Legends II Read online

  “No, me lord. He left with the regiment two years back. He did come round a week or so ago, Ilse said, only to visit his friends among the servants, but he didn’t work here.”

  Grey had now got down to his drawers, which he removed with a sigh of relief.

  “Christ, what sort of perverse country is it where they put starch in a man’s smallclothes? Can you not deal with the laundress, Tom?”

  “Sorry, me lord.” Tom scrambled to retrieve the discarded drawers. “I didn’t know the word for ‘starch.’ I thought I did, but whatever I said just made ’em laugh.”

  “Well, don’t make Ilse laugh too much. Leaving the maidservants with child is an abuse of hospitality.”

  “Oh, no, me lord,” Tom assured him earnestly. “We was too busy talking to, er . . .”

  “To be sure you were,” Grey said equably. “Did she tell you anything else of interest?”

  “Mebbe.” Tom had the nightshirt already aired and hanging by the fire to warm; he held it up for Grey to draw over his head, the wool flannel soft and grateful as it slid over his skin. “Mind, it’s only gossip.”

  “Mmm?”

  “One of the older footmen, who used to work with Koenig—after Koenig came to visit, he was talkin’ with one of the other servants, and he said in Ilse’s hearing as how little Siegfried was growing up to be the spit of him—of Koenig, I mean, not the footman. But then he saw her listening and shut up smart.”

  Grey stopped in the act of reaching for his banyan, and stared.

  “Indeed,” he said. Tom nodded, looking modestly pleased with the effect of his findings.

  “That’s the Princess’s old husband, isn’t it, over the mantelpiece in the drawing room? Ilse showed me the picture. Looks a proper old bugger, don’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Grey, smiling slightly. “And?”

  “He ain’t had—hadn’t, I mean—any children more than Siegfried, though he was married twice before. And Master Siegfried was born six months to the day after the old fellow died. That kind of thing always causes talk, don’t it?”

  “I should say so, yes.” Grey thrust his feet into the proffered slippers. “Thank you, Tom. You’ve done more than well.”

  Tom shrugged modestly, though his round face beamed as though illuminated from within.

  “Will I fetch you tea, me lord? Or a nice syllabub?”

  “Thank you, no. Find your bed, Tom, you’ve earned your rest.”

  “Very good, me lord.” Tom bowed; his manners were improving markedly, under the example of the Schloss’s servants. He picked up the clothes Grey had left on the chair, to take away for brushing, but then stopped to examine the little reliquary, which Grey had left on the table.

  “That’s a handsome thing, me lord. A relic, did you say? Isn’t that a bit of somebody?”

  “It is.” Grey started to tell Tom to take the thing away with him, but stopped. It was undoubtedly valuable; best to leave it here. “Probably a finger or a toe, judging from the size.”

  Tom bent, peering at the faded lettering.

  “What does it say, me lord? Can you read it?”

  “Probably.” Grey took the box, and brought it close to the candle. Held thus at an angle, the worn lettering sprang into legibility. So did the drawing etched into the top, which Grey had to that point assumed to be merely decorative lines. The words confirmed it.

  “Isn’t that a? . . .” Tom said, goggling at it.

  “Yes, it is.” Grey gingerly set the box down.

  They regarded it in silence for a moment.

  “Ah . . . where did you get it, me lord?” Tom asked, finally.

  “The Princess gave it me. As protection from the succubus.”

  “Oh.” The young valet shifted his weight to one foot, and glanced sidelong at him. “Ah . . . d’ye think it will work?”

  Grey cleared his throat.

  “I assure you, Tom, if the phallus of Saint Orgevald does not protect me, nothing will.”

  Left alone, Grey sank into the chair by the fire, closed his eyes, and tried to compose himself sufficiently to think. The conversation with Tom had at least allowed him a little distance from which to contemplate matters with the Princess and Stephan—save that they didn’t bear contemplation.

  He felt mildly nauseated, and sat up to pour a glass of plum brandy from the decanter on the table. That helped, settling both his stomach and his mind.

  He sat slowly sipping it, gradually bringing his mental faculties to bear on the less personal aspects of the situation.

