Wolf on a String

by Benjamin Black

  I stood up. No, I did not have the stomach for it. I had a sick sensation, and in my mouth a taste of bitterness and bile.

  The Chamberlain, still seated, with his fingers laced together now in his lap, was watching me.

  “Come,” he said, in almost a whisper. “The letters—where are they?”

  27

  I proposed to him a bargain. It was quickly struck, since my demands were simple, and few. In return for the letters, he would guarantee safe passage for me out of Prague. I would have a carriage and driver, and an armed escort would accompany me as far as the Polish border. No one was to know which direction I had taken—no one. His Majesty especially was not to be told of my leaving until I was well gone. Further, Curtius would return to me my purse of money, and would be made to stand before me while I counted the sum and verified it to the last coin.

  “All that I can grant,” the Chamberlain said, “easily. And also—? For I can see there’s more.”

  Yes, there was one thing more: Elizabeth Jane Weston was to be afforded the full protection of the Chamberlain’s office.

  On this the Chamberlain looked at me askance.

  “Oh, and what’s she to you?” he inquired, smirking.

  I made no reply. My satchel was on the floor at my feet. I leaned down and took it up and undid the buckles, and brought out the iron box and set it on the table between us. The Chamberlain stood and gazed at it. Then he laughed.

  “You had it with you, all this time that we were here, jawing?” He shook his head. “You force me to revise my estimation of you yet further upwards. You are not at all the dolt I thought you were.” He glanced at me sidelong. “Have you seen the contents?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “It’s locked,” I said. “You’ll have to break it open.”

  He chuckled.

  “Oh, I suspect not,” he said. “Wait.”

  He reached inside his habit and brought out the gold medallion, the one Magdalena Kroll had been wearing the night I found her in the snow. He placed it on the table and pressed the secret switch, and the Medusa-headed lid sprang open.

  “I had a notion about the thing,” he said, “a feeling that there was something I was not seeing. Then I searched, and found it.”

  He dug a fingernail into the paste filling the hidden compartment, and hooked out an object that had been sunk deep in the soft depths. He rubbed it between his palms to clean it, and held it aloft.

  It was a key, a small, iron key.

  “I did not know what it was meant to open, but I kept it, all the same. So now let us see.” He picked up the box and turned the key in the keyhole; the lock clicked. “Ah!” he breathed. “I was right.”

  I walked to the window. Below was the Stag Moat. I thought of Madek’s body bobbing in the water there, among the shards of ice.

  I was putting my trust in Philipp Lang. I had to trust someone.

  Behind me he had opened the box and taken out the letters; I heard him riffling through them, humming to himself.

  How had Magdalena Kroll come to have the key to the box? Madek must have sent it to her, a token of love betrayed.

  “Oh, yes,” the Chamberlain behind me exclaimed under his breath, “oh, yes, indeed. Now we shall know what things they were hatching between them, those two.” He opened a drawer in the prie-dieu and took out the code-book, then came to the window and shook the letters in my face. “With this evidence to show against him, I can hang the fellow ten times over!”

  I did not shift my gaze from the window and the wintry prospect beyond the glass. I was remembering how, that very first night, Wenzel had instinctively put out a hand to help the dead girl’s father as in his grief he faltered. I had taken my stance, I had chosen a side: had I done right? Then the thought returned of Jan Madek dead, with his eyes torn out.

  No side is right, ever.

  “You are melancholy,” the Chamberlain said, standing beside me with the letters in his hand. He smiled, and shrugged. “Remember,” he said, “someone has to prevail.”

  I went to my chamber. Curtius had put it back into some sort of order. To my surprise, I found the money purse returned to its place at the back of the drawer where I had hidden it. I counted the gold and silver pieces; they were all there. Curtius was either honest, or too fearful of his master’s ire to risk stealing my gold.

  I packed my satchel with what few things I judged I would need—some clothes, the purse, my astrolabe. I stood for a moment weighing the volume of Pliny in my palm, then laid it down on the table. Lang was right: the old man was too dry.

