The Tin Princess, Page 24

  Becky, her chest on fire and her mind frozen, was aware of a swirl of details, like a mosaic broken apart. There had been a picture once and there would be a picture again, but there was not a whole picture now.

  She saw the scuffling lope of a rifleman clad like a hunter all in green, as he dropped on his knees behind a low wall and lifted his rifle to aim through the world of swirling white.

  She heard the crying whine of a bullet as it spun off a rock.

  She saw two figures lumber through the encumbering knee-deep snow, long overcoats hampering their legs, using rifles as sticks or crutches.

  She saw the ancient flag lift slightly as a breeze from the upper airs caught its stiff folds, and she saw Adelaide look up at it like a child proud of a parent.

  She heard a ringing clash, steel on steel, again, a gasp of effort, clash, half-grunt half-cry, another clash, ring, gasp.

  She saw plumes - a man with an iron face - a rearing horse, hooves stamping at the air.

  She saw a hand that twitched, palm uppermost, saw the fingers clench and then relax profoundly, and saw the open palm fill up in under a minute with snowflakes, like coins thrown to a beggar. They melted at first, but then as more and more fell into it, they stayed, covering the palm entirely until there were just the fingers, then the fingertips, then four shadows, then nothing.

  She saw Otto von Schwartzberg stooping over a wounded man, a giant with a child, a huge hand soothing, an arm scooping him to shelter.

  She saw him bend, haul back the heroic string of his bow, raise it, shoot; heard the whiz of the bolt, heard a peal of mighty laughter as it struck.

  She saw a soldier, broad red face, pale eyes, bloated with astonishment as a sword-point slid through felt, serge, linen, skin, and into the grate of his ribs to put out the fire of his heart.

  She saw Jim, bloodied, leap down from the rocks around the flag, aim his pistol, fire, fire again, pull the trigger a third time and then hurl the empty weapon in the faces coming at him through the snow - saw one go down - saw Jim switch the sword to his right hand, sweep it to left and right to feel the balance, then leap again to slash, thrust, parry, a grey ghost fighting shadows.

  She saw blood; she saw a mound of snow turn red from within; she saw drops fall heavily and plunge their red heat deep into the soft white, leaving dark holes like wounds themselves.

  She saw Count Thalgau, his stout old man's courage stalwart against the enemy, steadfast even as his strength failed, look up at Adelaide and sense her thanks, and fight on dauntlessly, into the gathering dark of his own death.

  She remembered the pistol in her bag, and, moaning, hauled it out, and holding it with two hands, fired, and felt a fierce joy as a man fell.

  She saw Adelaide struck; she thought she saw the very bullet, a little black thing the size of a bee, spinning its way through the yielding air to its home in her breast. She saw the bright blood gush, she saw a pale hand fling out to grasp the flag, she saw Jim catch her, the flag dip and topple, wavering, dropping; she saw Otto spring to catch it and wave it mightily above his head in one hand, clearing the air for the pistol in his other hand to blaze in.

  She saw Jim above Adelaide's body, sword-point whirling, eyes not human any more but cat-like, demon-like, afire with emerald rage. He seemed to be fighting the air itself, hacking, slicing, cutting, thrusting; and the sky, the enveloping flake-thick air, seemed to swirl more closely around him, peopled by grappling shadows that clung and hung and tugged, dragging him down, struggling, fighting, down.

  Then there were acres of silence.

  The flakes sifted endlessly soft from above, filling the crevices in the walls, settling on eyes and teeth, covering upturned faces with a filmy veil that became a white pierrot-mask that became a nothing, a smooth blank space. The blood, that had blossomed in the snow, in the old fairy-tale way, soon faded to pink and surrendered to white, and vanished. Soldiers and students, bodies and stones, huntsmen and horses, were little more than hillocks in the snow.

  But voices came.

  At first she thought they were snatches of dream, or fragments of conversation from another world, the next world:

  "... gone ..."

  "... heard them shooting from the farm ..."

  "... Count Otto von Schwartzberg ..."

  "... dead! So many ..."

  "... a German uniform..."

