turned to smile at Nerine, wanting to share a moment of intimacy before the ceremony began. But Nerine, dazzling in gold brocade with slashed sapphire-velvet sleeves, was absorbed in her moment of triumph, her lips moving rapidly in a litany of rank. It was unbelievable, all of it! She and Arthur had watched from his window most of the day as princes and dukes and cardinals rumbled into the courtyard in their carriages and cars. Only when the theatre company had arrived, in their shabby lorries, had she been able to tear herself away and had gone to dress. Now, down among the guests, Arthur was blissfully counting . . . Five princes in his part of the hall alone . . . twenty-three flunkeys . . . two hundred bottles of champagne . . .

  Guy glanced at his watch and raised enquiring eyebrows at the Duchess and the Margravine. If they were to get through the hundred or so people assembled there before supper and the ball, it was surely time to begin?

  ‘Yes . . . yes.’ The eyes of the ladies were bright and eager. They were looking at him with tremendous expectancy and he had the absurd feeling that they had some special surprise in store for him, a kind of rabbit they were going to pull out of their hat. Earlier this had not been so. They had seemed depressed; the arrogance and aplomb he admired in them had been dimmed, and David too, though nothing could impair his efficiency, had seemed downcast. But then, just after Witzler’s troupe had arrived, everything had taken off and the kind of happy expectancy which precedes a party was everywhere.

  The master of ceremonies, sumptuously braided, stepped forward. But before he could announce the first of the guests, something happened.

  A ripple spread through the hall, an excited murmur – and then, in a single motion like a wave, every woman sank into a curtsy and every gentleman bowed his head.

  Mystified, Guy turned in the sudden hush and, tilting his head upward, saw that the oak-studded door which led from the first-floor vestibule into the mediaeval West Tower had opened to reveal a small figure in white who stood for a moment, perfectly still, in the frame of the dark stone arch. His first image – that of a banished child disturbed in sleep coming for solace – was dismissed as she moved forward across the landing, turned to gather the train of her dress with practised ease, and began her slow descent.

  Down below, the master of ceremonies tapped his staff and cleared his throat, but was stilled by a single shake of the head from the slim figure on the stairs. But if, by thus silencing her former steward, Her Highness the Princess Theresa-Maria of Pfaffenstein, Princess of Breganzer, Duchess of Unterthur, Countess of Malk, of Zeeberg and of Freischule, hoped to enter unobtrusively, her hope was to be unfulfilled. The eye of every curtsying woman was upon her; every man, his head respectfully bowed, awaited her.

  ‘Mein Gott, her hair!’ hissed the Archduchess Fred-erica above the hush of absorbed expectancy.

  Still moving very slowly, one hand guiding her skirt into a perfect fall, she continued her descent. The blue sash of the order of St Hubert, awarded only to descendants of ruling houses, bisected her small breasts; the jewelled wheel of light above her head struck fire from the tiara set on the shorn, sleek head.

  Guy alone of all the men had failed to bow his head. The first shock, which sent the blood from his face, had not for an instant broken his scrutiny. He felt, as if in his own bones, every movement she made; saw, as she came closer, her gravity, the degree of her concentration. How small she was against the vastness of the staircase, how slight – yet never dwarfed. She held it all in the hollow of her hand: this place, these people – and for a moment his throat tightened in pity and an exalted awe.

  She had reached the bottom. A smile broke like a grace-note across the serious little face and as she raised her hand, in its white satin glove, every woman present rose from her curtsy, every man straightened his head.

  It was that imperious gesture in the smooth white glove, so diffe
rent from the wrinkled kid from Traviata she had worn on the first night he saw her, that changed Guy’s mood to sudden fury. How could he have been so blind, so idiotic as to miss the clues that had been left for him everywhere? Her perfect English, her exquisite courtesy to Morgan . . . Frau Sacher’s admonition – for of course, that staunch royalist must have recognized her. This was the girl he had wanted to protect and succour: this girl at whose finger-flick the nobility rose and fell like ninepins! How dared she trick him like that – how dared she?

  And Nerine, whose moment of triumph this should have been – dear God, he had actually forgotten Nerine!

  Tessa had turned and was coming towards her aunts whose unguarded faces as they watched her betrayed, for a moment, the full extent of their love. But as she reached them, they composed themselves and the Duchess said, ‘Theresa, we would like to present to you the new owner of Pfaffenstein, Herr Farne.’

