Chapter One
The Austrian Empire, March 1851
The train left Prague at 8:35 pm on 15 March, arriving at Vienna before noon. It is the fifth day since Charles Maddox left London under grey skies and a louring rain, and he could have done the whole journey in little more than two, had he been so minded, but he had reasons of his own for prolonging this first excursion beyond his native shores. His passage has been paid for, for one thing—and handsomely, which is why we see him stepping down not from the back of the train, stinking of pipe smoke and garlic from hours pent up with squawking chickens, raucous soldiers, and mumbling old nuns, but from the rarefied atmosphere (in every sense) of the carriage labelled erste klasse. On the platform he finds a porter already waiting to take his bag, though that exchange does not take place, it must be said, without a somewhat condescending lift of the eyebrow when it becomes clear that one rather battered trunk is all the English Herr possesses. He has learned, this luggage lackey, that a great deal can be deduced from the state—and scale—of a gentleman’s baggage, but the lamentably little this particular passenger carries sits rather oddly with the arrogance in his air and the lift of his chin. And there is, on the other hand, no question at all that Charles Maddox’s clothes are far too unkempt for the company he has kept, hour after hour, in the well-upholstered surroundings of his designated compartment, watching out the window, and being watched in his turn—did he but know it—by each succeeding change of fellow travellers. And what would they have seen, the thoughtful French priest, the two plumply self-satisfied Belgian merchants, the family of pretty and excitable Flemish daughters with pinch-faced governess in vigilant attendance? A grimly beautiful young man, with a head of rowdy dark-bronze curls, and a film of something very like despair that greys his skin and dulls what must otherwise be the most arresting blue stare. Looking at him, you might well deduce—as the priest did, having studied him intermittently over the pages of his Aquinas for most of the distance from Liège to Cologne—that this is a young man who keeps his griefs close, for whom pain is a private matter for himself alone. And you would be right. For his part, Charles has studiously avoided contact of any kind with his companions, rather to the annoyance of the eldest Flemish daughter, resplendent in her ribbons, who has been scrutinising him every bit as intently as the Monsignor, though with quite another motive in mind.
Charles’s interest, insofar as he had one, has been in the landscape—the miles of lined flat fields that run here and there into whitewashed red-roofed villages, then dissolve again into darkly thick-quilled forests, and distant glimpses of domed churches and sun-glinting spires. It is so common for us now, to travel by train, that we cannot imagine what it was like then, to watch a whole new world at such unprecedented speed—to observe a continent unroll in a rectangle of glass, and see with a cinematic eye, long before that word was even coined. For a man like Charles, blessed with what a later century will call a photographic memory (and for a man of his profession blessed is indeed the word), the rush of images is almost too much, and it is with some relief that he spends a slow day of exploration at a foot’s pace, first in Antwerp, and then in Leipzig, though rather more frugally the second time, since his allowance will not otherwise suffice. And now he comes at last to his final destination tired and claustrophobic, and in need of a bath. But there will, it seems, be no time for that. He has barely left the platform of the Eisenbahnhof when he is accosted, with the utmost courtesy, by a small thin man wearing impeccable livery, who addresses him by name and then gives a low bow. The man— it seems—has no English, and Charles no German, so he is uneasy at first, to find his bag seized in a surprisingly vigorous grip, but when he follows the man out into bright sunshine and a row of standing carriages, he is relieved to find that the one he is led to bears the same crest as the letter of invitation he has in his jacket pocket. The battlements and barred helm of the armorial bearings of the Baron Von Reisenberg.
