Circle of Shadows

by Imogen Robertson

  Michaels began to work along the dress, loosening the soil until he realised he was not feeling vines now in the earth under his fingertips but human hair. The priest paused. She had been buried face down.

  Sitting back on his heels and wiping the sweat and muck from his eyes, Georg said, ‘She needs a box to put her in, and we’ll need a few extra hands to manage her back along the way.’ He stood and brushed the soil from his knees. ‘Will you come back with me, Father?’

  ‘No, no,’ the priest said quietly. ‘I’ll watch with Mr Michaels over this poor soul.’ The dress was a dark blue.

  V.7

  HARRIET RETURNED TO THE palace with a fierce frown drawing her eyebrows together and Graves staggering under the weight of a number of volumes. He placed them carefully on the little writing-table in her room and gingerly stretched his fingers.

  ‘I hope you made more of that than I did, Mrs Westerman,’ he said.

  ‘I can hardly say, Graves,’ she said, taking the first volume from the pile and turning the pages. ‘Alchemy again. These drawings are very beautiful, are they not? But they seem to me to be fairy stories for adults. With so many meanings available … it is like some drug for the imagination. Everything has a dozen possible resonances and so a manner of significance to every creature on God’s earth.’

  Graves drew a circle on the polished surface of the little walnut side-table next to him. ‘An alchemical emblem of life and balance scrawled on the wall where a woman is murdered.’

  ‘There is ritual in these murders, Graves. Why drown a woman on dry land, or choke another with earth in the confines of the palace, if it were not vital to the killer that they die in such a manner?’

  ‘A sense of the theatrical?’ Graves said. ‘A demonstration of power? There is something grandiose here, don’t you think? Overblown? I saw a production of Caractacus at Covent Garden in seventy-six where the gold of the setting overpowered the music so completely, they might as well have not bothered giving it voice at all.’

  When she did not reply, he looked up. Mrs Westerman was a little too casual for him in her handling of the rare texts of the Sovereign’s Collection; she had in her hands a volume he suspected of being a survivor of the Renaissance, and was holding it at arm’s length and turning one way and another. ‘Do treat those poor things carefully, Mrs Westerman,’ he said in a pleading tone.

  Harriet turned the book towards him. It was open at a double page showing a variety of strange-looking symbols, pentangles studded about with astronomical figures picked out in gold and red.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think so? Perhaps, but this one’ – she tapped one in the centre of the right-hand page – ‘I am sure I have seen this somewhere before.’

  Graves realised she was already alone with her studies so stood to take his leave. ‘Are you sure you will not come to the castle?’

  She looked up at him. ‘No, I think not. I must read.’ She flashed him a tight quick smile and returned to her books.

  Crowther found Harriet some time later, still surrounded by the volumes from the library, but with a light in her eyes. She became still while he told her of the body of Countess Dieth and what he had learned from it, but when he asked her about the fruits of her own labours she became quite animated again.

  ‘These are fascinating, Crowther,’ she said. ‘In another hour I shall have the secret for making gold from lead.’

  ‘I had quite enough of alchemy yesterday, Mrs Westerman. Do not tell me you have turned mystic?’

  She smiled. ‘It is strange, many of the books Beatrice took were not about alchemy as such, but more about magic generally. Spells and seals. Ways to become invisible, discover secrets or treasure. No, I have not turned mystic, but there is beauty here, and such imagination.’

  ‘It is nonsense,’ he said.

  She raised a hand and let it fall again. ‘Powerful nonsense, if you believe in it. I have also been thinking of Kupfel’s shaman and his ingredients. Many of the men who sailed with my husband knew the waters round the Dominican Isles,’ she said, ‘and they feared what they found there. They would tell legends of men brought back from the dead and made to serve the magicians that summoned them. If one were ever allowed on the ship, they said the spirits of the sea would rise up in rage and drown everyone on board. Do you see what I mean, when I say belief gives these things power? Perhaps those men were people who had been treated with some of the strange remnants Kupfel has gathered together. He thought himself in hell when he took the paralysing drops; whatever Clode took made him see devils. Many men might think they had died and been summoned again from hell.’ Crowther nodded reluctantly. ‘I thought them only stories that sailors tell, like the kraken and mermaids. Horrible to think there might be some truth in them.’

