The Golden Portifor - 40. Chapter 40

Jonas Antonin shouted cheerfully up to the loft of the western stables. ‘Uncle Karl! Maman said to tell you Papa’s going to be back in town soon!’

‘That’ll be another brother on the way for you then, Jonas!’ came the laughing reply, followed by Karl Wollherz himself as he climbed down a ladder. ‘How many of you are there now? Andreas, Karl, Boromeo, Sergius, Willem Fenicius, Jan ... I lose track. Your poor mother.’

‘With the twins, that’s sixteen of us in all.’

The Antonin family was something of a curiosity locally. Wilchin and Cecile had filled a large town house on the Altstadt with their all-male brood, with not one stillbirth or infant death to sadden their home. Mistress Cecile Antonin had understandably come to be regarded as someone lucky to have around at a birth on the Altstadt, unless of course a daughter was desired, and so she had gravitated into midwifery as a part-time profession.

Jonas was the eldest, and Karl had not been surprised to see the lad grow up to be a youth of extraordinary beauty, with thick raven hair and startling blue eyes, for within a couple of days of his birth his elfin godfather had spirited him off to Fäerie, exposed him to the celestial light of that sacred place and bathed him in the River of Life. Karl believed the elf had also spun spells of protection around the child, who was health personified.

Jonas also had some peculiar intellectual traits, though Karl wasn’t sure whether they derived from his father or from Jonas Niemand directly. The boy’s facility with languages was remarkable. All he needed was a day or two in a foreigner’s company to become fluent in his tongue. He had been particularly taken with French as a child. His linguistic skills and his looks made him an excellent salesman at the horse fairs of the Rothenian lands and the southern Empire, where he was already Karl’s chief agent.

The rest of the Antonin boys had been more conventionally baptised in the Veronkenkirche or the chapel of the Fenizenhaus. However, Karl was generally one of the godfathers and always surreptitiously added drops of water from a phial filled from the same sacred river into the font. Though the effect on the other children was not as dramatic as the gifts bestowed on their eldest brother, no child of the family had ever yet developed any of the more serious childhood ailments.

The Wollherz stables had absorbed four of the Antonin boys into its thriving business, and it was generally expected that they would be Uncle Karl’s heirs, since he showed no interest in marriage. Jonas certainly loved the work and was gifted with horses, but at 24 years old had never showed any interest in women, and indeed Karl already had reason to suspect Jonas’s close and exclusive friendship with a few former schoolfellows betrayed the direction of his desires.

Karl had begun his career in horse husbandry and stabling on his return with Brunhild to Strelsau in 1699 after leaving his lord Serge’s service on his succession to the lordship of Olmusch. With his partners, Herr Simon Ashkenaz and Boromeo von Tarlenheim, Karl had begun horse-breeding in earnest on fields he leased north of the city on the edge of the Strelsenerwald.

The superb quality of his stock and his mastery of the art of equine husbandry gained Karl rapid notice and considerable local fame. He took apprentices from the Fenizenhaus, expanded into livery stabling in the city and was one of those dealers who sponsored a celebrated three-day horse fair on the Altstadt, which much enhanced the trade of the city. The Ruritanian army relied on him as its chief buyer and provisioner. The funds he had deposited in the Neustadt compter now filled several chests. He had bought and handsomely rebuilt the Sign of the Angel on Engelngasse in 1707, the year King Rudolf II died and was succeeded by King Henry. On the feast of St Michael in this year of 1719 Karl had just been elected to the senior bench of the Scabini of the Altstadt at the young age of thirty-nine.

Jonas and Karl retired to his business room above the gatehouse of the large brick stables Karl had constructed in the city’s Sudmesten, south of the Neueplatz Bar on the Lines. There were four long ranges around a large courtyard, with barns and granaries behind. The room was handsomely furnished with the comfort the nobility and military who frequented it would expect.

Above the chimney piece was a portrait of Karl’s beloved Brunhild, the first of many horse portraits that now covered the wainscotted walls of the room, which served as an illustrated stock book of his business. The artist, one of the Graf Willi’s friends, had taken some care and had caught well Brunhild’s knowing look as she arched her neck towards the viewer. She had lived very long for a horse, which Karl had expected, and when her continued youthfulness was beginning to raise curiosity he had enlisted the help of Andreas and Wilchin.

One night they led deep into the Strelsenerwald Brunhild and a small herd of her offspring with some equine friends she had selected. There they crossed into Fäerie with over a dozen horses. And now a flock of Pegasuses had been added to the charms of the Unlikely Forest, where Brunhild reigned over her supernatural herd as queen.

