The Lightstep (41 page)

She reached the citadel, and gave her horse over to the footmen
at the palace door. They had a message for her. It was an
invitation to dine in the palace that night. It was signed 'Gianovi'.

The neat square of paper trembled in her fingers.

Gianovi! How had he known she was here?

'I had intended an engagement for myself,' she said aloud.

'We were to say, my Lady, that he especially hopes that you will
come. He has also invited the citadel Commander.'

I see.

This was maddening! She had been promising herself . . . And
now, with the firing to the north, there might be no more
chances. Why had she delayed?

Maddening! She could almost picture Gianovi, as he handed
his invitation to some clerk, saying,
She may he a little reluctant. If
so, please tell her that I have also invited the citadel Commander.

The vile, manipulating man! She could believe every bad word
that her mother had said about him, and double. What right had
he to presume so?

But she could not dine alone with Michel now. He would be
with the Governor. So she would dine there too. Perhaps it
would at least be possible to leave together, to have the maid drop
back, to put her arm in his . . .

Perhaps.

Disconsolate, she ordered pen and paper and went to her
room to write her acceptance. Then she penned a note to
Michel, to let him know that men were expecting barricades to
be put up inside the breach, but that this did not appear to have
happened yet. At the foot of the note she allowed herself to add
that she hoped to see him that evening. After that she went up
onto the north east bastion of the citadel to see if she could still
hear the noise of firing. She was not the only one. A number of
officers, soldiers, and a couple of maids from the palace, were up
there too, straining their ears to the wind. And yes, it was there:
that dull, irregular noise, flowing down the chill north wind.

Like a headache, it pursued her for most of the day.

Gianovi received her in the Blue Chamber: a long, high-ceilinged
room in the south-east corner of the palace. The great windows,
unshuttered, were dark with night. The chandeliers were not lit.
A few candles gleamed here and there, and a fire fluttered
busily in a hearth. The light glinted on the polished dining table
and on the three settings of silver and glasses laid at the end
nearest the hearth. Footmen stood like statues in the shadows.

'I fear my other guest may be delayed,' said Gianovi. 'But I
believe you are already acquainted.'

'We are, sir.'

'He must be very busy,' Gianovi said. 'Still, we shall hope.
Perhaps you would care to sit?'

There was nowhere to sit but at the table. She took the chair
at the head. Wine was poured for her. She sipped it, and looked
carefully at the little man who seated himself to her left.

He was unchanged. There were none of the marks of short
sleep and frantic activity that she had seen on the faces of Michel
and his officers. This was a man who was accustomed to workloads
far beyond ordinary experience and who bore them lightly.
He had not bothered with powder. His skin was pale, even in the
lamplight. The lines around the eyes and little muscles of his face
were clear, but they had always been there. His eyes moved
quickly, or did not move at all.

'Have you any news from the fighting, sir?' she asked. It did
not seem the time to bother with the ordinary nothingnesses of
conversation.

'We know that a strong column of the enemy has made its way
along the north bank of the river. Presumably what we heard was
their attack on our positions. How it has gone, I do not know. We
can only wait, and depend upon our dear Count Balcke to deliver
us.'

Balcke. She had forgotten that it was he who was commanding
the army.

'I am sure, sir, that we are depending upon all of them.'

'Oh, quite. Now, may I entreat you to try some of these
dainties while we wait? The palace master is so obliging to me
when I ask for his favours, and really it must be difficult now for
his people to come by such caviar . . .'

It seemed to Maria that they were not waiting at all. They
were seated, they were eating, the wine was poured. He was not
expecting Michel to join them. Had he invited him at all? Yes,
almost certainly he had. But he might well have known that
Michel would find it difficult to come now. She should have
known that too.

She clung to the feeling that if she had invited Michel herself
then he would have come, even if the enemy were already in the
breaches. But that was useless. She would have to deal with her
host alone. And she had already realized, even if she had not
known it before, that he was the very cleverest man that she had
ever met.

