by Magnus Flyte
“You seem a little . . . distracted?” Gottfried finally asked as they watched one of the horses work on a single piece of straw, looking for all the world like an ex-smoker.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She’d been having more nightmares about Pols and the round white room. Always with the sense of having picked the wrong door. Sometimes there was the woman in gold, other times a dragon or a giant appeared. She shook off the memory and said, “A friend of mine, a little girl, is very sick. I’m worried about her.” Why not tell him some of the truth, she thought.
“I am sorry to hear of this.” Gottfried put his hand on her arm. It was funny, he had a very comforting touch. Probably it was from working with these horses, who all did seem to be kind of high-strung. His hand continued up and down her arm. “Tell me about your friend.”
Sarah began to describe Pollina, and her illness, and how she had come to Vienna to research a cure, and how doing so had led her down some peculiar alleys.
“I’ve even been looking into homeopathy,” Sarah said, her fingers absentmindedly rubbing the brass stall decorations. “And older healing methods. I actually came across a famous Tyrolean healer. Philippine Welser.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Gottfried nodded. “My family possesses a book of her recipes. It is one of our treasures. Our family home belonged to Archduke Ferdinand and Philippine. Do you know Innsbruck?”
“No. I haven’t been able to travel that much in Austria,” said Sarah. She tried to sound merely curious. “I’d love to see the book.”
“I would be delighted to show it to you.”
Sarah took a deep breath. Good. She was finally catching a break.
“Yes.” Gottfried nodded. “Your friend will need you to be strong and calm. You can help her that way. Take another deep breath.”
Sarah inhaled the scent of Gottfried, the scent of horses, the scent of hay, and felt her shoulders relax a little.
“Good. Shall we continue?”
“Yes.” Sarah nodded. “This is exactly what I needed, actually.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was true. She had been racing from one baffling, sad, and frustrating event to another ever since setting foot in Vienna. But tonight she would take Westonia and she would get some answers. And if Gottfried took her to Innsbruck, maybe there would be something in the family archives there that might help Pols. Now, how to introduce Heinrich into the conversation?
“Please, show me more.” She smiled.
Gottfried rolled back a brass and lacquered wood door to open a stall. “So. The stallions are always named for the sire and dam. This is Conversano Bonadea 2002, meaning he is directly descended from those two founding horses, and born in 2002. All of his sons will also be named Conversano.”
“And his daughters?”
“All fillies take the name of their mother. The breeding is kept one hundred percent pure.”
“So no stealth visits from a randy Shetland pony?”
Gottfried smiled and ran his hand along the stallion’s thick arched neck. “Na Du—mein wunderbares Pferd,” he whispered affectionately. “He’s a powerhouse under saddle.” Gottfried rubbed the horse’s withers and the animal stretched his neck around in gratitude, rubbing Sarah’s arm with his velvety nose.
“It must be very prestigious, to be a rider here,” she said.
“It is a great honor to be selected. But lately I have become unsatisfied. The horses are too fat, too bored. They should have more time in the country. They should be allowed to be horses.”
Conversano blinked. His eyelashes were white and long.
“This is a prison,” Gottfried continued, gesturing to the marble stalls and rose granite mangers. “The horses are kept here nearly twenty-four hours a day. They are descended from warhorses. The best of the best. And look at them now.” He slapped the belly of the stallion, who farted. “Fat. Nervous. Like my brother, Heinrich.”
Perfect, Sarah thought. “He must be very sad about Nina.”
Gottfried shrugged. “He is unlucky with women.”
“He seems kind of unhappy in general. Does he enjoy his work? He works for a pharmaceutical company, right?”
Gottfried sniffed. “Heinrich enjoys nothing. He is neurotic. Like Pluto over there.”
