Weighed in the Balance (24 page)

He had tried to express this to Evelyn when he met her briefly at the train station, but she was concerned about the comfort of travel arrangements and had no interest in such reflections. Klaus was gloomy, his huge figure looming in the background, shoulders a little hunched, mind preoccupied with
what he would do when he reached Felzburg. He was impatient with railway officials, short-tempered with his own servants, and did not appear even to see Monk.

Evelyn rolled her eyes expressively and gave Monk a dazzling smile, as if the whole performance were somehow funny. Then she followed after her husband with an outward semblance of duty, but also a little swagger to her step, and a glance backward over her shapely shoulder at Monk before stepping up into her carriage.

They were several hours north, and Monk drifted off to sleep watching the countryside roll past. He woke with a jolt, both physical and of memory. For a moment he could not recall where he was traveling to. He had Liverpool in mind. He was going there to do with shipping. Huge Atlantic clippers filled his inner vision, a tangle of spars against a windy sky, the slap of water at the dockside, the gray stretch of the Mersey River. He could see the wooden sides of ships riding on the tide, towering above him. He could smell salt and tar and rope.

There was immense relief in him, as of rescue after terrible danger. It had been personal. Monk had been alone in it. Someone else had saved him, and at considerable risk, trusting him when he had not earned it, and it was this trust which had made the difference to him between survival and disaster.

He sat in the train with unfamiliar trees and hills rushing past the windows. The rattle and lurch were comforting. There was a rhythm to them which should have eased him.

But this did not look like any part of England he knew. It was not green enough, and it was too steep. He could not be going to Liverpool. His mind was blurred, as if sleep still clung to him. He owed an immense debt. But to whom?

The train had high divisions between each row of seats, giving a certain amount of privacy, but he could see that the man on the far side of the aisle was reading a newspaper. It was in Italian. Where would a man buy an Italian newspaper?

Monk glanced up at the luggage rack and saw his own cases. The label which was hanging down said “Felzburg.”

Of course. Memory came back quite clearly now. He was trying to find evidence to clear Zorah Rostova of slander, which meant finding proof that Princess Gisela had killed Prince Friedrich. And that was impossible, because she had not only had no reason, she had also had no opportunity.

It was a fool’s errand. But he had to do everything he could to help Rathbone, who had been uncharacteristically rash in taking the case in the first place. But it was too late to retreat now.

And Evelyn von Seidlitz was on the train. He smiled as he remembered that. With luck he would see her at dinner. That was bound to be a pleasure; it always was. And if they stopped somewhere agreeable, then the food might be good also. Although he was not looking forward to a night spent in a semireclining seat where it would be extremely difficult to do anything better than take short naps. He seemed to recall that somewhere in the world they had invented a proper sleeping car in the last four or five years. Perhaps it was America. Certainly it was not this train, even though he was traveling in the best accommodation there was.

It felt very natural. That was another discomfort to his mind. Once he had earned the kind of money which had made luxury an everyday thing. Why had he given it up to become a policeman?

This debt he owed was at the heart of it, but rack his mind as he might, it remained clouded. The emotion was sharp enough: obligation, a weight of fear lifted by someone else’s loyalty when he had not yet earned it. But who? The mentor and friend he had remembered earlier with such growing clarity and grief? Had he ever repaid that debt, or was it still owing, and that was why it was so sharp now in his mind? Had he walked away from it, leaving it? He wanted to believe that was not possible. He may have been abrupt, at times unfair. He had
certainly been overwhelmingly ambitious. But he had never been either a coward or a liar. Surely he had not been without a sense of honor?

How could he know? It was not merely a matter of going back, if that were possible, and paying now. And if it were his mentor, then it was too late. He was dead. That much had come back to him months before. It was necessary he should understand himself, to get rid of the pain of doubt, even if his fears about himself proved to be true. In a sense they were already true, unless he could prove them false. He could not leave this unresolved.

The train stopped regularly to take on coal and water, and for the needs of the passengers. Still, fifty years before, or less, he would have had to make this same journey by coach, and that would have been immeasurably slower and less comfortable.