Gianovi had no time for politenesses either. He talked about
politics – grand politics and the manoeuvres of princes. He did
not do it to impress or even to instruct. He spoke simply, as if he
were an observer describing things that passed his window.

'In a few years, I think, we shall look back and tell ourselves
what fools we were, because we did not see what was happening.
And yet it is very difficult to see, because so many things might
be happening that it is hard to tell which will and which will not.'

'Are you speaking of the siege, sir, or of the Revolution?'

'Both and neither. This siege, immediate though it may be
to us, is but a very small part of the whole. As for the
Revolution . . .' He frowned. 'Its exponents did not take very
long to learn the limits on idealism. It has lost its way, and must
find a new direction. But what – or perhaps who – that direction
may be is beyond guessing. These days there is much talk of
Buonaparte . . .' (he gave the name its Italian pronunciation)
'. . . However, until last summer, the same things were said of
Hoche. I will not predict.

'What I will predict, however, is that the Empire, a thousand
years old though it may be, must also change. Indeed that when
we look back we may realize that it has already changed, without
our realizing it.'

Maria scrabbled among the memories of conversations she
had overheard in her mother's salons. 'You are talking of secularization,
sir? The end of the prince-bishops?'

'That has long been mooted. Also, I fear, the end of the
independence of Imperial Knights. And at the same time, one
imagines, the growth of the greater secular princes – Bavaria,
Saxony, Wurttemberg and the rest. Perhaps they will even come
to rival Prussia and the Emperor.'

'But the Emperor will not permit such a thing. It would not
be to his advantage!'

'So we have told ourselves. I often think we fail to understand
that there is a difference between a thing that will not happen,
and a thing that has simply not happened yet. Yes, there has been
an alliance of convenience – I put it no more strongly than this
– between the Emperor and the prince-bishops. But now we
have seen Mainz abandoned in exchange for Venice. At the same
time we have seen the Rhineland abandoned too. That means
losses for those princes with lands on the left bank. How are they
to be compensated? The secularization of the bishoprics – ours
included – suggests itself. A nice problem for our delegates
convened at Rastatt. Meanwhile, as we chatter, the French
continue to make facts on the ground.'

'So . . . you do not believe the Emperor will help us?'

'I have never believed it, and I have told His Highness so.
Oh, the Emperor will go to war again. He cannot co-exist with
this new France. But when he does, it will not be because a
few thousand Germans cry out to him. It will be because he
has English gold. He does not have it yet.'

'A sorry thing, that Germany's pain should mean nothing to
the King of the Germans.'

'But what is Germany? When I hear the word
Germany
I find
that it means only what the speaker wishes it to mean. No,
pardon me. I do not mean to patronize. I am an Italian, and we
are in no better case. But the present truth is that any German
who thinks himself (or herself) a German has little to be proud
of. Too many princes treat their subjects scandalously. I believe
the only reason Germany has not itself fallen into revolution is
that in Germany there is no Paris.'

Maria frowned. 'Do you include your own prince in that, sir?'

'Not especially. If I set aside this present situation (which has
indeed come upon us largely out of his conviction) I find that he
has meant well by his subjects. If I have a regret, it is that his
attention has so often been taken by others. I am First Minister,
indeed. And yet I have had to contend with many ministries
other than my own: especially those I may call the Ministries of
Family and of Favour, which demand so much of a prince's
resources. Also important is the Ministry of the Night: the
confessor, even the merest bedchamber servant, have opinions
that they may whisper in a prince's ear when wiser heads are not
present to urge caution; and of course the mistress, who owns a
part of the man's very soul.'

Maria looked at him sharply. She was sure that the word
mistress
had had more than one target. He smiled thinly.

'What, after all,' he said, 'should one think of a state in which
Family and Favour all avert their eyes from the sight of an
ordained bishop practising incest?'

