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Fireworks and Darkness Page 4
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‘Why are you doing this?’
Simeon did not immediately reply. He picked up his army discharge paper and read it over. Then he folded it up and put it into his pocket as if he thought he was going to need it.
‘Because I’ve changed my mind,’ he said, and for the first time since the attack in the park, his voice sounded normal. ‘I think we should get out. Leave Starberg, leave Ostermark. If we can get to the coast we can take a ship. We can’t take all this stuff with us, so it has to be destroyed.’
Casimir sat down. The reply was so unexpected he found himself catching his breath, but his initial rush of fear at the thought of venturing into the unknown was quickly followed by excitement that they were finally moving on. What about Ruth? he wanted to ask. He couldn’t imagine taking her with them, but nor could he imagine her letting Simeon leave without a protest. Instead, he asked, ‘What about the warrant?’
Simeon shrugged. ‘They’ll have the fireworks. A lot of the stuff we’ve made for the wedding is already in storage under the treasurer’s stables and there’s the contents of the shop. They’re worth a fair bit. We’ll have to travel very light, cover a long distance quickly. We’ll leave tonight, after the curfew.’
No mention of Ruth at all. Casimir nodded. He knew better than to ask where they were ultimately headed, but for the moment he didn’t really care. A fierce elation filled him at the prospect that, after nine months of Ruth’s petty slights and humiliations, he was finally going to be rid of her. Meanwhile Simeon resumed his auto da fé, burning letters, bills, notebooks, and the rough drafts of poems he had written since their arrival in the city. Disposing of most of these did not seem to bother him, but when he reached his fair copies something inside him seemed to crack.
‘Ah, no, Cas, not The Tyrant. I can’t do that, it’s like burning my child. We’ll leave it for Ruth. She wrote it out for me, poor girl, it’s the only complete copy.’ His fingers, rough and blackened with ingrained gunpowder, curled possessively around the sheaf of paper and he set it gently aside. The last inconsequential items went into the fire, and then there was a loud knock at the shop door which made both of them jerk up their heads.
‘Who’s that?’
On a Sunday morning, there was no good reason why it should be anyone. Casimir looked at Simeon, who lifted a finger to his lips, and then the knocking sounded again, this time louder and more imperious.
‘I’ll go.’ Casimir started towards the door, but Simeon shook his head. He stood up and went swiftly down the corridor to the shop. On winter mornings its north-facing interior was dark, and, if one was careful, it was possible to see out into street without being observed from outside. A few moments passed, during which all sorts of horrible possibilities raced through Casimir’s thoughts. Then Simeon reappeared, shaking his head.
‘It’s Tycho.’
‘Tycho? What does he want?’
‘The philosopher’s stone? The Holy Grail? Your guess is as good as mine, and you’ll have to deal with it because I’m due to see Princess Christina in fifteen minutes.’ Simeon grinned and started pulling on his coat. It was his best dark red one, but still seemed hardly grand enough for an audience with royalty. ‘Put your mind to it and I’m sure you’ll be able to get rid of him. Eventually.’
‘Hey! You can’t leave me! It’s not fair!’
‘Who told you life was fair? Not me. Don’t worry, I’m sure the experience will be character building.’ Simeon flicked his hair out under his collar and straightened his neckcloth. ‘How do I look? Like a courtier?’
‘Like a firework maker in his best shirt.’
‘As it should be. And even the shirt has a hole in it.’ The knocking started up again, and Simeon added soberly, ‘Just get rid of him, Cas. Find out what he wants and send him on his way. And just in case…remember what I said last night. Don’t invite him across the threshold and don’t offer him any food.’
The warning sank like a stone into Casimir’s fragile calm. As Simeon went out the door, he paused and poked his head back inside. ‘Have fun.’
Casimir waited until Simeon had exited the yard door and counted twenty before he went out to the shop. He was rather hoping that by the time he reached the door, Tycho would have given up and left, but something must have alerted him to the fact someone was home. The knocking redoubled its ferocity until a voice from one of the neighbouring houses yelled out to him to shut up. A furious interchange followed. Casimir could not catch the exact words, but they were not polite. He only wished he had the courage to say as much himself.