As he had foreseen, dinner was taken at a hostelry along the way and was excellent. Klaus von Seidlitz had returned to the train a little earlier, in the company of two very solemn, militarily dressed men, so Monk spent a few minutes by the side of the track in the snatched company of Evelyn. He could see her face in the clear mountain starlight, in the sudden red flares of the sparks from the engine, and in the distant torches held by men as they labored to shovel coal and replenish the water for the night’s journey northward across France.

He would like to have spoken to her for hours, asked her about herself, told her things he had seen and done which would bring the flash of interest to her face, intrigue her with the mystery and reality of his world. He would like to amuse her.

But Rathbone weighed heavily on his mind. Time was growing short, and he had nothing of worth to take back to the barrister. Was he going to indulge himself, perhaps again, at someone else’s expense? Was this the kind of man he was at heart?

He stared up at the sharp, glittering sky with its sweeping darkness, and at the pale clouds of steam windblown across the platform. The heavy noises of coal and steam seemed far away, and he was acutely conscious of Evelyn beside him.

“Has Zorah no friends, no family who could prevail on her to withdraw this insane charge?” he asked.

He heard Evelyn’s sigh of impatience, and was furious with circumstances for offering him so much and at the same time preventing him from taking it. Damn Rathbone!

“I don’t think she has any family,” Evelyn replied sharply. “She always behaved as if she hadn’t. I think she’s half Russian.”

“Do you like her? At least did you, until she did this?”

She moved a step closer to him. He could smell her hair and feel the warmth of her skin near his cheek.

“I don’t care about her in the slightest,” she replied softly. “I always thought she was a little mad. She fell in love with the most unsuitable people. One was a doctor, years older than herself and as ugly as an old boot. But she adored him, and when he died she behaved atrociously. She simply ignored everyone. Had him burned, of all things, and threw his ashes off the top of a mountain. It was all rather disgusting. Then she went off on a long trip somewhere ridiculous, up the Nile, or something like that Stayed away for years. Some said she fell in love with an Egyptian and lived with him.” Her voice was thick with disgust. “Didn’t marry him, of course. I suppose you couldn’t have a Christian marriage with an Egyptian anyway.” She laughed abruptly.

Monk found all this peculiarly jarring. He remembered Zorah as he had seen her in London. She was an extraordinary woman, eccentric, passionate, but neither overtly cruel nor, as far as he could tell, dishonest He had liked her. He saw no offense in falling in love out of your generation or with someone of another race. It might well be tragic, but it was not wrong.

Evelyn lifted her face to look at him. She was smiling again. The starlight on her skin was exquisite. Her wide eyes were all softness and laughter. He leaned forward and kissed her, and she melted into his arms.

The train arrived in Felzburg at noon. After several days’ travel, Monk was tired and longed to stand in an unconfined space, to walk without turning after three paces, and to sleep stretched out in a proper bed.

But there was little time to be spent on such business. He had a letter of introduction from Stephan, whom he had left in Venice, and went immediately to present himself to Colonel Eugen.

“Ah, I was expecting you!” The man who received Monk was much older than he had imagined, in his middle fifties, a lean, gray-haired soldier who bore the marks of dueling on his cheeks and stood ramrod stiff to welcome his guest. “Stephan wrote to me that you might come. How may I be of help? My home is yours, as is my time and such skill as I possess.”

“Thank you,” Monk accepted with relief, although he was unsure even of what he was seeking, let alone how to find it. At least he was delighted to accept the hospitality. “That is most generous of you, Colonel Eugen.”

“You will stay here? Good, good. You will eat? My man will take care of your luggage. The journey was good?” It was a rhetorical question. Monk had a powerful feeling that the Colonel was a man to whom any journey would be good if he reached his destination alive.

Monk agreed without additional comment and followed his host to where a good luncheon was set out on a dark wood table gleaming with embroidered linen and very heavy silver. A small fire burned halfheartedly in the grate. The paneled walls were hung with swords of varying weights from rapiers to sabers.