Jonas Niemand just shrugged when he raised the question in one of their infrequent but much-anticipated meetings. ‘It’s the sort of thing that happens, ‘cos anything can happen there,’ he had commented. ‘There’s no rules. They’ll find a space. As long as they get on with the unicorns, I don’t see a problem.’

The elf’s visits tended to coincide with Wilchin’s returns to his native city. So Karl had some hopes of an imminent reunion with both his friends.

***

The court of Ruritania in the twelfth year of the reign of King Henry, called the Lion, lacked a certain something. The late King Rudolf had his gloomy side, but none could deny that the culture of his court in the arts and in music had raised Ruritania against its neighbours, even if it was hardly renowned for gaiety. Old King Rudolf had also a fine sense of the use of ceremonial in adding dignity to any occasion and uniting the nobility with the people.

People had hopes that the accession of a young and handsome king might make up for the deficiencies of his father’s court. But that did not happen. His father’s great political triumph in opening close relations with the Ruritanid family of Glottenburg, into which the beloved Princess Dorothea Sophia had married, lapsed with Henry’s developing coldness towards his brother-in-law, Prince Willem Stanislas, which had begun when he was still crown prince.

His marriage to the charming Leopoldine Eleonora of Neuburg in 1698, for all its political advantages, did not brighten the court. Queen Leopoldine lived her own life in the Hofburg, where after several miscarriages she brought to term a crown prince in 1710, named Rudolf after his grandfather. The new king however was all too often to be found at the Wenzlerhof in the province of Neder Husbrau with his mistress, Ulrica, now duchess of Zenda, and their numerous brood, when he was not at the Arsenal or one of the other crown fortresses.

‘You know, Phoebus,’ Count Willi of Strelsau tiredly observed, ‘I feel the weight of the entire kingdom on my narrow shoulders. It’s unfair.’

The two had carried on their relationship down the years despite the difficulties of distance and two very different careers. But somehow affairs brought Sergius von Tarlenheim not infrequently to Strelsau, even now he was Count of Verheltschjaen, Baron Olmusch and Chancellor of Glottenburg for his dear friend, Duke Willem Stanislas IV. He found many reasons to be in the Ruritanian capital, where he and his brother and heir, Colonel Boromeo von Tarlenheim of the Leibgarde, had business interests. The estrangement between the Olmusch family and the senior line of the Tarlenheims meant that Serge did not seek lodging at the urban palace of his cousin, the second Count Oskar, a hotheaded young man, already the veteran of a half dozen duels. Serge had lodging rights with Master Karl Wollherz at the new Sign of the Angel, but usually he left his servants there and put himself up at Willi von Strelsau’s.

Serge pulled his lover close in their bed in the modest house that Willi liked to call his ‘Palais du Bâtard’ on the Altstadt. ‘Now what’s bothering you, Willi?’ he asked.

‘Oh it’s all very well for you, Phoebus,’ he pouted, ‘you’re a great man of affairs and all that, intimate of European princes and so on.’

‘Give up on the half-hearted flattery, Willi. What’s the problem?’

‘Bizarrely, since I’m so evidently illegitimate as an Elphberg, it’s me keeping the family together. When Henry became king I very quickly began to realise that my former low opinion of old Cronos was mistaken. I mean, I always admired his musical tastes, but what I failed to realise was how much the old misery invested in maintaining the body politic and the skill with which he did it. Henry just doesn’t get it.

‘He has to have his way and the world can go hang. The number of people in council who can safely disagree with him is down to two, me and Duchess Rica. And appointing her to the Council of State rather than the queen was a very poor decision. Leopoldine is popular and now she’s produced a pretty little red-headed Rudolf who’s devoted to her and flinches when his father comes near.’

‘Ah, so you think that in due course the king and the crown prince will form rival courts?’

‘It happens a lot out in the world, and nothing could be worse for our realm. Old King Rudolf didn’t let it happen with Henry. Once Henry got his military way all was sweetness and light between the pair.’

‘It’s not my problem, dear. If you remember, I was a casualty of our Zeus’s Elphberg temper. He is also unforgiving. I can’t appear at his court, except as chancellor of Glottenburg.’

Willi growled. ‘Hmph. You still don’t quite understand my cousin, Phoebus. He knows you had the right of it in that argument, but it isn’t just resentment that makes him keep his distance, it’s the refusal to acknowledge his embarrassment and chagrin. That’s the lime in the cement of his resentment.’

‘What, you expect me to grovel in front of him so as to be accepted back in his royal graces? It’s far too late for that.’

‘And who else has problems with pride? No. I don’t expect that. He’d only despise you, and conclude you have ulterior motives.’

‘Then what can you do, Willi?’