  I spied a cherry stone on the hearth. Nothing else remained. I looked at the bed. Nothing else.

  I had finished my packing when Curtius appeared, bringing food for me, soup with lentils, bread, slices of dried apple, a jug of ale. The Chamberlain’s man exuded a curious faint smell, as of candle wax. He was one of those pale clerks whose time of power in the sun—or, better say, under a gibbous moon—would not be long in coming, when Rudolf was gone and his cousin Ferdinand raised up a conflagration in the world. It was from the likes of Curtius that I fled here, to this cold coast, than which there is no farther north for me to go, unless I should end up in Ultima Thule itself.

  My next visitor was the Chamberlain; he bustled in, in high good humor, rubbing his hands. I was standing by the window, with a plate of bread and the remaining few slices of apple. He cast a quizzical glance at the packed bag at my feet.

  “Will you leave so soon?” he exclaimed. “Won’t you wait to see the High Steward brought low? I am putting him in the cell where he put you. You might visit him there, to crow a little. No? Why, sir, where is your spirit of revenge? You told me he threatened you with the rack, and there’s no doubt he would have had you broken on it, had someone not stepped in to save you.”

  To all this I gave no acknowledgment; I was weary of the man, of his skits and sallies. I asked what measures he had made to ensure that Elizabeth Weston should be safe.

  “Oh, Elizabeth Weston, Elizabeth Weston!” he exclaimed, with a flick of his hand. “Why are you so concerned for this female?”

  “That is no business of yours,” I answered.

  “Ah,” he said, nodding and smiling. “Ah, I see. By heaven, young man, you do spread your favors wide!”

  He plucked a crust of bread from my plate and began to nibble at it. Outside, a weak sun was managing to shine, even as the first flakes of snow swayed randomly in the air.

  “Sir Henry Wotton,” I said, suddenly remembering—“what has become of him?”

  The Chamberlain laughed.

  “Sir Henry, learning of what had transpired at Most, suddenly remembered that he had urgent business to attend to in Italy. He is in Venice now, I believe, wooing the Doge and touting for business on the Rialto. A very active fellow, the good Sir Henry. You know his definition of an ambassador? ‘An honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for England.’” He gave a hoot of laughter. “A polished scoundrel, but witty withal.”

  A flourish of bugles sounded in the distance.

  “Hark!” the Chamberlain said, lifting up a finger, “that will be Matthias going home to Vienna. Good riddance. He would keep inquiring for the High Steward, and grew quite testy over his absence. I had not the heart to tell him that his man was even then on his way to the White Tower.” He picked a morsel of apple from my plate and popped it into his mouth. “I wonder how he will take to a diet of bread and water?” He shot me a merry glance. “You, as I recall, found it not at all to your taste.”

  He stepped past me to the window and looked out at the snow with a suddenly gloomy eye.

  “Ferdinand will be staying for some days,” he said. “There will be revels—subdued ones, I grant you, Ferdinand being Ferdinand.”

  “‘Our man,’” I said.

  He cast at me a sidelong glance. “How so?”

  “It’s what Mistress Sardo said of him, that he is ‘our man’—hers, yours, and mine too, supposedly.”

  “Well
, yes, certainly, she is right. He is indeed our man.” He sighed wistfully. “I would have had a gayer fellow, given the choice. I blame the Jesuits—they got him early and did not let go. Though, mind you, he is not without a certain wit, young Ferdinand. Not long ago he rounded up a cabal of alchemists who had promised to make gold for him and failed, and hanged them like a line of finches on a scaffold that he had ordered specially gilded for the occasion. That could almost pass for a joke, yes, or a show of irony at least?” I said nothing. “I see you are not amused,” he said, smiling.

  The Chamberlain turned away from the window and smacked his palms together softly.

  “So,” he said. “Shall we say our farewells?” He put a hand to his breast. “No tears, I hope? His Majesty will miss you, even though he’s wrought against you now. He forgives everyone everything, in the end.”

  He smiled, and touched a finger lightly to my cheek, and strode busily away.

