Sherlock Holmes and The Case of The Bulgarian Codex

Chapter VIII IN WHICH WE JOURNEY TO THE CAVE CHURCHES

EARLY the next day we left the Hotel Panachoff and returned to the Palace. The Prince came down the Red Staircase to meet us. He carried a large pair of chamois-leather gauntlets. Goggles dangled from his neck. A white fur cap surmounted by a white plume a foot high sat imposingly on his head. A favourite flower of mine, a fresh Malmaison carnation, sprouted from his lapel. An immense handkerchief of very fine silk, coloured like parrots’ tails, cascaded from a top pocket. His large, well-manicured hands were now even more luminous with costly rings. The absurdity of the plume combined with piquant knee-breeches and smart yellow boots made me warm towards him. My companion regarded him with a sardonic eye. “Slip out of the Palace unnoticed’,’ he commented, nodding at the ostrich feather.

Our salutations completed, Ferdinand led us to the stables, large buildings capable of holding a hundred horses. The great doors swung open. We entered upon another wonderland. It was like a harem of pure-blooded automobiles. Six of the latest and most elegant vehicles stood before us, the only motor-cars in the whole of Sofia. Each of the beautiful machines was assigned its own chauffeur. In some detail we were guided around the short and high five-litre Daimler, followed by the three-horsepower, curved-dash Oldsmobile which had fetched us from the Danube, and a Royal Mercedes powered by a Zeppelin airplane motor with an electrical gear shift. The Mercedes had been designed by the German Kaiser himself. Its rich mahogany doors were inlaid with floral designs of ivory and gold. The door-handle on the driver’s side contained an ivory profile of the Prince Regnant. The handle on the other side depicted his deceased wife. Once a week, as though exercising three-year-old fillies, the chauffeurs drove the vehicles up and down the Stamboul Road, to and from the Prince’s estate at Vranya, or a small distance further to his summer residence at Tchamkoria. Surrounded by nearly-impenetrable mountains, the road was one of only two or three routes in the whole of the country with a surface capable of supporting a motor vehicle.

Our host spoke nostalgically. ‘As you see, even here in the backwater of Europe the motor-car enters our very stables. The fuel-tank replaces the corn-bin. In the last month alone I have laid off four coachmen, two grooms and seven stable-boys. In twenty years the Bulgar cavalry will be obsolete.’ He shrugged. ‘The pennants flying from their lances, steaming horses tossing their heads - the sabres glinting in the sun. Soon we shall see those splendid men crouching over the wheels of omnibuses, driving round and round grating gears.’

Unusually, the Prince had selected the least gaudy of his collection for our journey, a Lifu fourteen-seater wagonette. Steam-pressure was building up in the boiler positioned between driver and passenger. Butterfly nets and a set of killing jars jutted from the rear of the vehicle. A gardener was passing branches of an apple tree in blossom up to a servant on the roof-rack. Next came a large open trunk of provisions. The Prince’s love of intricate dishes and succulent, highly-seasoned food was evident. We were to discover in the trunk, among other delights, salmis, mousselines, potted pork of Tours, and bombes gaufrées à la pistache, thrown together with a case of Calvados 1804.

‘I am your chauffeur, my dearest guests,’ the Prince announced grandly, pulling on the driving gauntlets. ‘Our destination is the famous Red Church near the town of Perushtitsa.’ His voice dropped. ‘In fact, dear guests, I shall disclose our true destination once we are out of the city.’

At this he handed each of us a chic Panama hat for the journey.

With the Prince energetically at the controls we set off. The conveyance reflected in the window-glass of barbers, drapers and hosiers. Further on we slipped silently past larger establishments manufacturing cloth, coarse linen and canvass, propelled by the almost-silent steamer against the tide of peasants trudging in the opposite direction, some walking alongside wooden carts piled up with farm-produce for the market, drawn by long-horned oxen or black buffalo with bright greenish-blue eyes. A troop of cavalry resting in the shade of the old city walls jumped up with a rat-tat-tat of spurs to salute our driver, bayonets fixed, each man decked in a blue and silver uniform. Once through the walls our host turned half-back in his seat. ‘Gentlemen, we go north east, our destination the monastery complex of Ivanovo, in the valley of the Roussenski Lom River.’

A few minutes more and we were in deep countryside of a disturbing and formidable kind, a strong contrast to the green and fertile landscape of Sussex where Holmes planned to locate his bee-farm.