  ‘But why, Mrs Westerman? Why have these individuals been chosen to suffer such torments and then be killed in such a way?’

  ‘Are you encouraging me to speculate, Crowther?’ She was teasing him, but he could not help that.

  ‘I suppose I am to a degree. I will try not to do so again.’

  Her eyes danced then she turned towards the window again and became serious. ‘Opportunity? This madman wants blood, so he takes it where he can and then performs his strange killings. That might answer for those earlier deaths – men who lived on their own. But what could be more difficult than killing in the middle of the palace! It does not answer.’

  She put her chin in her hand and drummed her fingers on one of the volumes on the table. Crowther watched her. It had, he admitted silently to himself, become one of his pleasures over the last years to watch Mrs Westerman think.

  ‘Let us suppose we are right about those previous deaths. These are all individuals who had great influence with the Duke, or in the case of the writer, some influence on the general society. Could they be political assassinations? But then this element of theatre in the deaths, the ritual …’

  Crowther picked up one of the volumes from her pile and began to turn the pages as he spoke. ‘A performance, but a private performance; a ritual, but it has some purpose. The removal of the blood …’

  ‘Blood has great significance in all these volumes, it seems to me. Though they normally ask that the magician use his own. There then follows a great deal of chanting.’

  ‘Of course blood is significant,’ he said. ‘Every child knows blood somehow contains the spark of life, and that if we lose enough of it we cease to be. But what led you into these paths, Mrs Westerman? This symbol?’

  ‘And your list of what was pilfered from Herr Kupfel. The librarian, Zeller, was intrigued by our little design. He says it is an emblem of alchemy.’ She took one of the volumes from behind her, opened it and turned it to face him. The picture was a complex one, filled with figures and symbols. A crown, a salamander, a bearded face, but the central form of a seven-spoked wheel placed over a triangle seemed identical to the design chalked on the door to the room where Dieth was murdered.

  ‘It seems very like.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it? And it appears in one of the books stolen from Kupfel. Shall I explain the symbolism of the original to you?’

  ‘I don’t think that is necessary,’ Crowther said, studying it. ‘The spokes are the seven stages of alchemy, each also related to one of the seven heavenly bodies; here are the four elements; the three points of the triangle are labelled body, spirit and soul. It is like one of Mrs Bligh’s fortune-telling cards, full of great, but somewhat imprecise meanings. What is it, Mrs Westerman?’

  ‘Just that I was at some pains to commit to memory the seven stages of alchemy.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Seven stages, just as there were seven glasses,’ she added. ‘Now what else, seven ages of man, days in the weeks …’

  ‘Celestial bodies, as I said. By the old count.’

  ‘A number of some significance then?’

  ‘Most of them are.’

  She leaned back in her chair. Crowt
her noticed for the first time the remains of a meal amongst the books. He hoped the books would be returned to Herr Zeller unstained.

  ‘But do you not think, Crowther, you would have to hate someone very much, to kill them in this way? These people were not chosen at random. It feels … like revenge.’ She twisted her mourning band on her finger, thinking of Manzerotti.

  ‘Mrs Westerman, give me your hand.’ Crowther spoke quite sharply, so she put it out to him at once. He took it between his own and twisted up the mourning band to the knuckle. In the three years she had worn it, the ring had made itself part of her. The space below was a little paler than the rest of her finger and slightly indented. Crowther’s touch was dry and cool. ‘I am a fool,’ he said.

  ‘Probably. May I have my hand back?’

  ‘Hmm … yes, of course. Countess Dieth wore no rings. Necklace, eardrops, yes, but no rings when I examined her, yet she had a band on her flesh like yours.’

  ‘So she did wear one.’

  ‘Habitually, as you do that mourning band for Captain Westerman. Yet it was not on the body.’

  ‘So the killer might have taken something more than blood?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Harriet rapped her fingers on the veneer of her desk. ‘Could you make out the shape of the ring?’