Now what, you might be wondering, could a peer of so proud and ancient a lineage want with the company of a struggling and rather scruffy young private detective? And why, moreover, should he be so earnest to secure it that he is prepared to pay his passage half-way across Europe? Pertinent questions, I agree, though to answer them I will have to take you backwards some three months, to that room on the first floor of the tall elegant house off the Strand which for thirty years served Charles’s great-uncle as his office, when he was universally acknowledged to be the foremost thief taker in England. The self-same room where we would have found Charles himself, that cold day at the turn of last year, deep in discussion with a portly balding man in a sombre suit of black of a decidedly clerical appearance, but who was not, as it transpired, the clergyman Charles first took him for, but the official representative of the Bodleian Library in the University of Oxford. It is an institution with a proud and ancient lineage of its own, and unique collections that, as this Mr Turnbull carefully explained, are not only priceless but ever more costly to maintain. So if a foreign gentleman—a nobleman no less—should unexpectedly approach the Curators with the offer of a quite alarmingly large sum towards the upkeep of one of the Bodleian’s finest and most famous bequests, it would be a rash custodian indeed who dismissed such an offer out of hand. Just as it would be a most imprudent one who failed to ensure that judicious enquiries were made before such a very conspicuous donation was accepted. Enquiries, Mr Turnbull conceded at once, which the Curators themselves were clearly not in a position to conduct, but which a man like Charles—energetic, discreet, intelligent—was admirably placed to undertake on their behalf. And enquiries, as it turned out, that have been both foreseen and forestalled, since the Baron Von Reisenberg accompanied his offer with an invitation to anyone the Curators might wish to appoint, to visit him at his ancestral home, and verify his credentials to their full satisfaction. As for Charles, he did not hesitate. Even though his great-uncle’s health is frail and his mind failing, Charles has leapt at the chance of being weeks away, a thousand miles from London, and his memories, and that house just off the Strand. It may be that you know what has driven him so desperate to be gone, but know or not, it will not be a secret long.
The coachman straps Charles’s trunk to the roof of the heavy and rather old-fashioned coach, then opens the door and fusses about with blankets and a flask of brandy, both of which seem to Charles to be irritatingly unnecessary, since even if there is a chill breeze the sun is bright, and inside the carriage the air is warm. As they move slowly away, Charles lowers the glass so that he can see the city, fighting down what he knows is rather an unreasonable exasperation that he wasn’t able to snatch a few hours to see it for himself. They cross the slow deep blue of the Wien River, and then skirt the huge fortifications that for a few years yet will circle old Vienna in a many-pointed star. Perhaps the coachman senses his passenger’s impatience, because all at once they turn off the main road and take one of the slower and more winding routes across the gardens that ring the ramparts like a grassy moat, and were once no less vital to the city’s defences than the towering walls above. There is a fair there today—the air is loud with the blare of barrel-organs and hurdy-gurdies, and as they pass along the ranks of brightly striped booths with their jugglers, glass-blowers, and puppet theatres, Charles is struck by how far he has come and yet how familiar this all seems. The old city may shimmer above them like a citadel from chivalry, but there is nothing to distinguish this Sunday show or the crowds of smiling and strolling promenaders, from those Charles sees every week in the streets of London. Children rolling hoops, fathers in tall hats, and matrons in their trailing silks—even the damn fashions are the same. He sits back again in his seat, obscurely disappointed, but it is a sensation that does not far outlast the city boundaries. As the carriage heads out of town and into the hinterland of forests and vineyards, neither the landscape nor the little flower-decked shrines he glimpses at the side of the road resemble anything Charles will ever see in England. And as the valleys narrow, the skies darken overhead, and Charles looks up to waterfalls springing from mossy stones, and vines planted terrace-wise on sheer slopes, and once or twice an abandoned monastery clinging perilously to the overhanging cliffs, where crows cackle and flap about the ruined choirs.