He pointed to the stallion in the stall across the walkway. It was biting the stall divider and sucking in air. “It’s called cribbing,” said Gottfried. “It’s like people who bite their nails, or border collies who lick their feet or chase their tails. Animals who should be doing real work, but instead are kept as pets. These horses have become lapdogs who dance for the tourists and line the pockets of the government. I am always telling the Oberreiter that I do not want to see these beautiful horses go the way of the rest of Austrians,” said Gottfried angrily. “Forgetting their real power.”
Sarah looked at Gottfried’s lean, muscled body.
Gottfried caught her eye and smiled. “Strength is merely the ability to overcome fear. Most people are ruled by fear. You have noticed this?”
“I have.”
“I don’t believe fear drives you, Fräulein Weston.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she said simply. “It doesn’t stop me, either.”
“We are alike, then.”
They looked at each other for a moment. And then Gottfried stepped forward and kissed her. Long, hard, and with a significant amount of talent.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since the ball,” he said.
Sarah felt an electric current running up and down her spine. The muscles of her legs were taut. She seemed to be lucking out in the stables in more ways than one. Conversano nudged her shoulder again. It was as if the horse was pushing her toward Gottfried. Hold on a second, buddy, Sarah thought. Let me just think this through for a minute.
But when Gottfried put his hands on her shoulders and moved her back against the wall of the stall, Sarah found thinking to be an extremely difficult activity, except for the part of her conscious mind that recognized—Ooh, limes—as she tasted him. Gottfried’s mouth was urgent and confident. The red beard was very soft. Sarah arched her neck like a Lipizzaner and let Gottfried plunge his hands into the V of her dress. Sarah caught Conversano’s eye. The horse was built to be free, to be powerful, to do what he wanted. And he had been tamed, and trained, and denatured. She would never let that happen to her. She had a sudden desire to be absolutely, primally naked. And for Gottfried to be naked. For basically everyone in the world to be naked. God, she was burning up.
Soon Gottfried was whispering, “Let me have you, let me have you,” in her ear, her throat, her breasts.
They were both drenched in sweat. Gottfried slid her sweater over her head and then undid his shirt. He had a black cross tattooed on his chest, right above his heart. Underneath this were three words: Helfen, Wehren, Heilen. Help, Defend, Heal. Gottfried picked her up and sat her on the lip of the stall. Sarah grasped the frame. His hand moved in between her legs, his fingers deep inside her.
Gottfried unzipped his pants. Even Conversano seemed impressed. Sarah threw back her head and laughed in delight, which caused Gottfried to laugh, too, deep in his throat. She wrapped her hand around Gottfried’s cock, which was hot to the touch.
Purse, she thought. Condom. Oh, God.
Sarah pressed her lips against the cross on Gottfried’s chest and for a moment she thought she heard the ringing of armor, the stamping of horses on the battlefield, tasted blood and sweat. And fear. And faith.
She wrapped her legs around his waist.
Everything was on fire. Gottfried’s cock inside her was on fire, and her skin was on fire. And Conversano’s cries were blending with hers, and all the horses were crying and stamping, urging them on, and her nose was filled with the scent of fire. She released herself into the fire, raining down upon it, as Gottfried let out a wild yell of satisfaction. And still there was fire.
• • •
No, there really was fire.
• • •
The stable was filling with smoke.
• • •
They realized the truth of it at the same time, pulling apart and then hastily reassembling pieces of their clothing as they stumbled into the walkway.
“Mein Gott. Where is it coming from?” Gottfried cried, racing from one stall to another. The stallions were panicking.
Sarah was dialing her phone. “No signal!” she shouted.
“The walls here are five feet thick! Go get help while I get the horses out.”
Sarah ran for the heavy wooden door to the courtyard, which loomed huge and dark in front of her. Hadn’t they left it open? Now she pushed as hard as she could, but found it immovable. She banged on it with her fists, barely making a sound.
“Gottfried!” she called. “Is there another way out?”
All of the horses’ stalls had doors that opened onto the courtyard, but these were bolted on the outside. They were locked in.
