Circle of Shadows

V.13

Pegel sat back in his chair. He was uncomfortable. Normally when he looked up from his work he linked his hands behind his head, crossed his ankles and thought about what he wanted to eat next, but tonight he stood slowly and looked down at his notes with great unease. He took a step away then returned and swept the papers into one of the drawers, slammed it shut and turned the lock. Then he headed towards the main door of his room to release himself. His momentum carried him until he had the key in the lock, but then he turned back, gathered up the papers once more and folded them into his coatpocket. There were three places in the room he had prepared for papers to be concealed, but now the messages were translated into plain language, none of these places seemed sufficiently secure. He was almost angry with Florian and his little group for making their codes simple enough for him to unpick. He didn’t want to know all those names, whatever profit it might bring him. The thought of the money stilled him for a little while. Money of his own. It would be enough for him to establish himself somewhere with a decent university. He could stay there, in one place, teach mathematics and pursue his own studies. He might even be able to make a friend he could keep.

As soon as the idea formed he thought it nonsense. He was not the sort of man who could afford to lead a settled existence. Better to dance through people’s lives, blow smoke in their faces and disappear while their eyes were still smarting. Damn these papers! It was no good. It was simply too dangerous to leave them lying about as they were. He must burn them, take the originals and translate them once more in front of his master. He unfolded the pages and looked at the names. He had watched some of them, and thought them good men. Fools, of course, idealists too protected by their position to see how the world really worked, their eyes so fixed on some distant lofty goal they probably hadn’t even noticed when they stepped off the edge and into the abyss. The papers burned and curled in the grate and he prodded the ashes into nothing. He wondered what would happen to them. Some of the smoke got into his eyes on this occasion. He would ride out as soon as it was light.

There was a light knock at the door and Harriet opened it to find Manzerotti leaning on the frame, a candle in his hand.

‘I received your note, as you see, Mrs Westerman. I do hope you haven’t reconsidered your decision not to shoot me dead.’

She turned back into the room and he followed. ‘Frequently. But tonight I am asking you to examine this chamber with me.’

‘How exciting! Secret passageways, darkness. I should be delighted, of course, but, flattered as I am, why is not Mr Crowther or Mr Graves at your side?’

She kept her back turned. ‘Crowther has to visit Herr Kupfel, and Graves is on watch at Swann’s bedside. Rachel and Daniel need to rest.’

‘I am sure the happy couple would be delighted to continue their vigil?’ he asked innocently.

‘Perhaps, but Mr Crowther feels it would be unwise of me to be found alone at night in the company of Mr Graves.’

‘Whereas a being such as myself? We eunuchs are a useful breed.’

‘It is nonsense to worry about such things in these circumstances.’ She breathed deeply. ‘I thank you for coming.’

‘Gabriel loves you very much, I think, Mrs Westerman. I am sure to make the suggestion was as distasteful for him, as it was for you to comply.’

She hesitated briefly then picked up the map Wimpf had drawn from the table. ‘Why do you call him by his Christian name, Manzerotti?’

He shrugged. ‘Because it irritates him, but he knows that to order me to call him by any of his titles, real or imagined, would make him ridiculous. He is a vain, proud man. It is a nature I understand, being both vain and proud myself.’ He took the page from her and examined it in the light of his candle. Harriet guessed he must be about her own age, but his face was as smooth as her ten-year-old son’s. ‘I think the most discreet way we can let ourselves into these passageways is through a doorway on this corridor.’

‘Why were they built, Manzerotti?’

He tilted his head to look at her. His expression was almost affectionate. ‘Your naivety is one of your great virtues, my dear. Do try never to lose it. In palaces such as these the great do not want their servants on view unless they are liveried and as superb as the gilding. I am sure they were built so the lower servants could go from room to room without offending their masters by breathing the same air. Shall we?’

Crowther knocked on the door with the head of his cane. There was a shout deep from within.

‘Who is it?’

‘The Englishman.’

The door was shuffled open. A little. ‘What? Why are you here? I heard the Watch call midnight already.’

‘Will you not let me in? Do you not wish to know how Chancellor Swann does?’

There was a moment of doubt on his face, but the door was dragged open enough to allow Crowther entrance and he once again followed the Alchemist’s stooped back through the junk to the comfort of the back room. Crowther did not wait for an invitation to be seated.