  "... off the train down there ..."

  "... the Queen? Surely not ..."

  "... a nobleman - look - the ribbon and the star ..."

  "... breathing? ..."

  "... can't be alive ..."

  "... the brandy! Fetch it, quick! ..."

  "... can't loosen his hand ..."

  "... grip like a baboon - all right, we're friends - take - a sip ..."

  "... Count Otto - he's got the flag ..."

  "... sent a man down for help ..."

  "...what was that? Did you hear a voice? ..."

  "... in the tower - quick ..."

  "... alive!"

  For Becky had wanted to speak, even if she was speaking to phantoms.

  A man appeared in the ancient doorway, elderly, whiskered, anxious. He saw her, turned to call for help, began to clamber clumsily up, holding out his old shaking fingers that beckoned as a grandfather might gently urge a little child to move forward so that he could pick her up.

  Then she realized that, truly, it was all over.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE SWISS CLINIC

  The people from the town of Andersbad carried down those who were still living and those who were dead, both German and Razkavian. It was a cold, uncomfortable, melancholy journey, and the Medical Institute of the little spa became more and more crowded, with wounded men sitting slumped in the corridors or lying unconscious in the wards, the Hydrotherapy Clinic, the Steam Room.

  The doctors worked hard, but they were more at home with archducal gout and baronial indigestion than sword-cuts and bullet-wounds. The medicinal waters were good, but not miraculous, except in the brochure. The Director ordered his staff to divide the patients into those who could wait, those who would die anyway, and those whom surgery could help if it came at once, and concentrate on the third; and at half-past three in the afternoon, they got round to Jim.

  "How are they ever going to kill this fellow?" said the surgeon. "Two bullets -"

  "Three," said his assistant, dropping something into a china bowl with a loud clink.

  "Three bullet holes, four wounds - sword-cuts? Looks like it - requiring stitches, multiple abrasions, exposure... Who is he?"

  "No name. He's got the Order of Something-or-other around his neck; a nobleman of some kind."

  "Ours or theirs?"

  "Oh, ours. Theirs are clean and tidy."

  "Keep him tucked away then. Found any more punctures?"

  A stocky young man with a sword-cut over his eye and broken collarbone forced his way through the crowd of people in the lobby to where Becky was lying, dizzy with pain, on a sofa in a draught.

  "Fraulein Winter..."

  "Karl! Is that you? Thank God! Are you..."

  "They're going to set the broken bone in a little while. Otherwise I'm well. How is -"

  "Have you heard whether -"

  "The Queen? I don't know. I saw her fall; I think they put her in the Steam Room. That's where they're keeping the..."

  She knew what he meant: those who were dead. "Oh, don't... But what are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to join Count Otto. He told me to come and get patched up and then join him in the hills outside Neustadt, but I think they're going to take too long to get round to the ones like me who can still walk. I want to leave now."

  "Take care! Do take care!"

  Karl had been crouching to talk quietly. Now he took her hand and kissed it formally.

  "Goodbye, Fraulein Winter."

  "Oh, please call me Becky! If you're going to leave..."

  "I hope so much I see you again, Becky. When all this is..."
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  They were awkward, shy. Then she caught a glimpse of uniforms through the crowd by the door: clean uniforms, not wet, dirty ones, and unfamiliar: German?

  "Be careful," she whispered. "Go. Count Otto will be a good leader. Please stay alive..."

  He kissed her hand again, and vanished.

  It was hours later, and the doctor wouldn't listen.

  "Rest," he said. "Keep still and quiet. There's nothing better for broken ribs. They will heal again, but if you agitate yourself--"

  "Can't you see that you're making me more agitated?" Becky cried. "I want to know where she is! Is she dead or alive? Can't you even tell me that?"

  "She? Who's this she? I think, Fraulein, I had better prescribe a sleeping-draught. Too much anxiety at the moment can--"

  "The Queen! Queen Adelaide! Dead or alive? You must tell me! I'm her secretary, her companion, her friend - this is too cruel! You must tell me!"

  The doctor turned to the nurse. "Nurse, please go and bring me some tincture of valerian from the pharmacy. And some papaver syrup."

