The Tin Princess, Page 9

  "It's worth a try. Hans?"

  "Friedrich and I have scuppered Glatz! We heard he was going to disrupt the Queen's visit to the School of Mines tomorrow, and we told him that they'd changed the plans and she was going to the Conservatoire instead. So he'll be hanging around with a gang of malcontents, and they'll have no one to jeer at."

  "Excellent! Now, what about the plans for the Coronation itself? Karl?"

  Karl cleared his throat and cast a quick, shy glance at Becky before describing the way they intended to guard the route. After a minute or so he forgot the shyness and spoke clearly and forcefully, and Becky saw another leader in him, another Jim: quieter, less mercurial, perhaps, and certainly less experienced, but equally strong.

  "The problem is our numbers," he finished by saying. "We can muster sixty fellows, sixty-three at a pinch, but no more. And of course our only weapons are swords. We're allowed to carry them by the rules of the fraternity, but we haven't got a pistol between us."

  "I wish I could join you!" Becky said.

  "Can you shoot?" said someone.

  "I bet I could if I tried."

  "I'll teach you," offered someone else. "They make little dainty pistols you can carry in a handbag. I've seen them."

  Becky looked at him curiously. "What makes you think I want to be dainty about it?" she said. "I'd just as soon be a pirate, and fire a cannon. In any case; I've got to be with the Queen; she needs me. I'll watch out for you all."

  "I hope you won't need us," said Karl. "If we come into it at all, then things will have gone badly wrong."

  "Enough," said Jim. "You've done all you can. Let's have some beer. But keep an eye on the hotels, and especially on the railway station..."

  Later, as Jim and Becky were walking back across the bridge, Becky said, "Do you really expect trouble at the Coronation?"

  "Yes. I wish I didn't. You sound as if you're looking forward to it."

  "Do I?"

  "All this talk of cannons and so forth. You're a bloodthirsty character, aren't you?"

  "I don't know," she said honestly. "I've never had the chance to find out. I'm pretty sure I would fight if I had to, though. I wouldn't give in, or flinch and cry and faint. People don't think girls are brave, but I'd love the chance to try... Just once, perhaps; just once, so I could know what it was like to risk my life and fight to the death. It's not that I want to kill people, it's that I want to find out about me. I'll never completely know about myself unless I try."

  "I don't think girls are less brave than men, but then I know Sally. Mrs Goldberg. I think I'd trust you in a fight, though."

  "Why?"

  "Just a guess. You made an impression on Karl von Gaisberg, you know."

  "Oh, really? Oh. Mmm. They ... they seem very competent. The Richterbund..."

  "I couldn't have found a better bunch. Karl especially... Makes me wonder what I've missed, Becky, never having been a student. It's a nice life at university, fighting and singing and drinking and so on. When this is over I might take up philosophy - if I thought I could stand the pace."

  Later, when Becky had returned to her room, Jim wandered out into the grounds of the Palace. It was a fine clear night without a moon, and the formal garden lay still and scented under the myriad stars. Jim walked the light gravel path between the dark little hedges, half-sleepy, half-intoxicated with the beauty of the night, entirely in love with Adelaide, whose window he could see above the stone terrace with its marble urns. He stood and watched for a while, and then left the garden for the wilder park, where a great sweep of grass, dotted with trees, undulated towards the distant forest.

  He wandered aimlessly over the grass for twenty minutes or so, moving in a wide curve away from the Palace. The silence was profound. He might have been the only human being in the world.

  Suddenly there came a sound that turned him to ice. It was a man's voice, screaming. It came without warning out of the dark and died away.

  Jim had never been so afraid. His muscles seemed to have melted; he was nearly sick with fright. It was more than a scream - it was a howl of horrible anguish - a rising, falling wail that spoke of infinite pain. He gripped the stick he was carrying and forced himself to stand still and remember which way the sound had come from: over there? Towards the forest? Was it some night animal, or an owl, which he could safely ignore?

  No, it wasn't. Swallowing hard, he set off quietly in the direction it had come from, towards a group of oak trees at the edge of a little dip in the ground. Crouching low and feeling better for the activity, he moved closer, listening with every nerve he had, prepared for something vile to spring at him: but nothing did. He reached the first tree, stood with his hand on the trunk, listening still, and heard nothing.