After some two hours the carriage slows, and a few minutes later Charles is jolted from his reverie by the sound of hooves on cobbles. A glance outside reveals that they’ve come to a halt before a yellow stucco-faced building, hard by an elaborate ironwork gate giving out over fields now grey in heavy rain. He opens the door, surprised to find Castle Reisenberg so unassuming, but it takes no more than a minute for him to realise his mistake: This building is nothing more than a farmstead, and their stop no more than a momentary pause. But any chance for air and movement is welcome after so many hours constrained. Charles leaps from the carriage and walks out into the wet, much to the amused disdain of several small boys playing with a little grey dog on the farther side of the yard, where wine barrels are stacked under the open barn and mounds of seasoned timber await the cooper’s croze. There are chickens picking at the grass between the cobbles, and the air smells of wood-smoke. The rain is now trickling down the back of his neck so he turns and makes his way to the door of the house, where the coachman is waiting to show him down the low vaulted passage to a room with a table laid before a fire, and a metal tureen warming on the hearth. The farmer’s wife is withdrawn and wary, and will not meet his eye as she ladles the meat onto his dish, but the food is hot and surprisingly appetising. Some sort of stew, clearly, but flavoured with a dry peppery spice he cannot name. He makes a half-hearted attempt to ask her what it is called—knowing full well she cannot possibly speak English—and is not much the wiser when she mutters something that sounds like “paprikash,” before turning to poke the already roaring fire. Charles has by now drained the flagon of rough red wine she had placed by his plate, and gets to his feet to find the privy: If dinner cannot wait for their destination, they must have a good deal more than an hour’s road ahead of them. The journey must have tired him more than he realised, because for once in his life he takes a wrong turn on his way back and finds himself on the other side of the yard, where he can see the coachman and an elderly thickset man in a leather apron talking in lowered but earnest voices behind the coach, as two stable- boys back new horses into the shafts. If he had stayed in the kitchen they would have been screened from his view, but from where he is now Charles can see the urgency of the coachman’s gestures, and the unease on the farmer’s face. Something has clearly unsettled the old man, and Charles sees him cross himself. Intrigued but not unduly alarmed, Charles strides out towards them, intending to thank his host with a handshake and one or two of the kreuzer coins he acquired in Prague, but the man starts at the sight of him and retreats at once to the farm door without a backwards glance. Charles looks to the coachman but he, too, is not meeting his gaze. Charles shrugs, storing the incident away for his first letter home to his uncle Maddox. Then he sets a foot squarely on the carriage step and swings up into his seat.
The sun is already setting and the temperature is dropping fast, and Charles appreciates, now, both the blankets and the brandy he had derided in the warmth of a Viennese afternoon. As they pull away down to the main road the rain begins again, but now it is a thin freezing miasma that speckles the carriage glass and chills the air to ice. It is soon too dark to discern much beyond the faint glow cast by the coachman’s lamp, and Charles can only guess at the lay of the land about them by the scattered lights visible on distant hills, clustered like constellations beneath the strange stars. And as the hours drag by and the sound of the hooves clatters monotonously on, Charles is lulled into that hallucinatory half sleep that dries the mouth, and hollows the eyes, and meddles memory with mirage. He will wonder, afterwards, if it was the effect of the wine, or the oddly metallic-tasting brandy he downed too fast, and if he was dreaming or deluded when he glimpsed the flicker of pale blue lights advancing and receding through the trees; whether the howling in his head was merely farm dogs driven mad by foxes, and not the black-pelted wolves he thought he saw ringed about the road, panting and steaming as the horses reared in terror and his own heart battered against his bones. And then as the beasts closed in and he felt their rank breath hot on his skin—as he heard his own voice crying out aloud, did he really see the pack fall suddenly back into the darkness, whimpering and craven before a faceless figure silhouetted against the sky, and a hand of silent power raised against the moon?
“Herr Maddox! Herr Maddox!”
Charles starts up and looks about him wild-eyed. The coachman is staring at him through the window, and Charles reaches over and winds it down, all too aware that his hands are trembling. The man looks at him narrowly, then signals for him to get out of the coach. The sky is clear now, and the moon high above the forest, but of man or wolf or even dog, there is no sign. The coachman is speaking to him again, and from his gestures and pointing fingers Charles eventually realises that they have stopped at the head of a sharp decline, and the man wants him to walk down to help spare the horses. For the next half an hour Charles trudges behind the coach as the horses slither and jerk in the mud, and the rain collected in the wheel-ruts flickers ghastly reflections up onto the overhanging trees. As his ears become attuned to the silence, Charles can hear small animals moving in the dark, and once, he is sure, a deer plunging away into the shadows. Then as the near horse suddenly loses its footing and the harness clatters against the side of the coach, a huge white owl swoops noiselessly down, barely a wing tip away, ghostly with its wraith-enormous eyes.
The lower they descend the colder it becomes, and the damp air thickens with tendrils of mist that hang in the air like flaws in ice. And then they turn a final bend and the trees open to reveal the long black curve of the Danube, glittering in the moonlight. The coachman brings the horses to a halt and opens the door for his tired and shivering passenger. The last stretch of the journey follows the bend of the river along a wide and wooded shoreline until Charles sees a high promontory jutting out into the water, and above it an immense baroque schloss standing foursquare, its steep roof soaring to a tiered tower crowned by an onion dome. A few minutes later they are approaching a narrow stone causeway, barely wider than the carriage, which ascends forty feet or more to a vast arch cut directly into the cliff, overlooked on either side by the circular turrets of the gatehouse above. Here and there lamps are burning in the turret windows, but when they emerge on the other side of the archway Charles can see not one single light in all the castle’s smooth and closed façade.
