Coronets and Steel (20 page)

Yesterday’s impressions resolved into more detail. I could see the different strata of history, the Baroque buildings built under the Hapsburgs juxtaposed with medieval ones, and with grand nineteenth-century edifices that presaged Art Nouveau. They all showed a curious blend of eastern and western motifs that was distinctly Dobreni.

There was still war damage, left for decades, and the evidence of King Milo’s recent projects—big projects, like sewer expansion, and in some areas, electricity for what was obviously the first time.

Here’s the weird thing. I sensed Alec’s presence everywhere.

I kept thinking,
only your imagination, Murray,
but the atmosphere of the city reminded me of him—distinctive, even elegant in an understated way. It was Alec’s space.

But not Gran’s. Oh, I believed the stories—at least, everything but Gran running off with the Wicked Armandros without benefit of marriage. I believed it intellectually, but I couldn’t get her into focus walking these streets, looking on these buildings.

I walked to the cathedral, just to discover it was still closed. Then I wandered around the city center in search of a hall of records or some equivalent, and not finding that, I headed for the cathedral for my second try. Right about then—like in Vienna—I got that feeling that I was being watched.

Last time it had turned out to be true.

I turned away from the cathedral. Since I didn’t know who was following me, I wouldn’t know if they got up close enough to hear my questions if I went into the cathedral. I didn’t have Jason Bourne’s savvy at spotting tails, but one thing for sure: I didn’t want anyone hearing my business.

So I slowed down, looking around, ho hum, see the boring tourist gawking, nothing else going on, nosiree Bob!

The open marketplace in the old section of town and many of the tall, narrow, three- and four-story houses under their slanting roofs looked the same as they must have for the last eight hundred years. I wandered through several stores offering exquisite handwoven rugs and embroidered clothes and beautiful, complicated wind-up clocks that would have gotten my dad’s mouth watering. Most everything in those shops seemed handmade, or at most made by simpler machines—no tech toys.

As I strolled around totally without purpose, I sneaked peeks over my shoulder from time to time.

Nothing. No sinister minions in mirror-shades, no Emilio or Kilber.

No Alec.

Most of the traffic was on foot. I wandered the streets alongside soberly clad Hasidic Jews doing Friday marketing preparatory for Sabbath meals, and smocked shepherds and cowherds whose clothing had probably altered little in style since 1300. I had to be careful where I stepped because these latter were often driving small flocks down the streets to or from market. They were interspersed with people in much more modern clothes. There were Slavic-boned faces, and here and there the unmistakable imprint of the Mongolian nomads in wide cheeks and tilted eyes. Most of the people were dark, but not all; the pale-headed and light-eyed evidence of long-ago Northern incursions also went about their business, wearing combinations of modern and local dress.

What I didn’t see was a cell phone. Not a single one. Even the young teens—a few boys wearing jeans, others in the Cossack tunics, girls in skirts of varying lengths, colors, and designs—walked along with hands free, talking to each other and not on the ubiquitous cell of the West.

I’d reached a flower-filled park that fronted the Jewish temple when I felt that “watched” feeling again. I turned around sharply as the bells from the cathedral half a mile west started ringing a carillon that echoed from the towering mountainside above and back.

Nothing.

Just people hastening on their way, some casting appraising glances skyward.

It couldn’t be the Ruli business again. The only people who knew her would either know where she was, or were all over Europe searching for her.

And it couldn’t be Alec—if for some wild reason he’d zoomed back home to Dobrenica, I couldn’t believe he’d slink around spying on me, especially after the whole Vienna mess. He’d come right up and ask me why I was there.

I stepped inside a corner bakery, breathing in the vanilla-tinged aroma of fresh-baked bread. I bought a nut-studded apple tart and sat at a table hardly bigger than a Frisbee as outside, a brief but violent thunderstorm sent rain hissing into the street. The squall was over before I finished the pastry and licked the dusting of cinnamon from my fingers. When I left, the cobblestones steamed in the pale afternoon sunlight.

