Circle of Shadows

by Imogen Robertson

  ‘Sorry, son,’ he said to the boy, who was looking at him outraged. ‘But you get an extra shilling for it, in case they box your ears for dropping it.’

  The boy took the coin and shrugged. It was a fair price for a beating. Pegel examined each letter carefully, made some notes, and then returned them to the messengers, who left with extra pennies in their hands. With their help Pegel traced the passage of the news of yesterday’s attack through the town. It fluttered through the Law Faculty, among half-a-dozen philosophers, and circled via a couple of the more prosperous tradesmen to the Vice Chancellor himself. It circled once more, then fell softly on the doorstep of a house not far from Pegel’s own, and the name on the note was not one with which Pegel was familiar. Dunktal. Interesting. The letters were all sealed, most with that curious mark of the owl. Pegel made more notes in the back of his book. Wrote down each name and direction and drew lines one to the other. By the middle of the afternoon he thought he had a fair idea of the names of Florian’s secret friends and, roughly, the hierarchy of the organisation. In his experience, bad news travels upwards like a bad smell. The small boys who chose to play outside Dunktal’s door reported that though the news had entered the house, it travelled no further forward. Jacob put his notebook into his pocket and sauntered down towards Herr Dunktal’s front door.

  Though she had spent as yet only one day in Ulrichsberg, the sense of relief Harriet felt when they passed out of the town was considerable. The road they followed wound upwards along the path cut by one of the tributaries to the Neckar, climbing into the hills until the placid river by which they had started their journey had disappeared, and become a distant sigh in the valley below. On either side of them the forest stretched away, broken from place to place with columns of dark red sandstone; their edges softened with mosses and ivy, their silhouettes broken by new birch leaves. Scents of earth and water filled the carriage. Graves, freed from the palace, looked positively cheerful. Harriet glanced at Rachel, remembering their conversation of the previous evening and wondering if she had said everything she should have done.

  Harriet remembered the first weeks of her own married life vividly, and with a certain amount of shame. She had loved James, and felt she knew him when they wed, but she recalled only too well the strangeness of first encountering the physical being of her husband outside the drawing room or the ballroom. The scent of him had been foreign, the sight of him stripped back to himself alarming. The physical side of marriage she had learned … to appreciate. She had been lucky. James had travelled the world before he met her and, he told her some months into their marriage, had once been the lover of an older woman, a widow. Though the idea that he had been as intimate with another as he was with her had troubled and scratched at her, she also recognised its advantages. He came to her bed wise, patient and kind. His strangeness became familiar, his touch sought after, valued.

  She had assumed that Clode, so handsome a young man, would have entered into marriage as experienced as James. She felt she had to blame herself. She had chosen to forget that Clode had been raised in a much more limited circle, and was rather younger than James had been. She had also ignored the slight prudishness in Clode’s nature, and in Rachel’s. It had been a choice. Rachel had still been angry with Harriet for continuing to involve herself with the investigations of murder even in the weeks leading up to the marriage, and Harriet had found it impossible to do her duty and talk to her sister about physical love. Her cowardice had done Rachel and Daniel a disservice. After three months of marriage Daniel thought himself a brute, and Rachel judged herself as unnatural. Their affection was clouded by fear and embarrassment. Now they were separated by the horrors of the Carnival night.

  Harriet remembered Rachel’s face, turned away slightly as she drank her tea the previous evening. ‘Two nights before the Carnival, I asked him if he had never taken a lover in the past,’ she had said. ‘Harry, he was so angry with me. He asked if I thought he should take one now, as I was unwilling to perform my duties as a wife with good grace.’

  ‘Oh, my dear.’

  ‘That evening we were in company with Lady Martesen, and I know nothing passed between them but common courtesy, but I was so jealous. I stormed and cried and all but accused him of making love to her in front of me! He reassured me, and I was in such a passion I wouldn’t listen to him. Then, well …’

  ‘You can tell me, Rachel.’

