The Shadow of Albion (35 page)

after all – what was one duchess more or less to his plans? Once Meriel was safely

away – and Sarah intended to satisfy herself of that before she abandoned her

friend-Sarah intended to lie low at Mooncoign behind a wall of stout footmen until

she could locate Wessex –

 – and explain to him how wrong he was about Lady Meriel’s character,

though I must own he was right about the rest of her family, Sarah admitted

mournfully. Accursed man! Where is he?

The Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen was a severe and formidable grey stone

building facing an enormous square. The Widowmaker had arrived the day before

yesterday, but it had taken until today for Wessex’s credentials to work their way up

through the labyrinth of protocol that surrounded the straitlaced Danish court and

win him an interview with Prince Frederick, who was regent for his father, Christian

VII. King Christian had for years been subject to such fits of rage and melancholy

that the government of the country had eventually passed to his eldest son,

Frederick.

Prince Frederick was Princess Stephanie’s father, and Wessex did not relish

being the bearer of the news that her ship had disappeared without trace somewhere

in British waters.

The Amalienborg was of recent construction, its classical marble facades

presenting a chill and imposing vista;

Wessex’s self was equally chill and imposing: his blue uniform coat and its silver

lace gleamed as if they were made of metal and enamel, and the finish on his black

Hessians glittered like glass. He carried a dispatch case beneath his arm.

At the door of the palace, Wessex was met by a functionary in Court livery, who

took and inspected his documents before allowing him inside. Another courtier,

adorned and slightly antique in slippers and powdered wig, was waiting; he turned

and strode away without meeting Wessex’s eyes, carrying a gilded staff of office

before him.

Wessex followed the courtier, his boots echoing upon the polished marble floors

as he walked along a corridor of columns and mirrors. The infrequent bronze doors

that interrupted the pale sweep of the walls were flanked by strapping guardsmen in

ornate uniforms.

The documents he had presented yesterday – returned to him so he could present

them more formally today – should be his guarantee of a private audience with

Prince Frederick, but Wessex had not lived as long as he had by making any

assumptions. While he would certainly receive a-hearing today, he might not see the

Prince for several days yet. There was still the Court Chamberlain to get past,

Wessex reckoned, and a smattering of Gentlemen of the Bedchamber at the very

least – the Danish court’s protocol was far more elaborate than that of the relatively

freewheeling Stuart court that had sent Wessex as its emissary. If it would not be in

the worst of taste to take a lead from regicidal France, Wessex might even suppose

that the very winds of liberty and Equality that had fanned the flames of the

holocaust in France blew more gently on England and her American colony.

Certainly as the years passed, Great Britain and her dominions seemed to have less

and less in common with their Continental kindred.

But these were ruminations for another day. For some minutes his guide had been

leading Wessex deeper into the palace and up several flights of steps. Wessex

judged they were now some distance from the ceremonial spaces of the palace.

So it was to be a private interview, then.

The courtier stopped before the most elaborate door they had passed yet. The

Danish Royal arms, carved and gilded, were set into the center of the door, and as

the courtier stepped toward the door the guards standing beside it turned smartly to

and thrust the two halves of the door inward. Wessex’s guide snapped to attention,

becoming nearly a statue, and Wessex, guessing his role in the play, walked past

him.

The walls of the small windowless room were elaborately draped with dull gold

velvet, and even the ceiling was hung with the stuff, pinned and pleated in elaborate

sunburst folds that radiated from a central rosette. The thick soft cloth that covered

the walls and ceiling deadened all sound and gave a curious sense of disassociation

to the room’s inhabitants, and though Wessex knew it was just past two in the

afternoon outside, it could be midnight here, or any other hour… just as anything

might be hidden behind those all-enshrouding folds of velvet. The predominant color

in the Aubusson carpet that covered most of the floor was the same soft amber, and

the only furniture in the room was an enormous desk whose top was a single slab of

semiprecious green malachite, and the thronelike chair behind it, occupied by the

man Wessex had come to see.

And the Prince Regent did not wait alone. With a sensation as of a knife twisting

in his gut, Wessex recognized me Regent’s companion.

The Marquis Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade had been an inmate of the

Charenton lunatic asylum until the Glorious Revolution released him. The unsavory

rumors that surrounded his name to some extent explained Napoleon’s tolerance of

him, for the Marquis de Sade was thought by England to be a diabolist as well as a

deviant, and in the apostate court of the Emperor Napoleon, such black arts could

be more than useful. Ever since the time of Louis XIV and the affair of the Marquis

de Montespan and the Chambre Ardente, it had been known that the etheric

magnetism more vulgarly known as the Art Magickal could be a powerful weapon –

especially in the hands of those who, unlike the Wicca, the Jews, and the Christians,

were not bound by either ethical or religious precepts. The worship of Lucifer, that

fallen angel, was a peculiarly French vice, and de Sade was a master of that and

many other vices, that much England was sure of.

But what was de Sade doing here, in pious, straitlaced, Protestant Denmark?

While at the moment Denmark was still neutral, that neutrality would end the instant

the treaty was signed, making de Sade liable to arrest and unceremonious banishment

at the very least. And de Sade did hot know that the most vital component for the

treaty’s signing – Princess Stephanie – was missing. The disaster had happened less

than a week before: news traveling through normal channels could not possibly have

reached the Danish court yet. So de Sade could not know.

Or could he?