  I put the plate down on the windowsill, and drained the mug of ale.

  Time to be gone.

  But first I had a last visit to pay, to the place where I had started.

  In Golden Lane the cobbles gleamed. Great soft wet flakes of snow were falling hurriedly. I tried the known door; it was unlocked. I stepped inside and stood in the little room among familiar odors, familiar shadows, feeling hardly more than a shadow myself.

  Something glinted on the table. Before I picked it up I knew what it would be: my mother’s ring.

  Serafina.

  How had she known I would come, this last time? The ring was too small to fit on any of my fingers. I put it into my purse, along with my money, where I had found it in the first place.

  It was old, that purse, old and worn. Might it once have belonged to my mother? And might it be she who had put the ring in it, and forgotten about it, those long years ago, when I was a babe and she was still of this earth? It was possible. After all, the god of chance is ever at our side, shaking the dice in his fist.

  I heard a footstep behind me and turned. It was a woman, in a gray cape, hooded, with flakes of snow on her shoulders.

  “Serafina!” I cried.

  But I was mistaken.

  “Is that the name of the little mouse who used to keep you warm here?” Caterina Sardo asked.

  She lowered the hood of her cape. Her bronze-gold hair was arranged in the way it had been the first time I saw her, in a long, loose braid flung with artless care over her right shoulder. How often I had twined that lovely lock around my fist and drawn her head back to expose her tautened throat, that pillar of cool, soft marble.

  “It’s you,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s me, certo,” she answered drily. “Are you very disappointed?”

  The snow-light spread a rich effulgence around her.

  “It’s cold,” she said, “as it always is, in this place.” She looked at my bag on the floor, at the purse in my hand. “You were going to leave without bidding good-bye? Dio mio, all is so changed.”

  What could I say to her? I looked into her eyes, in which I seemed to detect a new expression, a new uncertainty.

  “The girl,” I said. “Serafina, at the Nuncio’s house.”

  I stopped. She waited.

  “Sì?” she said, with a flicker of impatience. “What of her?”

  I paused, for the space of two deep breaths.

  “If you harm that child,” I said, “I shall hear of it, and come back and find you, and nothing will protect you from my wrath.”

  She stood and gazed at me, blank-eyed now. The moments passed. In the open doorway at her back the swift snow fell straight down in silence, like an endless curtain falling. She smiled then, and turned her face away, and sighed.

  “Oh, Christian Stern,” she said. She put out a hand behind her blindly and pushed the door shut. “Quanto sei stupido—you are, you really are a fool, my poor sweet fellow.”

  She stepped forward, until she was close enough for me to smell the fragrance of her body. There were patches of melted snow on her cheeks, on her forehead.

  “Why have you come here?” I asked curtly. “I know about your son, about Magdalena Kroll, about—about everything.”

  “No no no,” she said, gently, as if she were hushing a refractory child. “You know nothing, caro mio.” Her voice was a whisper now. “Nothing.”

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked

  “I followed you.” She took my hand. “Come,” she said, “come sit with me, for just a little while.”

  She led me to the table. We sat.

  “The girl, Serafina,” she said, “you need not be concerned for her safety. Malaspina will protect her—who lays a finger on Malaspina, or any person in his care, lays a finger on the Pope himself. And should that happen, that finger, believe me, would soon be separated from its hand.”

  I looked at her. What had changed? She was no longer the enchanting witch whom I had loved so desperately, in such transports of bedazzled terror, these past weeks. Was she, like Philipp Lang, only an actor, one who now had stepped down from the stage? I saw the wrinkles beside her eyes, the straw-colored wisps of hair at the corners of her mouth, the knotted veins in the backs of her hands. She had become her age, suddenly.

  “Why have you come?” I asked again.

  “I know all that the Chamberlain has promised you.”

  “How did you—?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head rapidly.

  “It does not matter,” she said.

  “I think it matters.”

  “Io io io!” she said, making a funnel of her lips and speaking in a hollow voice, mimicking me. Then she smiled, and cupped a hand against my cheek. “You are such a little boy sometimes,” she said. “So sure, so stubborn.”

