"Oh," she said, very cool. "It's you, Erdberg. Do not worry, I was just taking my leave of the major. You may have him now." A small, smug smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. Quite deliberately, she laid a hand along Grey's heated cheek, and let her fingers trail along his skin as she turned away. Then she strolled--curse the woman, she strolled!--away, switching the tail of her robe.
There was a profound silence in the hallway.
Grey broke it, finally.
"You wished to speak with me, Captain?"
Von Namtzen looked him over coldly, as though deciding whether to step on him.
"No," he said at last. "It will wait." He turned on his heel and strode away, making a good deal more noise in his departure than had the princess.
Grey pressed a hand to his forehead, until he could trust his head not to explode, then shook it, and lunged for the door to his room before anything else should happen.
Tom was sitting on a stool by the fire, mending a pair of breeches that had suffered injury to the seams while Grey was demonstrating saber lunges to one of the German officers. He looked up at once when Grey came in, but if he had heard any of the conversation in the hall, he made no reference to it.
"What's that, me lord?" he asked instead, seeing the box in Grey's hand.
"What? Oh, that." Grey put it down, with a faint feeling of distaste. "A relic. Of St. Orgevald, whoever he might be."
"Oh, I know him!"
"You do?" Grey raised one brow.
"Yes, me lord. There's a little chapel to him, down the garden. Ilse--she's one of the kitchen maids--was showing me. He's right famous hereabouts."
"Indeed." Grey began to undress, tossing his coat across the chair and starting on his waistcoat buttons. His fingers were impatient, slipping on the small buttons. "Famous for what?"
"Stopping them killing the children. Will I help you, me lord?"
"What?" Grey stopped, staring at the young valet, then shook his head and resumed twitching buttons. "No, continue. Killing what children?"
Tom's hair was standing up on end, as it tended to do whenever he was interested in a subject, owing to his habit of running one hand through it.
"Well, d'ye see, me lord, it used to be the custom, when they'd build something important, they'd buy a child from the gypsies--or just take one, I s'pose--and wall it up in the foundation. Specially for a bridge. It keeps anybody wicked from crossing over, see?"
Grey resumed his unbuttoning, more slowly. The hair prickled uneasily on his nape.
"The child--the murdered child--would cry out, I suppose?"
Tom looked surprised at his acumen.
"Yes, me lord. However did you know that?"
"Never mind. So St. Orgevald put a stop to this practice, did he? Good for him." He glanced, more kindly, at the small gold box. "There's a chapel, you say--is it in use?"
"No, me lord. It's full of bits of stored rubbish. Or, rather--'tisn't in use for what you might call devotions. Folk do go there." The boy flushed a bit, and frowned intently at his work. Grey deduced that Ilse might have shown him another use for a deserted chapel, but chose not to pursue the matter.
"I see. Was Ilse able to tell you anything else of interest?"
"Depends upon what you call interesting, me lord." Tom's eyes were still fixed upon his needle, but Grey could tell from the way in which he caught his upper lip between his teeth that he was in possession of a juicy bit of information.
"At this point, my chief interest is in my bed," Grey said, finally extricating himself from the waistcoat, "but tell me anyway."
"Reckon you know the nursemaid's still gone?"
"I do."
"Did you know her name was Koenig, and that she was wife to the Hun soldier what the succubus got?"
Grey had just about broken Tom of calling the Germans "Huns," at least in their hearing, but chose to overlook this lapse.
"I did not." Grey unfastened his neckcloth, slowly. "Was this known to all the servants?" More importantly, did Stephan know?
"Oh, yes, me lord." Tom had laid down his needle, and now looked up, eager with his news. "See, the soldier, he used to do work here, at the Schloss."
"When? Was he a local man, then?" It was quite usual for soldiers to augment their pay by doing work for the local citizenry in their off hours, but Stephan's men had been in situ for less than a month. But if the nurserymaid was the man's wife--
"Yes, me lord. Born here, the both of them. He joined the local regiment some years a-gone, and came here to work--"
"What work did he do?" Grey asked, unsure whether this had any bearing on Koenig's demise, but wanting a moment to encompass the information.
