There was a cruel smile on his lips. I trembled for Fritz. There was something sadistic about this man which could be terrifying. Was he implying that unless I became what he would call “friendly” he would wreak his frustration and anger on Fritz because he knew that was what would hurt me most?
I could think of nothing to say. I could not plead with him now. I had an idea that if I did he would make conditions.
I was glad when we reached the Schloss.
The children had seen our arrival and Dagobert came running out to do homage to his father.
“And, miss, where have you been?” he demanded.
“Miss has been enjoying the solitude of the forest,” said the Count.
I took my mare to the stables and went in. I wanted to see Fritz.
I found him in his room. I said: “Your father is here and he is taking you and Dagobert riding.”
I was pleased to see that he did not look nearly so frightened as he used to. I had done that for him. I had assured him that if one feared something one must look it straight in the face and try to overcome that fear. He was very familiar with his pony and it was only when he showed fear that the pony sensed it. If he felt perfectly at home, so would the pony. I had driven home that lesson.
Half an hour later I was in the schoolroom watching them ride away when Frau Graben came in.
“There they go,” she said, “off to the hunt, I daresay. My word, Fritzi sits his pony well. He seems to have lost some of his fear of his father.”
I nodded smiling.
She looked at me anxiously. “I saw you ride back with Fredi.”
“Yes, I met him in the forest.”
“It was Max you went to meet.”
“Yes.”
“And you saw him?”
I nodded.
“Well, I expect you’ll be leaving Klocksburg soon.”
“I’ve not made any plans yet.”
“You will,” she said confidently. Then she looked less happy. “Did Fredi see you with Max?”
“Yes, he did.”
She stuck out her lower lip, a habit which implied consternation.
“You’d better be careful. Fredi always wanted what Maxi had. The fact that it was Maxi’s gave it special value in his eyes. The trouble I had with that boy. There was a lovely little horse and carriage Maxi had. His mother gave it to him one Christmas. They had their own tables at Christmas. That was the great day of their lives. They’d talk about it for weeks. And then there would be their tables with their little fir trees all lighted with candles. Their presents were on the big tree and there was this carriage and horse for Maxi. It was a fine thing. It was painted like the royal carriage with the crown on it and the Duke’s arms and Fredi saw it and wanted it. That night he took it away and hid it. We found it in his cupboard and back it went to Maxi and the next day we found it smashed up. The wicked boy had destroyed it rather than that Maxi should have it. I’ve never forgotten it. I don’t think he’s changed much.”
There was a faint glint of anxiety behind the bland smile. She was afraid. She wanted me to understand that because the Count was interested in me and had discovered that Maximilian and I were in love he was now quite determined to become my lover.
Perhaps I should have been warned but I could not take this threat seriously. If I were careful never to be alone with him, there was nothing he could do. I was not a horse and carriage to be smashed, though he could of course make life very unpleasant.
I was in my room when they came back. I went to the window and saw them. My first glance was for Fritz; he was happily sitting his pony and riding with ease.
All I had to do was make him understand that he must not show fear. It seemed he had learned that lesson.
But I soon discovered from Frau Graben that the Count had decided the boys should now have done with ponies. They were to ride horses. He had been to the stables and chosen which they should have.
I knew something of the horses there and when I realized which was to be Fritz’s mount, I was afraid. It was one of the friskiest horses in the stables.
What sort of man was this who could endanger his son’s life on the pretext that he was making a man of him, and at the same time showing his displeasure toward a woman who had flouted him?
I had to try to see him against his own background. Was I perhaps unable to visualize what the rather wild upbringing had made of him? The outlook here would be very different from that in a peaceful English town. That was why everything seemed a little fantastic and unreal. These men took what they wanted and didn’t count the cost of others. They were so ruthless that even when they loved they could deceive with a mock marriage. What were they capable of when they were prompted by lust alone?
My fears for Fritz did at least stop my brooding exclusively on my own problem.
. . .
I went into the town that afternoon while the children were having a drawing lesson from a young artist who came up to the Schloss to teach them once a week.
I saw the hat in the window and afterwards I thought it was fate or instinct or something like that which led me to that window.
It was a boy’s hat in pale gray rather like a bowler and there was a small green feather stuck into the ribbon. Beneath the hat was a notice: THE SAFETY RIDING HAT.
I went into the shop. Yes, it was designed to give extra protection to the head. The hatter had heard only that day that a young fellow had fallen from his horse and avoided serious accident because he was wearing his safety riding hat.
I bought it.
If I were going to give Fritz a present I must buy gifts for the others. The toymaker’s shop was always a delight to all children. There were cuckoo clocks and dolls’ houses and dolls’ furniture, humming toys and toy horses and riding whips. It was not difficult to find something. For Dagobert I bought what was called a weather detector. It consisted of a little wooden house with two figures, a man dressed in somber clothes and a woman in bright colors. The woman came out when the sun was going to shine, the man when it was going to rain. I guessed that would please him. Liesel’s gift was a double-jointed doll.
