‘What happened to your uncle?’
She smiled sadly, and Michaels wondered what she was seeing. ‘I looked after him. Saw him buried decently.’ Her voice lost its softness. ‘Then I came looking for her. I’d had a letter from her saying she was in Ulrichsberg, calling herself Beatrice Lachapelle, and that she had found a magus – someone to teach her. I met the Colonel when he arrived at the hotel where I was staying here.’
‘And of your sister?’
She shook her head. ‘Not a trace.’
Pegel woke and stretched very carefully. Bruises mostly, he thought. He’d have rather done three rounds with his pet giant than take that fall again. The ankle was bad though. Well, he had to spend the day organising the papers he had got anyway. What was left of it. He had slept long and hard and the sun was already at its height. He looked at his right palm. Torn, ugly and dirty. He needed food and watering. He got slowly to his feet, hobbled over to the window and opened the latch. There was a pair of boys playing below him. He whistled, and after a good bit of miming and a coin that glinted in the sunshine, he heard small steps thundering up the staircase.
By the time his window rattled with a pebble hurled by Florian, his dirty clothes had been carried off, his wounds washed and his ankle was supported on a mound of blankets. The brighter of the two children he had held on to as a servant for the day. When the pebble struck, Pegel sent him to see who it was.
‘Fella.’
‘What sort of fella, genius?’
‘Yellow hair and all very ladidah!’ The boy performed a little mincing walk across the window and Pegel tried not to smile.
‘All right, go and fetch him in then.’
He went without a word and when he returned, presented Florian with a flourish. ‘Here he is! What do you want me to do now then?’
‘Bottle of wine and a bit of bread and cheese from Mother Brown’s. Go on then!’
‘They ain’t going to give it to me for free, are they?’
Pegel shrugged. ‘Fair point. Florian, give the boy some money, will you?’
Florian reached into his pocket automatically and handed the child a couple of coins. The door slammed and his wooden soles clattered down the stairs like a drum roll.
Florian had been staring at him open-mouthed. ‘Jacob, what on earth happened to you?’
Pegel crossed his arms and lowered his chin, looking sulky. ‘I met your friend in the brown coat again. He was running up from Fluss Strasse in a ripping hurry, but that giant wasn’t with him so I thought I’d try to have a word. Judged it wrong. He threw me over, turned my ankle.’
‘Oh Jacob, I’m so sorry. Did he hurt you badly?’
‘Oh, I’m fine, don’t fuss! He just got lucky, had some momentum build up. I could have taken him, no problem, otherwise.’
Florian came over and placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. For some reason Pegel’s eyes stung a little. ‘What time of day was this?’ Florian asked. ‘I came looking for you yesterday.’
‘Out walking most of the afternoon. Clears my head. I was just coming back – it was dark, or getting there, I suppose.’
Florian picked up a chair from the other side of the room and brought it over so he could sit with Pegel at the desk. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and looked deeply into his friend’s eyes. ‘A most terrible thing. It seems this man had found his way into the depths of a … society of friends of which I am part.’
‘What society of friends?’
‘The ones I told you of the other night. Men ready to rule, ready to guide us to a better future.’
Pegel scratched his head. ‘Those dreams – you saying they’re real? What are you going to do? Hang all the Dukes? Kill the Kings?’
Florian smiled. His face really did glow when he talked of these things. ‘There will be no violence, Jacob. Our people will take positions of power in every court and country in Europe. We will convert to our cause those rulers who can be reasoned with. The others we will control, then educate their heirs. Slowly, all of this,’ he waved his hand, taking in the attic, but Pegel supposed Maulberg, the Empire, ‘all this will wither away and once again people can live as nature intended.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘Inspired! But it is vital that secrecy is preserved until the world is ready. Vital. And now, somehow, someone has done what no one thought possible and identified the leader of our group in Leuchtenstadt.’ Pegel scratched behind his ear in hopes of hiding a slightly smug expression. Florian, however, had turned to watch the blue spring sky through Pegel’s huge window. ‘It is such a closely guarded secret, only two or three people know his name.’
‘You do not know your own leader?’
