The Cabinet of Curiosities (20 page)

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Chapter Thirty-Eight

The officer turned to Lukas and told him he had orders to bring him back to the Castle. He was courteous, there was to be no manhandling, but there were questions to be asked.

Lukas held open his arms to show he was willing to come without a struggle. For now he was too happy to be alive to appreciate the consequences of what had just happened.

Lukas emerged into the square, with Celestina holding tightly to his arm. Unsteady on her feet and weak with shock, she still managed to dash to her father’s side. He was conscious. Perpetua held his hand and he was wrapped in a cloak belonging to one of the soldiers. Four of them used it as a makeshift stretcher to lift him up and the whole party headed back to the Castle. One of the bigger soldiers picked up Aguilar’s body and draped it over his shoulders.

Lukas walked alongside the Spaniards. ‘You have saved my daughter’s life,’ Dorantes managed to say as he struggled to breathe. ‘I thank you.’ His face was a ghastly white and beads of sweat lined his brow.

‘What else could I do?’ said Lukas distractedly. The excitement of the moment had passed. Now he was wondering, with Hlava dead, how he could possibly save Anselmus.

Celestina squeezed his arm. Her strength was returning. ‘Lukas, you are the hero of the hour. Why do you look so troubled?’

Lukas spilled out his fears. ‘My uncle is imprisoned in Daliborka Tower, accused of trying to murder the Emperor. Hlava – the man who was killed just now – I think he’s behind it. What can I do now he’s dead?’

Dorantes was in great pain. ‘You have an impossible task . . .’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Pray for guidance.’

Celestina struggled for a comforting word. She knew Hlava had been an accomplice to her father. Now she was beginning to wonder what role
he
had played in these dreadful events. ‘You must tell them all you know,’ she said plainly, then regretted it as she caught her father’s reproachful eye.

Lukas noticed. Now, away from the terror and the tumult of the chase up the tower, he was beginning to think more clearly. Why had Dorantes and Celestina been there with Hlava? The rest of the journey home passed in grim silence.

As soon as Lukas reached the Castle he was seized. He could see Celestina watching him until he was out of view. He wondered again how much of the conspiracy she and her father were aware of.

The guards took him straight to Daliborka Tower, where he was thrown into a small wooden cell. Sitting in there, his back resting against the wall, was his uncle. ‘I was hoping you might rescue me,’ said Anselmus in a sad little voice.

‘Uncle, what happened?’ whispered Lukas.

‘I hope this has nothing to do with you,’ said Anselmus, suddenly angry.

‘Why are you in here?’ Lukas asked his uncle.

‘The Emperor and I tried that time machine I told you of. When I brought it to life it sent the two of us into a deep sleep. I woke with a violent headache and a horrible metallic taste in my mouth. The Emperor had fallen off his seat and was lying face down on the floor. I went over to him at once. He was still breathing, although his skin had gone white.

‘The room had a horrible stale smell about it. I could hardly breathe. So I flung open the windows and my head began to clear. I wondered at once what the machine had done to us. Then His Highness began to cough and splutter.

‘“Your Excellency,” I said, “that machine – it poisoned us. It rendered us both unconscious.”

‘“But we felt so peaceful,” he said. “We could have slept for a week.”’

Lukas had never heard his uncle mimic the Emperor before. And he had never spoken of him with such contempt.

‘He looked like a sad little boy, and tears were falling down his cheeks. So I said he should let me take the machine to my quarters and examine it. And I foolishly confessed that I might have been at fault bringing it to the palace. There is clearly something in its mechanism that made us both very unwell.

‘And what does he do to his loyal servant?’ Anselmus had gone almost puce with indignation. ‘He roars for his palace guard and three of them rush in. “This man has placed our life in grave danger,” he says. Me – his
physician
! And I had done my best to discourage him from believing that infernal machine would work at all. Then he says, “Take him to Daliborka Tower.” And here I am. And that’s the thanks I get for twenty years of loyal service. If I ever get out of here, I am never going to work for that . . .
imbecile
. . . ever again.’

.

Doktor Grunewald was summoned to attend to the injured. Celestina had a flesh wound from the arrow and a bump on the head where Hlava hit her with his pistol, Perpetua a twisted ankle. Dorantes was dying.

Dorantes had hoped he would survive his injury. He was doing God’s work, after all. Surely it was not unreasonable of him to hope for a miracle. Now he contemplated his death with remorse. He thought back to the time in his life when he had been happiest – close to the sea in the Low Countries with his family, before Peru. He thought of the simple things in life and how they were often the most beautiful: the flowers in a hedgerow or foamy waves on a shallow beach.

In his final hours he came to realise that nothing was more precious than life itself. He thought especially of Anselmus Declercq, imprisoned and facing torture, and his nephew Lukas, also sent to the Tower. Anselmus had been gracious to him, and the boy had brought some happiness into his daughter’s life. And she had told him Lukas had saved her from falling from the tower.