I returned to the inn, feeling as if every step I took was marked by an unseen someone; on my arrival, I discovered the place was packed, mostly with relatives from the mountain heights come for the wedding. The common room was a roar of voices and clattering dishes; not until I made my way past them all did I feel safely lost in the numbers.

When I tried right after lunch—the cathedral annex was closed again. I made it back to the inn just ahead of a sudden, violent thunderstorm that made it impossible to go out for a third time. I had to give up for the day.

S
ATURDAY MORNING, the Ziglieri family arrived among an impressive cavalcade of relatives. The men got to work shifting tables and benches about. Boys were sent to deal with pony traps and ancient cars. Girls helped Theresa and Tania to decorate the inn outside and inside with fragrant bunches of flowers and ribbon-tied boughs. Older women turned their hands to last-stage preparation of enormous quantities of food.

I stayed out of the way, watching from the vantage of my window overlooking the courtyard and gardens until Theresa knocked on my door and shyly informed me that Grandmother Ziglieri wished to speak to me.

Had
consented
to speak to me, I realized with a spurt of humor as I followed Theresa to where three elderly women in widows’ black sat enthroned on a sunny bench. They were overseeing the flurry of activity with the keen-eyed determination of conferring field marshals.

Theresa led me to the oldest of them, a diminutive woman with a snowy embroidered headdress on her small gray head. With a respect ordering on reverence, Theresa introduced me to Grandmother Ziglieri first, and then to the widows on either side of her, whose names I didn’t register. I was too busy trying to figure out what to say.

The three widows peered up at me, the one on the left nodding, the one on the right squinting nearsightedly. Grandmother Ziglieri regarded me, her wrinkled face impossible to read.

The widow on the right said in a thin voice, “Yes? Yes? You come from Paris, the child says?”

The nodding widow’s voice was dry, her German slow but clear. “Come! Sit with us. Talk a little.”

“Thank you.” I sat on the stool that Theresa set before their bench. Though she hadn’t spoken yet, I addressed Grandmother Ziglieri. “Theresa tells me you worked at the palace under the old king, and that you knew the princesses.”

The ancient woman’s face creased into a thousand new lines as she pursed her lips.

The nodding widow said, “Yes, yes. So many pranks, Princess Rose! But so sweet . . . and Princess Lily . . . such a good child, always busy with her piano. But, oh, she could ride on her pony. Fearless, the both. And so pretty. Hair the color of yours . . . no, lighter . . .”

Grandmother Ziglieri leaned toward me, her dark eyes intent as she spoke for the first time. “It was the Swedish blood, that yellow hair. You have it, too.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said, uneasy before that steady gaze. I hoped she wouldn’t ask me questions; I did not want to lie to her. I had this feeling those old eyes of hers could x-ray the inside of my skull. “Did you know the princesses as young women?”

The nodding widow was almost bowing as her head dipped slowly forward and back; her headdress was embroidered with cherry clusters and birds. “No . . . no . . . we worked as chambermaids in the nursery. When Their Highnesses left the nursery—Grandmother Ziglieri was married by then, to her good Ivaniev—I went to the bakery to work because it was closer to my two little girls.”

She went on in a meditative voice to talk about raising two girls, losing a third, then losing her husband during the war, all while working in the bakery. She reminisced over the formidable preparations they had made for royal dinners, and how impressive these affairs had been.

I did not interrupt. When at last she paused I said, “Is there anyone alive today who knew the princesses when they were young ladies? Anyone who . . .” I braced myself. “Might have known Princess Lily before she disappeared?”

“Ahhh . . . how sad that was . . . how sad.” She nodded gently, her eyes gazing long past the ever-shifting scene of frenetic activity going on around us. Finally she
tsked
two or three times. “Terrible sadness, to leave, and us open to—”

“Tsh,” the right-hand widow hissed.

The left-hand widow stopped rocking and blinked earnestly at me, her withered cheeks mottled with color. “You’re from Paris?”

The abrupt shift in subject startled me.

“I was there a couple of weeks ago. But please, what were you going to say?”