Sarah could now see the source of the fire, and she ran through the thickening smoke to the huge pile of wood shavings at the end of the aisle, piled up for use as the horses’ bedding. It was blazing with flames, throwing sparks toward the stalls. The heat from the fire was so intense that she couldn’t even get to the fire extinguisher on the wall, and the fire was growing in height, nearly ten feet. She made her way back toward Gottfried, calling his name. The smoke was becoming so thick that she could hardly see, and the horses were neighing in terror and thrashing around in their stalls.
“We’re trapped!” she shouted.
She found him in the smoke, two haltered horses plunging on either side of him, his eyes wide as he held their lead ropes, realizing there was no safety to lead them to.
She looked around for anything they could use to bust through the wooden door. She grabbed a shovel and tried battering, feeling instantly the futility of it. Why was no one coming? She looked around her. Even if she could find a corner of the stable that wasn’t bedded in flammable materials, the smoke would get them within another minute or two. She could barely draw breath, her lungs burning with effort.
Crack! Crack! Crack! She heard what sounded like a battering ram coming from the next stall.
She crawled through the smoke and could make out Gottfried and Conversano. He was holding the horse by the halter and pleading with him.
“Capriole, schnell!” commanded Gottfried, standing upright alongside the horse despite the smoke.
The magnificent white stallion, huge black eyes ringed white with fear, nevertheless obeyed the command of his master. He lifted his front legs and jumped up, kicking out with his hind legs with huge force. His hooves crashed into the wooden door, beginning to splinter it. Sarah had seen pictures of the horses doing this move, but kicking out into the air, never against something. The horse, in pain from the impact, fell to his knees, sweaty and trembling with fatigue and fear.
“Again, Conversano, again,” pleaded Gottfried. Sarah did not think the horse had it in him, but he groaned with effort, got to his feet.
“Again,” said Gottfried, laying a hand against the horse’s cheek. “Courage, my boy. Think of what you come from, not what you have become.” The horse gathered himself and kicked out again. Sarah thought of fourteenth-century knights’ horses, equine battering rams knocking down the gates of castles, and anyone standing behind them.
Crash! The wood was splintering.
She could feel the heat of the fire and hear its crackling. The horses were screaming. The smell of singed flesh and hair filled her nostrils. The bedding in the stalls was igniting from the flying sparks. They did not have much time before the entire place exploded in flames.
Sarah was struggling to breathe. Gottfried’s face was streaked with black. He stamped out a spark that landed in the straw at their feet.
“Again, Conversano. Capriole,” he commanded the animal. She saw Conversano’s hind legs were bloody from kicking the wood. He looked finished. She met Gottfried’s eye. He shook his head. Done.
No. She was not done fighting. Pollina wasn’t done fighting. They were getting out of here.
She threw her arms around the horse’s face. “Fight,” she whispered into his ear.
With a huge effort, the horse leapt into the air and—BAM!—hit the door again with the full force of his entire fifteen-hundred-pound body, channeled through the springs of his hind legs into his massive hooves. The door splintered to pieces, and Sarah could feel the rush of fresh air. She stumbled out, gasping, as firemen came streaming under the arched entrance across the courtyard.
“Take him!” shouted Gottfried, tossing her Conversano’s lead rope. Before she could cough out a word, Gottfried disappeared back into the flames.
Sarah led the bloodied and trembling horse away from the fire as the firemen hauled in hoses and shouted orders. She whispered to Conversano to keep walking, trying not to hear the screams of the other horses. Traffic was stopped in the street outside and tourists were being herded back, wide-eyed. The air was filled with smoke, and sirens sounded on all sides. Through these she heard a clattering, and when she looked back toward the Spanish Riding School, out of the smoke came galloping ghostly forms, giant white horses streaked with ash. Six, seven, eight, ten, she counted them as they churned around Conversano, majestic, panicked, terrifying, like the horses from a marble fountain come to life. People in the square screamed and ran from the frenzied horses, and cart horses on the far side of the square reared in their traces, hearing the primal call of the stallions.
A final horse galloped out of the smoke, and Sarah saw there was a rider atop him, no saddle or bridle, his bearing erect like a charging knight.
