The Memorist

Chapter 46

Vienna, Austria

October 18^th, 1814

Across the room the Tsar caught Margaux’s eye and smiled disarmingly. There were two men standing in front of him but the monarch towered over them, so while they believed they had his full attention, he was able to play his eye games with Margaux.

Even though the salon buzzed with conversation and the string quartet’s delightful music, nothing lessened the underlying note of sadness that played for Margaux no matter where she was, what she was doing or who was flirting with her.

The more lovely the moment, the more aware she was of Caspar’s plight and the more desperate her mission became. How much longer could she afford to wait? Day after day, she visited Herr Beethoven and witnessed his continual inability to decipher the memory song while Caspar languished in some unimaginable monastery on another continent. How ill was he? Would he survive until she raised the money? How long would it take to find him? She took a breath, deep and disconsolate, and let it out slowly, wishing she could give in and cry instead of standing so straight and making this effort at control. If she could stop loving her husband she would. Give it up for a day without worry, without the fear of what would happen to him if she failed. But she couldn’t stop. Neither loving him nor trying to save him.

The Tsar, one of the richest men in the world, was glancing her way again, his gray eyes intent and inviting. She returned his gaze.

If Major Archer Wells wasn’t authorized to purchase the flute for the Rothschilds without the score, perhaps the Tsar could be tempted by the idea of the object’s magic. Now. Before it was too late. She fought her rising panic. Double-dealing was dangerous but grief tempered her fear. Now was not the time for retreat; she’d spent too many days setting up this meeting.

Margaux’s lovely home was filled with clever and important people, fine food and charming music. It was all a patina. The threads that held the partygoers’ polite masks in place were fragile. Everyone in Vienna had an agenda and a plan for how the reapportionment of Europe would work best for them now that Napoleon was in exile. To the victor had gone the spoils, and now that the victor had been vanquished they were all arguing about how the spoils would be doled out. Despite the lofty talk about doing what was best for all nations, each country was ultimately concerned only with its own interests. So even here tonight, at what purported to be a totally social gathering, nothing was as it seemed.

Margaux looked at the Tsar again, responding not with the flirting she knew he expected but with a straightforward glance. She was betting the best way to play this game was not to play it at all. The power of the unexpected. One of the lessons Caspar had taught her along with a hundred others. So she held the Tsar’s gaze with a cool indifference, and from the intensity of his returning glance it appeared nonchalance intrigued the man no one dared treat with anything less than reverence.

Picking up two crystal glasses of champagne from a tray her servant passed around, Margaux crossed the room and delivered one to the Russian monarch, not only interrupting his conversation but ignoring the men with him. A handsome man with light auburn hair, the monarch wore the uniform of a field marshal and the many elaborate medals and thick gold epaulettes on his green coat caught the candlelight and gleamed as brightly as any queen’s jewels. Most women would have hung back at first, tried to be charming about the intrusion but she wanted to ensure the Tsar knew just how different she was.

It hadn’t taken much to pry the Tsar away. He agreed to her suggestion of a stroll in the garden with an intimate smile and the offer of his arm. Outside, where the moon and the lanterns cast the intricate paths in seductive shadow and the blooming night flowers scented the air with sweet smelling perfumes, the monarch-who had a reputation for being a Lothario-leaned in close to Margaux and thanked her for rescuing him from a boring political argument.

“It was my pleasure. I’d been wanting to talk to you all evening.” As did most people in Vienna that season, they spoke in French.

“Ah, so you have an agenda of your own. Nonpolitical, I hope. I’ve had enough of that for one night.”

“It is political but not the kind of politics you were discussing.”

Alexander smiled more intimately still. “How clever. I never tire of politics of the bedroom.”

“We’ve all heard about your spiritual marriage. Is it really true?”

“You take me by surprise. That’s a serious subject and here I thought we were having a frivolous conversation.”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Are you a student of mysticism?”

“My husband is, and I learned from him. He’s talked to me about many things, Your Excellency, including the idea that two people can communicate with each other through prayer, no matter how far apart from each other they are.”

They’d reached the center of the mazelike gardens. Here among the rose bushes was a stone bench that the Tsar brushed off for her. Once they sat, they were instantly hidden by pruned boxwood bushes so thick they functioned like walls.

“Yes, that’s what it’s like for us.”

“There are three of you involved in this marriage?” she asked, already knowing the answer, having grilled two ladies-in-waiting to the Tsarina yesterday and paid them off with jewelry she could ill afford to lose.

“Yes. We support each other with our hearts and our souls.”

“Is your spiritual wife here with you in Vienna?”

“She’s my own wife’s lady-in-waiting. Countess d’Edling. Maybe you’ve met her?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure,” Margaux said as she searched Alexander’s eyes, looking for a spark so she’d know if she should make the joke that was on her lips or stay away from making light of the situation. The Tsar’s expression was intensely serious.

So her spies had been right. His mystical interests were not sexually motivated but deeply held convictions. Everyone knew he believed Russia had been ordained by God to execute Napoleon’s downfall and then help organize the security for all European nations. So when his country did, indeed, prove instrumental in stopping the French Emperor, Alexander took it as confirmation of what he had to accomplish next. That mission was the reason he was in Vienna. He believed it was his destiny. But Alexander’s efforts to annex Poland and move Russia’s border several hundred miles west concerned the other heads of state at the Congress because the Tsar’s mystical beliefs made all of his reasoning suspect.

They’d fallen silent. Around them insects hummed. From inside her apartments came the murmurs of conversation and strains of the chamber orchestra’s music. It was cooler out here but she didn’t pull her shawl up around her shoulders because she knew the moon made her skin glow and that the Tsar was looking at her bodice even while he discussed philosophy.

“It impresses me that you are so generous with your soul that you’d share it with a woman who shares hers with another man.”

The Tsar laughed. “You mean the Theosophist, Schilling?”

She nodded.

“It was actually after meeting with him that I decided I wanted to be part of his union. You should hear how eloquently he explains the ways in which the spirit is superior to the flesh. Of all of us, he enriches the marriage. There is a fourth too, Baroness Kruedener. They are my phalanx of angels.”

Margaux did know, but feigned interest and surprise. Everyone knew. The Tsar’s spiritual marriage was a joke to most of them. “I heard that Schilling is a friend of the poet Goethe. Have you met him also?” she asked.

“No, but I’m familiar with his work.”

“Do you know about Goethe’s beliefs in reincarnation?”

“I do.”

“And do they interest you also?”

“Of course. Do you believe in past lives?”

“My husband does, Your Highness.”

“Ah, that’s right. The explorer. He was lost in India, wasn’t he? On some kind of treasure hunt.”

As Margaux told the Tsar about the flute, he was wholly absorbed in what she was saying. She was concentrating so hard on tantalizing him with her offer that neither of them noticed the flicker of a shadow on the path as someone approached.

“So this artifact belongs to you now.”

“Yes,” she said, “in fact I’ve been approached by the agent of a powerful family who wishes to buy it from me.”

“Why don’t you show it to me first,” the Tsar said. “I’d like to see it before you sell it to anyone else.”