Coronets and Steel

  Then the leisurely ring of hard heels worked slowly into my awareness. I whirled—and stared into the shadowed eyes of my seatmate at the ballet the night before. He was tall.

  “Contemplating memento mori?” he asked with a slight smile, contemplating in French.

  He’s not surprised to see me.

  This awareness startled me so much that I said randomly, continuing my previous train of thought: “As it happens, I’m beginning to wonder what Ariosto was trying to do for Charles V and his empire in Orlando Furioso. Chivalry as it should have been?”

  His brows lifted slightly and he gave a soft laugh. “And never was. Every time Orlando turned around, there was another monster. Or an evil knight.”

  I did the Mick Jagger point-and-shoot toward Maria Theresia’s magnificent sarcophagus, a gesture I’d learned from my old hippie dad. “So Ariosto, and Spenser, too, weren’t dolorously mourning the great days of parfait knights and quests?”

  The guy gave me the strangest look—like I’d sprouted a banana out of my forefinger, or had begun chanting in Martian.

  Stung, I said, “The conflict. Tension. Between the ideal of the mystical union of religious and temporal power—unity of empire—and real politics of those days.”

  “You mean Spenser and Ireland?”

  “Bigger than that. Or smaller. Ideal versus reality. Code versus behavior. Underneath all the cross-dressing fun and the glorious fights . . . well, I wonder if people always look backward rather than ahead when they sense their world splintering—”

  In the dimness of the alcove, his expression was difficult to define. Oops! In my enthusiasm I had switched to English, the language in which I’d debated these subjects at UCLA. I felt like a pompous twit, yapping at a perfect stranger. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bore,” I said stiffly.

  His lips parted. Before he could speak the teenage girl’s voice echoed slightly from around the corner, “Wow, Dad! She was only seventeen, and he shot her? How sick is that?”

  Mr. Darcy and I rounded the corner to the alcove where Franz Joseph and his family were interred. There stood the teenage girl, grinning at Mr. Darcy. She snapped gum at him in exactly the same manner her great-great-great grandmother might once have snapped her fan, and walked slowly away, the thong strap above her lowrider tight jeans seesawing up and down with every roll of her skinny hips.

  “Hell,” he said softly, his eyes narrowed in sudden humor as he turned away. “What was that?”

  “Just follow the smacking gum, Humbert, and you’ll find out.”

  He gave a soundless laugh, then sent me another glance of surprise that swiftly turned speculative. “So you’ve read Nabokov.” It wasn’t quite a question.

  In the background the father’s voice droned unheeding as he read a flaccid account of the unhappy Mayerling story. As if in epitaph, the little brother chortled in a loud voice, “The bones come out on Halloween! King bones!”

  “Moooom!” the little girl wailed.

  “Quiet, kids,” the mother hissed. “Listen to Dad! This is real history!”

  “I’d rather watch TV,” the boy muttered.

  “Yes, I’ve read Nabokov. I’ve even read Patrick Dennis.” I was about to add thanks to my dad, but when I saw a searching gaze instead of the expected smile, my laugh did a belly flop.

  The tightness about his mouth changed to mild enquiry. “Shall we have a coffee?”

  The timeless mood had splintered, landing me squarely back among my fellow humans—including one I couldn’t make sense of. Coffee—public place. I took in that handsome face, and thought, Oh, what the hell. Maybe he’ll turn out to be boring.

  So I said, “Okay.”

  FIVE

  OUTSIDE WAS BRIGHT light and color, a brisk breeze, noise, movement. Mr. Darcy walked beside me in silence. I sent a couple of fast checkouts his way, trying not to be obvious about it. He was wearing a tailored jacket over an expensive white shirt worn open at the neck, gray slacks, good leather loafers.

  I let him lead, as he knew the territory. And then the question came. He didn’t ask for my name, which one might expect. Instead he asked a different personal question, in German—familiar mode—“Do you make that pilgrimage often?”

  The du pronouns, I had learned since my arrival here, were used more widely among strangers, young people anyway, than we’d been taught in school. But his tone was familiar as well as the verb form, as if we’d known each other for years.