Tycho was Ruth’s cousin. At least, that was how Casimir interpreted the relationship. In reality it was rather vaguer than that, and he was not in fact sure whether Tycho was really related to Ruth’s dead husband. If not for ties of blood or marriage, it would be hard to explain the friendship which existed between them. Unlike Ruth, whom even Casimir was prepared to admit was highly intelligent, Tycho was as stupid as he was self-opinionated. The master of the grand gesture, the fervent word, and totally lacking in common sense, he had not even the saving grace of being likeable. Simeon despised him, considered him dangerous, and had never gone out of his way to conceal this opinion. To his father’s assessment, Casimir added an additional, personal grudge. Some nine or ten months since, it had been Tycho who introduced his father to Ruth.
Over the last few months, Casimir had often reflected on how their lives might have turned out if Simeon had not gone to Will Thursday’s printery on that chill March Saturday afternoon. No doubt, he and his father would have moved on in their usual way, and there would be no firework shop, no warrant, and—disturbing thought—no Circastes either. But Simeon had gone there the week before they were due to leave Starberg, taking with him several recently written poems and the recommendation of Casimir’s maternal uncle, Joachim Leibnitz. Tycho had chanced to be in the shop and, after Simeon had left, he had badgered the Thursdays to let him show the poems to his cousin. Since the margravine was known to be a woman of taste and influence, they had agreed, and the result had been a personal invitation from Ruth to attend a small gathering of her friends. Simeon had first refused, then changed his mind. Somebody had told him the treasurer’s daughter was notorious for her opinions, and that only the friendship and patronage of Princess Christina kept her a step ahead of the Queen’s Guard. So, against his better judgment, he had gone to the treasurer’s house, and within weeks he and Ruth were inseparable. Casimir could still not understand what attraction she held for him. He knew little about sex, though he often thought about it, and even less about love; but he understood instinctively that their relationship was both complex and binding. His own experience could not compass it, nor explain the sudden flowering of work which had resulted, over the course of the short summer and autumn, in his father’s long poem The Tyrant. All Casimir knew was that he bitterly resented it, and wished Ruth and all she represented consigned to perdition.
Which made it all the stranger—now he had a chance to think about it—that Simeon was proposing to leave her without even saying goodbye.
Tycho was standing on the footpath, peering in through the window. He was dressed self-consciously in a velvet suit, top boots, a white shirt that flopped open at the neck, and a hat with a feather that made him look as if he should be sitting in a tree. The woman next door was still shrieking abuse at him. Tycho yelled back to her: he certainly knew, thought Casimir, how to make himself inconspicuous. He fetched the big key from under the counter and put it in the lock. As he did, he looked at the firework boy and felt a pang of disappointment. The emotion was trivially ignoble in the face of their many troubles, but after so much work, he could not help feeling sorry his apprentice piece was going to have to be left behind.
Casimir turned the key and opened the door. ‘Can I help?’
His neighbour leaned out of her window. ‘Yes. You can tell this turd to heave his filthy carcase off my doorstep.’
Tycho returned the pleasantry. ‘Shut up,
trull.’
‘Shut up? Shut up? Who was it came banging on my door at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning?’ yelled the woman. She leaned out of the window and Casimir hastily stepped back; fortunately, all she did was make a rude hand sign and slam the casement, leaving Tycho with his mouth half open on the brink of another retort. He remembered Simeon’s verdict. ‘Dangerous. He flaps his mouth like a fool and thinks his connections will protect him. One day he’s going to go too far.’ Casimir was inclined to think that anyone who dressed like that had already gone quite far enough.
Now he redirected his attention to Casimir. ‘Is your father home?’
‘No.’
‘I need to give him a message.’ Tycho looked impatient. ‘Are you planning to leave me standing here in the cold, or are you going to ask me in?’