Despite his pain, and the awful gurgling of his lungs as he tried to breathe, his mind was as clear as bright autumn sunshine. He thought of all he had strived to do at the Castle and whether it had been right. The certainties that had moulded his life now seemed flawed. Despite their beliefs, these people, his enemies, were good at heart. It would be wrong to leave them to the torturers. Perhaps he could redeem himself a little, if he could help them.

Celestina asked for a priest. Father Johannes Pistorius, confessor to the Emperor himself, arrived at Dorantes’s bedside.

‘I understand the physician Anselmus Declercq is held,’ he whispered to Pistorius before the priest began the ritual of last rites. ‘And his nephew. Accused of attempting to kill the Emperor. Please tell the court they are innocent. The Emperor’s machine was devised by an . . . acquaintance . . . of mine –’ he could barely bring himself to speak the name – ‘. . . Hrusosky Hlava. It was he who perished this afternoon in the fall from the tower . . . and it was I who plotted with him to kill the Emperor. Just he and I. No one else.’

Pistorius went through his devotions as Dorantes faded in and out of consciousness. He was puzzled by Dorantes’s admission. But Doktor Grunewald understood. Together with what Lukas had told him that morning, the story made perfect sense.

As soon as Dorantes ceased to breathe, Grunewald took Pistorius to one side. Shortly after, they both hurried to the Emperor’s quarters.

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Anselmus and Lukas spent what was left of the day contemplating the burning braziers in the dungeon and wondering how long they would be able to withstand the attentions of the torturers – especially when they had nothing to confess.

Lukas told his uncle all he knew, carefully missing out his own connection to the culprits. But when he had exhausted the tale of his adventure in the city centre, and Hlava’s lurid fate, they fell into an uneasy silence. Anselmus shook his head. ‘Only this Hlava could have saved us. And now he’s dead.’ There was something else he wanted to say. ‘Lukas, I always wanted a son, someone to whom I could pass on my craft, but God gave me a daughter – kind and dutiful, but one with no interest in reading and writing, or even conversation. So when you came I tried to raise you as my son. You have kept me company, good company, and been a worthy student, and although you did a terrible wrong you redeemed yourself when you took poison to save my sister. But you know, what upsets me, what I really can’t forget, is that you repaid my taking you to the Cabinet, a place so few have been privileged to see, by stealing the timepiece. We went three or four times. When did you take it? What was I doing at that time? It haunts me.’

Lukas felt compelled to tell his uncle the truth. ‘I went there myself, with Celestina. It was another wicked thing I should never have done, but I wanted her to like me.’

He expected Anselmus to be angry. Instead he looked sad. Lukas wanted to cry. ‘I’m sorry, Uncle. You have been so kind to me and I have not deserved it.’

‘Did she encourage you to take it?’ He sounded hopeful – plainly he wanted to feel Lukas had been tempted.

But Lukas had lied enough. ‘No. She would have been horrified to see me steal from the Cabinet. I took it while she was distracted by something else.’

Anselmus put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I blame myself for your ill behaviour. I should have known you would want to find company your own age . . . have a life away from your stuffy old uncle. I should have made more of an effort to find you some suitable friends.’

Then he said, ‘I took Otka’s mother to the Cabinet too, in secret, when I was a young man. To try to impress her. It worked.’

Lukas raised a smile. They settled down to wait the worst, but at least they were at peace with each other.

The long-awaited banging at the door and footsteps on the stairs eventually came, and they feared their ordeal was about to begin. But instead the door to their cell was unlocked and they were released into the bracing freshness of an autumn evening to make their own way back to their quarters at the top of the Emperor’s palace.

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Chapter Thirty-Nine

They climbed the stone staircase in a daze and as they opened the heavy wooden door Otka rushed up to greet them both with a tearful hug. She was so relieved to see Anselmus she forgot she was no longer friends with Lukas. Grunewald came to congratulate them on their release. Anselmus asked him to join them for supper and opened a bottle of his finest vintage wine.

Grunewald told them of Dorantes’s confession and how he and Pistorius had spoken at once to the Emperor. He thought it best not to mention Lukas’s own admission to him. After all, the boy had not let him down.

Anselmus was lost for words. ‘What a fool I was,’ was all he said.

‘It is a febrile time,’ said Grunewald. ‘The strangest tales circulate around the Castle. I heard just now that the Grand Inquisitor has been found dead in the forest near Dablicky. They say he was kidnapped by Devil worshippers and sacrificed to the Evil One. It is a terrible fate – even for such a detestable man.’