Grandmother Ziglieri muttered something in Dobreni.

The nodding widow raised a gnarled, work-worn hand, then said, “After, many years after—we found out that Princess Lily had died in the war, in Paris. So far from home, and no one to know and be with her. You knew this?” She touched my sleeve.

“I know what happened to her,” I said with care. “But when she left Dobrenica—”

“Ah.” The small, heavy-knuckled hand came up, palm toward me. “A bad business. She went alone, in the night. Quick-quick.” She whisked her hands across her lap. “Like that. She took none of her own people!”

“Did you know any of them?”

“No relations of mine were in that wing, you see. We’d mostly to do with the food, our family. Two uncles, bakers, and a great grandfather, a pastry-maker. He was trained in Vienna. But Princess Lily . . . oh, the scandal when she left, and none knew where she had gone. Everyone questioned by the king himself . . .” She shook her head. “Those were bad days. And not long after, the king died, and then the German soldiers came. Terrible, terrible days.”

“So no one is alive who knew the princess then?”

“But yes, some do live. I, myself!” She smiled, as if making a joke.

Grandmother Ziglieri spoke in Dobreni again, but this time I understood most of the words. I think she meant me to. “Tell her about the Eyrie governess.”

“Mina Hajyos.” The widow on the left rocked gently back and forth on her bench. “She said she knew nothing of the princess’ plans. But her family lives on Devil’s Mountain. She was . . .” A quick look.

The nearsighted one cut in, her voice urgent. “Many said afterward that Mina Hajyos served the count all along. Paid in secret. She went back to the mountain and married. When the new duke went to England she stayed in Dorike on Riev Dhiavilyi.” I recognized that as Dobreni for Devil’s Mountain. “Where she became Salfmatta Mina.”

“Salfmatta?” I repeated. I still didn’t understand that title yet.

The nodding widow spoke up. “My niece’s two sons worked in the mines for a time. They were caught by an October snowstorm once . . . oh, four years back. Five. They took refuge in Dorike. They said Salfmatta Mina yet lives. She has a cottage near her grandson’s house.”

Grandmother Ziglieri leaned toward me. “Her family’s roses always grow,” she said slowly. “They are from English slips. The only rose garden in the village.” Her gaze was intent, as if she waited for some word or sign—as if her words, so simple, carried some extra meaning.

Madam Waleska approached, giving the old women a quick bob. “Are you finished, grandmothers? We must not be late to Mass.”

“No,” Grandmother Ziglieri said, but when I rose, she put out her hand to halt me. Then she said in slow, heavily accented German, “You have the sight.”

I stared at her, probably showing the perplexity I felt. I was certain I hadn’t been squinting like the widow on the right, who was being helped away by a patient daughter. “Sight?” I repeated.

A tall, strong-looking middle-aged woman stood by, waiting.

Grandmother Ziglieri said in Dobreni, “You have the—”

But I did not know the word she used—and it wasn’t the noun in the dictionary for “seeing.” It couldn’t be something like Second Sight—I had an idea from stories I’d read as a kid that those superstitions went with crystal balls and chicken entrails, or whatever.

“You will ask Salfmatta Mina.” She hobbled slowly away.

I raced upstairs to put on a nice dress, hoping I could talk to the grandmothers later. But if I couldn’t, at least I had a name and a location: Mina Hajyos, in the village Dorike, on a mountain called Riev Dhiavilyi.

 

The wedding was held in a medieval church as strange-eyed Byzantine saints gazed down with lovingly detailed expressions of benediction, their gold leaf halos glinting in the light of many candles. Incense spun slowly upward in the air, making me giddy again; my eyes stung from the smoke so that Anna’s ancient veil, with buds embroidered along the heel-length hem, and her white gown with pearls worked across the bodice, blurred until I seemed to see a simpler gown with no train, then an elaborate one with a long train, flanked by garlanded girls in high-waisted gowns, their arms full of flowers; I felt a sense of falling slowly down and down, as if I descended gently through the years, the centuries, past kneeling brides and grooms beyond count.