‘Just hold the line and dispense good humour, stage court entertainments of some quality and make very risqué jokes, I suppose. That’s the limit of my abilities.’

***

Karl loved autumn, especially when the weather was cool and sunny with a sharp hint in the air of winter to come, and the first days of October in Strelsau were always for him a special time. He associated it with the days, many years ago now, when he had met Jan Lisku and was taken into the service of his lord Serge, and the dazzling excitement of the magical world that opened up to him at the Sign of the Angel.

He stood at the west side of the Erchbischofsplatz that afternoon, looking out for a while over his city with the bells of the cathedral and the abbey of St Waclaw ringing the angelus behind him. He took a route north past the archiepiscopal palace, skirted the Lucasian convent precinct and was then in among the new lanes and narrow streets of tall, brick-built, stuccoed houses to the east of the Fenizenhaus. One of them was the Sign of the Rabbit on Westergasse. The Antonin twins were skipping and playing on the front steps, handsome little boys of six years of age, being watched by one of the maids of the house. Mistress Cecile needed a considerable staff to manage her large household, for none of her elder boys had yet moved out to begin their own establishments, though a couple of them were believed to be heading in the direction of marriage, and one had declared he wanted to be a priest. Jonas Antonin still shared a bedroom with his two next eldest siblings.

‘Daddy home yet, boys?’ Karl asked the twins.

‘Yes, Uncle Karl!’ they chirruped. ‘He’s doing the accounts with Mummy!’

Nobody on the Altstadt could quite pin down Herr Willem Antonin on the source of his evident prosperity. It was generally believed that he was a commercial agent for several finance houses, and indeed he did do some work for Herr Ashkenaz of Judengasse, who took advantage of his movements when he had delicate business that needed doing in Bohemia and Poland or which required someone trustworthy and willing to enter potentially dangerous situations in troubled parts.

Karl removed his hat and headed through to the back, where the house had an extension for the kitchen, brewhouse, larder and laundry room. The clumping and scuffling of male adolescent feet and the sound of arguing and laughing Antonin boys drifted down the stairs.

Wilchin and Cecile were at the long table in the kitchen, as around them their cook and scullery maid were in the throes of preparing the evening meal, which would soon cater for over a dozen hungry young males. The man himself looked up and grinned. Like all the former male servants of the old Sign of the Angel, Willem Antonin had preserved his youthful looks, though his hair was beginning to thin a little at the temples. But the wide and irresistible grin was the same as ever. Cecile was of course no longer the slim girl of those days. Motherhood had made her stout and taking the principal responsibility for her large clan had put lines on her brow and given her a certain no-nonsense air.

‘Karlo!’ she cried with a broad smile for her dear old friend. ‘I expect you and Lord Wilchin’ll want your beer. We’re finished here. Agnes will take your mugs and pipes out the back while we get ready for the hungry horde upstairs. Only half an hour, mind.’

A long yard walled with brick ran back from the house, a line of privies at the end. There was a bench and table just outside the kitchen door. The two men settled there.

‘So where was it this time, Wilchin?’ Karl asked, as he lit his pipe.

His old friend stretched. ‘London in England,’ came the reply. ‘What a place. Never knew cities could get that enormous. I mean, Paris is big, but London is bigger still. Yer blinks and it’s added a new suburb.’

‘What were you doing there for five months?’

Wilchin tapped his nose. ‘A number of things. Tracking down the last of old Dudley’s collection of magic books was one job. I dropped ‘em off at Medeln with the lady abbess on the way back. A very dodgy and wild young aristo by the name of Wharton had bought what was left of his library and got a bit too interested in the notes down the margins. I left him with a hole in his memory. Interesting bloke though. Very funny in his cups.’

Karl shook his head. ‘That it then?’

‘Nah! Our elf has decided that a lot of what’s bothering him about our world has its roots there. So I was on a scouting mission into London high society. Wharton helped, though he didn’t know it. I got all sorts of introductions. Had an especially useful day at the Royal Society.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A club for clever posh people. Our old friend Dudley’s dad helped start it, believe it or not. Lots of people there are like our Lord Serge, so I felt right at home. Yer knows what he’s like.’

‘How do you get away with it?’ Karl marvelled.

‘Me charm of course, Karlo. That and a few very amusing and informative years as groom in Lord Willi’s household. I learned proper court manners and quite a bit else from me favourite Graf, much more than he realised. So when I got to be eighteen I could easily pass meself off as one of them, only more amusing, interesting and cultured than most.’

‘You never put it on with me.’

‘I can still be Wilchin of the Conduit with you and Ando. It keeps me grounded like. Anyways, talking of Ando, we’re going to meet him at the Fenizenhaus after the feeding of the five thousand. We has things to discuss.’

