“Roland, and young Vincenze! You next, by the Sky Father.”
“P-pleased to accept,” Vincenze quavered.
The outer door opened again, sparing him further risk of embarrassment, and a footman called out in a low voice: “The Lady Margit, Chatelaine of Praha, and her Excellency the Baroness Olga Thorold.”
Six women came in, and now Miriam realized that she was probably underdressed, for the two high-born each wore the most voluminous gowns she’d ever seen, with trains that required two maids to carry them and hair so entangled in knots of gold and rubies that they resembled birds’ nests. They looked like divas from a Wagner opera: the fat lady and the slim virgin. Margit of Praha was perhaps forty, her hair beginning to turn white and her cheeks sagging slightly. She looked as if she might be merry under other circumstances, but now her expression was grimly set. Olga Thorold, in contrast, was barely out of adolescence, a coltish young girl with a gown of gold and crimson and a neck swathed in gemstones that sparked fire whenever she moved. Olga looked half-amused by Miriam’s cool assessing glance.
“Please be seated,” said Angbard. Olga smiled demurely and bowed her neck to him. Margit, her chaperone, merely nodded and took a seat. “I believe you have heard tell of the arrival of our returning prodigal,” he commented. “Pitr, fetch wine if you please. The Medoc.”
“I have heard quite a few strangenesses today,” Margit commented in English that bore a strangely cupped accent. “This songbird in your left hand, she is the daughter of your sister, long-lost. Is this true?”
“It is so,” Angbard confirmed. A servant placed a cut-crystal glass of wine in front of Miriam. She began to reach toward it, then stopped, noticing that none of the others made such a gesture. “She has proven her heritage—the family trait—and the blood tests received barely an hour ago affirm her. She is of our bloodstock, and we have information substantiating, sadly, the death of her dam, Patricia Thorold Hjorth. I present to you Helge, also known as Miriam, of Thorold Hjorth, eldest heir surviving.”
“So charmed!” Olga simpered at Miriam, who managed a wordless nod in reply.
Plates garnished with a starter materialized in front of everybody—roasted fowl of some kind, tiny enough to fit in Miriam’s gloved hand. Nobody moved, but Angbard raised his hands. “In the name of the sky father—”
Miriam froze, so utterly startled that she missed the murmured continuation of his prayer, the flick of wine from glass across the tabletop, the answering murmur from Roland and Olga and Margit and the stuttered response from Vincenze.
He
said
this wasn’t a Christian country,
she reminded herself, in time to move her lips as if saying something—anything, any response—just to fit in. Completing his brief prayer, Angbard raised his glass. “Eat, drink, and be safe under my roof,” he told them, then took a mouthful of wine. After which it appeared to be open season.
Miriam’s stomach grumbled. She picked up knife and fork and attacked her plate discreetly.
“One hears the strangest stories, dear.” Miriam froze and glanced across the table: Margit was smiling at her sympathetically. “You were lost for so long, it must have been terrible!”
“Probably.” Miriam nodded absentmindedly and put her fork down. “And then again, maybe not.” She thought for a moment. “What have you heard?”
“Lots,” Olga began breathlessly. “You were orphaned by savages and raised in a workhouse as a scrub, isn’t that so, nana? Forced to sleep in the fireplace ashes at night! Then Cousin Roland found you and—”
“That’s enough, dear,” Margit said indulgently, raising a gloved hand. “It’s her story, to tell in her own way.” She raised an eyebrow at Miriam. Miriam blinked in return, more in startlement at the girl’s artlessness than her chaperone’s bluntness.
“I would not mind hearing for myself how your upbringing proceeded,” Angbard rumbled.
“Oh. Indeed.” Miriam glanced down, realizing that her appetizer had been replaced by a bowl of soup—some kind of broth, anyway—while they spoke. “Well. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you—” she smiled at Olga—“but I had a perfectly normal upbringing. You know my birth-mother disappeared? When she was found in, uh, the other side, I was taken to a hospital and subsequently adopted by a young childless couple.”
Of stone-throwing student radicals who grew up to be academics,
she didn’t say. Olga was hanging on her every word, as if she was describing some kind of adventure with pirates and exploits in far-off lands. Either the girl was an idiot or she was so sheltered that all of this sounded exotic to her. Probably the latter.