  He tapped the trunk with his stick. Nothing responded.

  He moved under the trees, eyes wide, staring at every shadow. Nothing moved; the shadows were only shadows; there was nothing there to harm him, nothing there that had screamed.

  Cautiously he left the oak trees and looked further around. Nothing; starlight, silence, shadows.

  He gave a long, soft, shaky whistle and went to bed.

  On the night before the Coronation, the Palace and the city were alive with bustle and preparation. In the Palace kitchens, the pastry-cooks were completing the towers of icing and pastry that would decorate the table at the State Banquet, and in the ice-house, an artist in ice was busy chipping and shaving away at a huge block brought there from St Petersburg and kept intact since the winter. It was going to represent the Cathedral, though if the day turned out to be hot and too much melted, the sculptor would transform it speedily into a rugged simulacrum of the Eschtenburg Rock, complete with funicular railway and tiny flag.

  In the stables, the horses were being fed and watered, their tails plaited, their manes combed. The Coach had been polished and oiled and buffed and regilded, the wheels newly tyred, the seats stuffed with fresh horsehair. Outside in the city, the streets were being swept and cleaned, the flowers in the window-boxes watered and trimmed, every window-pane along the route polished until it sparkled. Beside the Nenuphar Lake in Stralitzky Park, a team of Neapolitan pyrotechnicians were setting the fuses and the revolving wheels for the firework display. The choir was being rehearsed in the Cathedral. The Opera House orchestra was going through the programme for the Coronation Ball, including of course Johann Strauss the Younger's Andersbad Waltz. The sentries on duty outside the Palace were stamping and wheeling and saluting and presenting arms with even more vigour than usual, while the Razkavian Police were patrolling the streets, twirling their whiskers and frowning officially. In every hotel and inn and beer-cellar, restaurateurs and chefs and landlords were checking their casks of beer, their cellars of wine, their sides of venison. In bars and cafes, journalists and correspondents from all over Europe - and one or two from America - were gathering local colour and essential background information in the usual way, namely by talking to one another over glasses of strong drink.

  In the Cathedral vestry, where the flag had rested since the death of the old King (the period between a royal death and a Coronation was the only time it wasn't flying), the nuns of St Agatha, the seamstresses who tended to it, were going over it with fine needles and finer thread, mending every rent and patching every thin spot and strengthening every seam, outlining the ancient eagle in fresh scarlet silk, and attaching new golden tassels to the border.

  And the focus of all this activity, the new King and his young Queen, sat across a little table playing a child's game and clapping and laughing and groaning, and Becky sat with them, like a nursemaid with two charges.

  It was a game called Whirlpool, which Becky and Adelaide had been playing before the King came in. Adelaide had wanted to play chess; but Becky always lost, and Adelaide, who had found a book of chess openings (she could read chess notation now, if little else) hadn't the patience to put up with a duffer, so they played Whirlpool instead. The object was to be the last to be sucked down into
the vortex, so you needed low scores on the dice instead of high ones, and Adelaide was cheating outrageously. Despite accidentally knocking the dice on the floor and then pretending they only showed two, and despite wrongly counting the number of squares she had to move, and despite elaborately talking about something else just after Becky had her move and then insisting that she'd moved last and it was Becky's turn again, she finally had to accept that her little tin ship was going to plunge into the maelstrom long before Becky's; and at that point she had the nerve to say that Becky must be cheating. Becky laughed at her.

  Adelaide was about to flare into a tantrum - Becky knew the signs - when there came a gentle knock on the door, and the King came in.

  Becky curtsied. Adelaide jumped up and greeted him with a kiss. She was genuinely fond of him, Becky thought; she had a great capacity for fondness. She'd called Becky sister once or twice, surprising herself as much as Becky, and doing her best to cancel the little revelation with a flourish of petulance. So Becky was never surprised to see how affectionate she was with Rudolf, though she felt that it was the sort of love you might show to a favourite brother: not, perhaps, a husband.

