The Lightstep (16 page)

Great heavens! They expected him to get the passport for
them!

And they were not so innocent after all, were they? Clearly
they knew he was not just a hussar officer. They knew he came
and went from the Prince's offices. That was why they had come
to him.

'That is accurate. But I fear that His Highness would hardly
seek my advice on a matter such as this.'

Madame Poppenstahl was disappointed, but she was not put
off. Some power greater than her natural diffidence was pushing
her on.

'Truly not? I wonder if you do yourself justice, sir.' She shifted
once more, awkwardly.

And then, as if she was not quite sure whether she meant what
she was saying, she went on, 'Lady Adelsheim has said we were
not to offer any rewards to the
palace
officials . . .'

Her voice trailed away as she saw Wéry's face change.

He could feel the muscles in his cheeks, set like stone. He was
glaring at her, and he knew it, and could not help it. And yes, she
was just a plain-thinking woman, trying to play palace games that
she did not know how to play. Yes, this was probably the first
time she had ever offered a bribe in her life. Yes, Erzberg was
riddled with corruption. Of course it was.

But damn it! To have picked
him!
To think that he was as
warped as they were – these princing, mincing aristocrats who
thought themselves
so fine
and everyone else so base, and they did
not see, because they could not allow themselves to see, how
close on the precipice they trod!

Finished!
he wanted to scream.
You're finished, all of you! And be
damned to you all and good riddance!

If he spoke, he would not contain himself. They would have
to leave, and would never be able to support his presence again.
And he nearly spoke. He nearly damned them both. And perhaps
the only thing that kept him from speaking was the memory
of the Adelsheim library, of what he had said there and by the
fireside, and of how even so he had been forgiven.

At last there was a sigh, and the hands of the other woman
lifted to put back her veil. The face of Maria von Adelsheim
looked out at him from under it.

'I should be grateful if you would address me – Captain.'

He nodded grimly.

'You are rightly outraged, Captain, because we have
approached you as if you were a palace time-server, and not as a
gentleman and friend of my brother. I see now that it was very
wrong of us. I can only plead that we have suffered so much disappointment
in this today that on coming to you we have failed
to give our suit the consideration it warranted. We are most
abjectly sorry.'

For a child of an Imperial Knight to speak so to a commoner
was not just unusual in Erzberg. It was almost unknown. Even in
his rage he could see that.

He found his voice, at last. 'Do not – please do not think on
it. I know how things are done in the palace. It was – I will not
say it was a natural mistake but . . . It is better that we do
not think on it.'

Her face was very pale, but her voice was steadier than his.
'You are merciful, Captain, and more so than we deserve. Truly
we see so often that a victim becomes a villain. Yet we never
imagine we will act so ourselves. Now Anna and I, thinking only
that we were victims of tyranny, have committed villainy in our
turn. I am ashamed. I wish you to know it.'

Tyranny? He frowned in incomprehension.

'Oh yes!' she said, exasperated. 'How is it that we are brought
to wait in the Saint Lucia barracks, attempting to bribe one of the
few men in Erzberg who cannot be bribed? I will tell you. It is
because we dare not return to our tyrant and tell her that what
she wills cannot be achieved!'

'Maria . . .' said Poppenstahl nervously.

'I know, Anna. I am being indiscreet and I should not be. But
I would not wish the Captain to think that we do this to amuse
ourselves! You have lived under tyranny, Captain. Have you ever
lived under such as we? There is no guillotine in Adelsheim, no
wheel, no hurdle, no flogging-stake. And yet I swear to you that
we tremble at a word. "Anna, dear, we will need a passport. Go
and get one, and don't allow any nonsense from those
wretched
people at the palace." So. Although even our cousin the Canon
Rother said it would be impossible, nevertheless poor Anna must
go, and must succeed, because my mother wills it. Do you see it,
Captain? I wonder if you do.'

'Yes,' he said slowly. 'I see it.'

So they had been at their wits' end, trying to satisfy the
monstrous Lady Adelsheim. Indeed, he could imagine it. It had
been a rather good imitation of Lady Adelsheim's manner. He
had recognized it at once.

