Though she had spent as yet only one day in Ulrichsberg, the sense of relief Harriet felt when they passed out of the town was considerable. The road they followed wound upwards along the path cut by one of the tributaries to the Neckar, climbing into the hills until the placid river by which they had started their journey had disappeared, and become a distant sigh in the valley below. On either side of them the forest stretched away, broken from place to place with columns of dark red sandstone; their edges softened with mosses and ivy, their silhouettes broken by new birch leaves. Scents of earth and water filled the carriage. Graves, freed from the palace, looked positively cheerful. Harriet glanced at Rachel, remembering their conversation of the previous evening and wondering if she had said everything she should have done.
Harriet remembered the first weeks of her own married life vividly, and with a certain amount of shame. She had loved James, and felt she knew him when they wed, but she recalled only too well the strangeness of first encountering the physical being of her husband outside the drawing room or the ballroom. The scent of him had been foreign, the sight of him stripped back to himself alarming. The physical side of marriage she had learned … to appreciate. She had been lucky. James had travelled the world before he met her and, he told her some months into their marriage, had once been the lover of an older woman, a widow. Though the idea that he had been as intimate with another as he was with her had troubled and scratched at her, she also recognised its advantages. He came to her bed wise, patient and kind. His strangeness became familiar, his touch sought after, valued.
She had assumed that Clode, so handsome a young man, would have entered into marriage as experienced as James. She felt she had to blame herself. She had chosen to forget that Clode had been raised in a much more limited circle, and was rather younger than James had been. She had also ignored the slight prudishness in Clode’s nature, and in Rachel’s. It had been a choice. Rachel had still been angry with Harriet for continuing to involve herself with the investigations of murder even in the weeks leading up to the marriage, and Harriet had found it impossible to do her duty and talk to her sister about physical love. Her cowardice had done Rachel and Daniel a disservice. After three months of marriage Daniel thought himself a brute, and Rachel judged herself as unnatural. Their affection was clouded by fear and embarrassment. Now they were separated by the horrors of the Carnival night.
Harriet remembered Rachel’s face, turned away slightly as she drank her tea the previous evening. ‘Two nights before the Carnival, I asked him if he had never taken a lover in the past,’ she had said. ‘Harry, he was so angry with me. He asked if I thought he should take one now, as I was unwilling to perform my duties as a wife with good grace.’
‘Oh, my dear.’
‘That evening we were in company with Lady Martesen, and I know nothing passed between them but common courtesy, but I was so jealous. I stormed and cried and all but accused him of making love to her in front of me! He reassured me, and I was in such a passion I wouldn’t listen to him. Then, well …’
‘You can tell me, Rachel.’
‘Then it was a great deal better. But we were angry at the time and oh, Harriet, I was so confused the next day. I felt as if some sort of monster had been released, in us both. And I was frightened by it, and Daniel would hardly look at me, and then we went to the Carnival …’
‘Did you notice the preparations in town?’ Graves’s voice called Harriet from her thoughts and back into the carriage.
‘I did,’ she said, passing her hand over her forehead. ‘The Princess’s reception should be magnificent.’
‘Poor girl,’ Rachel said. ‘She is only fifteen, you know, and has never met the Duke.’
Graves crossed his long legs and stared out at the passing forest. ‘And now she will arrive in this murderous court with Manzerotti to sing her welcome.’
‘She is trained for it,’ Harriet said. ‘She will have wealth, power, influence.’
‘Do you envy her, Harry?’
‘No, Rachel. I do not.’
Castle Grenzhow was a structure from a less frivolous time. It brooded high over the river valley and watched the narrow road askance through thin windows. Only the eastern part of the castle had been maintained. The tower to the west had crumbled to a rotted stump, and beside it the remains of the manor house had dwindled to walls without floors or ceilings, a stone staircase that opened on empty air, halls of weeds and grasses. All was in pinkish stone.
The single track that led to the gate could be observed by the castle’s remaining guardians throughout its last curving, climbing mile, and those in the carriage could feel themselves watched and waited for.
The castle, Harriet discovered when the carriage drew into the forecourt, had a more numerous population than she had at first thought. She had imagined Clode alone in a tower with one crooked guard to lock and unlock the door to his chamber. Instead the surviving part of the castle showed signs of being a thriving little community. There were several men on the gate and in the yard, and more supervising a work-party down the slope. In the work-party were perhaps a dozen men wielding pickaxes, all dressed in plain uniform work-clothes. She could not help looking into their faces with alarm, and felt Rachel’s hand brush her own.
‘Daniel has not been forced to work,’ she said. ‘Here, as everywhere else, status is what counts. He has a room and his own clothes. These men …’ she nodded out of the window, ‘are from peasant stock.’
‘What are their crimes?’ Harriet said, trying to pick out individual faces. None of the men were young, and all had the weather-worn skin of those used to outdoor work. None were fat, but none showed sign of malnourishment.
‘I asked the same thing, Harry. Persistent drunkenness or theft. Some argued with their priests or the headmen in their village.’
The carriage came to a halt and the door was opened by one of the scarlet footmen the court had provided to travel about with their visitors. An oppressive courtesy. A gentleman emerged from the heavy interior of the castle to greet them with a broad smile. He was not the hunched and shuffling jailer of Harriet’s imaginings, but a figure wigged and frock-coated, brushing crumbs from his waistcoat. Rachel made the introductions and he smiled at them very pleasantly and asked after their journey.
‘I am sure that all of Ulrichsberg is in a froth!’ he said, gesturing with his hands so broadly Harriet was afraid he might topple over backwards. ‘A new Duchess! I have had her portrait hung up in my office already, next to that of Ludwig Christoph. She is a pretty girl, but regal, I am sure you understand what I mean — regal!’
‘How is my husband, Herr Hoffman?’ asked Rachel.
He shook his head. ‘Pleased to hear of the arrival of his friends, but I wish I could get him to eat a little more. I had my own cook send up some of my stew yesterday evening, so delicious it was. But he hardly touched it.’
He blinked at Harriet and Graves. ‘The wind tells me you are already sowing doubt about Mr Clode’s guilt at court.’
‘You are very well informed, sir,’ Harriet said, surprised.
‘Fresh supplies and fresh gossip arrived only an hour or two ago, milady. You have an early meeting with the Duke, and Mr Clode’s friends leave it looking hopeful. The Countess Dieth has a conversation with the Duke, and her reactions are observed. A scribe is asked to make a copy of a letter. The tone shifts and without quite knowing why, we start to think Mr Clode is innocent. And I wanted to say, I am absolutely delighted about that. Such a pleasant, well-educated young man, a little serious perhaps, but it has been a pleasure to guard him. If you whip him away I shall have to hope the Duke finds some scribbler of seditious pamphlets to lock up here for a few months, or I shall be deprived of civilised company. No doubt some young man will publish something insulting for the wedding. I trust in that.’