  Becky prepared to leave, but King Rudolf said, "No, Miss Winter, please stay with us. You are playing a game? Which one is this?"

  "We've nearly finished this," Adelaide said. "Play chess with me, Rudi. Becky can watch and learn a new opening."

  "No, no. I like these games best. May I join you?"

  A little smirk of triumph from Her Majesty: she could start again, unvortexed. She swept the pieces off the board, and the King sat down with them in that comfortable, rather over-furnished room, at the table with its crimson cloth. Darkness was gathering outside, and the lamps were lit, casting their yellow warmth over the table and the brightly coloured board, and the ivory dice, and the little metal ships, and their hands: the King's a-glitter with the ring of State, and Adelaide's delicate rose-pink as she shook the dice between her cupped palms before rolling a double one.

  "Snake's eyes!" she said, clapping with delight. "It's going to be all right this time."

  She moved her ship two squares and the game began.

  In one of the handsome tall old buildings in St Stephen's Square, overlooking the Cathedral steps, a woman stood ringing the doorbell of an apartment on the fourth floor. The man who stood behind her was carrying a long, leather-bound box and what might have been a tripod in a green felt bag.

  A manservant opened the door. The householder, a bachelor cigar merchant called Alois Egger, didn't know the lady, who gave her name as Senora Menendez, a representative of the leading fashion journal in Madrid. Her associate was a photographer. Was Herr Egger aware of the enormous interest aroused throughout Europe by the accession of this young and beautiful Queen? If Senora Menendez could obtain early details and photographs - of the Coronation gown... And this apartment overlooked the Cathedral steps, did it not?

  Indeed it did. The balcony gave one of the finest views in the city.

  Herr Egger was no provincial stick-in-the-mud; he was a cosmopolitan businessman; he travelled to Amsterdam several times a year; he had even been to Havana once. What a pleasure to do business with a modern woman as agreeable and charming as Senora Menendez! Why, it put him in mind of a certain evening in Cuba - the moon behind the palm trees - the soft notes of a guitar - red rose, black hair...

  And the price she offered was really quite generous. They agreed: he would vacate the apartment early in the morning and let her and the photographer have the exclusive use of it throughout the Coronation. He would be in pocket, the ladies of Madrid would have their fashion picture-story, and perhaps, next evening - who could tell? - a little dinner, a stroll in the Spanish Gardens, the city en fete... It might be Havana once again.

  So everything was ready for the Coronation.

  Chapter Eight

  THE CORONATION

  Becky's maid woke her at six. She couldn't lie a moment in bed; she jumped out and stood at her window, gazing out at the park and the red-brown roofs of the city below and the dark sap-green of the distant hills, as the sun touched everything with a pearly fresh clarity that Frau Winter's acquaintance Monsieur Pissarro might have been able to depict, but which Becky could only wonder at.

  Then wash, dress, eat, hurry back to room, maid to do hair, looking-glass, shoes, hat, brooch, reticule... Oh, where was it? And purse: money... Would there be a collection? Did they pass the plate around at a Coronation? Surely not; but here was a coin or two just in case... What's the time? It can't be; hurry, hurry.

  She hastened downstairs, nearly tripped on the carpet in the West Corridor, and ran full tilt into someone.

  It was Jim. He had an expression of baffled fury, but not at her. He drew her into the little ante-room beyond the Library.

  "Listen," he said, "there's not much time--"

  "I know! I've got to be at the West Door in three minutes!"

  "Shut your trap and listen. Godel's concocted some ridiculous charge and ordered me confined to the Palace, damn his eyes. I've given the Serjeant-at-Arms the slip once, but if he finds me again it'll be lock and key. I'm going to try and get out in a minute and join Karl and the others. Something's up, Becky. By God, if I could -"

  He froze, and listened, and then darted behind the heavy curtain. Becky pretended to be fiddling with her gloves as there came a peremptory knock and the door swung open.

  She turned in mock surprise to face the two soldiers.

  "Excuse me, Fraulein," said one, "but have you seen the Englishman? Herr Taylor?"

  "Not this morning, no," she said. "Surely he's with His Majesty?"

