by Ellis Peters
And that, combined with the capture of four of the international gang which had been plaguing this corner of Europe for so long, made the nocturnal siege of Scheidenau Castle a highly profitable operation. All the more so as three of the four showed signs of being willing to talk for their own sakes, and possibly to bring in, indirectly, at least half a dozen others from the shattered brotherhood.
Not to mention, of course, their lord and master, Robin Aylwin, sometime ’cellist of Freddy’s Circus, listed by the hospital at Bregenz as ‘Dead on arrival.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
« ^ »
I quite understand,’ said Maggie, picking abstractedly at the keys on her piano and frowning at the music before her, ‘that he doesn’t want to see me, after all that’s happened. What did I ever do for him, except make use of him, involve him against his better judgment in… all that horror… and nearly kill him? I don’t blame him if he never wants to see me again. I haven’t any right to force myself on him. Are you sure he’s all right?’
‘Right as rain.’ Bunty stood by the window, looking out upon the placid surface of the lake, pale in a still midday, bright but sunless. It was the ninth day since Helmut’s night carnival, and the clear, chill peace of autumn lay over Scheidenau. ‘They wouldn’t be discharging him in two days’ time if they weren’t satisfied, especially after all the fuss and all the reporters. Six pints of blood they’ve got staked in Francis, they’re not going to waste that, you may be sure.’
‘Bunty, I owe you so much, you and George. Bunty, help me!’
‘Did I ever say,’ wondered Bunty, ‘that he didn’t want to see you? I said he said he didn’t want to see you. In fact, I rather gave him to believe that you were going home with George and me, to-morrow. So he’s due to come out of care the next day on his own, just the way he claims he wants it. He’s ordered a taxi already, to take him back to the Weisses Kreuz. Most of his things are still there. He’ll stay overnight, and then arrange his exit. He’ll think he’s clear of the lot of us. You, too!’
‘Bunty, couldn’t you find out for me what time?’
‘I know what time. The taxi’s ordered for ten in the morning. Maggie, are you absolutely sure you know what you want?’
‘Yes, quite sure. Yes, quite sure! Oh, Bunty, pray for me!’
‘Both of us will be doing that, naturally. For both of you!’
‘Your car is here,’ they told him, and made their good-byes with warmth and ceremony, for he had been their prize patient for ten days, and when were they likely to get such another sensation? He packed his few toilet things in the briefcase George Felse had brought in for him from Scheidenau, along with a newly-pressed suit and clean shirt and underclothes to replace the ruins they had stripped from him and burned on arrival. He went down the stairs beside a gay little chattering nurse, and picked up at the desk his wallet and papers, with a note left for him by George and Bunty, wishing him luck and hoping to see him at home in England. Yes, perhaps. Nice people! They had visited him several times in hospital, and kept him informed about Maggie. Nothing from Maggie herself, of course. Well, that had been his intention, hadn’t it?
So that was that. She had respected his wish to be left alone, maybe she’d even been grateful to him for taking the issue out of her hands. Back into your proper orbit, Miss Tressider, and I’ll skid back into mine. I’ll see you, he thought, from the back of the circle occasionally, I’ll hear you broadcast and be thankful for that, but that’s all the rights I shall ever have or ever expect in you.
He stepped out through the door into the cool, autumnal air, and shivered. He felt light, empty and aimless. The world was a big place, but without savour. He looked along the kerb for his taxi; there was little point in hurrying anywhere, but none in staying here.
There was only one car drawn up by the entrance, and that was not a taxi. It was an elderly Dodge of a creamy coffee-colour, with a girl sitting behind the wheel.
She didn’t get out when she saw him, but she leaned across and opened the passenger door, and waited for him to get in. Her hair was braided into two great plaits and coiled on top of her head, and all those subtle colours that met and married in it matched the leaves of the oak tree as well in autumn as in spring. She was pale but radiant; all the lines of her face were easier and more at peace than he had ever seen them before, and her gentian eyes were no longer straining to see something remote and ominous that would not stand still to be seen. On the contrary, they focused very sharply and resolutely upon him.