  As soon as the nurse had left, the doctor laid his medicinal hand on Becky's forehead and said softly, "Alive, and out of the way to be safe. She was very badly hurt: the bullet passed within an inch of her heart. We're not sure yet how well she'll recover; we're sending her on somewhere else. If we keep her here she'll be arrested again for sure. As it is we've had policemen from Germany looking all over the hospital, and there's been some crazy woman ... Fraulein?"

  Becky didn't need the tincture of valerian; at the word safe such a flood of relief passed through her that her system couldn't absorb it. She was fast asleep.

  The doctors making the first crude separation of patients into those who would live and those who would die had put Adelaide unhesitatingly in the latter class - if indeed she wasn't dead already. They laid her frail chilly body in the Steam Room, and it wasn't until late in the afternoon that anyone suspected she might recover. An attendant laying out one poor man heard a slight intake of breath, and turned to see her eyelids fluttering, her lips parting, her fingers moving faintly.

  Ninety seconds later, a doctor was feeling her pulse, and two minutes after that, he was joined by two of his senior colleagues.

  "Should we operate?"

  "Yes. At once."

  "And what then?"

  "You mean - politically?"

  "I heard they tried to execute her yesterday. She got away with the flag. Passed it on to Schwartzberg. If they find out -"

  "The city's in chaos. There's no one to give orders but the German general. That's what I've heard."

  "If they know she's alive -"

  "They'll want her back. She's a symbol of the freedom of the country - even more than the flag, I'd say."

  "They'd force her to submit."

  "She never would!"

  "Then they'd imprison her and let her die of starvation. They can't let her survive."

  "Well, we can't let her die."

  "Agreed... What do we do?"

  "Operate. Then send her secretly into Austria. Schwannhofer's clinic in Vienna."

  "Switzerland would be better. The Austrians..."

  "Might use her as a bargaining counter? Yes, good point. I know a man in Kreuzlingen; the St Johann..."

  "Excellent place. Come on, let's get her in the theatre."

  And four days later, Jim Taylor was sitting in an invalid chair, glaring balefully at the skaters on the ice outside the great windows of the colonnade leading to the Trinkhalle in the Swiss lakeside town of Kreuzlingen. The atmosphere inside was heavy and clinical, a combination of hush, steam-pipes, and carbolic soap. Ferns grew prosperously in glass containers beside the wicker tables; an elderly gentleman took nearly five minutes to turn the page of his newspaper, with much fussy rustling. Jim scowled at him.

  The string trio playing selections from Strauss and Suppe in the Trinkhalle through the open door, and the scatter of polite applause covered the sound of approaching footsteps. The blonde young woman in the fox-fur coat sat on the iron bench a yard or two from Jim, and waited for him to turn and see her.

  He looked pale and battered. There was a rug over his knees. But his straw-coloured hair was neatly plastered down, his high "masher" collar was immaculate, and his three-buttoned jacket in dark lovat was the very glass of fashion.

  Then he turned and recognized his oldest friend, and a little cry broke from him.

  "Sally!"

  He reached with both hands. She took them, and leant across to kiss him.

  "What's been happening?" said Sally Goldberg. "Is Adelaide -"

  "She's in bed. Not allowed to move. I tell you -"

  He stopped, aware of the waiter standing attentively by with a tray of glasses and a jug of the sulphurous water from the spring.

  "You're too healthy for that muck," said Jim to Sally, "and I'm too ill. We'll have some beef tea. Fleischbruhe, bitte," he said to the waiter, who murmured respectfully and hurried away.

  "What did he call you?" said Sally.

  "Baron. It's genuine. It was almost the last thing she did before the fight. It wasn't ... I didn't... It wouldn't have been right to refuse. And she had the perfect right to confer it, being Queen and all. When they patched me up in Andersbad and sent me on here, all they had to label me by was the ribbon round my neck, because I was unconscious. It makes the waiters hop, I'll say that for it, but it's back to Jim when we get home. But what brought you here? I thought you were still in America?"