When I returned to the Schloss the children were back from their art lesson, which had been given out of doors. They were delighted with their gifts.
Fritz put on his hat.
“It’s a safety hat,” I told him.
“Is it magic?”
“It means that while you’re wearing it you’ll be much safer than you would be without it.”
He regarded it with awe. Dagobert was delighted with his weather house but his eyes did rest rather longingly on the safety hat. It was astonishing really because I had thought a toy would have been much more desirable than an article of clothing, but it seemed that they had already endowed this hat with some special magic.
Inside it was a silk tab on which was inscribed the words SAFETY HAT. They read it with awe. Fritz put it on and wouldn’t take it off.
“It’s really for riding,” I told him; but he wanted to keep it on all the time.
I wished that I had bought them both one.
“Why is it a present day?” asked Liesel.
“Oh, just because I felt like it,” I told her.
“Do they have present days any sort of time in England?” asked Fritz.
“Well, yes, any time can be present giving time.”
“I want to go to England,” announced Dagobert.
I was at the turret window watching for Maximilian to come. Across the valley I could see the lights of the ducal Schloss, and I thought of that woman who, legend had it, had thrown herself from this window because she had discovered that she had been tricked into marriage and could not bear to go on living since she had been so deceived. How different was my position! I glowed with exultation because he loved me so much that he had jeopardized his future for my sake. I had lived in this community long enough to realize the feudal state of life here. The people’s rulers belonged to them; they were powerfu
l overlords yet they existed in power only through the approbation of those they ruled.
I knew that I could never allow Maximilian to suffer through me.
When he had married me (and I shuddered to think how easily he could have followed the custom of his ancestors and gone through a mock ceremony, for how should I have known the difference?) he had proved his all-embracing love for me. I was determined to show mine for him.
At last I saw him. He came along without attendants. I leaned from the window and caught my breath because of the sheer drop below and again I was thinking of the desperation of that sad woman who had been less fortunate.
I could hear his footsteps on the stair. I was at the door to greet him and we were in each other’s arms.
In the early morning before he left, we talked again of our future.
He had wondered whether to tell Wilhelmina and had come to the conclusion that his father should be the first to know.
“Again and again I am on the point of telling him. I want to take you to him. I want to tell him everything that happened. Yet I fear the effects of the shock.”
“And Wilhelmina?” I said. “I think a great deal of Wilhelmina.”
“It was a union of convenience. Since the birth of the child we have lived apart. I was grateful for that reason when the child came . . . so was she because it meant that we need not live together.”
“I had forgotten the child.”
“The complications are so great,” went on Maximilian. “It maddens me. It might have been so different. I was once on the point of telling my father what had happened to try to make him understand that I had met the only woman I could love and had married her. He could have borne it then. There would have been trouble and because I believed you dead I saw no point in raising it. Those people had lied to me. I shan’t rest until I know why. I shall have Ilse brought here. I shall discover from her what it all meant and why she and Ernst interfered in my life.”
“You had commanded them to interfere in the first place.”
“I had commanded them to bring you to me. They were the witnesses of our marriage. But they lied to you and to me. Why? I shall soon know, for she is to be brought here. We will confront her and have the truth.”
“Do you think she will come?”
“My cousin has to visit Klarenbock on state business. I have told him that I want Ilse, if still living, to be brought here.”
“Your cousin?”
“Count Frederic.”
I felt uneasy. The Count always made me feel so.
“Does he know the reason for which you want Ilse?”
“Good God no. I wouldn’t trust Frederic with that. Heaven knows what use he’d make of it. He’s getting as troublesome to me as his father was to mine.”
“And he is the one whom you have asked to bring back Ilse!”
“She would know she must obey him. She might even think it is her half sister Wilhelmina who wishes to see her. I have not specifically said it is I.”
“How I wish she were here now! I should like to meet her face to face. There is so much I want to ask her. She seemed so kind to me. I don’t understand why she should have tried to ruin my life.”
“We will discover,” said Maximilian.
The dawn was with us and it was time for him to leave. How happy we could be even though we could not look more than a day or so ahead and had come no nearer to finding a solution to our problem.
The next day Frieda, the wife of Prinzstein the coachman, who had joined the two maids we already had in the fortress, brought in letters from England—one from Anthony, one from Aunt Matilda, and one from Mrs. Greville.
Anthony wanted to know how I was faring. It was a long time since he had heard.
Is everything well there, Helena? If not give it up and come back. I miss you very much. There’s no one to talk to as I can talk to you. The parents are very good of course, but it isn’t quite the same. Every day I look for a letter from you which will tell me that you have had enough of it. Come home. I do understand that you are restless. What happened to you there makes that very understandable. Don’t you think that dwelling on the past only keeps it alive? Wouldn’t it be better to try to forget it? Do come home where I shall do everything possible to make you happy.