  Tom’s discoveries cast a new and most interesting light on matters. If Grey had ever believed in the existence of a succubus—and he was sufficiently honest to admit that there had been moments, both in the graveyard and in the dark-flickering halls of the Schloss—he believed no longer.

  The attempted kidnapping was plainly the work of some human agency, and the revelation of the relationship between the two Koenigs—the vanished nursemaid and her dead husband—just as plainly indicated that the death of Private Koenig was part of the same affair, no matter what hocus-pocus had been contrived around it.

  Grey’s father had died when he was twelve, but had succeeded in instilling in his sons his own admiration for the philosophy of reason. In addition to the concept of Occam’s razor, his father had also introduced him to the useful doctrine ofCui bono ?

  The plainly obvious answer there was the Princess Louisa. Granting for the present that the gossip was true, and that Koenig had fathered little Siegfried . . . the last thing the woman could want was for Koenig to return and hang about where awkward resemblances could be noted.

  He had no idea of the German law regarding paternity. In England, a child born in wedlock was legally the offspring of the husband, even when everyone and the dog’s mother knew that the wife had been openly unfaithful. By such means, several gentlemen of his acquaintance had children, even though he was quite sure that the men had never even thought of sharing their wives’ beds. Had Stephan perhaps—

  He caught that thought by the scruff of the neck and shoved it aside. Besides, if the miniaturist had been faithful, Stephan’s son was the spitting image of his father. Though painters naturally would produce what image they thought most desired by the patron, despite the reality—

  He picked up the glass and drank from it until he felt breathless and his ears buzzed.

  “Koenig,” he said firmly, aloud. Whether the gossip was true or not—and having kissed the Princess, he rather thought it was; no shrinking violet, she!—and whether or not Koenig’s reappearance might threaten Siggy’s legitimacy, the man’s presence must certainly be unwelcome.

  Unwelcome enough to have arranged his death?

  Why, when he would be gone again soon? The troops were likely to move within the week—surely within the month. Had something happened that made the removal of Private Koenig urgent? Perhaps Koenig himself had been in ignorance of Siegfried’s parentage—and upon discovering the boy’s resemblance to himself on his visit to the castle, determined to extort money or favor from the Princess?

  And bringing the matter full circle . . . had the entire notion of the succubus been introduced merely to disguise Koenig’s death? If so, how? The rumor had seized the imagination of both troops and townspeople to a marked extent—and Koenig’s death had caused it to reach the proportions of a panic—but how had that rumor been started?

  He dismissed that question for the moment, as there was no rational way of dealing with it. As for the death, though . . .

  He could without much difficulty envision the Princess Louisa conspiring in the death of Koenig; he had noticed before that women were quite without mercy where their offspring were concerned. Still . . . the Princess had presumably not entered a soldier’s quarters and done a man to death with her own lily-white hands.

  Who had done it? Someone with great ties of loyalty to the Princess, presumably. Though, upon second thought, it need not have been anyone from the Schloss. Gundwitz was no
t the teeming boil that London was, but the town was still of sufficient size to sustain a reasonable number of criminals; one of these could likely have been induced to perform the actual murder—if it was a murder, he reminded himself. He must not lose sight of the null hypothesis, in his eagerness to reach a conclusion.

  And further . . . even if the Princess had in some way contrived both the rumor of the succubusand the death of Private Koenig—who was the witch in Siggy’s room? Had someone truly tried to abduct the child? Private Koenig was already dead; clearly he could have had nothing to do with it.

  He ran a hand through his hair, rubbing his scalp slowly to assist thought.

  Loyalties. Who was most loyal to the Princess? Her butler? Stephan?

  He grimaced, but examined the thought carefully. No. There were no circumstances conceivable under which Stephan would have conspired in the murder of one of his own men. Grey might be in doubt of many things concerning the Landgrave von Erdberg, but not his honor.

  This led back to the Princess’s behavior toward himself. Did she act from attraction? Grey was modest about his own endowments, but also honest enough to admit that he possessed some, and that his person was reasonably attractive to women.