  I shot a look at him. In the full light of day those marks in his face that I had fancifully attributed to dissipation the night before now seemed more like ordinary human exhaustion.

  “To the Kaisergruft?” On his nod of assent I went on, “That was my first visit.” Bothered by that “often,” and by his unexplained switch to German, I threw back what I sensed was a challenge by asking in my elementary-school Russian, “Do you go there often?”

  I would have liked to have said Do you make that pilgrimage often? but I didn’t remember the word for “pilgrimage.”

  Damned if he didn’t answer, and in such good Russian I almost couldn’t follow him because of the speed of the words. “Looks like every tourist in Vienna had the same idea,” he said, pointing to the expensive Graben cafe he’d chosen. It was packed.

  He switched back to English. “Unless you’ve a favorite place, I’ll show you another crypt, shall I?”

  We turned toward St. Stephen’s Cathedral, then merged into the stream of late afternoon Kärtnerstrasse traffic.

  “You’re leaving Vienna soon?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where’re you staying?”

  “A pensione. Where are you leading me?”

  “The Zwölfapostelkeller. It’s nearly old enough to have claimed their patronage.”

  “Dude! Sounds awesome,” I said with enthusiasm; I had not been to any of the famed weinkellers. Sightseeing I enjoy on my own. Drinking alone I do not.

  On the other side of the cathedral we twisted and turned, finally ending up in a narrow street, Sonnenfelsgasse. Keller means basement: down we went, three stories worth. Over an ancient brick archway was set a stone carving dated 1561. A heady combination of odors embraced us: wine, bread, people. Revelers made congenial noise in the wooden booths.

  As we entered the ancient stone-ceilinged vault of the Brunnenkeller, lined with booths down both sides, my guide signaled a waiter who was bustling by. I didn’t hear the order because a burst of laughter from a neighboring booth drowned the voices. Six or seven older men with rosily flushed faces squeezed jovially round a table meant for four.

  Mr. Darcy touched my elbow. “This way.”

  This way . . . who? Something about his not asking my name irked me. Like he already knew, or assumed he knew. I decided to see how long before he asked, and I wouldn’t help by asking his. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do—and he sure was fun to look at.

  We found an empty booth and slid onto the hard, high-backed benches. The table appeared to be a couple hundred years old; as I breathed in the complexities of the air that giddy sensation came back, bringing brief, vivid images: young people in Empire-style clothes, heads bent in earnest conversation, fingering the unchanged rough stone wall, and wondering what Napoleon would do next; youths in German versions of Cavalier coats and long tangled hair speculating what it would be like to be ruled by a woman emperor; and most brief, young fellows in ruffs worrying about what that madman Luther was doing up in the north, nailing his 95 Theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg.

  I blinked and the images vanished.

  I ran a thumbnail absently along old grooves in the top of the table as the waiter appeared and set down a liter of white wine with two heavy, wide-based glasses. “White wine?”

  Mr. Darcy paid, then poured out the wine with a practiced gesture. “Kremser,” he said in that tone of you know that as well as I do. “From the Kremser district.”

  “I’ve never tried it,” I returned promptly, resisting the temptatio
n to ask if I had to give a secret password before learning his name.

  He lifted his wineglass with an ironic air. “Prosit.”

  I tried to come up with a suitable reply—and laughed. “Skumps!”

  I sipped. Usually I don’t like white wine, but this was light and smooth.

  “Skumps?”

  “What, you don’t recognize it? The toast of kings.”

  I was rewarded with an enigmatic smile and a short question in a Slavic-sounding language that sounded familiar. But you hear a lot of languages around a university.

  I shrugged, then sipped again. And because I couldn’t figure the why of his language quiz, I did what I usually do: turned the situation into a game, and gave him the resounding alliterative verse describing Grendel’s death.

  “Beowulf.” He lounged back on his bench. Then smiled, his blue gaze watchful. “Where the hell did you pick that up?”

  “Where else? At school.”

  “Which would be?”

  “UCLA.”

