The Tin Princess, Page 23

  He found it, wrenched at the handle, flung it open and called, "Becky! Becky! Where are you?"

  She said quite calmly from the darkness, "Don't shout. I think I've broken my arm or ribs or something. Collarbone, I don't know. I can't move."

  He let himself down in the darkness, and felt down the length of her free arm down her side to her hips. She was trapped under the upper bunk, which had broken from its retaining straps. He heaved it clear and said, "Can you move now?"

  She tried, and cried out, and tried again while he strained to hold the bunk clear of her. When she was out he let it fall again.

  "Got your boots on?"

  "No..."

  "You'll need 'em."

  He felt around till he found them, threw them out through the open door above, and then put his hands on her waist ready to lift her out. She fainted. It made her easier to lift, and he felt the grating of her broken ribs as he did so, but shoved mercilessly until most of her body was out; then he clambered up over her and hauled her free.

  By that time most of the students had got out of the second carriage, and Corporal Kogler was anxiously handing Adelaide the flag, one of its edges torn and trailing a length of crimson silk.

  "Is everyone safe?" she said.

  "Michael is dead," said Gustav shakily. "His neck's broken. He's dead..."

  Behind him, two others were carefully lifting out the body. They laid Michael under the trees and covered him with a blanket. Jim put his hands on Gustav's shoulder and shook it gently.

  Karl said, "Where's Willi? Is he still in the cab?"

  They looked along the twisted track. The glow of the spilled fire was lurid, the dark tree trunks looming like the wings of a stage-set. Jim, at the edge of exhaustion, anger, passion, wouldn't have been in the least surprised to see Henry Irving suddenly appear in his sledge from The Bells, or the trees draw apart like painted scenery to reveal Louis dei Franchi wounded after his fatal duel in The Corsican Brothers.

  "Pull yourself together," he muttered, and shook his head. "Willi's nowhere to be seen," he said in German. "Nor's that soldier, what's his name..."

  "Schweigner!" said the Corporal. "He wasn't convinced from the start! Damn it, I should have gone in the cab with him..."

  "We didn't have time to get everything right," said Jim. "Get everything you need out of the train, and quickly."

  As if to underline what he said, there was a sudden whoomp of flame behind them: the gas leaking from the tank had caught, and the force of the combustion pushed them off balance for a second.

  While two of the others climbed back inside to retrieve their weapons, Jim said to the Corporal, "Do you know where we are?"

  "Not more than a couple of miles from Andersbad. Look, there's the distance post."

  Nailed to a tree trunk was a rectangular tin plate in the faded colours of the Razkavian Railway Company. Jim looked past the glazing engine, shading his eyes against the heat, and saw only rank upon rank of dark pines in a gloomy recession towards utter darkness.

  "We can't be far from the Castle, then," he said to no one in particular.

  "It's on top of the hill," said a strained voice below him, and he looked down to see Becky sitting on a tree stump holding her side.

  "If it's that close we'll go there straight away," said Adelaide. "We got to get the flag up -"

  She stopped, hearing the same sound as they all did: the distant beat of a steam locomotive from the direction of the capital. The night was still, and it was some way off yet, but it was unmistakable.

  "That decides it," said Jim. "We'll go up there now."

  Karl said, "What about Fraulein Winter?"

  Becky sat still. Jim could see the tears glinting on her cheek.

  "Can't move?" he said softly.

  She shook her head. "Leave me here. I'll hide or something."

  "Don't be stupid!" Adelaide stormed. "You don't think I'd let anyone leave you behind? Don't even waste time thinking it. Get some blankets out the carriage, go on, someone. Make a stretcher!"

  Karl and two others leapt inside while Jim and Corporal Kogler pulled over a couple of saplings and tore the twigs off them.

  A minute or two later, Becky was lying in a blanket suspended by its four corners between the two poles. It was excruciatingly painful, and when the four bearers began to stumble up the rough slope it was all she could do not to cry out loud.

  But they were moving, the ragged band, and before long they were some distance over the railway line among thick trees. Jim looked back; he could see the glow of the burning engine, and strained to listen for the other train. He heard it more distinctly now. It seemed to be slowing down, which meant either that they had seen the crashed train or that they were expecting to; which meant that someone must have warned them. Schweigner... He shrugged.