“A university professor and his wife, a critic and reviewer. I think there was some issue with my—with Patricia’s murder, so the adoption agency gave my adoptive parents her personal effects to pass on, but blocked inquiries about me from anywhere else, it being a matter for the police: unsolved murder, unidentified victim, and so on.”
“There’s only so much you can do to prevent a suicide bomber,” Angbard said with deceptive mildness. “But we’re not at immediate risk here,” he added, smiling at Miriam, an expression clearly intended to reassure her. “I’ve taken special measures to ensure our safety.”
“Your schooling,” Olga said. “Did you have a personal tutor?”
Miriam frowned, wondering just what she meant. “No, I went to college, like everybody else,” she said. “Premed and history of economics, then med school. Then, well, instead of continuing with med school, I went back to college again to study something else. Medicine didn’t get on with me.”
“You double-majored?” Roland interrupted.
“Yes, sort of.” Miriam put her fork down. She couldn’t eat any more, her stomach felt too full and her back ached. She leaned her shoulders against the chair but couldn’t relax. “I switched to journalism. Did an MA in it.” Her gloved hands felt hot and damp. They reminded her of a long shift on a geriatric ward, a different type of glove she’d ended up wearing for hours on end, cleaning up blockages.
Corn starch,
she thought absentmindedly.
Must get some dusting powder.
“I began on the biotech sector beat but found the IT industry shysters more interesting.” She paused. Olga’s expression was one of polite incomprehension, as if she’d suddenly begun speaking fluent Japanese. “Yourself?”
“Oh,
I
had a personal tutor!” Olga enthused. “But Daddy didn’t want to send me away to school on the other side. We were having a spot of bother and he thought I’d need too many bodyguards.”
Angbard smiled again, in a manner that Miriam found disquietingly avuncular. “There has been a threat of rebellion in Hel these past two years,” he explained with a nod in Miriam’s direction. “Your father needed the troops. Perhaps next year we can send you to Switzer-Land?”
“Oh, yes!” Olga clapped her hands together discreetly. “I’d like that.”
“What would you like to study?” Miriam asked politely.
“Oh, everything! Deportment, and etiquette, and management of domestic events—balls and banquets. It’s so important to get the little things right, and how are you to supervise everything if you don’t know what your steward is doing?” She gave a little squeal. “I do hope they’ll let me continue with the violin, though.”
Miriam forced herself to keep a straight face. “I can see you’re going to make a very good marriage,” she said, voice neutral. It all added up to a horribly consistent picture: the older woman as chaperone, the total eagerness for the description of her own upbringing and education, the wistfulness for a place at an expensive finishing school.
This could be a problem,
she thought dispassionately.
If they expect me to behave like this, someone is going to be very disappointed. And it won’t be me…
“I’m sure she’ll marry well,” said Margit, venturing an opinion for the first time. Vincenze whispered something to Roland, who forced a knowing chuckle. “She’s of the right age.” Margit looked at Miriam dubiously. “I expect you’ll—” she trailed off.
“Discussions of Countess Helge’s eventual disposition are premature,” Angbard said coolly. “Doubtless she will want to make a strong alliance to protect herself. I’m sure she has a solid head on her shoulders, and will want to keep it there.” He smiled: a thin, humourless expression.
Miriam swallowed.
You old bastard! You’re threatening me!
Servants removed her plate and refilled her wine glass. Growing anger threatened to overwhelm her. She took an overhasty mouthful to conceal her expression, leaving a bleeding ring of lip gloss on the crystal. Her heart was pounding and she couldn’t seem to get enough air.
“To set your mind at ease, my dear, you are quite safe for the time being,” said Angbard. “This is a doppelgängered house, with a secured installation on the other side, as strongly defended there as here—but if you were to venture outside of it you would be in jeopardy. I am concerned about your
other
relatives, such as the family Axl, and your late father’s heirs of family Wu, in the far west. A strong alliance would go a long way toward protecting you.”
“An alliance,” she said thickly. It seemed to be hot in the dining room. She finished her glass, to buy some time. “Y’-know, it seems to me that you’re taking a lot for granted. That I’ll fit in and adapt to your ways.”