'Indeed, sir,' said Maria sternly. 'In my family I believe we are
careful with our words. But if you would tell me that we and
others like us have been an inconvenience to you, I should say for
our part we have sometimes had occasion to regret policies that
have been advised by His Highness's servants.'

His eyes flicked quickly, and his small, tight smile was like a
stiletto.

'No doubt. We have hardly been kind to one another. And yet
I suppose that you are aware that you and your family have cause
to be indebted to His Highness's servants – particularly to his
foreign servants, whom I suspect to be the butt of much that you
have heard?'

'I do not know that I am. But no doubt you will make me
aware.'

His shrug said that, if anything, he was a little surprised by her
answer. 'Since you ask. The prime excuse for the arrest of Canon
Rother-Konisrat and others of his party – I do not include here
the Ingolstadt set, whose purge I feel was long overdue and
undertaken only for the wrong reason – the prime excuse, as I
say, was that they had entered a conspiracy with the Illuminati.
The mentor of this conspiracy was a Doctor Sorge. So much was
reported and acted on. What was also known, but not reported or
acted upon, was the name of the house in which the first meetings
were held.'

The look in his eyes told her that he meant
Adelsheim.

Maria met his look levelly She had sensed that an assault was
coming. Now it seemed to have risen from nowhere to be inside
her defences.

'You are saying that you suppressed this report, sir?'

'I? No. I should not even have been aware of it. But I had an
interest, and the man responsible for suppressing it had seen fit to
requisition a clerk from my offices as a part-time assistant –
which, after a suitable show of reluctance, I had allowed. I simply
reconciled it with my conscience to pay the clerk a second salary.
It is not a course I am generally in agreement with, but on this
occasion I felt it justified. From then on I knew everything the
clerk knew of his master's work. Which was rather a lot. The
master in question has many qualities, but in some ways his mind
is insufficiently – ah – devious for the world he inhabits.'

His mind
is.
A foreigner, still serving the Prince . . .

'You are speaking of . . .?'

Gianovi inclined his head to the empty chair on Maria's right.

'As I say, the report was never forwarded, and later it was
destroyed. You are saying to me that he never mentioned it to
you?'

'On my word, sir,' she said, with a tremor in her voice. 'Never.'

'I had wondered if it could possibly have lain behind the
unusual dealings that appear to have occurred between you and
him. He did not seem to me to be obviously capable of blackmail,
and yet . . .'

'No sir, he is not!'

He smiled again at her firmness.

'And, sir,' she added. 'I may say that I do not believe any such
report could have had merit. My mother's opinions of His
Highness's policies were well known. So too was her curiosity of
mind, her interest in government and personal improvement, and
her willingness to explore what dogma and fiat forbade. If this is
enough to spin a story of conspiracy, then I must doubt very
much the case against the unfortunates who have been charged
with it.'

'Oh, I agree with you. I fear it has ever been so with the
Illuminati. It was the fault of the founder, Weishaupt, who had
dreams far beyond his capacity to realize them. Unfortunately for
his order, the Bavarian authorities took him seriously, and so have
other authorities ever since. Sorge may dream the same dreams as
Weishaupt, and with the same self-admiration, but with even less
mental or practical capacity. In my opinion Baron Knigge was the
best of them. Alas, he is dead now.'

'You seem to know them very well, sir.'

'I did say I had an interest. The report that our friend destroyed
referred also to an Illuminatus high in the ranks of the Prince's
government. That Illuminatus is of course myself.'

For a moment she could not speak. He smiled again.

'I make no excuses. In Italy I was a freemason, but I became
dissatisfied with my colleagues and sought something better. The
Illuminati, too, promised to work for the good of man. I was
eager to learn their mysteries. Therefore Sorge knew of me and
later, in his efforts to revive a failing order, sought to claim me. I
burned every letter I received from him. Nevertheless, I still
believe that the virtues to which the Illuminati dedicated themselves
are good ones to live by, and I flatter myself that I do.'