As they ate their evening meal there was a gentle tapping at the door. It was Celestina and Perpetua. Celestina was almost too distressed to talk. The Spanish envoys had all been arrested, she told them. There were too many for Daliborka Tower and they were being held in a cellar beneath the palace. Back at their quarters, there were just distraught wives, children and servants, waiting anxiously to see what would happen next.

For her, something even worse had happened. Her father had been denied a Christian burial. The imperial executioner had come to decapitate the body and then cut it into four quarters. Dorantes’s head was to be displayed on the Stone Bridge tower alongside the common criminals. The rest of him was to be buried in unconsecrated ground. ‘Why must they violate his body like this?’ she sobbed.

Anselmus answered plainly that this was the way with enemies who had committed grave crimes against the Emperor. He also advised that she should leave the Castle immediately. ‘I’ve never been a great admirer of punishing the child for the sins of the father,’ he said, ‘but it would be prudent for you and your maid to flee, before someone decides to take their revenge on you.’

‘But I have nowhere to go. I heard my father’s confession. I am so sorry. He acted without authority. The Spanish court will disown him – and me also. I cannot even go home.’

‘Then you must leave the city. I have a friend in Zidice. You may stay there. Go and pack. Tomorrow morning Lukas will go with you and your maid to hire a horse and carriage. You must take only what you can carry. I will give you a letter of introduction. Then, when the dust has settled and we see what has happened to the other members of the Spanish party, we will send word.’

Celestina looked dumbstruck. ‘But why should your friend help me?’

Anselmus gave her a tight little smile. ‘I will send a purse sufficient to cover your board and lodgings. Come back tomorrow morning at sunrise.’

She and Perpetua left with a flustered curtsy.

Lukas was speechless too. He had still not got over his infatuation with Celestina, but she had caused them all so much trouble. He thought about how much he had shown and told her and wondered guiltily what she had then told her father to use against them.

‘Why are you being so helpful to her?’ asked Lukas.

Anselmus gave him an impish grin. ‘As a punishment! They came here detesting our philosophy, our quest for knowledge and our “heresies”. Think what this will do to that girl. Grunewald here tried to save her father, you saved her life, now I am helping her! We represent everything she has been taught to despise. Perhaps this will make her question her actions and those of her father. If that makes her a better character, then that is good. She is still young. She can be redeemed.’

Grunewald gave a hearty laugh. ‘And if she cannot see the error in her thinking, then she will lie awake at night wondering why Satan’s accomplices saved her life and were kind to her when she was alone in the world. That will certainly torment her!’

They drank the rest of their wine and stared at the twinkling torchlight in the city below. After a while Anselmus said quietly, ‘I have done my best to heal his mind. And serving him has allowed me to indulge my interests in the world. But I can no longer attend a man who has betrayed me like this. I no longer wish to be a servant of the Emperor.’

Grunewald urged caution. ‘My dear friend, you will never hold such a position again. You will never reside in such splendour. Do not give these things away so hastily.’

Lukas listened sadly to their conversation. He did not want to give this life up either.

‘I am utterly certain of it,’ said Anselmus. He sat at his desk and began to draft a letter of resignation.

Grunewald let him write for a while. Then he said, ‘I am concerned that His Highness will see your actions as treasonable. Perhaps –’ he looked at Lukas and Otka – ‘perhaps all of you will be seen as traitors for leaving. His Highness is of such unsound mind I can no longer imagine what he will think.’

Anselmus stared out of his window for a long time. Then he tore up the letter. ‘Maybe I will stay another few months . . .’

There was a forceful knock at the door. ‘What now?’ said Anselmus in despair. Lukas tensed, expecting the worst. It was an officer of the guard, with another soldier, who was staggering under the weight of the large box he carried in his arms. ‘I have a message from the Emperor,’ he said, and handed Anselmus a scroll. The soldier placed the box on the floor and they both left.

Otka and Lukas studied Anselmus’s face for clues as he hurriedly scanned the message. He looked alarmed and then relieved.

‘He wants me to go,’ he explained. ‘He thanks me for my many years’ loyal service and wants me to take up the vacant post of chief physician at the hospital in Plzen. The box contains a generous contribution towards the upkeep and establishment of my new household.’

Lukas feared his uncle would feel further betrayal. But he seemed happy to accept this new position.

Grunewald came over to him and shook his hand. ‘You have been a dear friend to me, Declercq. I shall miss you immensely.’ Then he returned to his quarters.

‘Grunewald has long coveted the view from my rooms,’ said Anselmus. ‘He would be most welcome to them.’

‘So you don’t mind going?’ was all Lukas could think to say.

Anselmus smiled. ‘Here in the Castle we are like those gaudy parrots in the Royal Gardens – curious creatures kept for the entertainment of others and shackled to the trees with a golden chain. Much needs to be done in the world – and I am not doing it here. Will you come with me, Lukas? Will you still be my apprentice? And you, Otka? Will you come too?’