  ‘Then it was a great deal better. But we were angry at the time and oh, Harriet, I was so confused the next day. I felt as if some sort of monster had been released, in us both. And I was frightened by it, and Daniel would hardly look at me, and then we went to the Carnival …’

  ‘Did you notice the preparations in town?’ Graves’s voice called Harriet from her thoughts and back into the carriage.

  ‘I did,’ she said, passing her hand over her forehead. ‘The Princess’s reception should be magnificent.’

  ‘Poor girl,’ Rachel said. ‘She is only fifteen, you know, and has never met the Duke.’

  Graves crossed his long legs and stared out at the passing forest. ‘And now she will arrive in this murderous court with Manzerotti to sing her welcome.’

  ‘She is trained for it,’ Harriet said. ‘She will have wealth, power, influence.’

  ‘Do you envy her, Harry?’

  ‘No, Rachel. I do not.’

  Castle Grenzhow was a structure from a less frivolous time. It brooded high over the river valley and watched the narrow road askance through thin windows. Only the eastern part of the castle had been maintained. The tower to the west had crumbled to a rotted stump, and beside it the remains of the manor house had dwindled to walls without floors or ceilings, a stone staircase that opened on empty air, halls of weeds and grasses. All was in pinkish stone.

  The single track that led to the gate could be observed by the castle’s remaining guardians throughout its last curving, climbing mile, and those in the carriage could feel themselves watched and waited for.

  The castle, Harriet discovered when the carriage drew into the forecourt, had a more numerous population than she had at first thought. She had imagined Clode alone in a tower with one crooked guard to lock and unlock the door to his chamber. Instead the surviving part of the castle showed signs of being a thriving little community. There were several men on the gate and in the yard, and more supervising a work-party down the slope. In the work-party were perhaps a dozen men wielding pickaxes, all dressed in plain uniform work-clothes. She could not help looking into their faces with alarm, and felt Rachel’s hand brush her own.

  ‘Daniel has not been forced to work,’ she said. ‘Here, as everywhere else, status is what counts. He has a room and his own clothes. These men …’ she nodded out of the window, ‘are from peasant stock.’

  ‘What are their crimes?’ Harriet said, trying to pick out individual faces. None of the men were young, and all had the weather-worn skin of those used to outdoor work. None were fat, but none showed sign of malnourishment.

  ‘I asked the same thing, Harry. Persistent drunkenness or theft. Some argued with their priests or the headmen in their village.’

  The carriage came to a halt and the door was opened by one of the scarlet footmen the court had provided to travel about with their visitors. An oppressive courtesy. A gentleman emerged from the heavy interior of the castle to greet them with a broad smile. He was not the hunched and shuffling jailer of Harriet’s imaginings, but a figure wigged and frock-coated, brushing crumbs from his waistcoat. Rachel made the introductions and he smiled at them very pleasantly and asked after their journey.

  ‘I am sure that all of Ulrichsberg is in a froth!’ he said, gesturing with his hands so broadly Harriet was afraid he might topple over backwards. ‘A new Duchess! I have had her portrait hung up in my office already, next to that of Ludwig Christoph. She is a pretty girl, but regal, I am sure you understand what I mean – regal!’

  ‘How is my husband, Herr Hoffman?’ asked Rachel. />
  He shook his head. ‘Pleased to hear of the arrival of his friends, but I wish I could get him to eat a little more. I had my own cook send up some of my stew yesterday evening, so delicious it was. But he hardly touched it.’

  He blinked at Harriet and Graves. ‘The wind tells me you are already sowing doubt about Mr Clode’s guilt at court.’

  ‘You are very well informed, sir,’ Harriet said, surprised.

  ‘Fresh supplies and fresh gossip arrived only an hour or two ago, milady. You have an early meeting with the Duke, and Mr Clode’s friends leave it looking hopeful. The Countess Dieth has a conversation with the Duke, and her reactions are observed. A scribe is asked to make a copy of a letter. The tone shifts and without quite knowing why, we start to think Mr Clode is innocent. And I wanted to say, I am absolutely delighted about that. Such a pleasant, well-educated young man, a little serious perhaps, but it has been a pleasure to guard him. If you whip him away I shall have to hope the Duke finds some scribbler of seditious pamphlets to lock up here for a few months, or I shall be deprived of civilised company. No doubt some young man will publish something insulting for the wedding. I trust in that.’