‘Oh? What’ll they be?’

‘It can wait till we see Ando.’

Dinner chez Wilchin was nothing if not noisy, especially with Wilchin at the head of the table sparring verbally with his delighted elder offspring and doing magic tricks for the younger ones, which were perhaps more ‘magical’ than the children realised. Karl sat between Jonas Antonin and his younger brother Boromeo, another of Karl’s employees, and talked horse husbandry. So it was with a certain relief that he regained the street outside the Sign of the Rabbit, or Wilchin’s Warren, as the neighbourhood called it.

He and Wilchin headed down Westergasse through the dusk, as lamps and candles began to light the rooms behind the street’s windows. The Royal Hospital gates were lamplit but closed for the night. However a bell was hung by the wicket with a long, white rope for the benefit of any child seeking refuge after dark. It always brought the porter to promptly open up, besides which Karl and Wilchin were members of the hospital’s board of surveyors and were expected.

‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said the porter. ‘Busy evening so far. Three destitute children from the Sudmesten have arrived on the run from their father. His Excellency the Governor will be going down there later to call out the ward constable and have the villain examined. His Excellency’s in the Board Room.’

Karl and Wilchin found Lieutenant General the Baron Bernenstein in uniform but without his wig, having his dinner at the Board Room table. He was sitting with several of the senior Fenizenhaus boys neat in their Elphberg green waistcoats and breeches, regaling them with tales of his campaigns, from Flanders to Bosnia. His Baroness and numerous children were back at home in his residence in the duchy of Mittenheim, apart from his eldest boy, now a lieutenant in his father’s cuirassier regiment.

‘There boys!’ he concluded, ‘this gentleman, Master Wollherz, you will recognise from that portrait you see on the wall behind us.’ He pointed up at the double portrait of himself and Karl as young teenagers in 1692, which had been commissioned and painted at their master Serge’s expense. ‘Master Wollherz is of course barely changed from those days, apart from in height. Of me there is now considerably more than there was then. But that is one consequence of success in this world, alas.’ He patted the large spread of belly under his red waistcoat, as the boys grinned. ‘Now off to bed, my lads.’ They cheerily took leave of the general and headed off chattering to their rooms, as Wilchin and Karl took their places.

‘Welcome back Wilchin!’ Andreas grinned in his old way. ‘I expect you have tales to tell. You usually do.’

‘Later, Ando me old friend. I has a job, and it begins tomorrow.’

‘And what would that be?’

Wilchin stood and bowed low to his friends, but when he straightened a stranger stood before them: handsome, tall and dressed very elegantly. He smiled around him in a most courtly fashion: ‘Messieurs, permettez-moi de vous présenter, Monsieur le Comte de Saint-Germain.’

***

Serge von Tarlenheim dismounted at the Kitchen Court and confided his mare to the care of the royal stables. Then he headed for the Hofburg, remembering as he did a day nearly thirty years before when as a sixteen-year-old he began to make his way in the world. Once again he took the spiral stairs to the chambers of the court officers up under the leads, though the man he found behind the Lord Chamberlain’s desk was very different from the first person he had met occupying it.

‘Hello, dear! Welcome back to Hades,’ Willi smiled over the rim of his coffee cup. ‘Very brave of you to enter these dark and gloomy halls once more, and I’m about the only Eurydice on offer. But you can bear me away to the sunlight as soon as you like, just don’t look back as we go.’

Serge sighed as he took a seat in a new armchair. ‘I assume there will not be a diplomatic incident when I turn up at the king’s levée.’

‘Not at all, my dear. There’ll be a big crowd and you are after all the Chancellor of Glottenburg representing your prince. Also you have friends here still. Mannie von Speyer still presides over the Great Chamber and the good General von Bernenstein is at court, as used to be your groom in distant days long gone. Her Majesty regards you as a rare source of intelligent conversation. I understand she wishes to discuss the education of Prince Rudolf, so I expect she’ll whisk you off after mass.’

‘Rica’s not around then?’

‘Sadly no, she’d have loved last night. The queen brought this wonderful find with her from the Marmorpalast, a French fellow, or perhaps not ... difficult to tell in his case. Anyway he goes by the name of the Count of St-Germain. He’s a scream! He was at the court of Saxony last month and he comes with quite the reputation.’

‘Really? Women? Gambling?’

‘Not at all. He is very mysterious. Shares some features with your wicked old Grandad, the wizard, I believe, though rather more fun I would imagine. And he talks to Spirits. Handsome devil too. I was willing to be as sceptical as you’d have wanted but, my dear, he took my hand and told me some things about myself that no one but me could have known. I blushed! It must have been the first time in over a decade. He claims to be three hundred years old. If so I really must get the receipt for his face cream.’