  I looked to the window, and the blundering snow outside.

  “Tell me how you knew about the Chamberlain and me.”

  “Because he told me,” she said. “As he tells me everything.” She moved her hand from my cheek now and put it at the back of my neck and drew me closer. “He promised you that you might leave the city, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said. “A carriage is to come for me here at nightfall. By morning I shall be far away.”

  She regarded me, with a pitying smile.

  “No carriage will come, caro Christian, there will be no escort to the border. If you stay here, by morning you shall be at the bottom of the Vltava. He will drown you, you and all that you know.”

  Still gripping me by the neck, she leaned forward and put her lips to my ear. “Rudolf has ordered it,” she whispered.

  She released me, and sat back on the chair, nodding.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “You’re trying to trick me.”

  “No no no,” she said again, in that softly soothing tone. “His star has set; he will not consent to see it rise again. This is true. Lang’s men have their instructions.”

  I scrambled to my feet angrily, knocking over the chair I had been sitting on.

  “Why?” I demanded. “Why would His Majesty do such a thing?”

  She was silent for a long time, sitting with her hands loose in her lap and her head bent. At last she looked up at me.

  “Because you know who murdered Magdalena Kroll.”

  “But it was he who ordered me to discover her killer!” I cried.

  Now she too stood up. It always surprised me how tall she was, tall enough to look level into my eyes.

  “Yes,” she said, “and you carried out his order, and now my son is banished—”

  In a fury, I seized her by the shoulders and shook her. She hung unresisting in my grasp, her limbs twitching like a puppet’s.

  “You knew,” I shouted. “You knew the things he did! You knew he killed the girl. You knew it was him outside the door of my chamber that day, you knew it was he who flung himself at me in the corridor—you knew!”

  I let go of her, and she flopped back onto the chair. I turned away and paced the floor with my arms folded, tra
pping my fists—I was afraid I would use them to strike her.

  “Look at you,” I said in disgust, “you cannot even weep.”

  She rose again from the chair, drawing her cloak around herself.

  “Cold,” she murmured. “So cold.”

  I stood before her, barring her way. She looked at me, frowning vaguely, as if she no longer knew who I was, just as I no longer knew her.

  “You should go now,” she said. “They will come for you soon.”

  She stepped past me, turning towards the door. I caught her arm. She stopped and stood motionless, with her head bowed. She would not look at me.

  “Did you know?” I asked. “About your son, about the dwarf, about what they did?”

  She shrugged, still with her face turned away from me.

  “I knew,” she said, “and I didn’t know. What does it matter?”

  I let go of her arm, but still she stood there, head down, her shoulders drooping.

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “What will I do?” She spoke the words slowly, consideringly, seeming to turn them this way and that to examine them, as if they were in a language she did not understand. “I will do nothing. Live. All will be as it was before. I will remember you for a little while, and then forget. I will visit my son. I will know and not know.”

  She stirred then and drew up her hood and went quickly to the door and opened it, and stepped out into the snow. I tried to call out her name, but I could not.

  I went to the Blue Elephant, to buy back my horse. It had died, the ostler told me. I did not believe him, but I had not the time to argue. He offered me a sway-backed mare with a bloodshot eye, asking an absurd price. We haggled, I paid him half of what he had demanded, and he went off swearing under his breath.

  Outside, the snow was coming down in swirling billows. I mounted up, and the little mare threw back at me an anxious glance. I gave her flanks a prod with my heels, not hard, and we clopped away. A long road lay before us, northwards.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Wolf on a String is a historical fantasy. But then, real life at the court of Rudolf II was entirely phantasmagorical. The definitive account of the period is Rudolf II and His World, by R. J. W. Evans. More popular in tone, but no less authoritative, is The Mercurial Emperor: The Magic Circle of Rudolf II in Renaissance Prague, by Peter Marshall. I owe an unrepayable debt to the work of both of these fine scholars. Needless to say, they are wholly innocent in the matter of my large-scale distortions of the facts of history.