At the same time he recognized something else – something
suddenly and painfully familiar.

'Hey, Michel! Behold me! I am the Emperor Leopold. Tremble, you
fellows . .
.'

Were they all mimics, in the Adelsheim house?

'Yes,' he said. 'I do see it. Although – and I know you did not
intend this – but I think that I saw your brother too.'

Her eyes widened in surprise. 'Alba?' Then she dropped them.
'Truly sir, I – I did not know I was so poor an actor.'

He waited, but she did not look up.

'I did not say that you were,' he said gently.

'No, but Albrecht. . .' Her brow furrowed.

He saw the grief on her face. He felt it in the way she fumbled
for words. And he felt, too, how the name stirred in the mud of
his own heart. For a moment he cursed himself. Yet he had not
been able to help speaking of him.

'He did not
command]
she said at length. 'It was more that he
inspired us. At least he was so to me. Even if it was the most
ridiculous thing . . .'

She lifted her chin and looked at him again. And suddenly her
face lit up in boyish exuberance.

'Maria,' she cried mannishly swinging her elbows in a
pantomime of someone in a hurry. 'Hey, Maria! Attend to me this
instant – I have a notion! Maria, you
must
attend. It is of the
utmost importance. It is
squirrels,
Maria! Such beauty, such grace
– nothing surpasses them! We will go out and catch a hundred,
Maria. And we will have the kitchens place them in a dish, with
pastry on top. And then we will invite the Machtings and the
Jenzes to dinner, and when Father puts the knife in the pie – out
they will come, hoppity hoppity all over the table and down the
hall! Will it not be the merriest thing?

'And so,' she finished, dropping back into her normal voice,'so
I must spend a long day in the woods with him, he up the trees,
and I with a long-handled net waiting on the ground, and we did
not catch one! Was he not so? Anna, do say.'

'Oh, he was very merry, dear, all the time.'

'Captain?'

'Yes,' said Wéry, smiling. 'Yes, he was.' A strange imp was stirring
inside him. 'But also . . .'

A gentleman in conversation with a lady should not remove
his eyes from her.

He certainly should not lie back full length on his battered
settee.

He could not
possibly
lift his feet, booted and spurred and
muddy, and prop them crossed one over the other, on the settee's
sagging arm, as if no lady were present and he himself were a
hundred miles away, in another time, inhabiting another body.

'Michel,' he said languidly, staring at the ceiling.

(His voice was too husky. That was nerves. Pause, and
strengthen it.)

'Behold me, Michel . . .' (pause) '. . . I am furniture' (pause)
'. . . and I am content.'

He could sense her leaning forward to watch him. Would she
be shocked by what he was doing? Dear Heaven! What
was
he
doing, imitating her dead brother for her?

But there was nothing for it now.

'I am becoming,' he went on,'Joinery. Yes, I feel sure of it. And
cloth – a little threadbare perhaps. And better yet . . .' He smacked
his lips with luxurious delight and whispered,
'Woodworm!'

She laughed.

She laughed, surprised, delighted, and the sound burst over
him like applause. He felt elated. He felt a power growing in him.
It was years since he had played this sort of game. But once there
had been a time . . .

'Oh!' she cried. 'But was it not exact, Anna? Was he not just so?
Captain, you have a talent! I declare it might have been himself.'

'He was the nearest I had to a confessor for four years,' said
Wéry apologetically, as he righted himself. 'As to the passport . . .'
he frowned in thought.

'Oh no! Do not let us think of it. But tell me – was he drunk
when he said that?'

'Why, I do not recall,' lied Wéry.

'Then he was, I swear it! Were you, too? Were you drunk with
him often?'

'Maria!' said Poppenstahl warningly.

'Oh no, Anna. The Captain will forgive us, I am sure. You do
not mind, do you, Captain?'

There was no malice in her. Greed perhaps, for something of
her brother that she could never have shared, but no malice.