"Builder," Tom replied promptly. "Part of the upper floors got the woodworm, and had to be replaced."
"Hmm. You seem remarkably well informed. Just how long did you spend in the chapel with young Ilse?"
Tom gave him a look of limpid innocence, much more inculpatory than an open leer.
"Me lord?"
"Never mind. Go on. Was the man working here at the time he was killed?"
"No, me lord. He left with the regiment two years back. He did come round a week or so ago, Ilse said, only to visit his friends among the servants, but he didn't work here."
Grey had now got down to his drawers, which he removed with a sigh of relief.
"Christ, what sort of perverse country is it where they put starch in a man's smallclothes? Can you not deal with the laundresses, Tom?"
"Sorry, me lord." Tom scrambled to retrieve the discarded drawers. "I didn't know the word for starch. I thought I did, but whatever I said just made 'em laugh."
"Well, don't make Ilse laugh too much. Leaving the maid-servants with child is an abuse of hospitality."
"Oh, no, me lord," Tom assured him earnestly. "We was too busy talking to, er..."
"To be sure you were," Grey said equably. "Did she tell you anything else of interest?"
"Mebbe." Tom had the nightshirt already aired and hanging by the fire to warm; he held it up for Grey to draw over his head, the wool flannel soft and grateful as it slid over his skin. "Mind, it's only gossip."
"Mmm?"
"One of the older footmen, who used to work with Koenig--after Koenig came to visit, he was talkin' with one of the other servants, and he said in Ilse's hearing as how little Siegfried was growing up to be the spit of him. Of Koenig, I mean, not the footman. But then he saw her listening and shut up smart."
Grey stopped in the act of reaching for his banyan, and stared.
"Indeed," he said. Tom nodded, looking modestly pleased with the effect of his findings.
"That's the princess's old husband, isn't it, over the mantelpiece in the drawing room? Ilse showed me the picture. Looks a proper old bugger, don't he?"
"Yes," said Grey, smiling slightly. "And?"
"He ain't had--hadn't, I mean--any children more than Siegfried, though he was married twice before. And Master Siegfried was born six months to the day after the old fellow died. That kind of thing always causes talk, don't it?"
"I should say so, yes." Grey thrust his feet into the proffered slippers. "Thank you, Tom. You've done more than well."
Tom shrugged modestly, though his round face beamed as if illuminated from within.
"Will I fetch you tea, me lord? Or a nice syllabub?"
"Thank you, no. Find your bed, Tom, you've earned your rest."
"Very good, me lord." Tom bowed; his manners were improving markedly, under the example of the Schloss's servants. He picked up the clothes Grey had left on the chair, to take away for brushing, but then stopped to examine the little reliquary, which Grey had left on the table.
"That's a handsome thing, me lord. A relic, did you say? Isn't that a bit of somebody?"
"It is." Grey started to tell Tom to take the thing away with him, but stopped. It was undoubtedly valuable; best to leave it here. "Probably a finger or a toe, judging from the size."
Tom bent, peering at the fade
d lettering.
"What does it say, me lord? Can you read it?"
"Probably." Grey took the box, and brought it close to the candle. Held thus at an angle, the worn lettering sprang into legibility. So did the drawing etched into the top, which Grey had to that point assumed to be merely decorative lines. The words confirmed it.
"Isn't that a...?" Tom said, goggling at it.
"Yes, it is." Grey gingerly set the box down.
They regarded it in silence for a moment.
"Ah...where did you get it, me lord?" Tom asked finally.
"The princess gave it me. As protection from the succubus."
"Oh." The young valet shifted his weight to one foot, and glanced sidelong at him. "Ah...d'ye think it will work?"
Grey cleared his throat.
"I assure you, Tom, if the phallus of St. Orgevald does not protect me, nothing will."
Left alone, he sank into the chair by the fire, closed his eyes, and tried to compose himself sufficiently to think. The conversation with Tom had at least allowed him a little distance, from which to contemplate matters with the princess and Stephan--save that they didn't bear contemplation.