‘Why were you arguing with Glucke?’

Kupfel remained standing, staring at the fire. ‘None of your business. How is Swann?’

‘Still more asleep than awake, but much improved, I understand. His hands are less inflamed. Glucke was murdered this evening.’

Kupfel turned round at that, his mouth open and his face suddenly pale. Crowther realised he had not known the power of the blow he was delivering. ‘What? Glucke?’ Kupfel sat down heavily in his armchair and began to cry, covering his face with his hands. Crowther felt a spasm of pity. Kupfel raised his head. ‘Was it? Was it … like the woman?’ Crowther nodded and Kupfel howled. His face was red now and running with tears; he gulped and wiped his sleeve across his face. ‘Oh God, oh God … I wish I had never met that man. Never asked … What suffering I have brought among us.’

Crowther stood and poured a brandy from a dusty-looking carafe on the desk then handed it to his host. Kupfel took it and drank. Crowther poured a glass for himself and tipped it down his throat. He had never been a man who drank. It had marked him out in his youth and made his fellows suspicious of him — confirmed him in their eyes as a dry eccentric even at that age — but confronted with Kupfel’s animal grief he reached for it. It burned, but he felt its warmth. Kupfel stopped crying, but he rocked back and forward in his chair, and Crowther discovered that he grieved for him. What strange beings he found himself in sympathy with these days.

‘You went to see him, Kupfel. You thought he had stolen the book, did you not?’

‘I thought he had got someone to steal it for him.’ Kupfel’s voice was small and cracked, the wheeze underlying it more pronounced.

‘Did whatever harmed Swann come from the same volume?’

Kupfel’s face was crumpled and lined as if it had been scythed and folded. He held his empty glass in his old hands, and Crowther could read in the scars on the fingers, years of toil and work with heat and substances corrosive and violent. ‘No. It was not in that book.’

‘Did you believe Glucke had killed Lady Martesen?’

‘No, no. Never. He was a good man. No, I believe he got his hands on the book then gave it to a man of no scruples, a man ready to harm, to corrupt anyone who stood between him and power.’

Crowther was profoundly tired; he knew there was something in the words of the old Alchemist that would make him understand, something important, but it slipped from him. Kupfel thought the book had been stolen by Glucke; they knew the book had been stolen by Beatrice so Kupfel was wrong, and therefore his anger with Glucke meant nothing. He must sleep.

‘The book was stolen by your serving girl, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘We are trying to follow her path.’

‘The maid? Impossible!’ Kupfel looked into the fire. ‘A girl? You think her capable of understanding it?’

‘Yes.’

Crowther put his hand on the little Alchemist’s shoulder, and to his surprise the man reached up, seized it, and held it with his own, speaking with sudden enthusiasm, even through his tears. ‘I am so close, English. So close to the Great Work. Once that is complete, the Elixir, I can treat any ill, I can cure anyone who is harmed by what I have learned.’ His voice was intent, a little desperate.

‘You cannot raise the dead, Mr Kupfel.’

He slumped again. ‘It has been done. Perhaps I might, but I would not. I cannot save Glucke now. No one comes back from death … whole.’

They moved slowly along the corridor, the candles dancing shadows up the walls. Harriet noticed that Manzerotti smelled of bergamot. He seemed to have no animal scent of his own. He had handed the map back to her as soon as they closed the door to the passageway behind them, and allowed her to lead the way. She wondered what her husband would think of her now. He wouldn’t understand it, of that she was sure, but would he forgive her? Would he have continued to love her, had he lived? He had been gracious in his letters when news of the events of 1780 had reached them. He knew that she had saved Lord Sussex and his sister, or helped to at any rate, but she sensed that he had reservations, that he was not convinced that she had needed to step so far outside of the role nature and society had given her. She occasionally argued with him in the privacy of her own mind, claiming it was his own fault. Taking her with him on his tours abroad in the early years of their marriage had meant she developed this core of wilfulness, of unconventional thinking, a love of adventure. But that would have been unjust. One of the reasons she had married him was the smell of salt and foreign climates on his skin, the stories of his adventures, and she had campaigned to join him. Whatever strange quirk in her nature that meant she was here now, feeling her way through the darkness with Manzerotti beside her, had been born into her.