“Isn’t that how it always works?” asked Olga, confused. A dessert appeared, individual plates of chocolate truffles drizzled in syrup, but Miriam had no room for food. Her meal sat heavily on the top of her stomach.
“Not always, no,” Miriam said tightly. She picked up her full wineglass, then frowned, remembering two—three?—refills before it, and put it down again, a little harder than she’d intended. Roland smiled at her indulgently. They
all
seemed to be smiling at her too much this evening, she noticed. As if they expected her to break down in tears and thank them for rescuing her from a life of drudgery. She forced herself to straighten her shoulders, sipped sparingly from her glass, and tried to ignore the growing pains in the small of her back. If she could just get through the remainder of the meal she’d be all right. “But we’ll worry about that when we get to it, won’t we?” She mustered a pained smile and everyone pretended she hadn’t said anything.
The strange cousin’s faux pas,
she thought, as Vincenze asked Roland something about cavalry manoeuvres.
A few minutes later, Angbard rapped a silver dessert spoon on his glass. “If you have finished eating, by all means let the after-dinner entertainment commence,” he said.
Servants wheeled a tall trolley in and Miriam blinked in surprise. A huge thirty-inch Sony flat-panel television faced them, glassy-eyed, blocking the doorway. A black video recorder sat on a shelf below it, trailing cables. A white-gloved footman handed the remote to the duke on a silver plate. He bowed himself out as Angbard picked it up and pointed it at the set.
It was all Miriam could do to keep her jaw from dropping when a familiar signature tune came welling out of concealed speakers around the dining chamber. A helicopter descended onto a rooftop pad outside a penthouse suite: The famous Stetson-wearing villain stepped out into a sea of family intrigue. Miriam gulped down her wine without choking and reached for the inevitable—invisible—refill, barely tasting it. Her nose was going numb, a warning sign that she normally ignored at her peril, but this was just too bizarre to take while remaining sober.
Dallas!
she thought, making it a curse. As a choice of after-dinner videos, it was perfect. She’d been wrong about the ordeal being nearly over: The meal was only the beginning.
* * *
Roland tried to say something as they left Angbard’s rooms. “Hush,” she said, leaning on his arm as they descended the grand staircase. Her back ached and she was wobbling on her heels. “Just get me back to my room.”
“I think we need to talk,” he said urgently.
“Later.” She winced as they reached the corridor.
Take lots of little steps,
she thought. The ache in her back was worst in the region of her kidneys. She felt drunk. “Tomorrow.”
He held the door open for her. “Please—”
She looked into his eyes. They were wide and appealing: He was a transparently gallant, well-meaning young man—
Young? He’s only a couple of years younger than I am
—with a great ass, and she instinctively distrusted that. “Tomorrow,” she said firmly, then winced. “I’m tired. Maybe after breakfast?”
“By all means.” He stepped back and Miriam turned to close the door, only to find the head maidservant, Meg, standing ahead of her.
“Ah. Meg.” Miriam smiled experimentally. Glanced at the bathroom. “I’ve had a long day and I’m going to bed shortly. Would you mind leaving?”
“But how is you to undress?” Meg asked, confused. “What if you want something in the night?”
“What’s the usual arrangement?” Miriam asked.
“Why, we sleep inside the door here, against your needs.” She dipped her head.
“Oh my.” Miriam sighed, and would have slumped but for her dress, which seemed to be holding her upright. “Oh god.” She took a stride toward the bathroom, then caught herself on the door frame with one arm. “Well. You can start by undressing me.” It took the combined efforts of two maids ten minutes to strip Miriam down to her underwear. Eventually something gave way and her ribs could move again. “Oh. Oh!” Miriam took a breath, then gulped. “’Scuse me.” She fled dizzily into the bathroom, skidding on the tiled floor, and locked the door. “Shit, shit…” she planted herself firmly on the toilet.
After a moment, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her gaze fell on the dictaphone and she picked it up. “Memo to self,” she muttered. “At a formal banquet the pain in the small of your back might be the chair, but on the other hand it might be your kidneys backing up.” Four, no five, glasses of wine. She shook her head, still wobbly, and took another deep breath. “And the breathing trouble. Fuck ’em, next time—if they want formal, they can put up with whatever I can buy off the rack in Boston. I’m not turning myself into an orthopaedic basket case in the name of local fashion.”