‘I paid your taximan and sent him away,’ she said. ‘You don’t mind, do you? I’ll drive you back to Scheidenau.’
There was nothing to be done but get in beside her. ‘I thought you’d gone back to England,’ he said, leaning rather gingerly to dispose of his briefcase on the back seat.
‘No, not yet.’ She started the car, carefully because she wasn’t yet used to it, and drove slowly out into traffic, winding her way towards the frontage of Lake Constance. ‘I waited for you.’
‘That was kind, but you shouldn’t have put off going on my account.’
‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘I put it off on my own account. Did you really think I could go away and leave you here alone, after all that’s happened?’
‘I don’t see why not. You’d already done more than enough for me. You knew I was being perfectly well looked after, and making a good recovery. And you must be longing to get back and start work again. I see,’ he said, veering resolutely away from the subject, ‘they found the Dodge in time.’
‘At that mason’s yard in Regenheim. And quite a lot of contraband and stolen property, too, that nobody had time to ditch. When they’d done with the car I asked if I could take it over. I thought you’d be relieved to see it.’
‘It certainly wouldn’t be much fun to have to replace it. It was good of you to think of putting my mind at rest.’
Everything was going to be deference, kindness and gratitude, she could see that, whatever stresses might be gnawing away underneath. She waited until they were out of the town, winding their way along the upland road, and then settled to a gentle forty kilometres, and cast a long, measuring look at him along her shoulder.
‘You drive very well,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen you in action before.’
‘You’ll have plenty of chance, I’m driving you back to Zurich when we go.’
‘Maggie… now look…’
‘Well, naturally! With that shoulder you certainly shouldn’t be driving long distances yet. Though of course we could stay in Scheidenau for a week or two longer, if you like. It might be the best plan, actually.’
‘Maggie, look, you shouldn’t have done this. I can’t let you…’
‘You can’t stop me,’ she said gently, and turned and smiled at him. She would have to be very careful of him, she could see, he was still easily shaken. She felt his body tighten and brace itself beside her, and saw his brows draw painfully together over clouded eyes.
‘Oh, no!’ he said, shaking his head with decision. ‘None of that! I know you now. Once you passed by an overture of love, as you thought, without noticing it until it was too late, and spent years of your life paying your substance away in requital of what you took to be a debt. Now you’re so mortally afraid of repeating the error that you’ll fall over backwards to avoid it. But not with me! I’ve got too much sense to let that happen, if you haven’t. You don’t love me, you just feel responsible for me. You owe me nothing,and I’ll take nothing from you. Go home, girl, sing, be successful, be happy… you’ve got time even for that, now.’
‘That,’ she said patiently, ‘depends on you. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’ They were high among the meadows, the hills folding and unfolding before them in bleached green of pasture and blue-black of conifers. She pulled in to the wide grass verge and stopped the car, turning on him a face pale to incandescence with solemnity.
‘Francis, I’m not making any mistake this time, and I won’t let you
, either. I’ve never loved anyone before, perhaps I couldn’t because of him. But I love you now, and if you pass me by I shall have lost everything. Maybe you don’t want me, and that I could accept, but I daren’t let go of you until I know whether that’s really why you want me to go away. If you don’t love me, tell me so, and I’ll leave you alone. But for pity’s sake don’t tell me you don’t if you do, because that wouldn’t be noble, it would be damned ignoble, and I should spend the rest of my life paying for it, as well as you. And if you do love me, then start getting used to my being here, because I’m always going to be here.’
He opened his lips to answer her, and found she had left him nothing to say. Everything he could have produced by way of subterfuge she had anticipated, and now he could not lie to her, even if he’d thought for a moment he could have managed it successfully. How could he live with himself afterwards, if he ever began to suspect she had been right? To send her back to her own world and her own kind might have been almost bearable, as long as he could rest in the conviction that she would be happiest that way, which God knew any sane man would take for granted. But what if the unbelievable turned out to be true, and he was the one who was fooling himself, not she?