  It was only now that she saw him and joy, overwhelming and unbidden, blazed in her face. Guy, the owner of Pfaffenstein! Guy, the man who had so miraculously restored her home, who would make, she knew already, the best possible master for the castle.

  Radiantly she smiled up at him and extended her hand for his kiss.

  ‘I am honoured, Your Highness.’ The words were cold, the eyes as he straightened again as glacial and green as the waters of the Pfaffenstein See.

  The happiness drained from her face. She looked at him, puzzled.

  But Tante Augustine was now presenting the woman who stood beside Guy and who, as she sketched a curtsy, still kept her left hand, bearing its gigantic diamond, with firm ownership on Guy’s arm.

  Tessa scarcely heard the name because the woman, in her magnificent gold dress, was the most beautiful she had ever seen. Tall as Tessa herself was not, full-breasted as Tessa yearned uselessly to be, with an enchanting, heart-shaped face, long-lashed gentian eyes and jet-black hair. Thick, high-piled hair which caught the highlights from the chandeliers and would, when unloosed, reach to her knees in a ravishing cascade, thought Tessa as one of her own white-gloved hands stole for an instant to her own bare nape.

  How stupid not to have remembered earlier Guy’s words at Sachers: ‘As for me, Tessa, I am waiting for someone I love and hope soon to marry.’

  It was for this woman who was everything that Tessa herself could never be, that Guy had bought her home. This was the new mistress of Pfaffenstein.

  And of course it had to be so. A man like Guy would love only a woman as beautiful as this, would want, when he had her by his side, to have nothing to do with someone like herself.

  Fighting down the desolation which threatened her, she spoke a few friendly words to Nerine and then the reception began.

  Ponderously announced, the guests came forward to be introduced to Guy and welcomed by him to Pfaffenstein. The obese Archduchess Frederica . . . the red-bearded Archduke Sava, smelling of bear . . . the aged, cadaverous Prince Monteforelli, squinting down the lovely widow’s décollétage . . .

  Tessa faultlessly played her part, for she was in familiar country. How often in her short life had she stood thus, clamping down personal misery, to pursue a tedious and interminable duty.

  ‘His Highness, Prince Maximilian of Spittau,’ announced the master of ceremonies, and Maxi advanced.

  All had gone well with Maxi. Only one of the dogs had been sick on the train, his uniforms had been redeemed from the ravages of mildew, his mother was incapacitated with a migraine. Of course there had been that panic when they thought Putzerl was not coming, but here she was and looking very fetching too. His mother had been shocked by her hair, but Maxi liked it.

  Always correct, he kissed first of all the small hand of his intended (for Putzerl outranked her aunts), then those of the aunts themselves, and was introduced to Herr Farne and the luscious fiancée. The Englishman surprised him; he spoke excellent German and if one had not known better one would have taken him for a gentleman.

  But it was Putzerl’s welcome that warmed Maxi’s manly and bemedalled chest. She really seemed pleased to see him.

  And indeed she was. Too much had happened to Tessa that day, more overwhelmed than she realized by the sight of the home she would soon leave for ever. The shock of suddenly finding herself at Pfaffenstein, of being forced by her aunts’ eager entreaties into her old role, and the hurt of Guy’s rejection had left her, beneath the inbred poise, defenceless and forlorn.

  So Maxi, coming towards her in the absurd Artillery uniform he loved so much, was safety and familiarity, was the whole landscape of childhood with its escapades and jokes. All the others were dead, the boys she had played with, but here now was Maxi.

  The young Princess of Pfaffenstein, trained from the age of three in etiquette and protocol, gave no outward distinguishing sign of pleasure but her eyes were warm, the smile she gave him came from her heart, and as Maxi prepared to cede his place to the Duke of Oberkirchen, she leaned forward and whispered very softly, ‘Have you brought the dogs?’

  8

  In the arcaded Fountain Courtyard, the members of the International Opera Company were preparing for bed.

  Their spirits were low. They had eaten excellently, for Guy had ordered that the same food should be served to the company as to the guests who were dining in the banqueting hall. But as they sat at the trestle tables put out in the courtyard, washing down the roast veal, the raspberries and cream, the luscious cheeses still unobtainable in Vienna, with unlimited supplies of Pfaf-fenstein’s wild, white wine, conversation was desultory and the nightingales who presently trilled from the darkening woods trilled in vain. For there was no news of Tessa and in her absence this first night, which should have been a triumph, had turned to ashes.