  He thought it more likely, if the Princess had indeed conspired in Koenig’s removal, that her actions toward himself were intended as distraction. Though therewas yet another explanation.

  One of the minor corollaries to Occam’s razor that he had himself derived suggested that quite often, the observed result of an action really was the intended end of that action. The end result of that encounter in the hallway was that Stephan von Namtzen had discovered him in embrace with the Princess, and been noticeably annoyed by said discovery.

  Had Louisa’s motive been the very simple one of making von Namtzen jealous?

  And if Stephanwere jealous . . . of whom?

  The room had grown intolerably stuffy, and he rose, restless, and went to the window, unlatching the shutters. The moon was full, a great, fecund yellow orb that hung low above the darkened fields, and cast its light over the slated roofs of Gundwitz and the paler sea of canvas tents that lay beyond.

  Did Ruysdale’s troops sleep soundly tonight, exhausted from their healthful exercise? He felt as though he would profit from such exercise himself. He braced himself in the window frame and pushed, feeling the muscles pop in his arms, envisioning escape into that freshening night, running naked and silent as a wolf, soft earth cool, yielding to his feet.

  Cold air rushed past his body, raising the coarse hairs on his skin, but his core felt molten. Between the heat of fire and brandy, the nightshirt’s original grateful warmth had become oppressive; sweat bloomed upon his body, and the woolen cloth hung limp upon him.

  Suddenly impatient, he stripped it off and stood in the open window, fierce and restless, the cold air caressing his nakedness.

  There was a whir and rustle in the ivy nearby, and then something—several somethings—passed in absolute silence so close and so swiftly by his face that he had not even time to start backward, though his heart leapt to his throat, strangling his involuntary cry.

  Bats. The creatures had disappeared in an instant, long before his startled mind had collected itself sufficiently to put a name to them.

  He leaned out, searching, but the bats had disappeared at once into the dark, swift about their hunting. It was no wonder that legends of succubi abounded, in a place so bat-haunted. The behavior of the creatures indeed seemed supernatural.

  The bounds of the small chamber seemed at once intolerably confining. He could imagine himself some demon of the air, taking wing to haunt the dreams of a man, seize upon a sleeping body, and ride it—could he fly as far as England? he wondered. Was the night long enough?

  The trees at the edge of the garden tossed uneasily, stirred by the wind. The night itself seemed tormented by an autumn restlessness, the sense of things moving, changing, fermenting.

  His blood was still hot, having now reached a sort of full, rolling boil, but there was no outlet for it. He did not know whether Stephan’s anger was on his own behalf—or Louisa’s. In neither case, though, could he make any open demonstration of feeling toward von Namtzen, now; it was too dangerous. He was unsure of the German attitude toward sodomites, but felt it unlikely to be more forgiving than the English stance. Whether stolid Protestant morality, or a wilder Catholic mysticism—he cast a brief look at the reliquary—neither was likely to have sympathy with his own predilections.

  The mere contemplation of revelation, and the loss of its possibility, though, had shown him something important.

  Stephan von Namtzen both attracted and aroused him, but it was not because of his own undoubted physical qualities. It was, rather, the degree to which those qualities reminded Grey of James Fraser.

  Von Namtzen was nearly the same height as Fraser, a powerful man with broad shoulders, long legs, and an instantly commanding presence. However, Stephan was heavier, more crudely constructed, and less graceful than the Scot. And while Stephan warmed Grey’s blood, the fact remained that the German did not burn his heart like living flame.

  He lay down finally upon his bed, and put out the candle. Lay watching the play of firelight on the walls, seeing not the flicker of wood-flame, but the play of sun upon red hair, the sheen of sweat on a pale bronzed body . . .

  A brief and brutal dose of Mr. Keegan’s remedy left him drained, if not yet peaceful. He lay staring upward into the shadows of the carved wooden ceiling, able at least to think once more.

  The only conclusion of which he was sure was that he needed very much to talk to someone who had seen Koenig’s body.