Gottfried had a bullwhip in one hand, and he cracked it to bring the stallions in line, circling his own mount with pressure from his legs, keeping the stallions in a smaller and smaller space until they came to a halt in a writhing mass of horseflesh.
In his other hand Gottfried held her purse. Her white bra, which she had not redonned in all the commotion, dangled jauntily, half out of the opening.
TWENTY-THREE
“The newspapers say it was faulty electrical wiring.”
The morning after the fire, Sarah and Nico had made their way past Schmetterling, the vast steampunk greenhouse that housed, of all things, butterflies, and through the Hofburg complex to check out the damage to the stables.
“So much for German engineering,” said Nico.
Sarah felt a moment of relief. In the confused hours after the fire, when she had found herself once more giving statements to the police, she had dazedly wondered if somehow the source of the blaze hadn’t come from the heat off of her quite smoking encounter with Gottfried. She had left that part out of her statement, though. She had been taken to the hospital, and then gone back to Alessandro’s apartment. At some point, she had lost track of Gottfried.
“Do not worry. I will find who did this,” Gottfried had said in the square in front of Michaelerkirche. “They will be punished.”
Standing now, surveying the damage, Sarah wondered if a team of engineers were currently being horsewhipped.
The stables were taped off, and police and firemen were still positioned outside the building. There was quite a crowd, taking pictures. Some people had brought flowers, though, miraculously, all the horses had been saved. Sarah read how they had been safely removed in trucks, taken to the stud farm at Piber.
“I don’t like it,” said Nico. “The game is no longer a game. This is twice that your life has been threatened.” While Sarah was at the stables, Nico had conducted his own investigation. The little man had visited Bettina’s apartment on Paniglgasse and thoroughly ingratiated himself with the concierge, Herr Dorfmeister. “I stayed away from the dog,” Nico had said. “Dogs are uneasy around me. But we began a game of chess. I did not learn anything about your elusive doctor, but I have procured the key to her apartment. Should you care to make a visit.”
“I want to take Westonia at Bettina’s lab,” Sarah said. “That seem
s more like the scene of the action. But first I want to see if there’s anything at the Austrian National Library about the galleon and Philippine Welser. Now you’ve got me curious about her.”
“Worth a try,” Nico said as they turned back to the massive Hofburg complex and made their way to the library.
Sarah paused for a moment at the entrance to the Prunksaal, which was truly breathtaking, with its marble floor, wood paneling, frescoed ceiling, carved balconies, rolling ladders, huge gilded columns, and dizzying heights of books.
“There are three million printed manuscripts here,” said Nico. “Not to mention one hundred and eighty thousand Egyptian papyri covering three thousand years of history. Let us hope they have a better smoke detection system than the stable. And that even Moriarty couldn’t sift through that much data.”
Disappointingly, there wasn’t much at all about Philippine Welser. Sarah chalked it up to the fact that women, even remarkable women, perhaps especially remarkable women, hadn’t rated much mention in the archives of history as chronicled by men. Nico had more sinister theories regarding Philippine’s absence from the public record. Sarah did find some brief asides. Birth and death dates for the sons of her morganatic marriage to Ferdinand, one of whom became a cardinal. Descriptions of her extended family’s vast holdings.
“Did you know Philippine’s uncle went to South America?” Sarah called over to Nico, who seemed deep in his own search.
“Yes, her family were wealthy merchants. Her uncle lent a large sum to the emperor and in return was given Venezuela.”
“Venezuela? Like, all of it?”
“Yes. In fact, the Welsers were the ones who named it, for ‘little Venice.’ They had many encounters with native tribesmen.”
Sarah pondered this as she looked around the hushed roomful of people lost in ancient books, librarians hovering like priests. Philippine was wealthy, educated, interested in medicine, highly empowered for a woman of her era, and possibly in possession of medicinal plants from South America. No wonder she had hallucinogens up her sleeves. Very interesting.