  "How far up is this Castle?" he said to Karl.

  "At the top of the slope. We're on the right path."

  "I wish we were on a path. This is bloody murderous stuff to walk on. Here! You want to change over, you fellers?"

  The four stretcher-bearers gladly gave up their poles to Jim, Karl, Gustav and the Corporal. Becky was still, though Jim could hear a barely audible moan that seemed to be tearing her heart out.

  "Not long now, gal," he said, knowing it was a lie.

  Over rocks and tree stumps, slipping in icy moss, floundering through gaps where the snow concealed the footing, they stumbled ever upwards, each focused on the ground in front of them. Vague blurs of grey and black were all they could see. Soon the knee Jim had injured years before was hammering with pain, but he kept moving, shoes full of snow, face scratched by brambles, holding his pole as still as he could. Adelaide, just ahead and clutching the flag to her breast, was muttering a string of quiet, concentrated curses, talking to herself.

  Then, from a long way below, there came a change in the sound of the approaching train. There was a faint squealing of brakes, a long hiss of steam, though both were so muffled by the trees that the listeners might have imagined them.

  "They've reached it," said Karl.

  "Keep going, then," said Jim, and they stumbled on.

  Poor Becky seemed to have fainted again, because there was nothing but silence from the heavy blanket. Jim noted it grimly. No doubt it was dangerous to carry her like that; no doubt she ran the risk of having a lung punctured by a broken rib. It was a little picture of the whole muddle. He was practically certain that they were going to die, here in this forgotten little corner of Europe, for a struggle that was pointless anyway. Dan Goldberg was right: Germany would inevitably crush Razkavia, or Austria would.

  And if you could trace cause and effect accurately enough, he thought, you might be able to follow the thread of it all back to the starting-point, and it might be a thousand miles away and many years ago, in the bank-books of a financier or the childhood of a frustrated princeling; but more probably there were a million such threads, and if any one of them had snapped or twisted differently the outcome would have been utterly different, too. There was no pattern in things, Jim saw, no sense; everything was random and chaotic.

  Which left a ragged band of wounded people struggling to plant a rectangle of silk in a heap of ruins, and die defending it. Since nothing made sense, that made as much sense as anything else.

  The climbing was a little easier now. The trees were thinning ahead; the sky had not lightened, but something in the air spoke of the approach of dawn: a freshness, a stir in the breeze. It was bitterly cold. Jim felt the sweat chilly on his face.

  "Change over," said someone, and the four bearers gave up their poles to the ones who'd had a rest. Jim looked at Adelaide, whose head was down, whose cloak trailed bedraggled, whose white chemise was torn and muddy at its lacy edge, but who was clutching the flag to her breast with firm arms.

  "All right, gal?" he said.

  She pulled her head up and lifted her chin. In the wolflight, the ghostly pre-dawn hour when the world turns grey, her great eyes glowed
black, and brimmed with feeling.

  "Yeah," she muttered. "How much further?"

  "Dunno. Must be close, though."

  He took her hand and helped her up the last tumbled slope of snow-covered rock.

  Suddenly they were out of the trees.

  They stood at the edge of the forest, facing a wild prospect of jagged mountains. The sky that hung over them was heavy with snow, a dark metallic bruise-grey. Directly in front, across a gentle slope of untrodden snow, lay the ruins of Schloss Wendelstein, which Adelaide had last seen under the warm sun of an autumn afternoon. The place looked more desolate now; the tower thrust up at the sky like a single broken tooth, the lines of tumbled walls confused under the white.

  To the left, a path sloped down from the Castle and into the forest towards the town. Darkness was clustered thickly under the branches; the world was wrapped in silence.

  And silently, having taken stock, the little band set off across the snow. The going was easier here - easy but cold, and terribly slow, for the snow was knee-deep. Becky had woken and asked to be set down, and Karl supported her as she walked. They took nearly ten minutes to cross the four hundred yards or so to the first tumbled wall of the Castle.

  It was no good taking refuge in the tower, for it was only a hollow shell. The roof had fallen in, and the ground floor was filled with a heap of rubble laced through with bramble-stems.