‘Here, I think,’ she murmured.

Manzerotti handed her his own candle and felt for the handle. ‘Locked.’

Harriet felt her eyes sting. ‘Of course it is. I am a fool. Wimpf said Auwerk had the key and I never even thought-’

‘Do not worry, dear lady, I have another advantage over Mr Graves as a companion on this venture.’ Manzerotti reached into his jacket and produced a soft leather roll. It was the same sort of thing that Crowther used to carry the tools of dissection with him, but much smaller. He untied it and showed her within a number of slim metal tools, each a subtly different shape and size.

‘Lock picks? How did you know?’

‘A lucky guess, my dear. But I try to be prepared. I am also carrying a knife and a large quantity of money.’

‘You know how to use these, of course.’

‘Of course. How do you think I always manage to know a little more than I should? But I had the best teacher when I was young — hunger. The boys who had been castrated were a little better fed than the rest at the school where I was trained, but only a little. There. The pantry at Padua was a great deal better guarded than this.’

He pushed the door open. At first Harriet could make out nothing but the chequerboard design on the floor, but as Manzerotti moved around the room, lighting the candles that hung against the walls, each with a brass panel behind it to throw forward what light it could, the room began to take shape before her.

It was a square chamber, with a number of chairs placed against the wall and one larger chair at the north end. The case with the glasses in it was located on the sideboard by the door. Harriet opened it. Seven, all identical and arranged in a circle. She took out one. It was engraved as Wimpf had said with a pattern of vines and flowers. He had not mentioned that there was also an owl cut into the glass of each.

‘What do you think they spoke of here, Manzerotti?’

‘Power, I suspect. Imagine, Mrs Westerman, this little group with their owls: if they had simply been courtiers wandering in the gardens making their little plots, then they are ordinary. But here they are a secret little group of seven, meeting in their own secret little room. It gives them a sense of their own importance. Some people have children to stave off their mortality, some religion, and some create these rituals of their own.’

‘But not you?’

‘I am a breed apart, Mrs Westerman, you know that.’

‘Music?’

He smiled. ‘Very, very occasionally. I enjoy what is beautiful and original, and so very little is.’

She fitted the glass back into the case and closed it. ‘Do you know of a musician named Bertolini, who was employed here some years ago, Manzerotti?’

‘Yes, but he was neither beautiful, nor original. He is Kappelmeister in Colburg now. He leads a band of competent musicians in a competent manner. What of him?’

‘I heard this evening that he was involved in a scandal here some years ago. It ended badly for the woman involved. She was separated from her child, and the child died.’

‘I am not sure I understand, my dear. What threads have you been pulling from the air?’

‘I was told the Duke was thinking of putting this lady, Kastner was her name, under his protection when the scandal broke out, then after her banishment his attentions alighted on Countess Dieth. Suppose this little cabal wanted one of their own in the Ducal bed and they slandered this woman to remove her. She is sent from court, her child is taken from her and dies. That woman therefore had reason to hate her enemies to such a degree she might take this … revenge.’ The word choked her, and she found herself staring at Manzerotti, but seeing only her husband. She remembered suddenly the feel of her children’s hands in her own the day of James’s funeral. She stepped back from him, fumbling for the chair behind her, and sat down. He lowered himself onto one knee in front of her. She felt a sickness in her throat.

‘Mrs Westerman …’

‘Do not speak.’

‘I must.’

She placed her hands over her ears, but could not block out the sound of his voice.

‘I have done many things that you may think immoral, but I gave no order that any man, woman or child should die in London. I ordered that a body be removed and concealed. That is all. Johannes’s devotion to me was very powerful. It had become unmanageable by the time we arrived in London.’

‘I shall not hear you — you are the devil himself.’

‘Johannes acted to protect me, but not by my command. Do you think I would be the man I am today if such slaughter were my usual modus operandi?’ His voice was low, urgent.

‘Why did you not tell me this before, at once when we met, if it is true?’

‘You would not have believed me.’

‘Why should I now?’

He was still kneeling before her, looking at the floor in front of him. ‘You know me a little better now. I should have killed him before we left France. I am sorry, but he was my friend. I told myself he was under sufficient control.’ She covered her face and heard him move; he had taken the chair next to her own. ‘Forgive me.’