Arm in arm, the Chancellor of Glottenburg and the Lord Chamberlain of Ruritania descended to the East Gallery, so familiar to Serge from when he was in the prince’s household. It was little changed, though it was now called the King’s Gallery, as Henry had stayed in the East Wing of the Hofburg after his accession and resigned the West Wing to Queen Leopoldine. The Duchess Ulrica lived when she was in Strelsau in a fine house called the Vesterborg Palace, which she had built across from the Hofburg, west on Gartengasse.

‘This place is getting run down,’ Serge commented.

‘Yes, well my dear, Cousin Henry doesn’t much care for the Hofburg and if he’s not out in Neder Husbrau with Rica and their little flock of bastards then he’s mooning round fortresses and barracks. He’s still smarting from the late Louis of France making peace at Utrecht. Nor has he forgiven Eugene of Savoy and Marlborough for inconsiderately destroying the French army marching on Austria through Bavaria before he could have his crack at them.’

‘At least he had the joy of marching against the Turk once more with his hero,’ Serge added. ‘He was at Petrovaradin with Prince Eugene, if not in command. Alas that our old friend Mehmed Pasha was not there for the rematch he so wanted. Still, he at least went out in a blaze of glory, regaining Azov for his emperor and his brother the Grand Vizier, and defeating Tsar Peter in the field. Who knows what would have happened had he survived that battle.’

‘I wonder what happened to that odd boy Hans Blicke who went off to Constantinople with Mehmed? I suppose we’ll never know,’ mused Willi.

They reached the antechapel to find the court awaiting the royal family. As a foreign visitor, Serge separated from Willi, found the Glottenburg ambassador and with him took place in the back row, craning to see who emerged when the cry of Hoch! Hoch! Der König! went up.

The king and queen proceeded from the Great Chamber to a roll of drums, followed by a nervous-looking red-haired child, Serge’s first sight of the Crown Prince in a few years. He was alongside a fine-looking young man whose close resemblance to his mother identified Leopold Jakob, Count in Vesterborg, King Henry’s eldest bastard. He seemed very much at ease with his situation in life, smiling and chatting with his unresponsive half-brother as they walked. He was in the uniform of a captain of the Royal Leibgarde, whose colonel was Serge’s brother.

The king himself was still a good looking man, but to Serge’s eye he had lost that physical grace and ease which helped give him beauty in his youth. There was a hardness to his face and a tightness to his jaw that told the world this was no longer a man who might share a joke or waive his claims to deference. Serge followed the royal party into the Hofkapelle and was relieved to find that the music of the royal chapel remained exquisite, whatever else was dilapidated about the palace. That had a lot to do with Willi, who had deftly secured the management of the musical establishment of the Hofkapelle in the face of the king’s indifference.

Following mass the court returned to the Great Chamber, and the king and queen took their places on the thrones under the canopy of state. Serge chose not to resent that he was called forward to be received after the minor ambassadors of the Prince of Wallachia and the Prince-bishop of Augsburg, despite being the chief representative of an allied Rothenian state. Rising from kissing the royal hand, he was met by a cold look and a nod. The queen added to his discomfort by too effusively insisting that he join her on the terrace after the court dispersed, the king silent beside her.

Willi was at hand to stage-manage his retreat from the royal presence. ‘Oh, dear,’ he sighed. ‘Henry’s getting no better. That was on the verge of being a calculated insult to Glottenburg. I really don’t know what to do with the man. Fortunately you have no rival in self control and civility, Phoebus.’

‘Doesn’t mean I don’t feel the slight, for the sake of my prince if nothing else,’ Serge growled. ‘Does he really mean to break with the Peace of Orbeck? I half suspect he’s looking for a casus belli.’

‘What?’ Willi looked concerned. ‘I’d surely have picked that up.’

‘My dear,’ Serge replied, ‘since Henry knows very well anything said in council in your presence concerning Glottenburg would soon be repeated to Dodie and to me, I would not be too sure.’

***

Once the suspicion was aroused in Serge’s mind he commenced some discreet investigating around the Elphberg court, and did not like what he began to hear. His brother, Colonel Boromeo von Tarlenheim, shrugged when Serge questioned him.

‘I’m here with my Leibgarde in Strelsau. His Majesty doesn’t confide in me. It’s at Luchau that the military council meets and I’m never invited. I am a mere colonel after all.’

