The Horn of Roland

by Ellis Peters

  When she had tugged down her dress again, and reared her head to stare, she could see the faint, fine line of phosphorescence prolonging itself across the blue-black of the Himmelsee. It looked a long way off, it was crossing her field of vision steadily from left to right, unaware of her, abandoning her here if she did not do something quickly to assert herself.

  She cupped her hands about her mouth, threw back her head, and hallooed again and again at the full stretch of her lungs, without even realising that she was crying Mike’s name, calling him to her on fierce, commanding notes of appeal and possession, demanding that he hear and understand.

  She stopped only because she was exhausted, drained of breath and for the moment of energy and purpose. She clung to the insecure rail above the water, and staring out into the darkness, saw the dotted line of lambent light hesitate, and heel, and come about, turning towards her. And after a moment she heard her answer uplifted thin and clear into the night, the distant, gallant clamour of Roland’s horn.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lucas was halfway through La Battalia when he sensed that there was someone standing behind him, quite still, listening. He did not stop playing. The miniature but tremendous excitement of the virtuoso display he was staging for no one, the vulnerable stream of memory, too, which once broken could not be restored without deformation, kept him constant. But his hands were in perfect command at the moment, he could release a thread of his consciousness for communication. Without turning his head he said:

  ‘Come in, if you like it. Come in and listen. I don’t mind an audience.’

  How did he know that it was neither Una nor Crista standing there hesitating in the doorway? For one thing, neither of them would have had to hesitate. For another, he was sensitive to the very texture of Una’s presence, he would always know when she was within touch of him. And Crista? It was beginning to be like that with Crista, too. She did everything possible to be anonymous, and she had only to move a hand, and he knew it, only to feel a slight, a pain, a regret, and he was responsive to it. The more she hid, the more he was aware of her. The more she confined herself severely to her secretarial duties, the more he saw her diffused and pervasive and in possession. And this was neither Una nor Crista.

  Whoever it was had come nearer, accepting the invitation, and was soundlessly edging towards his right shoulder. Lucas was aware of pleasure, curiosity and delight, all contained, because the battle was not yet over, and a movement too sudden, an inch too far, might snap the thread and bring those sparkling keys jangling into disharmony and ruin.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Lucas to the shadow that loomed behind him. ‘Why not? Listen in comfort, if you like it.’

  The shadow crept from him, with considerate quietness, stepping lightly in the thick carpet, and found a seat by the wall, retired and in darkness. The whole salon was in near-darkness now, dusk came swooping when it came at last, spread wings obliterating the light; that was the gift of the mountains. Lucas needed no light to complete what he had begun, threading all those brief, vivid movements like beads on a string, without a break, only the rapid, expert knot between. The whole formidable suite took some twelve minutes to play. By the time he ended it, the two girls should be on their way back.

  He did not miss them; in a sense they were present with him now. He had discovered the perfect secret of integrity, the total concentration on one immaculate task in hand, whatever happened afterwards. He had even an entranced audience; the shadow in the twilit room was sitting braced and still, only a vibration emanated from it, and that was of taut and charmed attention.

  The battle passed, echoing into the distance, the lament over the casualties grieved and diminished, life recovered, took fresh bearings, and resumed its pilgrimage. The lovely old instrument – it was almost worth all the anguish, to have been brought to this encounter with it – stood trembling and palpitating like a female creature that has given birth. And gradually the vibrations ebbed out of it and let it rest in stillness and silence. Lucas turned, and looked at his companion. This one had stood at his back unchallenged, and had ample opportunity to cut off both the music and the performer, had he so wished; and he had not done it.

  Lucas had expected Geestler, who was known to play most keyboard instruments, and to be fond of music. He saw the slimmer, more youthful outline of Richard Schwalbe, braced upright and alert, and with round young eyes fixed upon him.

  ‘It’s you, Richard? I didn’t know you liked this kind of thing.’

  ‘I didn’t know, either,’ said the dark swallow, and laughed. ‘You didn’t need light? No music? You weren’t making that up?’