'What I
do
recall,' said Wéry, 'was that he might be most
merciless if I were – a little ill – of a morning.' He chuckled. 'He
would visit me in my sickbed, stamp up and down, recite the
Rights of Man at me, until I was fairly driven to get up and chase
him away. "War on the cranium, peace to the corpus," he called
it. You know the saying of Chamfort? "War on the castles" and so
forth?'

'And you drove pigs through the tents of other officers
together.'

'Well, I may have helped, but . . .'

'What villains you were!'

'Ah, but did he tell you about the bear?'

'Bear? No! What bear was this?'

'A dancing bear. A poor creature. Its master brought it to the
camp with a halter around its neck and played on a drum for it
to dance to. We watched. And then suddenly your brother said,
"Aha! But now comes the deluge!"And he pushed the man into
the ring, and said, "Now you, sir, will dance!" and he took the
drum and gave it to the bear!'

'No!'

She was laughing aloud. And so was he.

'And – and the bear could not hold the stick. So he sat down
with it, and put one arm around its shoulders . . .' He hugged an
imaginary bear with one arm. 'And with the other hand he took
the bear's paw and the stick and played the drum for it. And he
cried to us, "Make the villain dance!" And someone drew his
sabre, and the fellow danced, and – and the bear . . .'

He tried to imitate the bewildered look of the bear, watching
the stick bounce up and down on the drum, and the girl laughed,
and could not stop laughing, and he was laughing too at the
memory.' . . . And at the end he – he p-paid the bear!'

And he did the bear's face again, looking at the purse in its
paw, and the girl laughed again, and he was laughing too, and
weeping a hot tear from his eye. And it hurt.

And it was good – unimaginably good. It was healing, like a
massage of muscles that had gone stiff and cold for years.

'But – but was it not dangerous? The bear!'

'Very! I was sweating for him. But he was like that, was he not?
Danger, and a joke, and something serious too. He meant it as a
parable – an allegory of revolution. And I did not agree, for no
man of any station is an animal, and we argued over it afterwards.
But also we laughed. We laughed for days . . .'

'Maria,' said Madame Poppenstahl more urgently. 'Really I
think we must not detain the Captain . . .'

He saw the older woman's look, and understood.

They were being too familiar.
She
was being too familiar with
him. And yet he too was greedy for her company now. Greedy
for more of this. He did not want her to go.

'The – ah – the passport,' he said.

'Oh no, Captain,' the girl exclaimed. 'You must not think of it.
We did wrong to ask you!'

'It may be possible,' he said. 'I do not know but . . .'

He had their attention again.

'This officer you require it for. He is not here already, in the
city, is he?'

'He has returned to Wetzlar to attend his General,' she said
soberly. 'But he has undertaken to my mother that he will seek
leave to come back, if we can obtain the permissions.'

'For what purpose?'

She hesitated for a moment. 'It may not be a purpose of which
you approve, Captain. But I feel bound to be frank with you. He
is the officer who carried the French parley to our troops before
the action at Hersheim. We wish him to testify at an inquiry
of the War Commission, for which we have petitioned. It is for
my brother's sake. And for the other men who died.'

He let out a long breath.

This was impossible. He was supposed to be on watch for
agitators. How could he help admit to the city a man whose
word, true or false, could do more damage than a hundred rabble-rousers?
And the man would be given an opportunity to speak
against Balcke-Horneswerden – to do him as much damage as
possible. If he owed anything to anyone living in Erzberg, it was
surely to Balcke.

And yet he had already let her believe that he would help.

'You . . . want this very much, do you not?' he murmured.

She looked at him, considering. She had said he must not think
of it. Now she must decide whether she would truly ask it of him.

'Yes,' she said slowly. 'Yes I do.'

'May I know why?'

'I – I believe I have already said . . .'

Words rose within him – words that he would never normally
have considered, and had not known were true.

'Lady Maria,' he said. 'I am a man who hates. I know it. It is
not good – although I believe that reason is with me. But I know
how treacherous hate is. It does not admit – cannot admit – that
there is reason, or good, or honour, in the one we hate. I do not
ask you to tell me your thoughts. But I do ask that you consider
why you want this man to come here.'