  Witzler had spent the afternoon rushing through the castle, questioning every servant he could find, making a nuisance of himself to the steward and to Farne’s own staff. But no one had seen a vanished wardrobe mistress or seemed unduly interested in her fate. Boris had run down to the village to question the local policeman; Jacob had rung the mayor in Oberwent. No one had seen anything suspicious or found anything to report and the men who had marched her away had gone off duty and were nowhere to be found.

  ‘Herr Tremayne will find her in the morning,’ soothed the Rhinemaiden now, lowering her vast bulk, encased in a nightdress of shirred mattress ticking, on to the bed and allowing her flaxen hair to ripple over the pillows in a way that her husband frequently found soothing.

  But nothing at that moment could soothe Jacob, who blamed himself ceaselessly for Tessa’s fate.

  There was a knock on the door and Klasky’s dark and tortured face appeared.

  ‘Any news?’

  Jacob shook his head.

  ‘Capitalist swine,’ said the conductor, a dedicated Marxist. ‘She’s probably in a dungeon somewhere.’ Entering gloomily, ignoring the Rhinemaiden in bed, he proved – despite his political principles – to be wearing jet-black silk pyjamas monogrammed in gold, and to be carrying a briefcase containing his opera. He flinched as the sound of ‘Wiener Blut’, played by the local hired band, wafted over the battlements and closed the Witz-lers’ window without asking permission. Tomorrow he was taking over the music. His orchestra would play during the firework display; he himself had agreed to accompany Raisa in a recital of lieder – but without Tessa, now, to turn the music. Only Tessa turned the pages at the right time. Only Tessa did not have to be grimaced at for being too late or too soon.

  ‘There has been heard nothing?’ enquired Pino, arriving in a resplendent Paisley dressing-gown lightly streaked with egg.

  The stage-hands, in their dormitory under the rafters, were still muttering mutinously.

  ‘If they’ve done anything to her I’ll murder them. I’ll murder the whole lot of them,’ said Stefan.

  ‘Do you remember that night we took her to the jazz club and she danced till four in the morning and then we found her asleep in the cloakroom curled up on her coat?’ said Georg.

&
nbsp; But at last sleep overtook the company which had, after all, laboured since dawn. In his room Jacob slumbered, one hirsute arm buried in the tresses of his Rhinemaiden. Boris slept, The Mother flocculating quietly on his bedside table. Frau Pollack slept, whimpering and wracked by her dreams. Klasky, his ears stuffed with cotton-wool against the noise of the yokel band, finally put down the pencil-stabbed score of his opera before he, too, closed his eyes.

  But in his cot in the small room assigned to Witzler’s under wardrobe mistress, Bubi, the Witzlers’ infant son, now woke.

  The nightlight, glowing on soul-filled, coal-black eyes and an ear strangulated by the blond curl he was winding desperately round it, illuminated a scene of despair. Bubi was wearing new, utterly masculine pyjamas that replaced his infantile nightdress and had been bought in the flush of affluence that Guy’s commission had brought to his papa. Bubi had cleaned his teeth; he had prayed; everything that could be done had been done and where was she? They had said that if he went to sleep like a good boy she would be there when he woke – and he had, and she was not there. The unfairness of it was beyond belief. He had been promised Tessa. She was going to tell him about the giant whose stomach rumbles caused the thunderstorms; she was going to play the game where he crawled under the bedclothes and she had to guess what animal he was being. She was going to be there all night!

  And where was she? Nowhere. Her bed was flat and empty: there were no clothes on it, nothing.

  Pondering on the wickedness of mankind and on promises betrayed, Bubi, biting his lip, now heard the soft but unmistakable sound of music. Unwinding a fat finger from the coil of his hair, he listened. Hope dawned. Music meant people, and rows of chairs to crawl between. It meant men with hammers who let him bang things – and it meant Tessa.

  Carefully he climbed out of his cot, padded along the landing and emerged in the courtyard. There were lanterns in brackets lighting the fountain, and flares in the archway from which the sound of music came. Hitching up his striped pyjamas, which had been bought to last, he set off resolutely across the cobbles. Bubi’s first word after ‘Mama’, ‘Papa’ and ‘No’ had been ‘Bailiffs’ and men in bowler hats still made him cry, but the shadows behind the flaring lamps held no terrors for him.