‘It is much safer so! I only know the names of two or three members of my own rank, and then there is my guide in the rank above. He will decide when I am ready to be initiated into the next rank, then pass my advancement over to another man who will guide me to the next stage. I told you, secrecy is vital.’
‘Sounds like the army. What’s your rank now then?’
Frenzel hesitated. ‘Master Knight of the Chosen Company of the Elected.’ Pegel snorted. ‘Jacob! This is very serious!’
‘Too bloody right it’s serious – look at my ankle!’
The stairs gave notice that food was arriving and Jacob’s young butler slapped it down on the table. ‘What else?’
‘Nothing for now. Go and run about in the square and scare the old ladies, or whatever it is you do,’ Pegel said. ‘Stay within earshot, though. I may want you later.’ And when the boy stayed where he was: ‘What?’
‘Retainer.’
Florian reached into his pocket and pulled out yet another coin. He placed it in the boy’s hand, saying, ‘Look after my friend.’
The boy grinned and began to run the coin back and forth between his fingers. ‘I’ll wipe his arse if you carry on paying like that.’
Pegel grinned. ‘Not required. Now sod off, there’s a good boy.’ As the lad went on his way again, Pegel noticed that Florian was blushing slightly. Good Lord, this man was brought up in a nunnery, he thought, and felt a stab of affection.
‘The house of this man, our leader here, was broken into last evening. His papers were searched. That man must have been fleeing the chase when you encountered him.’
‘I wish I could have stopped him.’
‘If the thief had found anything of value we should all be ruined, our project at an end. Our leader here is in constant communication with a network of superiors, our leaders across Europe.’
Is he now, Pegel thought. He said, ‘The thief had no luck then?’
‘No, the significant papers were very cleverly concealed, and found undisturbed.’
Pegel shifted in his seat to try and ease the ache in his leg. ‘So you know who the leader is now then?’ Florian shook his head, and Pegel rolled his eyes.
‘But it’d be so simple to find out! I told you, that fellow was running up from Fluss Strasse when I had my “encounter” with him, as you call it. All you need to do is wander down that way and ask in a casual manner whose house was broken into last evening, and there you go! They’re probably all talking about it.’
‘Jacob, you don’t understand. The society requires loyalty, obedience. I shall be introduced to him at the proper time.’
‘I thought you were a brotherhood. How can you be brothers if all these layers of secrecy are required?’
‘It is for the greater good.’
‘Greater good! Well, if you say so. So are there other bands of merry revolutionaries – sorry, visionaries – elsewhere in Maulberg? Do you actually have a chance of doing any good, or have my sacrifices been in vain?’
Florian shook his head again, and Jacob thought of a young horse, troubled with flies. ‘Oh no, Jacob. I told you much good has already been done. The leaders of our group first came together almost seven years ago. There are many of our mind who hold high positions at court in Ulrichsberg. So I have been told.’
‘But you don’t know who?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Can we eat?’ Pegel said, apparently losing interest. ‘Healing makes me hungry.’
‘When I talk of the greater good, Jacob, I mean something real. It’s not just an idea. I have something to show you. I thought of it as soon as I saw the equation you wrote out, and well … after what we’ve been speaking of.’ Florian reached into his pocket and took something out of it, then held it between his fingers, hesitating.
‘Oh, give it here then.’ Pegel took it and looked. It was the small medallion struck in silver. On its face was an owl holding open a book. On the pages were legible four letters:
PMCV
. On the reverse was an outline of the state of Maulberg.
‘Confident lot, aren’t you? Claiming Maulberg for your own already.’
‘It is just to show where we are from,’ Frenzel said earnestly. ‘There are many places in Europe where our members hold great power.’
‘Hmm. What does PMCV stand for?’
‘
Per me caeci vident
.’
‘“Through me the blind shall see.” Interesting claim. Now you said you thought of it when I wrote out that equation. Does that make me the owl? Yet in talking about your owl it sounds like you think me blind.’
‘You just need to be led towards the light, Pegel.’ Florian looked confused suddenly and made to reach for the coin again. ‘I shouldn’t have given it to you; they are only for those who have taken the oaths. Give it back.’
Pegel held it out of his reach. ‘Hang on there, you can’t give a man a present then snatch it back.’