  ‘No,’ said Lucas, tired and sated, stroking the ivory keys that were like silk to the touch, ‘I didn’t make it up. I only wish I had but I merely arranged it. It was written by an amazing creature called Biber, in central Europe nearly three centuries ago. In Olomouc, in Moravia, I believe. For viols, originally. I know it by heart. I never played it better. I’m glad you were here to listen to it. I don’t guarantee it was flawless, but I know I never made a better job of it. Will you remember I said that?’

  ‘It sounded marvellous to me,’ said Schwalbe joyously. ‘I wanted to laugh and shout. Was that right?’

  ‘That was right. Was that all?’

  The boy pondered. ‘One might also weep? Afterwards?’

  ‘Many have,’ said Lucas. ‘I suspect this man Biber knew it, even while he was laughing and shouting. Richard, I enjoyed having you as an audience. Thank you! Will you have a drink?’

  ‘No, no … I’m on duty, I must go. But thank you, all the same.’ He was on his feet, backing deprecatingly towards the doorway, his smile gleaming in what remained of the light. ‘I should be patrolling below.’

  It was a strange thing, Lucas thought, turning back regretfully from the cabinet Heinz-Otto had stocked so generously with drinks, how everything that had given this young man his mystery and his perilous ambiguity in full daylight became crystal and understandable in the dark. His inscrutable gaiety, his brevity of speech, his distant enjoyment of the girls, that never made any attempt to draw nearer, all were human and touching and minor, instead of pagan and cool and incalculable. The dark swallow was encased in an impenetrable shell of shyness, and only music had drawn him through it for a moment. His purity was something no potential assassin, however motivated, could possibly afford. Valentine’s passionate heat would have melted the shell long ago. This one was safe, simple and sweet, untouched by any corrosive hate, if he was not to be touched, as yet, by any disenchanting love. Some girl would lay her hand on his arm some day, and break the spell. But not, Lucas thought, either of my girls.

  ‘Richard,’ he said, before the boy reached the terrace and vanished, faun-like, into shadows, ‘tell me something. When I lived here as a boy, I knew two families of Geestlers. Johann had a farm out beyond the castle. And there was a younger brother, Niklaus, with a smithy at the other side of the town. Which of them is your friend Hugo’s father?’

  It was hardly important, of course, since one of them must be. The age was right, and as far as he remembered, there were no more Geestlers here. Johann, the elder, possessor of the family farm, had been married already when Lucas left, and he thought there had already been one child, and another on the way. About Niklaus he had less clear memories. Hadn’t he been courting a girl from one of the inns? Leni, who helped at the Sonne? Hard to distinguish those lost faces, after all this time, yet most of them must still be here, and not changed out of all knowledge.

  ‘His father has the smithy,’ said Schwalbe readily. ‘At least, it is not quite like that, he is not really their son. Herr Niklaus and Frau Leni took him as their own, because they had no children.’ He let fall his bombshell gently and serenely, clearly only with a precise regard for truth, and knowing that everyone in Gries knew, and his friend was in no way sensitive about the relationship. A sensible family, without vulnerable secrets.

  ‘You mean,’ said Lucas, after a br
ief, blank pause, ‘he is adopted?’

  ‘He came to work for them, from an orphanage. And they liked him so much they took him legally for their own.’ The faun shrugged wide, slender shoulders, and lit the dusk with his incandescent smile.

  ‘I see. It seems both he and his – family – have been lucky,’ said Lucas. ‘Perhaps they knew his own parents?’

  Richard hoisted those eloquent shoulders again, lightly and easily, with a different implication: What does it matter? They are all happy with the arrangement! ‘I have no idea, I never spoke of it with him.’

  ‘No, of course not! It’s of no importance. They have a good son, and he a good family. That’s everything.’ The boy hung in the doorway, patient and well disposed, and again shy, awaiting dismissal. ‘Goodnight, Richard!’

  ‘Goodnight, Herr Corinth!’

  He was gone, as light of foot as a deer, across the terrace and down to his rendezvous midway of the approaches, where he should have been some ten minutes ago.