  "No, he's missing, Fraulein. Excuse me for disturbing you."

  He saluted and withdrew. It was time for Becky to be at the West Door, or she'd make everyone late; she was going to travel to the Cathedral with the Count and Countess, because Adelaide had insisted that she was to be close by.

  "Jim?" she whispered desperately. "I must go!"

  "See if they're still in the corridor," he said, coming out from behind the curtain. "Give me a nod if it's clear. Remember - green-and-yellow's safe."

  She opened the door. The red-carpeted corridor stretched empty to left and right, and she looked back and whispered, "All clear" before darting out. She tore along to the entrance and reached it just in time, stumbling past the surprised footman and out on to the steps like a low comedian in a farce. In the open carriage below, the Count was glaring at her like a hand-grenade. Becky saw that there was a fourth passenger, and groaned inwardly.

  "I do beg your pardon," she said, scrambling up in the least unladylike fashion she could manage. "I caught my heel in the carpet and tripped as I came out."

  There was a frosty silence. She took her seat beside the Count, facing backwards. The groom swung the door shut, the coachman shook the reins, and they trundled slowly away to join the State Coach, which was already moving through the gates. Becky longed to turn her head and look at the crowd, but it would have been ill-mannered, because the Count was introducing her to the old gentleman opposite, a duke of some kind whose name she didn't catch. Not knowing how to curtsy sitting down, but feeling that some kind of gesture was due, she gave a sort of ugly squirm and he very politely lifted his top hat. The carriage slowed as it caught up with the State Coach, and then another two carriages swung in behind them; and then a troop of hussars or Uhlans or Lancers trotted up from somewhere, jingling and snorting and monstrously pleased with themselves as they eyed Adelaide squintwise from beneath their black fur helmets.

  And then they were off, a huge cheer shaking the rooftops and scattering pigeons, and a thousand flags waving from windows and doorways and balconies. The actual distance to the Cathedral was not very great, but the drive took the best part of half an hour, since they went down the Cesky Boulevard and under the Arch of Remembrance, and then into Stralitzky Park and along the Nenuphar Lake, past the Grotto-Pavilion which King Michael had built in 1765 for his swan-bride.
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br />   All along the route, citizens waved flags and tourists raised their hats and policemen stood stiffly saluting. Here and there Becky saw a young figure move through the throng, and caught a glimpse of a green-and-yellow flash at his shoulder; or hoped she did, anyway.

  Jim slipped along to the end of the West Corridor and looked around the corner across the Saloon and into the Banqueting Hall. At the other end of that, a long way off, there was a serving room with a steam-cupboard for keeping plates and dishes hot, and beyond that, a short passage to the kitchen; but could he get to the other end of the Banqueting Hall without being seen? Servants were coming in and out every few minutes to arrange flowers, to position chairs, to set out glasses...

  Voices behind him. Nothing for it; have to go. He crouched and darted across the Saloon, into the Banqueting Hall - empty - thank God! - a clatter of plates: someone in the Serving Room - dive under the table.

  The cloth came halfway down to the floor all around. Provided he kept quiet, he should be able to get from this end to the other, because the floor was carpeted; nothing to scrape or knock on; but it was a long way. The table was as long as a cricket pitch: Jim had paced it out once, twenty-two yards from end to end. And it was supported by several massive central legs, over whose radiating feet, like smoothly-polished roots, he'd have to clamber.

  He set off. It took him far longer than he hoped, because when he was halfway down, a squad of footmen came in to set out the cutlery with geometrical precision. All he could see was white stockings and black patent-leather buckled shoes on either side of him, moving slowly from one setting to the next. He could hear a hiss of steam from the Serving Room, the soft, light knocks of cutlery set down on the tablecloth, the murmur of conversation - which stopped when the Steward (dark trousers) came in to stroll the length of the table, stop to criticize, move on.

  Then came another silence, and feet and legs turned to the door through which Jim had scuttled in. Uniformed legs at the end of the table: the tight maroon trousers with black stripe of the Palace Guard.

  "Have you seen His Majesty's secretary? The Englishman Taylor?"

  "No, Serjeant," from the Steward.