He felt mildly nauseated, and sat up to pour a glass of plum brandy from the decanter on the table. That helped, settling both his stomach and his mind.
He sat slowly sipping it, gradually bringing his mental faculties to bear on the less personal aspects of the situation.
Tom's discoveries cast a new and most interesting light on matters. If Grey had ever believed in the existence of a succubus--and he was sufficiently honest to admit that there had been moments, both in the graveyard and in the dark-flickering halls of the Schloss--he believed no longer.
The attempted kidnapping was plainly the work of some human agency, and the revelation of the relationship between the two Koenigs--the vanished nursemaid and her dead husband--just as plainly indicated that the death of Private Koenig was part of the same affair, no matter what hocus-pocus had been contrived around it.
Grey's father had died when he was twelve, but had succeeded in instilling in his son his own admiration for the philosophy of reason. In addition to the concept of Occam's razor, his father had also introduced him to the useful doctrine of cui bono.
The plainly obvious answer there was the princess Louisa. Granting for the present that the gossip was true, and that Koenig had fathered little Siegfried...the last thing the woman could want was for Koenig to return and hang about where awkward resemblances could be noted.
He had no idea of the German law regarding paternity. In England, a child born in wedlock was legally the offspring of the husband, even when everyone and the dog's mother knew that the wife had been openly unfaithful. By such means, several gentlemen of his acquaintance had children, even though he was quite sure that the men had never even thought of sharing their wives' beds. Had Stephan perhaps--
He caught that thought by the scruff of the neck and shoved it aside. Besides, if the miniaturist had been faithful, Stephan's son was the spitting image of his father. Though painters naturally would produce what image they thought most desired by the patron, in spite of the reality--
He picked up the glass and drank from it until he felt breathless and his ears buzzed.
"Koenig," he said firmly, aloud. Whether the gossip was true or not--and having kissed the princess, he rather thought it was; no shrinking violet, she!--and whether or not Koenig's reappearance might threaten Siggy's legitimacy, the man's presence must certainly have been unwelcome.
Unwelcome enough to have arranged his death?
Why, when he would be gone again soon? The troops were likely to move within the week--surely within the month. Had something happened that made the removal of Private Koenig urgent? Perhaps Koenig himself had been in ignorance of Siegfried's parentage--and upon discovering the boy's resemblance to himself on his visit to the castle, determined to extort money or favor from the princess?
And bringing the matter full circle...had the entire notion of the succubus been introduced merely to disguise Koenig's death? If so, how? The rumor had seized the imagination of both troops and townspeople to a marked extent--and Koenig's death had caused it to reach the proportions of a panic--but how had that rumor been started?
He dismissed that question for the moment, as there was no rational way of dealing with it. As for the death, though...
He could without much difficulty envision the princess Louisa conspiring in the death of Koenig; he had noticed before that women were quite without mercy where their offspring were concerned. Still...the princess had presumably not entered a soldier's quarters and done a man to death with her own lily-white hands.
Who had done it? Someone with great ties of loyalty to the princess, presumably. Though, upon second thought, it need not have been anyone from the castle. Gundwitz was not the teeming boil that London was, but the town was still of sufficient size to sustain a reasonable number of criminals; one of these could likely have been induced to perform the actual murder--if it was a murder, he reminded himself. He must not lose sight of the null hypothesis, in his eagerness to reach a conclusion.
And further...even if the princess had in some way contrived both the rumor of the succubus and the death of Private Koenig--who was the witch in Siggy's room? Had someone truly tried to abduct the child? Private Koenig was already dead; clearly he could have had nothing to do with it.
He ran a hand through his hair, rubbing his scalp slowly to assist thought.
Loyalties. Who was most loyal to the princess? Her butler? Stephan?
He grimaced, but examined the thought carefully. No. There were no circumstances conceivable under which Stephan would have conspired in the murder of one of his own men. Grey might be in doubt of many things concerning the Hanoverian, but not his honor.