  He reached for the liter and poured out more wine for us both. “Tell me about UCLA.”

  I described the history and linguistics departments, moving with wine-loosened enthusiasm to some of the pet eccentrics on the faculty and among the grad students there and in other departments. His gaze was steady on my face as he listened. He said nothing until I finally ran out of gas and snatched up my wineglass to wet my dry mouth.

  “You say you learned your French there?”

  “Nope. That I got at home.” And because it felt awkward to be chatting about school and home without the usual niceties of manners, I dropped the game and gave him a Subtle Hint. “My name’s Kim, by the way. Kim Murray.”

  “Kim,” he repeated in an odd, ironic voice.

  “Something wrong with it?” I sounded more belligerent than I felt. Whoa, better slow down on the wine.

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Do I have to pass a test before you tell me yours?”

  “Alec. I apologize, I thought I had.” The irony was back, distinctly.

  “I’m betting you were an Oxbridge student, and before that, you went to one of those ancient schools that the British call public but are actually private. Not to mention mega-posh. Am I right? Was it Eton?”

  “Downside.” He lifted a shoulder, his tone that ironic one again—like I already knew that, and who did I think I was fooling?

  So I said chirpily, “I’ve never met anyone who went to one of those. Tell me! Was it really a seething den of slashy passions, like in Alec Waugh’s novel, or was it sadistic like C. S. Lewis’ school, or . . .” I waved a hand. “Was it all jolly games fun and tuck-shop treats and rags, like Chalet School and Billy Bunter?”

  He sat back, gaze distant; his cell phone vibrated insistently. Then he blinked, his attention back on me. “A combination of all things is probably somewhere near the truth. I expect you get what you’re looking for. Could be said for any school.”

  “And you?” I asked, steepling my fingers.

  “What I got from them is an excellent education. What I looked for . . . was growing up and getting on with my life.”

  My ear caught among the pure upper-class British words a subtle twist, distinctly non-English. Russian?

  I snickered. “Are you a Russian spy?”

  His brows twitched upward, then he smiled. “No. Are you?”

  The wine-fueled laughter was hard to stop—not that I tried hard. “No way.” I smacked my chest with a thump. “Solid American citizen, that’s me! You’ve an accent,” I added. “The way you said ‘education.’ The linguistics profs train students to listen for those clues, you see,” I repeated the word education but my wine-loosened tongue couldn’t reproduce either the British or the other accent.

  His gaze was steady under an ironic brow lift. “Like they trained you to speak French?”

  This time I didn’t use Dad’s point-and-shoot, but my grandmother’s airy, elegant gesture. “I told you, I learned my French at home. In fact, I scraped up my tuition money this year by student-teaching je suis, tu es, il, elle est.”

  “Do all Americans speak French at home?”

  “No,” I said softly as I remembered my grandmother smiling proudly at me. “Grandmère’s English is okay but she never spoke it with me. She used to say, ‘Though times have changed and changed again since I was small, I don’t believe you will ever be sorry to speak French like a Parisian lady. This is the only gift I can give to you, Aurelia Kim—’ ”

  He set his wineglass down with a precise movement, and despite the roar of noise in the background I heard the ring of glass on the hardwood, which broke my reverie.

  I sighed. “I never got what she meant by that. She was always doing things for me.”

  Alec’s gaze was steady, reflecting the glitter of the atmospheric candles set in sconces. His expression was assessing in a way that I found odd.

  “Sorry. I’m babbling,” I said. “But I usually don’t drink during the day. Hey,” I made a discovery. “We killed that whole liter! And,” I added, “I need to make a restroom run.”

  “I can show you where it is.”

  “You’re on.”

  We wound our way back through the increasing crowds of patrons and up two flights of stone steps.

  When I came out Alec was there, lounging against the wall, cell phone in hand. When I stepped near he snapped the cell shut and straightened. I bit my lips and said, “I could’ve found my way back. Actually we were done, weren’t we? I know I’d best not drink anymore, so I think I’ll shove along. Well, it’s been—”

  “How about a last toast. I ordered a half-liter, and I’d better pay for it, at least.”