  ‘Thicker than your band.’

  ‘I wonder if the Duke will see me,’ Harriet murmured. Crowther had raised his eyebrows at her. ‘He was often in company with Dieth. Perhaps he remembers it, and in any case I have the desire to know our host better.’

  ‘Be careful, madam.’

  ‘There is food in the parlour, Crowther. Eat.’

  Harriet was forced to wait some minutes in the anteroom and was wondering if perhaps she was wasting her time, given the number of gentlemen in court dress who also seemed to be waiting to see their sovereign, but it was not long before the door to the Duke’s study was opened again, and a gentleman almost smothered by the splendour of his cravat beckoned her inside.

  Though the room in which she found herself was far too grand for anyone but an Absolute Ruler to call it a study, it was a far more domestic space than any other she had seen in the palace. The colours were the brown and green of leather volumes, and the space was broken up with small groups of chairs and tables. The Duke was bent over his desk while Swann hovered behind him, placing one document after another in front of him for signature. Christoph Ludwig looked up as she entered, then beckoned her forward. She heard a movement behind her and saw that Manzerotti was present, curled in the armchair like a cat. She remembered the Duke’s request for music as he worked the previous day and wondered if Manzerotti had been required to serenade his present patron’s signatures.

  ‘Mrs Westerman!’ the Duke greeted her. ‘I thought you would be on your way to Castle Grenzhow by this time.’

  ‘My sister and Mr Graves have left to collect Mr Clode.’

  The Duke did not look up. ‘I feel like a pharaoh in Egypt, such a plague seems to have struck my advisers. I hope that releasing Clode will lift the curse. Did she suffer?’

  ‘I am sorry to say it, sire. But yes, she did.’

  The Duke was silent, staring at the page in front of him. He was absolutely still for some moments, then, as if he had been suddenly reanimated, lifted his head.

  ‘Ah, here is an uncomfortable case, Mrs Westerman. I’d be delighted to have your opinion on it.’ Harriet wondered, not for the first time, if she should have listened to Crowther. ‘A young woman is accused of killing her husband. From the accounts the lawyers have prepared it sounds rather as if he deserved it. He was a known drunk, a bully, and she was often seen bruised in the village.’

  ‘What does she say, Your Highness?’

  ‘That he was beating her, she used her cooking pot to defend herself, and down he went.’

  ‘Your subjects surely have the right to defend themselves against attack.’

  ‘That depends on who is attacking them, Mrs Westerman. A man rules his wife, as I rule my people. If the people disagreed with the way I ruled them, would you say they had the right to rise up against me?’

  ‘You, sire, are neither a drunk nor a bully.’

  ‘You are a loss to your diplomatic service, Mrs Westerman.’ Harriet smiled, wondering with what disbelief her husband would have heard that opinion. She thought of Manzerotti behind her and touched her mourning ring again like a talisman. ‘The District Officer of the area – not Krall, my dear, I have thirty-four – the Law Faculty at Leuchtenstadt and my Privy Council all recommend execution. Surely if I only imprison her for a year or two that will be seen as weakness on my part?’

  ‘Mercy, sire.’

  He blinked at her. ‘Swann, the lovely Mrs Westerman recommends mercy. Is your heart still of stone?’

  Harriet saw a flash of irritation cross Swann’s face. ‘A crime against a husband is a manner of treason, sire. If you will be merciful, do not agree to her breaking on the wheel, but she must certainly die.’

  The Duke smiled lazily. ‘One would think after all these years, Swann, you would have learned not to say “must” to me. We have failed to protect our friend Countess Dieth, so this is our penance. We will be merciful to this girl. A compliment to the fairer sex. An indulgence.’

  He passed the paper back to Swann unsigned then pushed himself away from the desk a little.

  ‘The gentleman at the door said you have something to ask me, Mrs Westerman. Ask it.’

  ‘Thank you. Did Countess Dieth wear a ring, sire? There seemed to be a mark left on her hand to show she did, but there is no sign of it.’

  He frowned briefly. ‘She did, a sort of signet ring engraved with an owl. I never saw her without it. How strange that it is missing.’ His long-fingered hands went to his neck. ‘Lady Martesen also had a similar device – a jewel she wore at her neck. Swanny, do you remember?’