  Adelaide looked around, and it was clear that she had never ceased to be the Queen; she was the Queen now, deciding things.

  "Take one of them sticks you was carrying Becky with. Fix the flag to it, that's the first thing, and set it up among the stones over there. I'll feel happier once it's flying again."

  There was nothing to tie it with until Jim remembered his last ball of wool. The Corporal's eyebrows rose at this unsoldierly substance, but it worked well enough. However, the flag hardly flew; it hung limply in the still air, its lower edge trailing on the snow. Jim and Gustav lashed that pole to the other with lengths torn from the blanket, and that raised it off the ground, at least.

  It was important to keep warm. Jim was shivering hard, having been without his jersey since leaving the dungeon, and Adelaide, even with her thick cloak wrapped around her shoulders, was shaking. Jim made her sit next to Becky, so they could share each other's warmth.

  Then Corporal Kogler saluted and shyly said, "I beg your pardon, Your Majesty. I didn't think I ought to tell you, but I did something wrong. See, it's so cold, up there on the Rock, that sometimes on sentry-duty we take a little nip of something. Normally you should have me court-martialled, I reckon. But I haven't touched it yet, and if it'll help keep the cold off you or the young lady, you're welcome to it..."

  He brought out a battered gun-metal flask and unscrewed the top.

  "Plum brandy," he said. "My granny makes it up in Erolstein. You won't taste anything better than that."

  Adelaide looked stern. The light was gathering now, and they could see her almost clearly. "You're a bad man," she said. "Give it to me. I can't have my soldiers boozing on sentry-go. I'm shocked." She sipped it, blinked, took a deep breath and swallowed several times. "But I forgive you. You can tell your granny that I'll give her a Royal Warrant. Becky, have a sip, go on."

  She held the flask to Becky's lips. As Becky moved she cried out softly, and Adelaide said, "D'you want to lie down, dear? I'll clear a space. You can have all the rest of the blanket, I'm nice and warm..."

  But Becky shook her head. Adelaide nestled closer.

  "You haven't got a length of sausage in that pocket, have you?" said Gustav to the Corporal. "Imagine that, eh! A piece of hard sausage, with lumps of fat like pearls, and well-peppered on the outside..."

  "Not for me," said Karl. "Give me a pastry. Apple strudel. With a dusting of cinnamon and icing sugar, and whipped cream oozing over the top."

  "Too sickly," said one of the others. "Meat for me. A plate of venison in a goulash sauce - big lumps of it - hung for a fortnight first - with onions and garlic and paprika, like they do at the Florestan, with sour cream over it - and dumplings..."

  "No, you're all wrong," said someone else. "The best thing of all is bread. Warm bread fresh from the oven. You break the crust and it steams a little and you lift it to your mouth and--"

  "That's enough of that," said Adelaide. "We can't eat words, and you're making us hungrier. How far's the town? It's only a mile or so, isn't it? We'll send someone down to buy some bread and suchlike as soon as the bakers open. And meanwhile -"

  But there was going to be no meanwhile. Adelaide had seen a movement under the edge of the trees where they'd emerged from the climb, and then another, and the students and Jim and the Corporal saw her expression and turned to look. Then they straightened and stood closer together, and Adelaide stood up too and put her hand on the flagpole. Becky, huddled under the blanket, wished with all her heart that she could stand with them - she tried, but she couldn't - as they prepared to defend the flag against the grey-clad German troops, one after another, who came out of the trees, their rifles held across the chests, and began to advance steadily over the snow.

  Chapter Nineteen

  GHOSTS

  The first flake of snow settled on Becky's eyelashes. She blinked it away, but almost at once there were others. The sky was light enough now to show the heavy flakes dark against it when she looked up, and the army from the trees - a hundred or more, it looked like - was suddenly rendered ghostlike by the veils of swirling featheriness, as if someone had burst a million pillows.

  Becky felt as if she were seeing visions, having dreams. This snowy world - white and grey - shifted and drifted, and figures from other worlds walked through it, became visible, faded again. This was the spot where Walter von Eschten had fought, and there he was, a gigantic figure with his plumed knights around him, still here after all this time. Becky was proud beyond measure that they'd come back to help. For there were other figures striding among the tumbled walls and emerging from the white confusion of the air, and Jim and the others had noticed too, and looked around in bafflement.

