Wilbur Smith - Assegai

Her body was racked by silent sobs, and he could find no words to console her. He pressed his lips to the top of her head and held her until the storm abated. ‘That’s enough, Eva. This is taking too much out of you.’

‘No, Badger. It’s cathartic. I’ve kept it bottled up inside me for years. Now I have somebody I can tell it to. Already I can feel the benefit of letting the poison pour out at last.’ She pulled back and saw the pain in his eyes. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being selfish. I didn’t realize what this was doing to you. I’ll stop now.’

‘No. If it helps you, let it all out. Go on. It’s hard for both of us, but this is one way I can get to know and understand you.’

‘You’ve become my rock.’

‘Tell me the rest.’

‘There’s not much more to tell. I was alone and the funeral took all the money I had left. I didn’t have enough to pay the rent. I didn’t know which way to turn. I took a job in the mill for two shillings a day. Curly had a friend with whom he had played chess and he and his wife took me in. I paid them what I could and helped his wife with their children.

‘One day a stranger came to visit me. She was very elegant and beautiful. She said she was a childhood friend of my mother’s but that they had lost track of each other. She had only heard my tragic story recently and had determined to find me and look after me for the sake of my mother’s memory. She was so kind and friendly that I went with her unquestioningly.

‘Her name was Mrs Ryan and she had a splendid house in London. She gave me my own room and new clothes. I had a tutor and a dancing teacher. A woman came twice a week to instruct me in etiquette. I had a riding instructor, and my own horse, a darling little filly called Hyperion. The strangest thing was how assiduously Mrs Ryan made me practise my German. She was quite ruthless. I had a succession of German teachers and worked with them for two hours a day, six days a week. I read aloud all the German newspapers and discussed them with my tutors. I read aloud histories of the German nation from the time of the Holy Roman Empire to the present. I did the same with the works of Sebastian Brant, Johann von Goethe and Nietzsche. Within the first year of this intensive study I could have passed readily as an educated native-born German speaker.

‘Mrs Ryan was like a mother to me. She knew so much about me and my family. She told me things about them that I hadn’t known. She knew how Curly had been tricked out of his company, and told me about Otto von Meerbach. We spoke of him often. She said he had murdered Curly just as surely as if it had been his finger on the trigger of the shotgun. Although I had never laid eyes on him, I began to hate him with a burning passion, and Mrs Ryan subtly fuelled the flames of my loathing. She had an important job in the government. Not until much later did I have any idea what it might be, but we spoke often about how privileged we were to be the subjects of such a noble monarch, and citizens of the most powerful and far-reaching empire the world had ever seen. We should welcome any opportunity to serve King and empire. We should train ourselves to meet any call that might be made on us. We should be ready to make any sacrifice that duty and patriotism demanded.

‘I took her words deep into my heart and worked even harder than she demanded. I was never given the opportunity to meet any men except the servants, my tutors and teachers, so I had never known how beautiful I was, or that most men would find me irresistible.’ She broke off and shook her head ruefully. ‘Oh dear. Please forgive me, Badger. That sounds terribly immodest.’

‘No. It’s the simple truth. You’re beautiful beyond the telling of it. Please go on, Eva.’

‘Beauty and ugliness are random occurrences. The difference is that beauty fades and becomes another form of ugliness. I place no value on mine, but others did. It was one of the three reasons why they chose me. The second was my intelligence.’

‘What was the third?’

‘I had suffered a terrible wrong, and I was eager for retribution.’

‘I find this fascinating in a dreadfully sinister way. My skin is beginning to creep.’

‘For my nineteenth birthday the dressmaker made me a magnificent ballgown. Mrs Ryan stood beside me as I tried it on for the first time. Together we looked at my reflection in the full-length mirror.

She said, “You’re very beautiful, Eva. You’ve become everything we hoped you might be.” There was something sad and regretful in the way she said it. I thought little of it at the time because, of course, I had no idea what they were planning. Then she smiled and the sadness vanished. “Tomorrow night I’m holding a birthday party for you,” she told me.’ Eva laughed. ‘It was a very strange birthday party. Mrs Ryan and I went in a cab to a house in Whitehall, one of those magnificent government buildings. Four men were waiting for us. I had imagined that there would be dozens of young people, but there were just these four old men – the youngest was at least forty. Three were dressed in gorgeous military uniform. They must have been very senior officers for they wore glittering decorations, stars and medals. The fourth was thin and severe-looking. Mrs Ryan introduced him as Mr Brown. He was the only civilian in the group. He wore a black frock coat and a high collar.

‘We sat down to dinner at a round table in the centre of a large room, with massive chandeliers suspended from the ceiling. The panelled walls were hung with huge canvases of battle scenes – I remember one was a painting of Nelson dying on the deck of the Victory at Trafalgar, and another was of Wellington and his officers at Quatre Bras, watching the charge of Napoleon’s hussars. A band was playing in the gallery and, one after another, the officers danced with me. While they did so, they questioned me as though I were in the dock.

‘I cannot remember what we ate because I was so nervous that I lost all appetite. A servant poured champagne into my glass, but Mrs Ryan had warned me and I didn’t touch it. At the end of the meal all four men conferred in low tones that I couldn’t follow, then seemed to come to some agreement, for they nodded and looked extremely pleased with themselves. The evening ended with a speech from Mr Brown about duty and sacrifice. That was the end of my birthday party.

‘Two days later I met Mr Brown again, this time in less salubrious circumstances. We were in a musty office, filled with files of old papers in another part of Whitehall. He was kind and avuncular. He told me I was privileged to have been selected for a task of the utmost delicacy, which was vital to the interests and security of our beloved Britain. The stormclouds of war were gathering over the continent, he said, and soon the nation would be engulfed in flames. I couldn’t understand what this had to do with me – and all his rhetoric had a stultifying effect upon me until he mentioned the name of Otto von Meerbach. My attention was immediately riveted. He suggested that I was in a position to perform a memorable service for King and empire, and at the same time find retribution for the terrible wrongs my father and I had suffered at the hands of Graf Otto. All I had to do was induce him to tell me information that would be vital to Britain’s military interests.’

She laughed again but this time with genuine amusement. ‘Can you imagine, Badger? I was such a naïve and innocent little ninny that I hadn’t the faintest idea how I was supposed to make him tell me his secrets. I asked Mr Brown outright, and he looked mysterious and exchanged a glance with Mrs Ryan. “If you agree to do as we ask you will be taught,” he said.

‘As I recall, my exact words to him were “Of course I will. I just want to know how.” ’ She broke off, sat upright and looked solemnly into Leon’s face with the violet eyes he adored. ‘Nearly a year after I made that contract with the devil they deemed I was perfect in the role they had chosen for me. I learned everything there was to know about Graf Otto except, of course, the secrets I was to wheedle out of him. By then I knew that he was estranged from his wife of ten years, but as both he and she were good Catholics they were unable to divorce. There would be no question of my being coerced into marrying him once he had fallen under my fatal spell.’ She laughed without humour at this piece of hyperbole. ‘Mr Brown and Mrs Ryan placed me in the way of Graf Otto von Meerbach. It was arranged through one of the military attachés at the British Embassy in Berlin that I should be invited to his hunting lodge at Wieskirche. I had been taught my duty and I did it,’ she said flatly but, like a drop of dew on the petal of a violet, a single tear clung to her bottom eyelashes. ‘I was a virgin when I met Otto von Meerbach, and in mind and spirit I still was, until yesterday. My darling Badger, I don’t want to go into any more detail, and even if I did you would not want to hear it.’