  I peered up into those enigmatic light blue eyes, looking for the warning smirk or leer that would herald the usual come-on.

  Nothing. No expression at all.

  “Oh, may’s well. One more. Only one.” I shrugged recklessly. “And then I’m outta here.”

  “Thank you.” He gestured politely for me to go before him.

  Presently we were at the booth again, and there was a half-liter, with fresh glasses. “Catch the waiter’s eye?” Alec murmured as we slid in.

  Obligingly I leaned out, watching a trifle blearily as the waiter appeared and served the loud gentlemen. Finally I succeeded in catching the waiter’s attention, and sat back in triumph as Alec placed a full glass before me. Alec paid, then raised his glass in a silent salute.

  I said, “To Vienna!”

  “Vienna,” he repeated. He reached across the table and touched his glass against mine, then with a quick movement he drank his wine off.

  I started to follow suit (with a suitable flourish) but stopped halfway. I’d drunk too much already, and besides, this wine was different, subtly bitter. I put my glass down and tried unsuccessfully to suppress a shudder. “Okay, I’m done,” I said. “Whew, that stuff is too dry for me.”

  “I apologize for the taste.”

  “No problemo! Not your fault. Probably a newer bottle than the last.” I smiled, but the room had turned stuffy and warm. I drew in a slow breath. “Well, Mr. Da—” (cough) “—um, Alec. It’s been nice.”

  If he noticed the slip, he gave no sign. “I’ll walk out with you. No wish to stay and drink alone.”

  “Okay.” I laughed inanely as I slid out from my bench.

  Once again I was giddy, as if I had grown to a height of seven or eight feet. Light gleamed brightly off people’s faces, glasses, watches, clothes, and the shadows behind them grayed and blurred, overlaying the guests here with more fanciful images of people in historical costume, as if my imagination was channeling the past.

  I didn’t think I was that drunk, I thought blurrily.

  A strange sense of distance—a recklessness—swept through me and I threw my head back to look up at Alec’s face. He was right behind me. I stumbled, and his hand moved swiftly to my arm to help me restore my balance.

  “Thanks. Ech. I feel strange. But i
t was fun,” I rambled on. “I must say,” I added, my tongue ranging as freely as my thoughts, “if this was a pickup—and I’m so glad it’s not—it was the weirdest I ever had.”

  “Did you want to be picked up?” he returned, smiling. “Watch that step,” he added under his breath.

  “No. Yes. No. Don’t want complications,” I mumbled, staring up the stairway I’d come down a few minutes before without any problems. It seemed to stretch up for miles. “Oxygen, that’s what I need. No air in here.” I tried a dramatic turn, and stumbled. “Came along cuz . . . you seemed like Mr. Darcy. Not Mr. Darcy.” In case he misconstrued, I added, “Byronic villain.”

  This caught him by surprise, and he laughed. It was a quick, genuine laugh, unlike the guarded countenance he’d shown me during our conversation. His smile was singularly attractive.

  “Um,” I said appreciatively.

  “Last flight.” He steered me with care.

  By the time we reached the top, he was half holding me up. “Wha’s hap-pening?” I croaked, my lips feeling icy-cold and stiff.

  “Door’s here,” Alec said kindly.

  Sweet, cool air washed across my face as he guided me outside.

  I sucked it in gratefully—and my knees buckled. At once two strong arms picked me up; my head rolled to the side, my perspective whirled.

  From the increasingly confusing shadows emerged a green car with unfamiliar smooth lines. Alec stepped toward it. He opened the back door and smiled at me.

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s go home, Aurelia,” he replied gently, as the shadows merged and my eyelids drifted down.

  SIX

  PRISONER OF ZENDA.

  If you’re thinking my experiences so far match that hapless scion of the Elphbergs and Rassendylls—well, just wait.

  I woke up groggily and slowly, to find myself stretched out on a narrow bed with another bunk a couple of feet above me. A steady rhythm penetrated into my aching brain . . . lank-lank, thunk-thunk . . . lank-lank, thunk-thunk . . . as my bed quivered—