To our right, high up on a dramatic cliff, surrounded by the silent loneliness of soaring mountains, stood the solid walls of a monastery which history recounts withstood the crashing waves of Turkish soldiery. An hour or so passed. Beneath us the paving gave way to furrowed dark earth. The hiss of the engine grew shriller. We passed isolated houses built of wood, two stories high, the lower part serving for a barn. Stands of pine replaced the wild pear, cherry, and crab-apple near sites of human habitation. A feeling of isolation grew more and more oppressive, alleviated now and then by horses spattered with glittering ornaments, blue beads, bells and amulets.

‘You may shudder at the dismal wilderness around us,’ the Prince called back, catching my thoughts, ‘but it tells you Bulgarians are just like me. We would prefer to make our homes in barren mountains as free men, feeding on wild fruit and stale bread, rather than in fertile valleys crawling through life under the conqueror’s yoke. Over there’ - he pointed to a formidable mountain - ‘is the tomb of Vasil Lechkov, a Bulgar borislav, a great warrior. Lechkov went into battle with a cross in one hand, sword in the other. He hewed off fifteen heads before he fell against the Ottomans. According to the story, his men played nine-pins with them.’

Ferdinand added as an afterthought, ‘though I understand Frenchmen’s skulls make the best bowls - more rounded.’

Some miles later he spoke up again.

‘Those mountains may provoke fear but they also provoke avarice. They are packed to the brim with topazes, amethysts, crystals, jasper.’

Another pause, then, ‘You may have noted the absence of my wife. She died last year, twenty-four hours after giving birth to our fourth child.’

‘The Princess must still have been very young,’ I called forward sympathetically. ‘Not so very young. Twenty-nine. I buried her in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Louis in Plovdiv.’

In his direct manner Holmes asked, ‘Will you also be buried there when your time comes?’

‘I plan to be buried in the Forty Martyrs Church in Turnovo, in a tomb as grand as that of my ancestor Louis XIV. Unfortunately the Coburgs don’t have a Pope in their past or I’d book a plot on Vatican Hill.’

He went on, ‘Like John of Rila, I shall take steps to embalm myself before death, consuming great quantities of Tansy and potions. People will make pilgrimages to my tomb, believing my incorruptible corpse will possess miraculous powers.’

With a rueful smile he added, ‘First, however, before my death comes the matter of marriage. Sir Penderel and others will have told you the great vixen hunt is on. My darling mother, the Princess Clementina of Orléans, never forgets she is the daughter of Louis-Philippe, King of the French. You must meet her on her return with my children from Coburg. With quite indecent haste she is preparing everything for my next marriage. She has even designed a fleur-de-lis tiara for my bride, no doubt crowned with minarets and turrets and belfries. As to my diadem, she has consecrated it at Lourdes. It will rival that of the Russian Tsar in gems and beaten gold.’

He looked back over his shoulder. ‘All that’s wanting is that bride.’

‘Why should someone so rich and powerful as you find it difficult to remarry?’ I enquired. ‘Surely it’s simply a matter of time, a respectable period of mourning after your wife’s death?’

The Prince chuckled grimly. ‘Simply a matter of time, you say, Dr. Watson? I wish it were so. You may comprehend the lack of enthusiasm a woman of standing might have for such a marriage. Think of the fate of the Empress Elisabeth two years ago, stabbed to death in Geneva by an anarchist with a four-inch needle file.’

Night was coming on rapidly. It was almost dark before we saw a sprawling complex ahead. A big half-moon hung out of the heavens. The Lifu came to a stop at the Convent of Kazalak on the slopes of the Balkan mountains where we were to spend the night. Nuns brought us cups of coffee with small plates of rose-leaf jam and glasses of water. The younger nuns vacated their cells for us.

The Prince went on a long walk. He returned looking relaxed, carrying several specimens of rare flowers snatched in the gathering dusk for his botanical gardens in Sofia. The Mother Superior, an elderly brown-faced peasant woman, invited us to lay offerings before a miracle-working ikon of the Three Persons of the Trinity before leading the way across a cobbled courtyard to our beds. The Prince ordered us to meet for breakfast at six, ready to set off on the final leg of our journey.

I slept fitfully in my cell. Strange fancies and surmises and distorted countenances crowded into my mind. We were approaching territory as remote, bare and sinister as anything I had fought in during my long years in Afghanistan, when the blood ran fast. Memories of desperate encounters amid rifle-blazing crags flooded back.