My love as ever, Anthony.
What peaceful calm that conjured up: the new vicarage with those lovely green lawns which had been maturing for more than two hundred years; the lovely house which was Elizabethan and built to represent the letter E as so many had been during that Queen’s reign. A fascinating house with its buttery and stillroom, its walled garden, its little orchard which would be a glory of pink and white blossom in May. How far away it seemed from the Schloss in the mountains!
Suppose I wrote to Anthony and told him I had found Maximilian. Perhaps I owed that to him. I did not want him to go on thinking that one day I would return to him. But I must not do so yet. Maximilian’s father must be the first to know.
There was a letter from Aunt Matilda too.
How are you getting on, Helena? Have you had enough of that teaching job yet? Albert says he reckons you’ll be back before the summer’s over. The winter wouldn’t be good there. I believe they have a lot of snow. Take care of your chest. There are some that say mountains are good for chests, but chests are funny things. We miss you in the shop. On busy days Albert says “We could do with Helena, particularly in the Foreign Department.” He works like a slave which isn’t right with one kidney . . .
How those letters brought it all back.
And Mrs. Greville’s:
We miss you very much. When are you coming back? It’s been such a lovely spring. You should see the shrubs in the vicarage garden. And now the lavender’s a picture. The grass was a bit trampled by people at the fête, but it was a great success. Anthony is very popular. There are so many willing helpers. A very nice lady, a Mrs. Chartwell, has come to live close by. She has a pleasant daughter who is being so useful in the parish. Anthony was saying what a great help she is. She’s quite nice-looking too, is Grace Chartwell, gentle personality, gets on with people . . .
I smiled. In other words, a perfect vicar’s wife. I understood Mrs. Greville was telling me: Come back before it’s too late.
A hush had fallen over the town, over the Schloss and over the mountains. The Duke was very ill.
There was a note from Maximilian for me which told me that he was unable to leave the Schloss. The doctors were in attendance on his father and it was feared that the end was not far off.
Frau Graben couldn’t hide her excitement.
“Our Maxi will soon be Duke,” she whispered to me.
I avoided her eyes.
The children were affected by the general solemnity for a short while but they soon forgot it.
Fritz was rarely seen without his hat although Dagobert had long grown tired of telling people whether it was going to rain or shine and one of the legs of Liesel’s doll had come off.
I should have given them all hats.
Through the next day the Duke lingered on. In the streets there was a hushed silence; people stood about on corners talking in whispers.
He had been a good ruler, they said, but ailing for a long time. It was a mercy they had a strong Prince to follow with the country and the surrounding states in such a turmoil.
Those days of anxiety over the Duke were not allowed to interfere with the life of the Schloss.
In the courtyard twice a week the children practiced archery when other boys of noble families came in to join them and very often there were as many as ten or eleven taking lessons. It had been considered that there would be greater competition for the boys if others were there; and there was always a great deal of activity and noise in the courtyard where they practiced.
I was in my room when Fritz came running in. He was carrying his hat and protruding from it was an arrow.
“It hit me on the head,” he said, “but it went into my hat. It?
??ll have to be pulled out carefully or it might tear. Herr Gronken said I could bring it to you when I told him you would know how to get it out. Oh, miss, do be careful with my magic hat.”
I took it in my hands: the thought immediately came to me that if he had not been wearing a hat, the arrow would have struck him in the head.
I withdrew the arrow very carefully and laid it on the table.
We examined it together. It had made a hole in the fabric.
“Never mind,” I said to Fritz, “that makes it more interesting, more your very own. Battle scars are signs of honor.”
That pleased him. He put the hat on again, and went off to finish the lesson.
I picked up the arrow. The point was sharp. It had to be, of course, to hit the target. What struck me was that there was a faint discoloration at the tip. I wondered what it was.
I thought no more about it then, for a few hours later news came that the Duke was dead.
All the flags in the town were flying at half mast.
“Of course it had to come,” said Frau Graben. “This will make a difference to our Prince. My goodness he’ll be busy for a few days. And then of course there’ll be the funeral. That will be an occasion for sure.”
A disturbing incident happened. The following afternoon Dagobert went into the forest on his new mount. We were unperturbed during the first hour or so when he didn’t return but when it grew dark and he had still not come back we grew alarmed.
Frau Graben sent the servants out to look for him. Herr Prinzstein the coachman formed a party which he divided into two and they went off in spearate ways.
We sat together in Frau Graben’s little sitting room and anxiously talked of what could have happened to him.
Fritz came in and said: “My hat’s gone. My magic hat. I’ve looked everywhere.”
“You can’t fret about a hat when your brother’s lost,” said Frau Graben.
“I can,” said Fritz. “I think he’s taken it.”
“Oh, Fritz, why do you say that?” I asked.