Robert Butler - The Empire of Night

I set out across the Persian hunting ground, thinking of books. Early in my previous assignment I’d discovered at least a temporary Rosetta stone for one of the Germans’ methods of secret communication: a book called The Nuttall Encyclopaedia of Universal Information , the placement of whose words were the basis for numbered codes. Not that Al’s Nuttall would be kept on the library table off the Great Hall. But if they weren’t simply tony wallpaper, I was interested in his books.

I approached three Brits in summer tweeds and spats drinking tea and talking low on red-velvet Jacobean chairs before the fireplace. Middle-aged gents, all of them. Other guests for the weekend, no doubt. One glanced my way as I approached and then back to the discussion, the voices clipping phrases and extending vowels in that toffish, fixed-jawed upper-class British way. The reporter in me thought to slide into their conversation and find out what they know about Albert. But a young American, out of the blue, asking the kinds of questions I’d need to ask to make it worth my while, would only create suspicion. My real work required that I remain mostly unnoticed.

I passed them by and stepped into the library.

The place was chockablock with wainscoted shelves full of books in great, uniform runs of sets, the blues and reds and browns and greens of their spines coordinated carefully into a variegated but orderly panorama. The east wall held a twenty-foot-wide bay window looking out to the strait.

I strolled along Stockman’s books, the sets a patchwork of writers and subjects. A dozen volumes of Illustrated World Geography running in green into fifteen umber Sam Johnsons into twenty tan Bulwer-Lyttons into a couple dozen French Shakespeares in black and gilt. I stopped here and saw, on the shelf below, another complete Shakespeare, in English, and then next to that a twelve-volume set of the Schlegel and Tieck German translation. Shakespeares sämtliche dramatische Werke .

I looked more closely at the Schlegel Shakespeare. They were placed in evenly at the front edge of the shelves. All the books in the library were arranged like this. Not quite flush. There was about a quarter of an inch lip between the edge of the shelf and the spine of the book. And that quarter inch was gray with dust. I pulled one of the Schlegels out. The shelf was instantly wiped clean in a band the width of the volume in my hand. I replaced it.

I continued on, more slowly, looking at the ubiquitous layer of dust. He was not a reader. Not from this library at least. And I also kept an eye out for the German works. There weren’t many and they were scattered along. The collected Goethe. Schiller. But Stockman’s books were mostly English. Still, if he was trying to make an impression, he didn’t mind showing at least some of his Germanic origins. Not that he was reading the English-language books either. Not lately.

I finally reached the wall of stuffed shelves at the far end. I stood with my back to the rest of the room and found twenty-two volumes of a German writer I did not know. Johann Gottfried von Herder. Two of the volumes had been pulled from the shelves recently. By Sir Albert or by an invited guest. I drew one out. The end board was marbled in blue and brown and cream. I opened the cover. The volume was from 1820. Die Vorwelt . “The Primeval World.”

I lifted my face from the page.

Perhaps he’d made some small sound. Or, if he’d quietly drawn close, perhaps there was some kinesthetic clue, a displacement of air perhaps. Whatever it was, it registered on me so quickly and subtly that I could not trace it. But I knew someone was in the room with me.

I turned.

Stockman was only a few strides away. He stood with his arms folded over his chest, changed from his tailcoat into more relaxed day wear, a three-piece gray linen suit.

I kept the book open in my hand.

Stockman unfolded his arms and moved to me, saying, “I’m happy you’re exploring the library, Mr. Hunter.”

“It’s impressive,” I said.

He stopped just a bit beyond arm’s length away.

He glanced at the volume in my hand. “Do you read German, Mr. Hunter?”

“Pretty well,” I said. “Do you, Sir Albert?”

“I do,” he said. “How are you with the Fraktur?”

Fraktur was the broken-angled, heavy black letter typeface Germany had used for nearly four hundred years. His identifying it only by its esoteric name in the question struck me as part of what was likely to be a subtle, ongoing test of my Germanic credentials.

“I should read it more often,” I said. “I do all right, but it still strikes my eye oddly.”

He smiled. “Of course. Were your parents born in their homeland?”

“Yes. They came to the United States when I was very young.”

“My family background is German as well,” Stockman said. “As is the case with a great many Englishmen.”

“Your present royal family. .” I began, hesitating only for a fraction of a second.

He finished my sentence. “Is Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.”

He looked at me for a moment. Though it was very brief, I felt certain it was filled with a serious, subtle, rapid assessment of me. He made a decision and said, “Some might say that a royal family by any other name would be a different royal family.”

“Would not smell as sweet,” I said, bringing his sly joke closer to the Shakespeare quote and to the political point we were quietly deciding to share.

He laughed out loud, a bright, sharp bark of a laugh.

He flipped his chin at the book in my hand. “Do you know von Herder?”

“I don’t.”

He smiled. He nodded to the shelf behind me. “May I?”

I stepped aside. He moved forward and removed a volume of von Herder and searched its pages for a moment. He found the passage he wanted and handed the book to me, taking Die Vorwelt from me. “Beginning of the second paragraph on the right-hand page,” he said.

I read it. Another little test. I struggled with the wildly angled letters of the Fraktur and then with the German itself. He watched patiently. But he did not let me off the hook. A few moments along he said, “Apropos of our recent observations.”

Then I had it. Though it probably took less than a minute, it felt like a very long time. But I knew that for the circumstances, I’d done this fast. I lifted my face from the page and smiled at him. Just in case he was open to the suspicion, I let him think for a moment that I’d overstated even my modest declaration of proficiency in German and I was about to confess. It would be all the more impressive when he realized I was, indeed, far better than I’d claimed.

“Shall I translate?” I asked.

“Please,” he said.

“The heart of it,” I said.

“I’d be interested in your selection.”

I let go of the literal enough to make it read smoothly in English and I went to the heart of the message: “The English are Germans, and even in recent times the Germans have showed the way for the English in the most important matters.”

Stockman slowly unfurled a small, one-sided smile. I could easily read approval into it. For a clever boy passing a tricky test.

He said, “Can I have your assurance that my personal views and sympathies will be strictly omitted from any story you write?”

Though the context was almost mellow in tone, I’d never heard the word “strictly” spoken with such bite. It leaped from the sentence as if he’d flashed a pistol and threatened to use it. Perhaps he had.

“Of course,” I said. “I understand the delicacy of your position. I often feel it myself.”

I sounded convincing.

He made one more brief, evaluative pause.

I’d passed another test.