  Graves opened and shut his mouth a few times before managing, ‘It is kind of you to say you wish him freed, sir, if you would feel his loss so.’

  Herr Hoffman waved his handkerchief. ‘Not at all, milord Graves. I would lose him anyway to the axe-man, given the charge, and would much rather see him go free! Do not worry about me a jot.’

  To that Graves had no reply at all, so merely bowed.

  ‘Kleinman!’ A rather stooped-looking creature appeared suddenly at his elbow in the doorway. ‘Kleinman will take you up. Such a delight to make your acquaintance. I hope I shall see you at one or other of the fêtes and celebrations in town. Perhaps I shall be delivering dear Mr Clode back to you!’

  ‘You are able to leave your place here then, sir?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Oh yes, from time to time. Some of these fellows have been here fifteen years. If I unlocked the doors and gave them the key, they’d probably lock themselves up again at once. Really, where could they go?’

  In spite of what Rachel had told her, Harriet had not been prepared to see Daniel so drawn. There was a gauntness to his features, and though he met them warmly, Rachel was right, he was still distant, still to some degree lost in that night.

  ‘Harriet! Owen! How strange to see you here. What do you think of my first establishment as a married man?’

  The room in which he was held was plain, but not uncomfortable. He had a little pile of books on his desk and a narrow view of the forest. The walls were the unplastered reddish stone of the castle, the only decoration a simple wooden cross above his narrow cot. Harriet preferred it to her own accommodation in court.

  ‘I rather like it,’ she said with a brisk smile and took a seat on one of the wooden stools provided. She removed her gloves and handed him a letter. ‘From your parents, Daniel.’ His expression as he saw the handwriting on the envelope was both tender and pained.

  ‘How are they?’ he asked. ‘I feared for my mother’s health – that the news might make her ill.’

  His deep blue eyes looked too large for his face. Harriet felt an overwhelming urge to bundle the young couple into the carriage at once and not let them out of her sight till they were pink with health again. ‘She is frightened for you, Daniel, of course, but I suspect she is stronger than you think. Verity intended to call on them again with her parents when they arrived from London. She will give them every attention and I think they will like each other.’

  ‘Yes, I think they will. However gracious you are to them, Harriet, my father still feels like a footman in front of you.’ He ran his hand through his hair and Harriet noticed for the first time grey hairs among the black. ‘He and Mr Chase will understand each other. It is good of Verity to look to them. You have married well, Graves.’

  Graves was looking uncertain, something shocked by his friend’s looks and tone. His voice was serious as he replied, ‘I know it, Daniel. And better than I deserve, much like yourself.’

  Clode dropped his gaze. ‘Of course, I did not mean,’ he put his hand out to Rachel, ‘you know I did not mean to imply …’

  Rachel smiled and shook her head. ‘Of course not, Daniel.’

  An odd, clinging sort of silence fell over them. Harriet looked out at the forest through the open shutter. It filled the frame with spring green. So vast it seemed, waves hiding the landscape. It reminded her of the sea when they were out of sight of land, how it seemed to flow to the edges of vision.

  ‘You have come to tell me about your reception in court,’ Daniel said. His voice was slightly hoarse, as if he had become unpractised at speech. ‘Do you think they mean to execute me? Or lock me in a madhouse?’

  ‘They will do neither,’ Graves said. ‘You will be returning to England with us, your name cleared and their profound apologies ringing in your ears. What is the matter with you, man? We have travelled for weeks and you greet us as if we’d just arrived rather inconveniently while you were writing epic verse or somesuch.’

  Clode almost smiled. Almost. ‘I thank you for coming, and I know you will do everything in your power to release me. But how can anyone, even Harriet and Mr Crowther, find out the truth of that night? It must haunt me always.’ He folded his arms across his body as if cold. ‘I thank you, for Rachel’s sake, but you can do nothing for me, I think.’

