Von Namtzen glanced sharply at him, but then nodded, and returned his attention to the paper before him.
“Wine, you say? Well, that is strange.”
“What is strange?”
The Captain tapped a long, immaculate finger on the paper.
“This name—Hungerbach. It is the family name of an old noble house; zu Egkh und Hungerbach. Not German at all, you understand; they are Austrian.”
“Austrian?” Grey felt his heart lurch, and leaned forward, as though to make certain of the name on the paper. “You are sure?”
Von Namtzen looked amused.
“Of course. The estate near Graz is very famous for its wines; that is why I say it is strange you bring me this name and say it is about wine. The best of the St. Georgen wines—that is the name of the castle there, St. Georgen—is very famous. A very good red wine they make—the color of fresh blood.”
Grey felt an odd rushing in his ears, as though his own blood were draining suddenly from his head, and put a hand on the table to steady himself.
“Don’t tell me,” he said, feeling a slight numbness about his lips. “The wine is called Schilcher?”
“Why, yes. However did you know that?”
Grey made a small motion with one hand, indicating that it was of no importance. There seemed to be a number of gnats in the room, though he had not noticed them before; they swarmed in the light from the window, dancing motes of black.
“These—the Hungerbach family—some are here, then, in London?”
“Yes. Baron Joseph zu Egkh und Hungerbach is the head of the family, but his heir is a distant cousin, named Reinhardt Mayrhofer—he keeps a quite large house in Mecklenberg Square. I have been there sometimes—though of course with the situation as it now is . . .” He lifted one shoulder in acknowledgment of the delicate diplomatic issues involved.
“And this . . . Reinhardt. He—is he a small man? Dark, with long . . . curling . . . h-hair.” The gnats had become suddenly more numerous, and illuminated, a nearly solid mass of flickering lights before his eyes.
“However did you—Major! Are you quite well?” Dropping the paper, he grabbed Grey by the arm and guided him hurriedly to the sofa. “Sit, please. Water I will have brought, and brandy. Wilhelm, mach schnell!” A servant appeared briefly in the doorway, then disappeared at once at von Namtzen’s urgent gesture.
“I am quite—quite all right,” Grey protested. “Really, there is . . . not . . . the slightest . . . n-need—” But the Hanoverian put a large, firm hand in the center of Grey’s chest and pushed him flat on the sofa. Stooping swiftly, he seized Grey’s boots and hoisted his feet up as well, all the while bellowing in German for assorted incomprehensible things.
“I—really, sir, you must—” And yet he felt a gray mist rising before his eyes, and a whirling in his head that made it difficult to order his thoughts. He could taste blood in his mouth, how odd. . . . It mingled with the smell of pig’s blood, and he felt his gorge rising.
“Me lord, me lord!” Tom Byrd’s voice rang through the mist, shrill with panic. “What you done to him, you bloody Huns?”
A confusion of deeper voices surrounded him, speaking words that slipped away before he could grasp their meaning, and a spasm seized him, twisting his guts with such brutal force that his knees rose toward his chest, trying vainly to contain it.
“Oh, dear,” said von Namtzen’s voice, quite near, in tones of mild dismay. “Well, it was not such a nice sofa, was it? You, boy—there is a doctor who is living two doors down, you run and fetch him right quick, ja?”
Events thereafter assumed a nightmarish quality, with a great deal of noise. Monstrous faces peered at him through a nacreous fog, with words such as “emesis” and “egg whites” shooting past his ears like darting fish. There was a terrible burning feeling in his mouth and throat, superseded periodically by bouts of griping lower down, so intense that he now and then lost consciousness for a few moments, only to be roused again by a flood of sulfurous bile that rose with so much violence that his throat alone provided insufficient egress, and it burst from his nostrils in a searing spew.
These bouts were succeeded by copious outpourings of saliva, welcome at first for their dilution of the brimstone heavings, but then a source of horror as they threatened drowning. He had a dim sense of himself at one point, lying with his head hanging over the edge of the sofa, drooling like a maddened dog, before someone pulled him upright and tried once more to pour something down his throat. It was cool and glutinous, and at the touch of it on his palate, his inward parts again revolted. At last the dense perfume of poppies spread itself like a bandage across the raw membranes of his nose; he sucked feebly at the spoon in his mouth and fell with relief into a darkness shot with fire.
He woke some unimaginable time later from the disorientation of opium visions, to find one of the monstrous faces of his dreams still present, bending over him—a pallid countenance with bulging yellow eyes and lips the color of raw liver. A clammy hand clutched him by the privates.
“Do you suffer from a chronic venereal complaint, my lord?” the countenance inquired. A thumb prodded him familiarly in the scrotum.
“I do not,” Grey said, sitting bolt upright and pressing the tail of his shirt protectively between his legs. The blood rushed from his head and he swayed alarmingly. He seized the edge of a small table by the bed to keep upright, only then noting that in addition to the clammy hands, the dreadful countenance was possessed of an outsize wig and a wizened body clad in rusty black and reeking of medicaments.
“I have been poisoned. What sort of infamous quack are you, that you cannot tell the difference between a derangement of the internal organs and the pox, for God’s sake?” he demanded.
“Poisoned?” The doctor looked mildly bemused. “Do you mean that you did not take an excess of the substance deliberately?”
“What substance?”
“Why, sulphide of mercury, to be sure. It is used to treat syphilis. The results of the gastric lavage— What are you about, sir? You must not exert yourself, sir, really, you must not!”
Grey had thrust his legs out of bed and attempted to rise, only to be overcome by another wave of dizziness. The doctor seized him by the arm, as much to keep him from toppling over as to prevent his escape.
“Now, then, sir, just lie back . . . yes, yes, that is the way, to be sure. You have had a very narrow escape, sir; you must not imperil your health by hasty—”
“Von Namtzen!” Grey resisted the hands pushing him back into bed, and shouted for assistance. His throat felt as though a large wood-rasp had been thrust down it. “Von Namtzen, for God’s sake, where are you?”
“I am here, Major.” A large hand planted itself firmly on his shoulder from the other side, and he turned to see the Hanoverian’s handsome face looking down at him, creased in a frown.
“You were poisoned, you say? Who is it that would do this thing?”
“A man called Trevelyan. I must go. Will you find me my clothes?”
“But, my lord—”
“But, Major, you have been—”
Grey gripped von Namtzen’s wrist, hard. His hand trembled, but he summoned what strength he could.
“I must go, and go at once,” he said hoarsely. “It is a matter of duty.”
The Hanoverian’s face changed at once, and he nodded, standing up.