This led back to the princess's behavior toward himself. Did she act from attraction? Grey was modest about his own endowments, but also honest enough to admit that he possessed some and that his person was reasonably attractive to women.
He thought it more likely, if the princess had indeed conspired in Koenig's removal, that her actions toward himself were intended as distraction. Though there was yet another explanation. One of the minor corollaries to Occam's razor that he had himself derived suggested that quite often, the observed result of an action really was the intended end of that action. The end result of that encounter in the hallway was that Stephan von Namtzen had discovered him in embrace with the princess, and been noticeably annoyed by said discovery.
Had Louisa's motive been the very simple one of making von Namtzen jealous?
And if Stephan was jealous...of whom? And what, if anything, did Bodger's death have to do with any of this?
The room had grown intolerably stuffy, and he rose, restless, and went to the window, unlatching the shutters. The moon was full, a great, fecund yellow orb that hung low above the darkened fields and cast its light over the slated roofs of Gundwitz and the paler sea of canvas tents that lay beyond.
Did Ruysdale's troops sleep soundly tonight, exhausted from their healthful exercise? He felt as though he would profit from such exercise himself. He braced himself in the window frame and pushed, feeling the muscles pop in his arms, envisioning escape into that freshening night, running naked and silent as a wolf, soft earth cool, yielding to his feet.
Cold air rushed past his body, raising the coarse hairs on his skin, but his core felt molten. Between the heat of fire and brandy, the nightshirt's original grateful warmth had become oppressive; sweat bloomed upon his body, and the woolen cloth hung limp upon him.
Suddenly impatient, he stripped it off, and stood in the open window, fierce and restless, the cold air caressing his nakedness.
There was a whir and rustle in the ivy nearby, and then something--several somethings--passed in absolute silence so close and so swiftly by his face that he had not even time to start backward, though his heart leapt to his throat, strangling his involuntary cr
y.
Bats. The creatures had disappeared in an instant, long before his startled mind had collected itself sufficiently to put a name to them.
He leaned out, searching, but the bats had disappeared at once into the dark, swift about their hunting. It was no wonder that legends of succubi abounded, in a place so bat-haunted. The behavior of the creatures indeed seemed supernatural.
The bounds of the small chamber seemed at once intolerably confining. He could imagine himself some demon of the air, taking wing to haunt the dreams of a man, seize upon a sleeping body and ride it--could he fly as far as England? he wondered. Was the night long enough?
The trees at the edge of the garden tossed uneasily, stirred by the wind. The night itself seemed tormented by an autumn restlessness, the sense of things moving, changing, fermenting.
His blood was still hot, having now reached a sort of full, rolling boil, but there was no outlet for it. He did not know whether Stephan's anger was on his own behalf--or Louisa's. In neither case, though, could he make any open demonstration of feeling toward von Namtzen now; it was too dangerous. He was unsure of the German attitude toward sodomites, but felt it unlikely to be more forgiving than the English stance. Whether stolid Protestant morality or a wilder Catholic mysticism--he cast a brief look at the reliquary--neither was likely to have sympathy with his own predilections.
The mere contemplation of revelation and the loss of its possibility, though, had shown him something important.
Stephan von Namtzen both attracted and aroused him, but it was not because of his own undoubted physical qualities. It was, rather, the degree to which those qualities reminded Grey of James Fraser.
Von Namtzen was nearly the same height as Fraser, a powerful man with broad shoulders, long legs, and an instantly commanding presence. However, Stephan was heavier, more crudely constructed, and less graceful than the Scot. And while Stephan warmed Grey's blood, the fact remained that the Hanoverian did not burn his heart like living flame.
He lay down finally upon his bed, and put out the candle. Lay watching the play of firelight on the walls, seeing not the flicker of wood flame, but the play of sun upon red hair, the sheen of sweat on a pale bronzed body...
A brief and brutal dose of Mr. Keegan's remedy left him drained, if not yet peaceful. He lay staring upward into the shadows of the carved wooden ceiling, able at least to think once more.