‘Never. Even if you did not give the order, it was still you who told Johannes that my husband might be able to identify you. I shall never forgive you.’

He sighed. ‘That is your right.’ He waited until her breathing began to steady and then spoke as if the exchange had not taken place. ‘The woman you speak of cannot be your murderer; you need someone who can move about in plain sight. Someone to whom Glucke would open his door. Either this merry band gave someone else a motive as powerful, or someone is taking revenge on her behalf.’

Harriet’s blood beat in her brain, her exhaustion slowed her thoughts. She held up her hand. ‘Mrs Westerman?’ She did not speak to him, but after a few moments picked up the candle from the table and placed it near to the panelling behind them. There was a draught coming from somewhere close to her that carried some strange foreign smell. An astringency. She stood.

‘Never speak to me of London again, Manzerotti. Never mention my husband in my hearing.’ He lowered his head. ‘Now help me shift these chairs.’ He did so swiftly, setting them in the centre of the room while Harriet moved the candle-flame to and fro. The flame held steady. She wondered if she had imagined it, but then she felt it again on her left hand. She moved the candle once more and the flame fluttered and bent towards the wall. Using it as her guide, she brought the candle closer. There was a keyhole. It had a thin wooden covering over it, that had been left not quite straight, allowing that thread of air into the room. She ran her hand over the carved uprights in the panelling. It was possible that the edge of a doorway might be concealed beneath them. She felt Manzerotti’s breath on her cheek.

‘Very good, Mrs Westerman.’

This lock took rather longer than the first. Manzerotti, after an initial examination, actually removed his coat. She watched him as he worked and wondered if she believed him. The more she thought of it, the more likely it seemed. He was subtle, the murders in London were not.

As he worked, he never swore or showed any sign of frustration. The only indication that he had found it anything of a challenge was the nod he gave to himself as something deep within the wood clicked. He pushed the door with his fingertips. It was beautifully weighted. To conceal its edges behind the decoration it was particularly wide, yet it swung slowly open even with that most gentle pressure. He stood at the doorway looking over his shoulder at her. Without his jacket his figure looked almost girlish, and his forearms showing where he had pushed up his sleeves were as white and hairless as his cheek.

‘That smell,’ she said.

‘Yes. I would think it wise if we were to avoid touching anything in this room,’ he said, and moved aside to let her join him in the doorway. It was a far smaller chamber, almost a closet. A narrow bench ran along one wall and on it were a number of innocuous-looking glass jars. In front of them was a brown leather folder. Manzerotti produced a knife from his pocket and flicked open the cover with its blade.

There was a diagram of a series of circles, each labelled in flowing copperplate. Harriet counted the row of jars. She craned forward slightly to read, then she reached out for one of the jars. Manzerotti, apparently without looking up, caught her wrist with his left hand.

‘A moment, Mrs Westerman.’ He turned the page. A number of paragraphs in the same florid handwriting. ‘The names may be innocent but the potions are not.’ He tapped the knife on the page as he released her, and Harriet read: Nausea, vomiting and evacuation of the bowels. To be ingested. Will not be detected in highly peppered dishes.

‘And here.’

May be applied to clothing: will cause a painful rash wherever it touches. ‘This is foul.’

Manzerotti’s voice sounded angry when he spoke. ‘Yes, it is, and my employer and I take it very seriously. I am in your debt, Mrs Westerman. This is certainly the lair of the poisoner I am searching for, though Herr Kupfel’s most powerful secrets did not end up here. There is no sign of the drugs used on Clode or the victims of blood-letting.’ He turned another page. ‘Nor anything that would nearly kill Swann either. But it is unpleasant enough. Until we sort out who is who in our catalogue of poisoners, may I give you some advice — advice you might pass to your friends here?’

She would not look at him, but nodded.

‘Caution. No poison is completely invisible. Drink only when you see others drink. Eat only from shared plates. As for clothing, remember, Mrs Westerman, you noticed a scent that came from the poisoner’s chamber. That must be your warning. May I also suggest that none of you put clothes on your person that feel cold to the touch. Sometimes articles are chilled, that on being warmed by the skin give off their poison. And now, madam, perhaps you will allow me to escort you back to your chamber?’