‘Luchau?’ Serge frowned. It was a garrison city ninety miles down the Starel towards the Ostberg gap and the Hungarian border in the north of the province of Tirolen, its hinterland a vast royal forest stretching south and west.

‘The king’s hobby,’ his brother continued. ‘It’s his new toy, like Mittenheim was in the nineties. He’s designed a grand new fortification, which is under way. Most of the army exercises happen there nowadays, not on the Martzfeld here in Strelsau. I picked up from some fellows in the Royal Artillery that there are border works going on towards Hungary, sealing up the pass at Kaleczyk.’

‘Now why would that be? The Turks aren’t likely to be marching on the Rothenian lands from that direction these days. I must ask around. How’re my nephews and nieces?’

Serge pondered as he walked to the house of the Glottenburg ambassador, an amiable old fellow called the Ritter von Cappenberg, who had been his government’s agent in Strelsau almost since the days Serge had been a resident in the city. Despite that he had very little to offer, assuring Serge that things went on in Ruritania much as they always had. ‘His Majesty has been till recently absorbed by his foreign wars,’ he observed, ‘which suits the nobility and the commons alike. Ruritania has great standing in Christendom because the king supports the Turkish wars and has favour from the Emperor because King Henry took the Habsburg part in the Spanish Succession question. France these days is in decline and rather less of a threat to the peace of Central Europe. The Ottomans have been driven back far down the Danube.’

‘Yes, my dear Ritter,’ Serge replied, ‘all that may be true, but had it not occurred to you that favour in Vienna might well be traded for imperial indifference to an Elphberg renewal of the Rothenian Wars? And King Henry the Lion at a loose end is a very dangerous beast. I would like what agents you can spare to be sent to Luchau.’

That evening he accompanied Willi and General Bernenstein to the Hofburg for a diplomatic reception in the Great Chamber to which the queen had invited him. He secured a corner and a glass of wine, and continued his investigations with his old friend and sometime employee Andreas Wittig von Bernenstein.

‘So Andreas, I continue to hear very good things of the Fenizenhaus.’

The general beamed. ‘The delight of my life, Serge. We had a delegation visiting from Salzburg last month, looking to build their own hospital. The Carmelite orphanage here does its best, but it’s always placed too little emphasis on practical care and proper feeding. A third of the children there died from childhood disease last year: no isolation measures! They’d have been safer at the Conduit, poor little ones.

‘Some of our waifs come in too late for us to do much for them other than see them out of the world with decency and kindness, it’s true. But we don’t admit any to the general wards till we’re sure they’re free of infectious disease. Few of our admissions who’ve been with us longer than a year have yet died on us! All our senior class of children went into respectable service or apprenticeships last year, every one of them literate, happy and healthy, and the girls with the promise of a modest dowry on marriage. Just shows what can be achieved.’

Serge smiled. ‘Money helps of course, as well as the sort of dedication and commitment you give ... and the endowment you’ve given the hospital is exceptional.’

‘Don’t forget old King Rudolf! In his last will and testament he left one third of the royal fisc in Husbrau to finance a Fenizenhaus Hospital in that city and the other thirds to endow income on the Strelsau Carmelites and us. His present majesty was not too pleased at that noble act of generosity.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘He swore it was throwing away the support for an entire brigade.’

‘Really? I thought he’d be winding down the military since his excursion into Serbia with Prince Eugene in the year ‘16.’

Serge got a sharp glance from Andreas, who responded evasively. ‘Old habits, your excellency. Now Serge, have you heard of the new sensation at court?’

‘You mean the Count of St-Germain? Willi was full of the man’s oddities.’

‘Some say he’s a French agent, others that he works for the Bavarians and others again that he’s a Lithuanian wizard. All I know is that he knows a lot more about what’s going on in the world than anybody reasonably should. You should talk to him.’

Serge scanned the circulating crowds in the room. He gravitated towards a knot of courtiers and found seated at the centre of it an imposing man in his thirties. His coat was of cloth of silver, extravagantly cut and lined in sprigged silk. His wig too was of silver grey and of a combed-back fashion unknown to Serge, who himself still refused to wear the things. He assumed he was seeing the latest Versailles mode.

The count was at a baize table reading the cards for a crowd of thrilled ladies, who were alternating between amazement at his revelations and laughter at the man’s dry wit. Serge watched a while trying to detect the trickery of what must be one of the cleverest confidence tricksters he had ever seen at work. All of a sudden he was skewered by the man’s sharp glance.

‘And you sir? It would be a change to determine a male fortune. Do please take a seat.’

The coterie of ladies would not be resisted and Serge obligingly complied, suddenly surprised to realise that he and the mysterious count were talking in Rothenian.