  Becky watched, her heart knocking against her painful ribs like a smith's hammer, as the leading ghost approached Adelaide and stopped as Jim leapt in front to defend her, pistol in hand.

  "The Englishman!" came a deep growling voice, a voice with laughter in it, the voice of no ghost there could ever be: the voice of Otto von Schwartzberg.

  Becky brushed the snow away from her eyes, straining to see and hear, and thought she saw Adelaide extend a hand and the giant bend low to kiss it.

  "Cousin," said Adelaide. "I thought you'd gone to Africa to shoot lions."

  "Oh, there's better sport here! I heard about your trick with the flag - nice joke, to steal it from under their prying noses! And where would you come but Wendelstein?"

  "How did you hear of it?"

  "A good servant of yours told me," said Otto, and stood aside.

  Behind him was the figure, grey with pain and fatigue but still upright and soldierly of Count Thalgau.

  As Adelaide looked steadily at him his eyes dropped, and then the old warrior knelt down and took off the black shako so that the snow fell thickly on his iron-grey hair.

  "Your Majesty," he said roughly. "I've done wrong. I betrayed you, and I betrayed my country. I am more ashamed than I can tell you. You ... you've got a better heart than I have. You did right instinctively, and I did wrong. But I won't fail you again. Trust me now, Your Majesty, and I'll fight beside you till I fall dead. Every drop of my blood, every remaining minute of my life, is yours, and I beg you to forgive me and let me serve you properly, at last."

  His voice shook, and gave out. She reached forward and gave the old man her hand. He kissed it fervently.

  "Of course I forgive you. Now get up and do as Mr Taylor tells you."

  "So you're the general?" said Otto genially to Jim, and then, seeing the gold star on the green ribbon, added, "My congratulations, Baron."

  "Thank you, Cou
nt. Have you come to talk or to fight?" said Jim.

  "To fight. We'll talk later, over breakfast. How many are you?"

  "Six men. One rifle, six pistols. That's it. When we run out of bullets we'll throw stones."

  Otto looked around. Becky, watching from where she sat huddled against a corner of the wall, was still unsure about him: he seemed to be flickering back and forth between the nineteenth century and the thirteenth, Otto and Walter, air and snow.

  "So," he said, and turned back. "Well, Baron, since you're in command, I offer you two dozen men all armed with rifles, and myself and my crossbow. How many bullets have you got?"

  "Six only."

  "Take this then."

  Otto slid his sword out of its scabbard and offered the hilt to Jim, who took it and saluted him, holding the hilt to his forehead in the classic style before tucking it through his belt.

  "We're all looking forward to that breakfast," Jim said.

  And Becky saw Jim turn into a general. As if he'd been born to it, he disposed the men about the ruin, hiding one here, ordering two to wait in reserve there, concentrating the main force in the centre behind the low wall in front of the flag. Otto stood and watched, nodding.

  Finally Otto said, "And the Queen?"

  "I'm staying with the flag," she said.

  "Keep your head down, then, cousin. But the little girl must hide in the tower."

  Becky was too weak to protest: little girl indeed... But Count Otto lifted her as if she were a baby, and put her safely behind the pile of rubble inside the door.

  "Don't fire till I give the command," said Jim.

  It was the last patch of clarity Becky knew. There was a moment of profound silence, in which the snow whirled in a million directions so thickly that there seemed more snow than air, and even the closest figures were ghost-grey.

  Then there came a sound like a firecracker exploding in a garden on a winter's evening, heard through a curtained window by a child inside in the warm. The shot was muffled and made kindlier by the uncountable drifting flakes of down. Then another, and another; little explosions - crack, silence, crack - sounding harmless, as if all they engendered was a spray of pretty sparks.

  But each little crack launched a bullet, and each bullet sped ahead of the sound like a hawk released from the hunter's hand. They cut straight through the air and through the tattered flakes, leaving invisible eddies of heat behind them, which dissipated into randomness, tossing the snow this way and that long after the bullets had flattened themselves on stone or plunged into the cold soil far beyond.