“What may I do to assist you?” Eugen asked when the soup had been served. “I am at your disposal.”

“I need to learn the truth of the political situation,” Monk replied candidly. “And as much of the past as I am able to.”

“Do you consider it possible someone murdered Friedrich?” Eugen frowned.

“On the basis of the factual evidence, yes, it is possible,” Monk replied. “Does it surprise you?”

He expected shock and anger. He saw neither in Eugen’s response, only a philosophical sadness.

“I do not believe it could be Gisela Berentz, but I would not find it hard to believe that someone did it, for political reasons,” he answered. “We are on the brink of great changes in all the German-speaking states. We survived the revolutions of ’48.” He dipped his spoon into his soup and drank without seeming to taste it. “The tide of nationalism is rising all over Europe, and most especially here. Sooner or later, I think we will be one nation. Sometimes principalities like ours survive independently. Some chance of history, or geography, makes them unique, and the large powers are content to let them be. Usually, they are swallowed up. Friedrich believed we could remain as we are. At least,” he corrected, “that is what we thought. Count Lansdorff is a strong protagonist for that view, and, of course, so is the Queen. She has dedicated her life to serving the royal dynasty. No duty whatsoever has been too hard for her, no sacrifice too great.”

“Except forgiving Gisela,” Monk said, watching Eugen’s face.

He saw no humor in it, no understanding of irony.

“To forgive Gisela would mean to allow her to return,” Eugen answered, finishing his soup and breaking a little bread on his plate. “That is impossible! If you knew Ulrike, you would have understood that from the beginning.”

A solitary manservant removed the soup plates and brought in roasted venison and boiled vegetables.

“Why are you prepared to help a foreigner inquire into what can only be a most distressing and unseemly affair?” Monk asked, accepting a generous serving.

Eugen did not hesitate. A shadow crossed his face, and his china-blue eyes flickered with what might have been amusement.

“A percipient question, sir. Because I can best serve my country and her interests if I know the truth.”

Monk had a sudden chill rack him, as if the food he had swallowed had been iced. Eugen might just as well have added “That is not to say I will allow it to be repeated!” The meaning was there, for an instant, in his face.

“I see,” Monk said slowly. “And what will serve your country? Accidental death? Assassination by a hired man, preferably unknown, or murder by his wife for her own personal motives?”

Eugen smiled coldly, but there was appreciation in his eyes.

“That is an opinion, sir, and mine you do not need to know, nor would it be in my interests that you should. Felzburg is dangerous at the moment. Feelings run very high. We stand at the crossroads of half a millennium of history, perhaps even at the end of it. Germany as a nation, rather than a language and a culture, may be at the beginning of hers.”

Monk waited, not wishing to interrupt when he sensed Eugen had more to say. His host’s eyes were bright, and there was an eagerness in him which he could not mask.

“Ever since the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire under Napoleon,” Eugen went on, his food now forgotten, “we have been only scores of separate little entities, speaking the same tongue, having the same culture and hoping one day to bring to pass the same dreams, but each in its own way.” He was staring at Monk intently. “Some are liberal, some chaotic, some dictatorial and repressive. Some long for freedom of the press, while both Austria and Prussia, the two greatest powers,
believe censorship is as necessary to survival and defense as is an army.”

Monk felt a faint stirring of memory. News of rebellions all over Europe one spring; men and women at the barricades, troops in the streets, proclamations, petitions, cavalry charging at civilians, shots into the crowd. For a brief spell there had been wild hope. Then despair had closed in as one by one the uprisings had been crushed and a subtler, deeper oppression had returned. But how long ago was it? Was that 1848?

He kept his eyes on Eugen’s and listened.

“We had parliaments, briefly,” Eugen went on. “Great nationalists arose with liberal ideas, freedom and equality for the vast mass of people. They too were crushed, or failed through their own ineptitude and inexperience.”

“Here as well?” Monk asked. He loathed exposing his ignorance, but he had to know.

Eugen helped them both to an excellent Burgundy.