  "We came back earlier than we'd planned. And the first thing I saw was this." She took out a folded newspaper cutting from her bag. "I wired the Medical Institute at Andersbad and they told me where they'd sent you. And here I am."

  He took the cutting and read:

  FALL OF AN ANCIENT KINGDOM

  The Cockney Queen is Missing

  Flight of the Red Eagle

  News has been received of the annexation of the Kingdom of Raskavia by the German Empire. This little country, scarcely bigger than Berkshire, has been independent since 1276, but civil disturbances in recent days, coupled with an appeal for help from the Chancellor, the Baron von Grodl, have resulted in a response from the German authorities. A regiment of Pomeranian grenadiers is now quartered in the capital city, Estenburg, and discussions are under way with a view to the country's entering the German Customs Union and ultimately its administration from Berlin.

  Raskovia became the object of widespread interest six months ago, at the coronation of the last King, Rudolf II. Readers may recall that he was assassinated at the ceremony and that his place was taken by his Queen, an Englishwoman. Queen Adelaide reigned in her own right for six months, but she has not been seen in the capital for some days.

  Also missing are several valuable items from the Treasury of Rasvakia, including the ancient banner

  Jim angrily crumpled the paper and threw it down.

  "They're all saying that! Implying she did a bunk and scarpered with a lot of loot! Bloody liars..."

  "That's what I thought. I brought Frau Winter with me, by the way; she's with Becky now. You'd better tell me all about it."

  "Mama, you are not to believe what it says in the papers. Believe me, your daughter. I was there. Oh, it was so close, Mama! One more day and there would have been a treaty to keep us safe and independent for ever! And they loved her, the people, and you should have seen how we fought - at the end..."

  Frau Winter's hands released her daughter's, and smoothed down the rug Becky had rumpled in her agitation.

  "I shall never forgive her for leading you into danger. If I had thought--"

  "Mama, you will have to forgive her if you want to speak to me again. She could only lead if people were willing to follow. And she didn't cause the danger, she was betrayed. Have you seen the papers? I never believed they could write things like that. I thought it wasn't allowed, I thought they had to print the truth. It's too cruel, Mama, after what she's done. But Count Otto knows. And the men who fought - they k
now. Oh, Mama, when will people listen?"

  Frau Winter didn't know.

  That afternoon, Sally Goldberg went to the British Consul. He was a plump man with snippy manners, mildly irritated to be called away from his study, where he was happily cataloguing the dried results of his summer's collecting among the Alpine flora.

  "Yes? How can I help you, madam?"

  "I wonder if you could tell me about the British government's attitude to the invasion of Razkavia. Are we making any representations to Berlin? What about the safety of British residents? And what of the attempts on the life of the Queen, who is of British birth?"

  "May I ask what your interest is?"

  "I am a concerned British subject."

  "I see. Well, Razkavia is not a matter of great or immediate concern to Her Majesty's government. As far as I know there are few British residents there, but no doubt their interests are being very effectively looked after by Her Majesty's representative in the capital. What else did you want to know? Something about Berlin? - Oh yes. Well, it has long been the policy of Her Majesty's government to seek and foster the most cordial relations with the major powers. Germany is a nation of immense importance; it would not be in our interests to interfere in what is essentially, I understand, an internal German question. And finally, what was your other point? - Oh yes - the famous Cockney Queen. Well, you see, this is the sort of thing that happens to old, corrupt, played-out regimes - they fall prey to any adventurous confidence trickster who comes along. I gather she made off with half the Treasury, did you see that in the papers? Used to be a music-hall dancer, or worse, I believe. Probably halfway to Brazil by now. Make a jolly good yarn. But, good gracious me, Mrs ah - Goldberg, it's not the job of the Diplomatic Service to give aid and protection to common criminals, even picturesque ones. No, the work of diplomacy is serious, and, if I may say so, grown up. We have no interest in the Cockney Queen. Was there anything..."

  "I see. Thank you. No, there was nothing else. Good afternoon."

  As the daylight faded over the lake, the nurse came to change Adelaide's dressing and to tell her that she was allowed a visitor.