‘It depends what you want. I told you, Simeon’s not at home.’ It occurred to Casimir that the injunction on inviting people over the threshold was highly inconvenient, but in this instance at least, their visitor was not Circastes in disguise. When Casimir made no effort to show him in, Tycho swore, pushed past him into the shop and stood there, alternately rubbing his hands and blowing on them. Casimir followed him in and shut the door.
‘Damn cold in here. Don’t you have proper heating?’
‘We only light fires for cooking. It’s too dangerous. There’s enough fireworks here to blow up every building between here and the cathedral.’
‘Really?’ For a brief moment, Tycho looked interested. Then he seemed to remember who Casimir was and why he was there. ‘Where’s your father?’
Casimir considered. As Simeon was so fond of reminding him, in Ostermark, a careless remark might easily be turned against one. In the end, he just shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘The Queen’s Guard haven’t got him, have they?’ The unexpected shrewdness of this question took Casimir aback, and he wondered what Tycho had heard. He shook his head, and Tycho went on, ‘Ruth told me about that business in the park. Very interesting, particularly with Christina being there. Really made me think.’
‘That must be a new sensation for you,’ said Casimir nastily, and Tycho gave him a dirty look. He put his hand into his sleeve and pulled out a letter.
‘For your father. Make sure he gets it, nobody else.’
Casimir took the letter. There was nothing on it to say where it was from, and the seal was merely a blob of wax with a thumb mark in it. Even the paper looked dirty and disreputable. ‘What is it?’
‘None of your business. Just keep it safe and give it to your father as soon as he comes home. That is, if he really is out.’ Tycho glanced at the workroom door, as if he suspected Simeon was hiding from him. Nettled, Casimir opened his mouth to object, then remembered what Simeon had said about getting rid of him quickly. He started moving to the door.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll give it to him when he comes back.’ He opened the door and Tycho stepped out into the street. As he did, the contents of an almost full chamber pot hit the ground inches away from him.
It had started raining again. Casimir stood in the doorway, watching Tycho walk off with an air of displeasure through the drizzle. When he turned the corner at the end of the street, a man came out of a doorway and followed him. Or so Casimir thought. Then the rain started coming down in earnest again, and he was no longer able to be sure.
Casimir went back inside and put Tycho’s letter on the shelf behind the counter. He would give it to Simeon when he came home, but was under no illusions as to what he would probably do with it. Tycho fancied himself as a revolutionary and was constantly frustrated when others failed to rise at his call: he put into writing what sensible folk would not have dared whisper in their most private moments. Most of Ruth’s friends considered him a joke, but one around whom it was best to be circumspect. Everyone knew Tycho was headed for a fall. The best thing to do with his correspondence was to destroy it.
Meanwhile, he had to get rid of the mess on their doorstep. Casimir fetched a pail of water from the butt in the yard and started flushing it over the cobbles into the central gutter. He was assiduously applying himself to the removal of a particularly large fragment from under their door scraper when a voice said,
‘Casimir Runciman?’
Casimir straightened slowly. For a second, the denial was actually in his mouth. It was automatic, but even he knew one did not lie to a member of the Queen’s Guard. The man was short-haired, young, and, despite the uniform with its red flashings, did not look unpleasant. Casimir nodded warily and he handed him a folded piece of paper.
‘A summons from Her Royal Highness, the Princess Christina,’ he said. ‘You’re wanted for an audience at the palace.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Casimir had never seen Princess Christina. He had of course, heard a great deal about her. He knew she was Queen Elsabetta’s younger half-sister and heir to the throne, and that, following her mother’s disgrace, she had spent most of her life in distant Osterfall. He knew she was reputed to be highly intelligent, and that certain of Ruth’s acquaintance were enthusiastic about the supposed progressiveness of her politics. He also knew she employed Ruth, an acquaintance from her Osterfall days, as a sometime lady-in-waiting. None of this, however, explained why she should want to see him.