‘Sir, you speak Roteniske well,’ he admitted. ‘Are you from a Rothenian family?’

‘No sir, not I, but I have an arrangement with certain spirits who will happily translate the unfamiliar for me and provide me with words to reply.’

Serge switched back to German. ‘A most useful aid in life, sir.’ He translated for the ladies the count’s astonishing boast. They immediately tried him on their repertoire of languages, and found they were answered easily in French, Latin and Italian. Serge’s repertoire was considerably larger, but nonetheless he was answered in Ancient Greek, English, Spanish and even Turkish, despite Serge’s own limited command of the language. The count’s fluency was the same in all.

‘Sir, that is a remarkable gift you possess,’ Serge confessed. ‘And is that all the spirits tell you?’

The count shook his head with a smile. ‘They can be quite tiresomely chatty at times, your excellency.’

‘You know me, sir?’

‘Why yes, though there is nothing uncanny in that. The Chancellor of Glottenburg is known to all Europe for his learning, valour and wisdom. But it is true the spirits do flock around you in numbers.’ He paused as if listening to unseen voices. ‘There is a most remarkable one that desires to speak with you. He has the appearance of a child of quite uncanny beauty, but do not be deceived, child or not his power is very great. Does the name Jonas Niemand mean anything to you?’

‘What!’ Serge shot to his feet. ‘How can you ...?’

‘I see you recognise the name. He once took service as your page I believe, and regrets that he left without giving his notice. A very polite imp he seems. He also hails the General standing behind you, whom he knew as a boy. Is that so, my lord Bernenstein?’

Andreas gripped Serge’s shoulder. ‘It is so, count. And what does this supernatural child want of us?’

A growing crowd surrounded the table, but the Count of St-Germain remained sitting imperturbably in the ring of fascinated courtiers. He looked around and his voice raised clear above their subdued babble. ‘The child is a spirit of peace and he is troubled. He sees fratricidal conflict gathering amongst the people of Rothenia. He warns that now is a moment of dire choice. Down one road is utter ruin for the children of Ruric and unending war. The other leads to peace and glory beyond any understanding.’

The crowd was struck dumb, and drew aside as the figure of the king walked up. He cast a cold look about him, as the mysterious count rose to his feet and bowed. ‘Monsieur de St-Germain, I believe,’ said King Henry. ‘You are here by the invitation of Her Majesty, and I would not wish to be discourteous by putting you in irons for so disrupting my court. But I would ask you to follow my lord Bernenstein here to the Guard Chamber. We shall talk, sir, about who you are and who has sent you. And I truly hope that you have nothing to do with these theatricals, my lord of Verheltschjaen,’ he said, turning to Serge. ‘Attend me.’

***

Serge was bemused, which was not something that often happened. In part it was because of the way the Count of St-Germain so closely and ominously echoed his own fears, and in part because the Jonas Niemand incident which he had alluded to had been one of the most troubling of Serge’s intellectual life. The boy’s oddity had never been successfully explained away either by his friends or by Serge’s own intellect. Now it had come back to haunt him, literally, and by a character equally unaccountable.

The general had put guardsmen at the doors both inside and outside the chamber. The object of their attention took up a place in a window alcove looking out on to the Hofgarten. The count seemed perfectly composed.

The king wasted no time in satisfying his curiosity. ‘So sir, on pain of most severe penalties, I have some questions I want answered. The first is what nation gave you birth. Not France I believe.’

The man shook his head. ‘I was born at a time before most of your nations existed, so the question has no relevance. You are right of course that I am not French, but then I have never claimed to be.’

‘Evasive sir, as well as incredible. What warrant have you to bear such a title, as all assume that it is St-Germain-en-Laye to which it refers?’

‘The title is genuine, Your Majesty. It is a papal one, and a patent can be produced to that effect. It is taken from St-Germain-en-Provence, an ancient fee of the pope’s French principality of Avignon.’

‘And who sent you to Ruritania, monsieur le Comte? Not His Holiness I would think.’

‘No, sire. I travel where the wind of the spirit blows me, and it brought me here to this room, which I think is where I should be.’

‘I do not believe you, sir. Your intervention here points to a foreign sponsor. What do you say, my lord Sergius, eh?’

‘I would say, Your Majesty, that this man is either a very talented trickster or a most imaginative fantasist. But if you wish to imply that I sent him here, I would say you’ve forgotten everything you’ve known about me.’

The king bridled, then relaxed. ‘Very true, my lord. Not your style at all, since your God is Reason. But then, a godly man might use the devil’s weapons at need.’ He turned back to the count. ‘Tell me sir, in my presence you’ve used the dark and satanic science of ... what d’you call it?’

