At once, she was in a world of aching familiarity. Here was the hollow alder in which she had found a nest of curled-up, sleeping water voles; here the rock shaped like a bird; here the bush that in summer was ablaze with sulphur-yellow roses…
She crossed the road, wondering again at the absence of people, and began to climb the steep, circuitous Narrenweg. The first shrine, with the wreath of artificial poppies which had lain there since Frau Sussman’s son fell in the war… the second, on which the quiet-faced Virgin’s nose was inexplicably missing… the third, beneath which old Marinka had put, as she put each year, a great bunch of her orange dahlias before they caught the frost –
‘Oh, God!’ Tessa had stopped, put down her bag and grasped the branch of an ilex beside the path, suddenly overwhelmed by a searing sense of heimat — that word which, though embracing it, means so much more than simply ‘home’.
Then she set her chin, picked up her bag and ten minutes later was walking through the gatehouse arch.
There was no one on duty. The courtyard was deserted. Feeling suddenly extremely anxious, Tessa walked up the short flight of steps into the great hall and looked about her, puzzled. Where were the ornaments, the vases, the tapestry hangings? Then a door opened above her and, breaking the silence, she heard a furious voice.
‘Who the devil has raised the flag on the flagpole? Who is the imbecile who is climbing about up there? I’m going to blast him out of existence if it’s the last thing—’ Guy had appeared at the top of the staircase. ‘You!’
He came down swiftly, the brows drawn in a dark bar across his face, and stopped in front of the small figure in the grey cloak. ‘And what brings you here?’ he enquired.
‘I brought the Lily. For Nerine. Martha promised to meet me at the station and bring it up, but she wasn’t there. There was a message to say she wasn’t well. Is it anything serious?’
Guy shrugged. ‘She was all right this morning, perfectly all right. In high fettle, in fact.’ He gave up the puzzle. ‘You came from Spittau?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded, scowling. ‘And the prince is well?’
‘Very well. Guy, please would you take this, I want to get back,’ said Tessa, proffering the box. ‘Just take it and give it to Nerine… with my best wishes for her happiness.’
Guy took the casket, opened it and looked at it for a long moment in silent tribute. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you’re right. It’s an extraordinary piece of work. I regret, however, that I cannot give it to Nerine because she isn’t here.’
‘Isn’t here?’ Tessa stared at him, completely bewildered. ‘But where—’
‘She heard that I was ruined and left. In case you’re feeling anxious on her behalf, let me assure you that she managed to take all her clothes and jewels and a few other unconsidered trifles that were lying about. We have reason to believe that Lord Frith will soon be the happiest of men.’
Tessa’s eyes widened. There was no point in feeling happy because Guy was ruined, which was sad for him. Moreover, he certainly did not love her or he would not keep glaring at her in that way. All the same, happiness continued to streak in small, uncontrollable waves through her body. To conceal it, she looked round the hall.
‘Is that why the furniture has gone?’ she enquired. ‘Because you’re ruined? Did the bailiffs take it away?’
‘Yes.’
Tessa nodded. ‘It looks better like this, I think — not so cluttered.’
She tried to concentrate on the subject of Guy’s ruin and was rewarded by a brilliant idea.
‘Guy, if you’re ruined you must take the Lily! It’s terribly valuable! You wouldn’t think so because it’s just silver, but it’s the legend and all that. The Museum of Antiquities in New York offered my father a fortune for it! Then, with the money you can start again and get something to sell like—’ But for the moment inspiration failed her.
‘Shoelaces?’ suggested Guy, the old teasing note back in his voice. But at once, the anger returned to his face. ‘Oh, God, why didn’t you wait!’ he burst out. ‘Were you so eager for the prince?’
Tessa, looking around for something to sit on, found the pedestal of her great-grandfather’s statue which had been too heavy to move. At the same time it occurred to her that she could at this moment have walked barefoot up Mount Everest, which would have been a record and pleased people.
‘I knew you’d gone to Spittau, but I thought I had time. And then they said the wedding had been bought forward—’ He broke off and turned away.
‘Yes,’ said Tessa. ‘I thought it would be a good idea. Heidi was so very pregnant, you see.’
‘Heidi? Who the devil? Oh, that dancing girl. What’s she got to do with anything?’
‘Actually, Guy, I was wondering if I shouldn’t train as an actress,’ said Tessa reflectively. ‘I never wanted to act before, but honestly I think I may have talent. I did the Stanislavski method before I came downstairs — you know, getting yourself into the part — and then I swept into the banqueting hall when they were all at dinner and called Maxi a vile seducer and pointed my trembling finger at him and everything. I think my bosom heaved too; I’m almost sure it did. And if I was a successful actress I could help you—’
Guy had walked over to her and pulled her up by the wrists. She smiled at him and he said, ‘Don’t smile like that, damn you! Tell me what happened.’
‘Well. I found out that Heidi and the prince had been—’ she flushed. ‘You know… It was incredibly stupid of me not to guess, but I didn’t because nobody brought me up to know anything useful.’
‘Go on.’
‘And, of course, it was obvious that they were just meant for each other, but Maxi isn’t… you know, very resolute. So I made this scene — I wanted to do it in a night-dress like in La Sonnambula but I thought I might trip — and denounced him and said he had to make an honest woman of my friend. And then the Swan Princess screamed and said she was going to have a heart attack and everybody ran about except Monteforelli who said God was almost certainly too busy watching sparrows fall to arrange anything so providential — only sotto voce, of course, and—’
Guy put a finger over her lips, which was a mistake because Tessa turned white and stopped.
‘Just get to the point.’
‘Yes, I will. But you mustn’t touch me when I’m trying to concentrate. So then I said, very well, I would take Heidi to her mother in Simmering and her unborn child would be raised to a useful trade, and the Swan Princess went into a paroxysm (which was her snobbery fighting with her blood-lust for babies) and her blood-lust won and she said no Spittau born or unborn was going to be raised away from the ancestral home, and then she told Maxi he had to marry Heidi! So then we had the wedding and I came to give Martha the Lily, only she wasn’t there.’ She broke off. ‘Guy, isn’t that Martha out there? Only, what is she doing?’
‘Good God!’
Tessa was looking out through the double doors of the hall across to the chapel — round the side of which there had just appeared, crawling slowly on hands and knees, the plump sandy-haired figure of Martha Hodge.
Guy was across the courtyard in a moment. ‘Martha, have you gone completely mad?’
His foster-mother crawled another painful yard, then rose stiffly to her feet. ‘Ee, I dunno,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Rudi said as how I’d feel better when I’d done this penance, like, and I’ve ruined me stockings right enough and bruised me knees. But what the Reverend Ridley would say in Byker—’ And as Guy continued to look at her in stunned amazement she went on. ‘It’s what King Louis-the-something did when he got on the wrong side of the pope, crawled three times round the church, only on ’is stomach. It was all those lies I told, see — saying I was poorly and getting young David to call away the station-master and all that faddle so as to get the lass up here. And me not even knowing if she ’adn’t married the prince, like they all said…’