On his arrival at the palace Casimir was handed over first to a footman, then to a gentleman usher who clearly considered himself too important to be playing escort to a grubby youth. He scarcely spoke, except to tell Casimir to change into a clean shirt and coat which he supplied from a clothes chest, and how to bow to and address the princess when he met her. Then he took Casimir down what was clearly the back corridor to the princess’s apartments. The passage walls and floors were plain white plaster and scrubbed pine, and the only people on view were servants; having expected richly dressed courtiers and degenerate opulence Casimir was vaguely disappointed. At the end of the passage they went up some stairs into an anteroom. A second, more ornate door connected it to a bigger chamber from which emanated low conversational rumbles.
A woman was speaking, too indistinctly for Casimir to make out the words, and then a man interjected, his voice slightly, but indefinably accented. With a mild shock, Casimir realised it was Simeon. He strained to hear, without looking too obviously like an eavesdropper, but before he could make much sense of the conversation Simeon was cut off in mid-sentence by a second woman. This time, Casimir had no difficulty in understanding what was said, for the voice was authoritative and sharply raised.
‘Please do not make any more excuses, Mr Runciman. I am not ignorant of these matters, nor do I appreciate being lied to. What I want now is your assurance that such an attack will not happen again.’ Again Simeon spoke, more or less inaudibly, and the woman replied, ‘Your resignation should not be necessary. It would arouse suspicion and make our situation even more difficult than it is already. Also, since it would undoubtedly ruin your reputation in Starberg, I cannot help wondering what your motives are in tendering it. If you are thinking of walking away from this, let me assure you, the Queen’s Guard has a very long reach.’
Several minutes of further conversation followed about security in the royal park. Patrols would be doubled until the wedding was over and the firework machine placed under twenty-four hour guard. Finally, Casimir heard the tinkle of a bell and muffled footsteps as Simeon and, he presumed, Ruth, were shown out of the room through another door. His own usher went over and tapped discreetly on the anteroom door. A voice called out, ‘Enter!’
The usher went in and reappeared a moment later with a disgruntled look on his face.
‘You’re to go in alone. Remember what I told you about how to bow.’ Casimir felt a surge of panic, then suddenly the door was shutting behind him and he was standing in a room unlike anything he had ever seen in his life.
It was not so big as he had expected. Casimir had imagined a huge space, but the princess’s office was not even as large as Ruth’s father’s st
udy, though like it, this room was filled with books. What was singular about it was its shape, which was perfectly round, and its decoration, which even Casimir, with his limited experience of such things, could see was exquisite. The walls, or those parts of them not lined with gilded book cabinets, were covered with gold and green trompe l’oeil work; there was a rich rose-patterned carpet, and a huge curved window, draped with soft velvet curtains, which looked out over the park. In the distance Casimir glimpsed the firework machine. Its top was blackened and listing slightly to one side. Evidently, they were in the south tower, the strange, turret-shaped structure which had been built as a retreat for his young second wife by the late king, Frederik.
The young queen—Christina’s mother, Astrid—had died mysteriously twenty years ago; it was generally believed in the city she had been murdered by the Procurator of the Queen’s Guard for taking one or possibly several lovers, and that the turret was haunted. If so, her ghost did not seem to trouble her daughter. Princess Christina sat now at a desk under the window, writing swiftly on a piece of paper. Mountains of documents were piled in front of her. Casimir stood awkwardly on the edge of the carpet, wondering how long it was going to take for her to notice him, and whether he should do anything to attract her attention.
‘Wait there,’ said the princess without looking up, and Casimir waited, wondering whether he should bow now, or whether, as the son of a self-confessed anarchist, it was appropriate for him to bow at all. The princess finished writing and laid down her pen; she turned in her chair, and, for the first time, Casimir was able to get a proper look at her face. His first impression was that, like her portrait in the treasurer’s entrance hall, she was very beautiful. The princess’s features were neat and flowerlike and her eyes very round and blue; her hair, like most people’s in Ostermark, was straight and honey fair, worn swept back over her ears in smooth waves. She wore no jewellery except a pair of pearl earrings, and a golden bracelet which gleamed against the shot silk of her gown. Otherwise, the most distinctive thing about her was her perfume, which was rich and floral but, like her beauty, stopped short of being cloying.