Imogen Robertson - Circle of Shadows

He rubbed his elbow. ‘All right. What do you want to know?’

‘For two thalers down? Bloody everything.’

He considered. ‘She wasn’t that friendly to begin with. Held herself apart, you know? Then one night I found her round the back of Whistler’s place sitting on a barrel and crying her eyes out. Thought she’d fly when I saw her, but I showed her a couple of magic tricks. Made her smile. After that we seemed to bump into each other a fair bit. Nothing much. Just a bit of conversation and a laugh at the end of the day.’

‘She liked your tricks.’

‘Yeah, you know, just pulling a coin out of her ear, that sort of caper. Funny thing is, she never wanted to know how I did it. I asked her why and she explained that that always spoils it. Told me a bit about her sister and uncle then.’

‘And what of her work for Whistler?’

‘Said she wanted to learn the tricks of alchemy, but that she’d bribed her way into working for a fool who was actually trying to do it — make the Elixir of Life and all that — rather than fake it. She was bitter that she’d spent good money to get the position. Said it was money wasted. All books. No cons.’

‘So what did she plan on doing then?’

‘She was a smart one.’ He smiled and scratched his ear, the hard glitter in his eyes softening now. ‘The next time I saw her, she said that she reckoned she could still get her money’s worth out of it. He had some book of his own and she’d worked out the way he had of writing in it. Thought it could be sold with the bits and pieces wrapped up with it. Then she’d picked up some learning from the other books, copied out pictures and signs, a few spells and incantations and stuff. Cut out others. Said she was making her own book of magic, and when she found the right mark she’d twist him for everything he’d got.’

‘What happened to the books she cut the pictures from?’ Michaels asked. Simon shifted in his seat. ‘You burned ’em in the forge, didn’t you?’ The boy said nothing.

Michaels looked about the room. Voices were beginning to warm up and the laughter was getting louder. Three or four men of about his own age with their backs to the wattle walls were singing a song to the vine and toasting it in vats. He knew the feeling from his own place. A good night, open pockets and no trouble.

‘Beatrice was still wanting to take a step up from the occasional session seeing spirits, then?’

‘Suppose so, though she did them now and again for the servants up at the palace.’ He sounded a little more eager to speak now. Get away from those mangled books burning in his master’s fire, no doubt. ‘Said it was a good way of getting information out of them on the sly. She weren’t one to give up on her dreams easy, Beatrice. She thought if alchemy was a wash-out, best thing to do was find a rich family with a hole in it and draw them in. Stay with them, give them the good news of their loved ones, find a bit of treasure for them, then settle in and rob ’em blind.’

‘Still don’t see how-’

‘She thought she could arrive a pauper and leave a Lady. Find a grateful old man with wealth to leave behind him to the girl who had been such a comfort, who had summoned angels to visit him, and let him talk to his lost ones again.’

‘Did she tell you she was going?’

‘Yes, the day before.’

‘When?’

‘Late summer, near two years ago now.’

‘Where was she headed?’

‘Didn’t say precisely.’ He supped his drink again and looked away. Michaels sighed and counted out two coins from his purse onto the table. ‘She took the road to Oberbach.’

5 May 1784

Krall did not know why he had been summoned to the Mirrored Hall of Ulrichsberg Palace, but when he found Chancellor Swann there in his shirt-sleeves, grey-faced and alone with a candle in his hands, he began to suspect.

He had been woken, dressed and then guided to the Chancellor by Wimpf, who had taken the role of his personal servant while he was in the palace. As they approached, Krall found the Chancellor surrounded by a hundred broken images of himself. Together they filled the room like a crowd.

Swann wasted no words on greeting Krall, but only nodded and swung open a hidden door on the wall behind him, sending their gathered images dancing among each other in the candlelight till they were legion. Wimpf disappeared back into the shadows.

‘This way,’ Swann said. The hidden door led to a long corridor, unadorned, and crimped and bent by the rooms between which it snaked. Krall had a sense of being lost in the entrails of some great beast, or finding himself cast suddenly in an abandoned mine. Even in the light of the travelling candle he could see doors and panels to his left and right. From here surely all the court could be observed, reached, secretly. He wondered about his own rooms. After some minutes Swann came to a halt with his hand on a latch to his left. The candlelight made him look a great deal older; his shoulders seemed to have acquired a stoop since they had seen each other a few hours before. There was a light grey stubble across his chin, and his cravat was only carelessly tied.

‘Krall, are you loyal to the state you serve?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency,’ Krall said, frowning and irritated by the pantomime.

‘And your sovereign?’

‘My sovereign is the state I serve.’

Swann seemed to consider this a moment before he continued. He handed the candle to the District Officer and, pushing open the door, gestured for him to enter.

It was one of the smaller guest chambers. Krall stepped forward. Countess Dieth was seated in the middle of the room on a straight-backed armchair in a full court gown of plum silk, her chin down like someone sleeping over their book. Her left hand hung loosely, pointing towards the floor. Her stillness. In his first confusion, it took Krall a moment to realise she was dead. ‘Huh …’ he said and crossed slowly towards her, his steps heavy and awkward. Her dress pooled out around her feet. Krall lowered his candle and with his right hand gently lifted her chin.

Her face was white with powder, her cheeks rouged, but around her mouth was a flurry of dark specks, coal dust on snow. He brought the light closer. Her lips were covered in what looked like soil, loose dry soil. Krall looked about him, but the room was clean. Her eyes were open, bloodshot, empty.

‘When was she found?’ he said, resting his palm on her cheek. Quite cold.

‘Half an hour past,’ Swann said, his voice rather thick. ‘A maid had cause to enter the room. I was summoned, and on seeing the body, ordered that you be awakened.’

‘What cause?’

‘District Officer?’

‘What cause did the maid have to enter this room in the thick of night? Countess Dieth has a house in town — why is she not there?’

‘I do not know.’

Krall tilted the Countess’s face back and carefully opened her mouth. It was full of dirt. He breathed in deeply and with great gentleness closed her jaw and let her head tip forward again. There was soil caught in the bodice of her gown and in the folds of her skirt. He struggled with the impulse to clean it away, to make her neat again. Then he held the candle to cast some light upon the lady’s wrists. The left had been slit and the hand was bloody. The candle moved back and forth. There might have been some blood on the dress, but he could not be sure, given the deep colour of the material. The polished floor was apparently quite clean, no signs of drop or spray. He frowned.

Krall lifted the candle above his head and walked slowly round the body. The room was very much like his own, one of the apartments provided for the favourites of the court when their sovereign wished them near at hand. Not large, but luxurious, the wood all polished or gilded. Thick hangings tied round the bedposts. The fire had not been lit. The basin and ewer on the wash-stand were empty. He thought of his own chamber in the palace. Every night he had spent there, when he entered the room, the coals had been burning in the fireplace, fresh water to wash in. Normally wine and a little something to dull the appetite under a cloth. There was a small table set up to the body’s right, with decanter and glass set upon it. Both empty.