He had begun to shake and sweat, between crazy hope and craven fear; this sort of thing wasn’t for him yet, he wasn’t up to it. He dragged his gaze away from her face with an effort, pressing his fingers deep into his hollow cheeks to clamp the wrong words in until he could find the right ones and somehow get them out. There are hurdles not even love can take without a crashing fall; only the native obstinacy recent stresses had roused in her could make her attempt them, and when the stresses passed, and even the memory of them grew pale, she would regret ever assaying the leap. She was a reasonable being, she would listen. And this wouldn’t be lying to her.
‘Maggie,’ he began laboriously, ‘have you really thought what you’re suggesting? You know who you are, and what you are, nobody knows it better. A world figure, and going to be even greater…’
‘I could,’ she agreed very quietly, ‘given the right circumstances.’
‘And I’m the right circumstances? Wake up, girl, for God’s sake! I don’t have to go into details about myself, and I’m not going to. Don’t pretend you can’t evaluate well enough to get my number right.’
‘Better, perhaps,’ she said fiercely, ‘than you.’
‘All right, let it go. But you know very well what I mean. You belong in a world about which I know nothing, among people with whom I have nothing in common, except, perhaps, a liking for music, and that wouldn’t get me far. It’s a live, mobile, important world, with no room for hangers-on. You know what I’m talking about as well as I do. Do you think that would be an easy marriage?’
‘All right,’ she said after a long pause, her eyes wide and watchful on his face, ‘I do know what you’re talking about, and no, it won’t be easy. Did you ever hear of a marriage that was? But this one will be more difficult than most, I know it. And fathoms deeper! I’m not glossing over anything. I don’t know any of the answers, those we have to find as we go. I’m simply telling you that there isn’t any alternative! Marriage may be difficult, but separation is impossible. After what we’ve been through together, after what we know about each other, what do you suppose the ordinary pinpricks can do to us? Do you think two people ever drew as near as we have, and managed to pull themselves apart again without bleeding to death?’
He didn’t know whether she had reached that argument by a lucky inspiration or by serious thought, but as soon as she had said it he saw that it was irresistibly true, and thanked God for it, since resistance was becoming unendurable. For better or worse, they had grown together until separation would have been extreme mutilation, a death before death.
Whether she had convinced him, or whether he had surrendered only to his own awful longing to be convinced, however it happened, suddenly she was in his arms. They had, after all, no option but to make their own rules, having strayed so far out of range of any others. Maybe she could never have married anyone now for the ordinary, socially respected reasons. Maybe he would really turn out to be what she wanted, and what she would continue to want, life-long. Please God, he thought. And God help us both, because we’re going to need it! But when he kissed her all his lingering forebodings vanished like the mists dissolving over Lake Constance, and there was no room left in him for anything but incredulous gratitude and joy.
After a while they disentangled themselves silently and solemnly, and drove on mute and dazed with achievement into Scheidenau.
—«»—«»—«»—
APPENDIX
« ^
Text of Maggie Tressider’s English Singing Version of ‘WHERE THE SPLENDID TRUMPETS BLOW’
‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen,’ from Des Knaben Wunderhorn: set by Mahler.
Who’s that without there, who knocks at my door.
Imploring so softly, so softly: Sleep no more!?
Your love, your own true love is here,
Rise up and let me in, my dear!
And must I longer wait and mourn?
I see the red of dawn return.
The red of dawn, two stars so bright.
O that I were with my delight,
With mine own heart’s beloved!
The maiden arose and let him in.
Most welcome home, my more than kin,
Most welcome home, my own true love,
So long you’ve watched and waited.
She offered him her snow-white hand,
Far off there sang a nightingale.
The maid began to weep and wail.
O do not weep, love, do not pine,
Within the year you shall be mine.
Ere long you shall be one with me
As never bride on earth shall be,
No, none but you on earth, love!
Across the heath to war I fare.
The great green heath so broad and bare.
For there, where the splendid trumpets blare and thunder,
There is my house, my house the green turf under.
—«»—«»—«»—
[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
[v1 by anonymous for the Prooflist, 2002]
[v2 by MollyKate September 2002]
[A 3S Release— v3, html, reproofed and formatted from scan images]
[July 22, 2007]
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Ellis Peters
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