Imogen Robertson - Circle of Shadows

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.’