  ‘No, sire.’

  ‘I teased her about it when I first saw it. They were cousins, you know. I asked them if it was some family emblem.’

  Harriet heard a stir of silk behind her as Manzerotti shifted in his seat. ‘Did she explain it at all?’

  ‘I don’t remember. It made her blush, you see, Mrs Westerman, when I asked, and Aggie always looked so beautiful when she blushed.’ His smile faded and he put up his hand to take another paper from Swann. The Chancellor did not notice for a moment, and it was not until the Duke had clicked his fingers that a fresh sheet was offered to him. The Duke began to read.

  ‘Your Highness?’

  ‘Yes, madam?’

  ‘Might these attacks be aimed at you, sir? This loss of people … of importance to you.’

  He put down his paper and watched her for a few moments. ‘If an assassin can kill Countess Dieth, he could kill me. He has not done so. Therefore I am not a target. No one in court, other than myself, is ever indispensable, but in two days Maulberg will be more secure than it has been for years, and in all likelihood better advised. Do not bridle, Swanny, you know I think the world of you, but we need fresh blood, fresh thinking.’

  Harriet dropped her eyes and curtsied.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Westerman. Glance to your right as you leave. There is a little Caravaggio of St Catherine there of which I am quite fond. Find who is responsible for the deaths of the women, and it is yours.’

  The doors were opened for her, and she paused in the anteroom for a moment, realising her breathing was uncomfortably rapid. She wondered if the Duke had been teasing her when he called her a diplomat. She had just lifted her chin again when the door behind her opened and closed once more and Chancellor Swann emerged. Without preamble he took hold of her elbow and led her into a quieter corner of the room. The waiting gentlemen harrumphed into their collars and stared about them.

  ‘Chancellor Swann?’

  ‘Krall has spoken to me of the Major,’ he said simply. Harriet looked up into his face; he seemed to have aged in the last days. There were shadows under his eyes, and they fli
cked from side to side as he spoke. ‘It is my habit to take a walk in the garden between the hours of four and five o’clock. Perhaps you and Mr Crowther would like to meet me there.’

  His manner surprised her, but she nodded. ‘Certainly, Chancellor.’

  He hesitated as if about to say something more, then retreated once again into the Duke’s audience chamber.

  Harriet found that Crowther had taken her advice, had served himself from the warming plates and begun to eat. He had been joined by Krall. The contrast between the two men made her smile. Crowther took no pleasure in his food, and whatever was put in front of him seemed to regard it as a necessary inconvenience. Krall had filled his plate and was busy trying to empty it again. Harriet waved them back to their seats as she entered. Crowther looked at her, but she only slightly shook her head. Krall had already returned to his food.

  ‘The District Officer has spoken to Major Auwerk,’ Crowther said.

  ‘Meetings were held in the room from time to time,’ Krall said, dabbing at his mouth, ‘between some friends of the Duke who wished to meet away from the public gaze. However, the Major never attended himself. Countess Dieth would ask him to leave the room unlocked, and clean it afterwards. He was willing to hold the key, but must have thought the cleaning below him, so employed Wimpf and put in a good word for him from time to time.’

  ‘What friends?’

  Krall pushed away his plate. ‘The Major says he did not know, but that he trusted the Countess absolutely.’

  ‘And do you believe him, Herr District Officer?’

  ‘I do. I sense he would have loved to know who met there with the Countess –’

  ‘Seven glasses,’ Harriet said. Krall ignored the interruption.

  ‘– but that he did not. He was glad to hold the key though. The Countess had great influence and I am sure she helped his rise through the ranks. He is young to be a Major. I have called on the Countess’s servants in town. They did not seem altogether surprised that she had decided to spend some time at her country estate. Her maid said they expected as much when she returned to the palace last night. She told them a servant had arrived with a summons. She then instructed Auwerk to leave the door unlocked after supper.’ He stood. ‘Forgive me. I must make the arrangements I spoke of earlier. I fear I shall be of no use to you for some hours.’