The courtier followed Wessex into the room, precise as any well-drilled ranker in

the Duke’s own regiment, and announced him.

„His Grace the Duke of Wessex begs leave to approach Your Most Christian

Highness.“

Privately, Wessex did not beg leave of anyone to do anything, least of all foreign

monarchs who were not even – as yet – England’s allies, but he supposed he would

allow the statement to stand.

„Your Highness,“ Wessex said. He advanced to the front of the desk and made

his bow, then indicated the case of his credentials that the servant had placed upon

the table between them. The lion and the unicorn of England, stamped in gold upon

its flap, flanking the Royal arms, gleamed brightly in the room’s candlelight as

Frederick opened the pouch and withdrew a document heavy with seals and written

in King Henry’s unmistakable raking script. There had not been time to commit the

details of the disappearance to paper, even if the King had been willing to do so, so

Wessex, like a messenger of old, carried the true message in his head.

As the Prince studied the document, Wessex studied the Prince. Prince Frederick

shared the pale, hawklike good looks of the rest of the Danish Royal family. His light

blond hair was swept back from a high widow’s peak, and his broad forehead and

piercing blue eyes gave an impression of keen intelligence. He was-dressed in a

uniform of pale blue satin, which, Wessex guessed, must be that of one of his

regiments, though Denmark was primarily a naval power and it was the Danish navy

that England feared Napoleon gaining as a weapon against the Triple Alliance.

Neither King Henry, who had dealt extensively with Prince Frederick in arranging

for the now-endangered treaty, nor Wessex, who had read the briefing book the

White Tower kept on the Danish Prince Regent, knew , much about the man himself.

Denmark had played a remarkably close hand these past two decades in navigating

through the sea of alliances and entanglements that had marked the map of Europe in

the wake of the French Revolution, and even now she was far from wooed to

England’s standard.

And now Wessex must tell Denmark’s ruler that his daughter had vanished, an

event that the Frenchman de Sade would be quick to turn to England’s discredit.

„So you are the Duke of Wessex,“ Prince Frederick said, in his ponderous,

accented English.

Wessex inclined his head. De Sade emitted a faintly audible sneer. His eyes

glittered fervidly, reflecting the flame of the candles, and his gaze flicked back and

forth from Frederick to Wessex. The diabolist was dressed in ornate black and had

powdered his pale skin until he looked like a convict… or a corpse. His face was

fleshy and corpulent, and his body had the bloated unconvincing obesity of the

invalid or the drunkard. His hands were long and slender, making a shocking

contrast with his black and ragged nails (normally of the most cold-blooded

temperament, even Wessex did not like to contemplate what use’ those sullied hands

were put to), arid the Marquis’s fingers were crusted with massive rings whose

stones shone in the dim candlelight of the windowless room as if they were open

sores.

„I had hoped that we might speak privately, Highness,“ Wessex offered as his

opening gambit.

„I do not think you will say anything I would not wish my good friend the

Marquis to hear,“ Prince Frederick said disapprovingly.

Wessex kept his eyes on the Prince and his face expressionless, but from the

corner of his gaze he could see that dé Sade gave every appearance of wriggling with

delight at Wessex’s discomfiture, rubbing his hands together so that the rings he

wore clicked together like abacus beads.

„Then I am sorry to have to convey to you King Henry’s deep sorrow and regret

in so public a fashion, Your Highness. He is desolated to be forced to inform you

that Princess Stephanie’s ship has disappeared, and she and all aboard her are

missing.“

Wessex had spoken so bluntly in part to judge the reactions of his auditors to the

news he bore, and in this he was not disappointed. The Prince Regent’s face went

absolutely white, confirming Wessex in his belief that the Prince had not known

about mis in advance.

But de Sade certainly did not seem to be particularly surprised by the news of the

Princess’s disappearance. His face was slightly flushed beneath its coating of

greyish powder, as if he fed upon the Prince Regent’s palpable distress.

„Missing?“ Prince Frederick said. His pale eyes, unfocused by the sudden shock

of me devastating news, fixed themselves now upon Wessex, and there was an angry

light in their wintery depths.

„Her ship disappeared a day’s sail outside of Roskild, while still in Danish

waters,“ Wessex said again. Roskild was the northeasternmost port that Britain

could claim, and her influence did not extend appreciably far beyond it: as Wessex

had said, the princess had vanished in Danish waters, for what that was worth.

„A very pretty illustration of how the English treat their allies,“ de Sade said. He

spoke in French, as if all the world should be expected to know that tongue.

„Be silent,“ Prince Frederick snapped in the same language, without looking at the

Frenchman. The Marquis emitted a small displeased hiss and rocked back on his

heels.

„You will please tell me what occurred,“ the Prince said to Wessex in his labored

English. „And where is Her Highness my daughter?“

„Your Highness,“ Wessex said, bowing again, and proceeded to explain at great,

diplomatic, and ultimately pointless length what little the English knew: that the

Queen Christina had sailed from the Copenhagen harbor toward the port Roskild

(where she and her sister ship were scheduled to rendezvous in any case if there

were any trouble on the voyage) and had disappeared in a fogbank before she

reached it.

„And this is the security you haf provided for my poor daughter?“ The Prince

Regent’s accent was thicker now with the stress of this information, and his face had

darkened with the characteristic rage of his royal line.

„The security for your daughter disappeared with her,“ Wessex pointed out.

„Along with a number of British diplomatists. Naturally His Majesty has sent ships to