  ‘All that Crowther and Mrs Westerman have done, and you show such little faith? In two months you’ll be home and dancing with my wards till you are sick with laughing.’

  Clode turned sharply on his friend. ‘Laugh?’ Harriet noticed that as he lifted his hand to his temple, the fingers were shaking a little. ‘You don’t understand, Owen. I was parted from my reason, the horrors of that night …’

  ‘No, I do not understand, and from what I saw of that little girl, I can only imagine. But it was a dream, Daniel. A nightmare, and you must learn to see it in that light, rather than brood.’

  ‘What little girl?’

  ‘One who thought I was King of the Fairies. There, that almost made you smile! Your mask was drugged, my friend. We have just seen a demonstration this morning. A child wore it for a short time – and she saw all manner of things.’

  ‘So it was drugged?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that does not prove I am innocent of doing Lady Martesen harm.’

  Graves was quite red in the face. Harriet felt a wave of affection for him. ‘From what I read, you were hardly capable of standing. Could you, in that state, pour water down a woman’s throat till she drowned?’

  ‘Drowned?’ Clode lowered himself onto one of the rough stools in the room and stared at Graves, his mouth slightly open.

  ‘Yes, drowned. You were drugged with your nasty mask – I can’t believe you were fool enough to wear such a thing – and she drowned on dry land. Hoffman will be delivering you back to court within the day, I guarantee it. And you will look every silk-smothered devil there in the face like a free-born Englishman! So there is a little parcel of facts for you and we have others to hand too if you will stop staring out of the window like a hero in a novel and act like a man. Do you have food here? Rachel says she always brings you delicacies and finds them untouched.’ He picked up a stool and placed it opposite Daniel, blocking his view of the forest. ‘And by the way, Manzerotti is in court.’

  Daniel turned to stare at Harriet. ‘Good God, Harriet! Is he …? Have you …?’

  Harriet tilted her head to one side. ‘I was going to stab him with one of Mr Al-Said’s files, but he provided a pistol so I almost shot him instead. I hate to say it, but I think having the opportunity to do so, and not killing him, has done me a great deal of good.’

  Rachel smothered a shocked laugh. Clode was speechless. Graves ploughed on.

  ‘Now we have a mission, Daniel. We must think through every moment of your time in court before the Ca
rnival and see who might have had a reason to try and murder you alongside Lady Martesen.’

  Daniel was looking confused and distressed, and Rachel put out her hand. ‘Graves, please! Daniel has been very ill.’

  Graves reached across the table and grabbed one of Clode’s wrists, jerking it towards him. His coatsleeve rode up and the scar, thin and livid across his wrist, was exposed. Graves turned his hand back and forth. ‘Seems to be healing well enough. A year and you won’t even have to wear long cuffs. Rachel, you have been too sympathetic. What Clode here needs is good food and a swift reminder of his duties.’

  ‘You think they aimed to kill me?’ Clode said slowly, looking up at his friend.

  ‘Don’t be a fool. Lord, I’ve entrusted my ward’s fortune to a babe-in-arms. Think, Daniel – if Colonel Padfield had not broken down the door, you would have died on the floor in your own blood. It was the merest chance saved you. Someone meant you,’ he released his grip to point at Clode fiercely, ‘you – to die there. Now who?’

  Clode looked across at Harriet. ‘Is this your opinion too, Harriet?’

  ‘Yes. In all particulars,’ she said very calmly, ‘and Crowther’s too.’

  Clode shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself again. ‘Very well.’ Then he lifted his head and looked at Harriet. ‘You and Mr Crowther are come like angels to deliver me, Harriet.’ The corner of his mouth twitched, and she saw something of his former self trying to return. She only smiled in reply, trying somehow in that smile to show both her faith and her sympathy.

  ‘Do you have pen and paper?’ Graves asked, looking about him. ‘I shall act as your scribe.’

  ‘No, Graves. Dear God, only years of close study have taught me to read your hand.’ Clode sighed deeply and shook himself. ‘Let Rachel write while you play drill master with my memory. But Manzerotti?’