The archway opens onto a paved courtyard where the castle overlooks the river, dropping sheer below. The carriage comes to a stop by a huge oak door studded with nails and surmounted by a weathered stone crest. A smaller door has been cut into the wood, which puts Charles suddenly in mind of the college gates he saw in Oxford, and as the coachman unstraps his bag and lifts it down, the inner door opens. Charles is not sure, at first, if he is in the presence of his host, but when the figure in the doorway clears his throat and welcomes him softly in excellent though heavily accented English, he is no longer in any doubt.
With all that we will discover of this man—and all he will be to this story—we will pause, here, a moment and allow Charles’s first impressions to have full sway. So what is it he now sees, as the high clouds shred across the moon, and the wind echoes wildly about the high walls? A tall man, taller than Charles in fact, if he were not slightly stooped. A long dark coat of some heavy matte material that reflects no light. An antique lamp swinging from one hand, the wick cut low and the flame guttering. A high forehead and thin silver hair wisped about the ears. Yet these are but details. What draws and holds the gaze, is his face. The extraordinary pale eyes, heavy-lidded and ashen-lashed. The head too small—surely—for a man of such a height, and the bones of the skull painfully visible under skin stretched so white Charles wonders for a moment if the Baron is an albino. And when he holds out his hand the fingers Charles takes briefly in his own are as wan as a corpse an hour old.
Charles bows. “Freiherr Von Reisenberg.”
“I am pleased to welcome you to my home, Herr Maddox,” the Baron replies, his voice still low, as if he suffers from the night air. “I know you come here on a visit of business, but I hope, nonetheless, that you will lack nothing while you are with us, and that when you come to leave, you will take with you all that you come here to seek.”
It is no doubt the result of learning the language in academic fashion and rarely speaking it, but the formality of the Baron’s speech has a curiously distancing effect, and as Charles follows him into the lofty stone-paved hall it is as if those few paces across the threshold have borne him centuries back. Here, as outside, no lights are burning, and in the weak glow of the silver lamp Charles wonders again, with a jerk of unease, if his eyes are once more deceiving him, for as the swing of the lantern throws shadows like blackened branches spiking across the walls it seems for all the world as if the great room has been built inside the forest that presses close upon the promontory on every side. And he is sure—sure this time—that he can see the glitter of animal eyes, and the shape of figures in the darkness, hunched and hooded—
He checks his pace a moment, but the Baron does not turn or slow, and as he rounds a corner ahead and the dark pours back, Charles makes haste to catch him up. They follow a narrow passage to a flight of steps, then ascend a long spiral stair of worn and pitted stone, and Charles finds himself at last, breathless with the climb and more than a little unnerved, in a small, windowless octagonal room ringed by bookshelves and lit only by the fire in the grate. A door opposite stands open onto a bedroom where a great carved four-poster has been warmed and turned, and a bottle of Tokay wine and a plate of cold cuts and cheese is awaiting him.
“I beg you to excuse me,” says the Baron, turning to face him. The flames cast a golden glow about his features, but the effect is oddly artificial—like a black-and-white film wrongly re-coloured.
“I have myself already dined,” he continues, “and will not, therefore, join you. I am cognisant, likewise, that you have had a long journey, and would no doubt prefer to sup in privacy, and retire at a time of your own choosing. I anticipate much pleasure in making your acquaintance, but will reserve that gratification for the morrow, when you will be rested. Should there be any comfort I have omitted to provide, do not scruple to ring for one of the servants. They have been instructed to assist you in all you require. And now, if I may, I will bid you good night.”
And with that he bows once more, and retires. The air in the room swirls, then settles, leaving a faint scent of something acidic, chemical. Charles turns up the lamp, and starts to wander about the room as he discards his layers of clothes. The shelves are stacked with scientific books and journals, most of them in German, but a surprising number in English, as well as French. There are books of geology and botany, chemistry and metallurgy, physics and cosmology, as well as a large section—most of these in German—on human anatomy and physiology. Charles pulls out a volume or two in English and goes to place them by the bed. Then he sits down at the small table and starts upon his food.
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