‘Thaumaturgy, sire?’ Serge provided.

‘Damn it, Serge. You don’t change.’

‘I’m not going to apologise for my level of education, sire. I don’t recall your objecting to it in happier days.’

King Henry snorted. ‘Nor ever apologise for intruding your unasked opinions either. But back to this mountebank. So sir ... thaumaturgy. We don’t have the Inquisition here in Ruritania, but I do believe we have laws about blasphemy ... that right?’

‘Yes sire,’ Serge offered, ‘though I rather think the Count of St-Germain has very carefully said nothing to dishonour or challenge the Christian faith. As for the powers he claims, they’re an empty imposture. It’s his opinions that have annoyed you.’

‘He rattled you too, Serge, I saw it.’

‘Yes sire, but what shocked me was his implication that you were looking to renew the Rothenian wars that devastated these lands two centuries and more ago.’

The king scowled and turned to the count. ‘So who planted such an idea in your head, sir?’

‘I who have seen so much of times past have been gifted to see also the future, and the spirits unveiled to me two visions, sire. One was of a kingdom devastated by an unending war, while its hungry enemies gathered to rip it apart and feast on its carcase. The other was of two realms once broken apart to their mutual weakness moving forward in alliance towards unity and strength.

‘They told me to come here to tell you, sire, that it is in your power to choose which future it will be. And they also told me that you take good advice badly, and so they brought also here my lord Sergius. For had you listened to him over the man Gerlitz’s fate so many years ago and not banished him from your council, Mittenheim would now be a docile province of the Elphbergs and Glottenburg and Ruritania brother states, united in friendship rather than edging towards war in mutual suspicion. Do the spirits lie, sire?’

King Henry was struck dumb, and it was Serge who rallied first. ‘Who put you up to this, St-Germain? You know things nobody could.’

The man smiled. ‘But Nobody does, sir.’

‘What’s he mean, Phoebus?’

‘I think he alludes, sire, to a very strange encounter I had with a boy calling himself Jonas Niemand many years ago, a child that could not exist but did and who was in my service at Mittenheim in the year ’92, around the time Anton von Gerlitz made his attempt on you.’

‘Then you’re admitting that spirits might meddle in the affairs of men ... you?’

Serge stared at the king. ‘I think I may be. By the way, you called me Phoebus.’

‘I did? Old habits. So very hard to shake off.’ He turned to the mysterious count. ‘Sir, you have delivered your message from whoever your master may be, and now General Bernenstein will remove you from the palace precincts. You shall not return, and I do not wish to hear of your continued presence in my city of Strelsau beyond tomorrow. Be warned. Now Serge, you and I must talk, I think.’

***

Andreas Wittig von Bernenstein waved the guards away as he and the Count of St-Germain reached the twilit gardens of the palace, the moon appearing in the western sky.

‘So Wilchin, me mate. What exactly did you do? I could feel you up to something.’

‘Oh, not a lot. Jonas taught me that the best spells are where you get people to see or do what they already want to. The king deep down loves Lord Serge and really regrets the row they had, but is far too proud to admit it. He also knows that Serge is a good true man, and he should have listened to him, so all it took was to strengthen and liberate that feeling in him. And of course the “spirits” will give him the excuse and argument to change his mind. So I very much think that those two are making it up back there in the Guard Chamber, and that as they talk the future that Jonas feared will be disappearing back into the might-have-beens, and the better one will be beginning to happen.’

‘So what’s our elf up to?’

‘He’s decided that of all the realms in the world, it’s this one that holds the future for humans he wants to happen. There’s that great mysterious power at Medeln Abbey for one thing, then there’s Lady Fenice’s interest in the country, and there’s us, the best playmates he’s ever had, and he says he couldn’t find many such people outside the Rothenian lands as he has here. So we’re special and Rothenia’s special, and things can happen here that can’t anywhere else in the world. He just wants to know what they might be and to protect this place from the storms of the world so that the future he wants will come to fruit. He also says our Karlo has shown him that his own future’s bound up in this land. It’s under his protection now.’

Andreas laughed. ‘All that money King Henry’s wasted on Luchau and the border fortresses!’

Wilchin’s shape in the twilight next to him shifted and changed, and the count of St-Germain disappeared. ‘I liked that disguise. I’m going to use it again, a lot.’

‘It was the real you in some ways. Fancy getting together with Karlo for a drink tomorrow up on the Altstadt? He was talking about making a trip to Fäerie, to see how Brunhild and the flock are getting on.’

‘Him and his horses. Still he’s done well out of ‘em.’

‘We’ve all done well, me mate.’ And arm in arm the two friends walked off laughing into the dark.