‘Please, Jacob, it was a stupid idea.’ Pegel looked at him. There were tears in his eyes.
‘All right, all right.
Per me caeci vident
, eh?’ He ran his finger over the raised body of the owl, then passed it back to Florian. ‘Then talk, owl, and I shall eat.’
Michaels set down the letter on the table. It was the short note from Beatrice that had brought Mrs Padfield to Ulrichsberg. ‘So you think this man Kupfel is the magus she wanted to learn from?’
‘He’s the only alchemist in town.’
‘You haven’t been to see him yourself?’
‘I intended to do so, but by the time I had found out his name, an attachment had formed between Colonel Padfield and myself. I did not want to risk his affection, which was foolish. I find I have married a generous man. And then …’
‘What, lady?’
She smiled briefly, sadly. ‘I was sure she would come to me. I married under my true name, and we always read the papers wherever we lived. She would have seen I had married well, and come to pick my pockets. She has not.’
Michaels stroked his jaw. ‘She could be anywhere by now. What’s to say she’s not in Spain, telling fortunes there?’
‘If you find signs she had gone there, I will not ask you to follow. But I am sure she would have written. I can only think she either has married very well indeed, so wishes to keep our past as secret as I do, or she is dead. I would like to know which. I hope you will help me, though I know there is no reason why you should.’
He considered, and thought of his wife and son, the mantelpiece in the kitchen where the family liked to spend their time with its pewter-ware laid out. ‘That ivory puzzle-ball you were playing with – I think my wife would like it. If I find you certain word of your sister, I’ll take that for her.’
‘Very well.’
Michaels got to his feet and his greatcoat knocked against the table and made the tea cups rattle. Mrs Padfield stood also and rang the bell for the maid.
‘Why now?’ he asked. ‘You lived with the not-knowing all this time. Why confess all to your husband, then me?’
She clasped her hands loosely in front of her. ‘I think I have been looking for a way to tell my husband the truth for some time. I am … very fond of him. Then I heard a man like yourself had arrived in court and it gave me hope.’
‘Any other way to know her, other than the name and the hair?’
‘She had a plain gold cross, with her name engraved on the back. A boy she liked gave it to her many years ago, and I never saw her without it after.’
The maid curtseyed at the door and Michaels made to follow her. Mrs Padfield offered her hand and Michaels caught the maid’s blink of surprise. No wonder she couldn’t go looking for herself if offering a hand to a man like him made the servants curious. ‘Thank you, Michaels.’
He nodded, and followed the maid out of the house.
It was a small and extremely inky child who opened the door. Harriet had elected after their discussion with Krall to find out what she could of the writer Bertram Raben and Krall had directed her to the shopfront in one of the smaller squares of Ulrichsberg where his works had been printed and sold, and where the official newspaper of Maulberg was written and printed. It was suggested that to avoid the sneers of the court, Harriet should take her maid. It irritated her, but when she saw Dido’s delight at an outing, even if it were walking three paces behind her mistress to a newspaper office, she felt more at peace, and a little guilty.
Harriet asked for Herr Dorf and the inky child jerked his head towards a young man in shirt-sleeves standing behind a desk in the back of the room. It was a crowded space and Harriet had a general impression of paper, noise and tobacco smoke. Four or five men, rather sloppily dressed, shouted instructions or requests back and forth. The man to whom they wished to speak looked up briefly and seemed to be in the process of readying himself to speak to them, when another man of roughly the same age, but double his girth thrust a sheet of paper under his nose. He spoke German, but with such weight on each of his words, Harriet found she could understand him reasonably well.
‘Look at this, Dorf! Look! Four Princesses at the Gala and the names of three of them are spelled wrongly! It will have to be altered, or we shall have all of the cats about our ears.’
‘Then speak to Flounders, Kurt. And you could learn to write more clearly.’ Dorf’s voice was calm but sounded deeply weary.
‘I think you should tell him.’
‘I am sure you can express your displeasure strongly enough. Look, we have a guest.’ He crossed towards Harriet and made a bow. He was perhaps the same age as Graves, and had a particularly long face. He reminded Harriet of her favourite saddle-horse at Caveley, a patient beast.