  Lucas stood quite still until the light, descending echoes had danced away down the steps, not yet out of earshot but so withdrawn now that they seemed to belong among the remembered reverberations of drums, in the battle still vibrating somewhere in the air. So this, like everything he touched in his concern for his own life, turned and confronted him with a changed situation and an opponent still elusive. Geestler, the one who was so safe because he was a Geestler, turned out to be only one by adoption. And there was hardly time now, even if there had been opportunity, to entice him into the same intimacy that had just been established with his friend, and see through him as clearly, and know the truth.

  Adopted, after he had come – by his own choice? Lucas knew very little of how boys in public care are placed in employment! – to work for a family in Gries. At what age, then? Fourteen or fifteen, certainly. After how many years in care? Who knew? But perhaps only a few, only the end of his childhood, after the seed of a lifetime’s hate and an inescapable duty of revenge had been implanted too deeply ever to be erased. Yes, it could be so.

  But then, why had he not acted already? He had been trusted implicitly (though God knows, Lucas thought, that might in itself be a powerful deterrent against action!) and had surely had opportunities enough. But had he? When Lucas came to think back over their association, how many real opportunities had there been? When had they been alone together? There were five people here, and no harm, surely, intended to the girls. And Valentine would not be so lost to the compulsion of his own youth as to write himself off by acting openly, in front of witnesses. He had the rest of his life to live, he had to preserve his secrecy.

  Lucas switched on the small lamp that stood on the drinks cabinet, poured himself a modest brandy and soda, and went on thinking. About those five people. Only this evening had this curious feeling of solitude found its way in here. The five people had dwindled to three. We won’t be long, Una had said. But they hadn’t come back. The two who were to be spared as much as possible seemed to have been temporarily eliminated from the scene. And now Richard Schwalbe, late for his patrol, was hurrying away. How if the girls had been ambushed and shut in, somewhere in those deserted splendours at the other end of the colonnade? How if the field was being cleared, now, at this moment, for the final act? There is a way, he said to himself, of finding out. I could, of course, take a torch and go and look for the girls, but why bring them back on to the stage if they have been considerately removed for a good reason? If he doesn’t want anyone else involved in the final encounter, neither do I. Someone else might get hurt. I prefer not to risk that. And I’m tired – how tired I am! – of sitting and waiting.

  He took his glass, and crossed to the great window that looked out across the court to the opposite wing, and commanded a view of the whole terrace, and at least two shallow levels of the shrubberies below. Deliberately he drew back the curtains from every inch of the glass, and reaching out his free hand when that was done, switched on all the lights in the room, even the great chandelier, and stood framed in silhouette for the night to see. If Valentine wants me, here I am, let him come to me.

  There was only a faint glimmer of starlight now on the marble and stone of the court, and a dim, greenish afterglow along the edge of the western sky. He could see, under the shadow of the colonnade, opposite, the faint reflection of the white balustrade refracted in oblique gleams in the panes of the last window in the forsaken wing, the fellow to this window at which he stood. With his face close to the glass he could even see down into the overgrown bushes and plaster caprices below the end of the other wing. Somewhere down there, out of sight, he heard Schwalbe raise a pure, shrill whistle to locate his colleague. Without success, for the whistle came again after the lapse of a few seconds.

  And instant and sharp at the end of the whistle, before the silence could settle again, the shot split the night.

  He heard the impact like a tiny, ringing echo. Eighteen inches or so above his head the tall pane of glass starred but did not shatter, and in the centre of radiating cracks the bullet-hole sat round and dark like a spider in its web. A few infinitely fine particles floated glittering in the light of the chandelier. A speck of blood on the hand that held the glass marked his only wound. He brushed away the silver of glass that had pricked him, and for several seconds he was not fully conscious that he had missed death by inches. The brandy in the glass was quite steady as he put it down on a table beside the window.