  CHAPTER 6

  HOCUS-POCUS

  Finding Private Koenig’s last place of residence was simple. Thoroughly accustomed to having soldiers quartered upon them, Prussians sensibly built their houses with a separate chamber intended for the purpose. Indeed, the populace viewed such quartering not as an imposition, but as a windfall, since the soldiers not only paid for board and lodging, and would often do chores such as fetching wood and water—but were also better protection against thieves than a large watchdog might be, without the expense.

  Stephan’s records were of course impeccable; he could lay hands on any one of his men at a moment’s notice. And while he received Grey with extreme coldness, he granted the request without question, directing Grey to a house toward the western side of the town.

  In fact, von Namtzen hesitated for a moment, clearly wondering whether duty obliged him to accompany Grey upon his errand, but Lance-Korporal Helwig appeared with a new difficulty—he averaged three per day—and Grey was left to carry out the errand on his own.

  The house where Koenig had lodged was nothing out of the ordinary, so far as Grey could see. The owner of the house was rather remarkable, though, being a dwarf.

  “Oh, the poor man! So much blood you have before not seen!”

  Herr Huckel stood perhaps as high as Grey’s waist—a novel sensation, to look down so far to an adult conversant. Herr Huckel was nonetheless intelligent and coherent, which was also novel in Grey’s experience; most witnesses to violence tended to lose what wits they had and either to forget all details, or to imagine impossible ones.

  Herr Huckel, though, showed him willingly to the chamber where the death had occurred, and explained what he had himself seen.

  “It was late, you see, sir, and my wife and I had gone to our beds. The soldiers were out—or at least we supposed so.” The soldiers had just received their pay, and most were busy losing it in taverns or brothels. The Huckels had heard no noises from the soldiers’ room, and thus assumed that all four of the soldiers quartered with them were absent on such business.

  Somewhere in the small hours, though, the good-folk had been awakened by terrible yells coming from the chamber. These were produced not by Private Koenig, but by one of his companions, who had returned in a state of advanced intoxication and stumbled into the blood-soaked shambles.r />
  “He lay here, sir. Just so?” Herr Huckel waved his hands to indicate the position the body had occupied at the far side of the cozy room. There was nothing there now, save irregular dark blotches that stained the wooden floor.

  “Not even lye would get it out,” said Frau Huckel, who had come to the door of the room to watch. “And we had to burn the bedding.”

  Rather to Grey’s surprise, she was not only of normal size, but quite pretty, with bright, soft hair peeking out from under her cap. She frowned at him in accusation.

  “None of the soldiers will stay here, now. They think theNachtmahr will get them, too!” Clearly, this was Grey’s fault. He bowed apologetically.

  “I regret that, madam,” he said. “Tell me, did you see the body?”

  “No,” she said promptly, “but I saw the night-hag.”

  “Indeed,” Grey said, surprised. “Er . . . what did it—she—it look like?” He hoped he was not going to receive some form of Siggy’s logical but unhelpful description,“Like a night-hag.”

  “Now, Margarethe,” said Herr Huckel, putting a warning hand up to his wife’s arm. “It might not have been—”

  “Yes, it was!” She transferred the frown to her husband, but did not shake off his hand, instead putting her own over it before returning her attention to Grey.

  “It was an old woman, sir, with her white hair in braids. Her shawl slipped off in the wind, and I saw. There are two old women who live nearby, this is true—but one walks only with a stick, and the other does not walk at all. This . . . thing, she moved very quickly, hunched a little, but light on her feet.”

  Herr Huckel was looking more and more uneasy as this description progressed, and opened his mouth to interrupt, but was not given the chance.

  “I am sure it was old Agathe!” Frau Huckel said, her voice dropping to a portentous whisper. Herr Huckel shut his eyes with a grimace.

  “Old Agathe?” Grey asked, incredulous. “Do you mean Frau Blomberg—the Buergermeister’s mother?”

  Frau Huckel nodded, face fixed in grave certainty.

  “Something must be done,” she declared. “Everyone is afraid at night—either to go out, or to stay in. Men whose wives will not watch over them as they sleep are falling asleep as they work, as they eat . . .”