  It was a great shout from Schwalbe, below in the garden, that brought him back to life. He sprang to the door, and out into the dimness of the colonnade, and ran to lean over the balustrade and peer below. Two terraces beneath him Schwalbe was running towards the great thickets of false acacia that shrouded the marble railings under the distant wing of the house. All the night was full of their drowning fragrance, as though they had been shaken and disturbed by a sudden wind, or the crashing flight of a fugitive. And indeed someone was already in among them, the bushes threshed and shook. From somewhere there, surely, the shot had been fired, and only the angle had caused it to miss him by so much. Not easy, from there, to shoot high enough to clear the balustrade, and still put the bullet through the window. Valentine had not done so badly. A mistake, though, to have attempted it from there.

  Schwalbe saw him leaning over the railing, and checked for an instant in his headlong run to shout up at him: ‘Go back! Go inside!’

  Lucas had been about to launch himself down the steps in support, but he pulled up and swung round abruptly when Schwalbe insisted furiously: ‘Go in! Take the girl inside and lock the door. Draw the curtains and stay inside!’

  Lucas had not heard the steps behind him until then, light, frantic steps running towards him round the paved semicircle of the colonnade. He turned, hesitating, saw Crista’s yellow dress glimmering in the darkness, and went in haste and concern to meet her, letting Schwalbe plunge on alone into the threshing bushes.

  ‘It’s all right, Crista, it’s all right!’ He took her by the shoulders, folded his arm round her, and drew her towards the blazing lights of the salon. Thank God she was intact, only frightened and shocked. She had heard the shot, and come rushing from whatever room she had reached in her tour of the dilapidated wing opposite. How like her, at any alarm to run towards him, not away! ‘It’s all right, you see I’m not touched.’ He paused in the doorway to switch off the chandelier. ‘Come along in, and I’ll get you a drink. We could both use one.’

  He stood back for her to enter the room before him, and then, passing her with a gentle touch on her arm to urge her towards a chair, he crossed to the window and drew all the curtains close before going to the cabinet and reaching into it for a second glass. She still had not uttered a sound, and the arm he had touched had felt like marble in his hand, cold with shock. It astonished him when he heard her move a few steps and turn the key in the lock. He smiled. She had always that intense sense of duty, she was taking no chances with him now.

  ‘You’ll have to ope
n that again, you know,’ he said reasonably. ‘I’ve got to find Una before we raise the drawbridge and drop the portcullis. Where did you leave her?’

  He turned with the glass in his hand, and looked into the round black eye of a small pistol.

  His first thought was that she had privately accepted from Wehrle the protection he had refused, intent upon not failing in her charge. He even began to say, smiling: ‘You’re not going to need that …’ But there he broke off. He had once known guns, Austrian-made guns at any rate, very well, and this was a smaller calibre thing, a good two inches shorter overall, with a stubby barrel and a wide, flat butt. He still knew the difference between a Steyr .32 and a little .25 Owa at sight. This one wouldn’t put a slug through five inches of pine board at fifteen feet, but it would put one through a man, at pointblank range. And he had been wrong: she was going to need it. It was another charge she was intent on fulfilling, at all costs.

  She had not moved. She stood with her shoulders braced back against the door, her great eyes fixed unwaveringly upon him. All the colour had drained from her face, and left her pale as marble, and stonily calm. The fine, competent hand was quite steady upon the butt of the gun. She held it as if it had been her familiar all her life, and could be relied upon absolutely to do her will now. He thought he had never seen anyone look so desperately sad.

  So now he knew everything. He had what he had wanted; he was face to face with his enemy, and no policeman between them.

  ‘I see!’ he said in a long sigh, and the smile that had died on his lips came slowly back to them. ‘You know, I’ve often read that a whisper has no character or sex or age, but one forgets to keep that kind of knowledge in mind. The one thing that never occurred to me was that the child might have been a girl! Now what am I to call you, Crista or Valentine?’ She didn’t answer, she seemed not to hear him; and no doubt both those names were hers. ‘What have you done with Una?’ She didn’t answer that, either, but it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t hurt Una, her score was against no one but him. And the imaginary gunman in the garden, it seemed, need cause him no anxiety on anyone’s account; he had already served his purpose.