An empty gulf opened in Freddie’s abdomen at this first clear view of the person calling herself Sebastienne Wollherz von Stock, who was not a boy after all. So it appeared that Freddie was not a sodomite, though relief was not the principal emotion he was feeling just then. Lust was still in evidence, just a glimpse of her profile having been enough to set him ablaze. Fortunately he and Frank had walked their horses west almost to the Anger Tor before Frank reined in, looked back and addressed him.
‘Phew, Freddie! That was a close call. So that was Fräulein Wollherz? A pretty little thing. I think we escaped the prince’s attention. He was very intent on the lady. So what do we do now, eh?’
Freddie mastered himself. ‘Are they still there?’
‘No. The prince must have gone into the courtyard of that house down the lane from the nunnery gate, but I just saw the lady herself actually go into St Jakob’s convent. How strange is that? I say, might she be one of those nefarious, dissolute nuns you Protestants are so convinced exist? I do hope so.’
For some reason, Freddie bridled at the suggestion. ‘Don’t be vulgar, Frank.’
‘Don’t be missish, Freddie,’ he retorted. ‘We’d best get back and report our findings to Teddie Carfax, then he can take credit for them.’
Freddie shrugged. ‘You do it. I’ll see what else I can find out before I return.’
‘What d’you think you can do? You’d be ill-advised to knock on the convent gate.’
‘I know, but I’d like to find out some more about this nunnery.’
‘Not much to know. The Angerkloster’s name translates as “St James in the Meadows”. It’s a very well-regarded house of Poor Clares under the patronage of the electors. I believe they run a school for well-heeled and noble girls. They had a particularly celebrated nun some years ago who was excessively chummy with the dead in purgatory, as I recall. I can look her up if you’d like, though it’s not really your thing is it?’
Freddie shook his head, and turned his horse’s head in the direction of the livery stable to return his hired mount. He absently patted the animal’s neck. He was an amenable, intelligent and good-tempered beast, which he remarked on approvingly to the stablemaster as he returned the reins.
The man was fluent in French, as many in his profession were, since their trade was an international one, and he was disposed to be chatty. Freddie was a country boy and Norfolk was famous horse breeding country, so he had picked up quite a bit on horse husbandry in his youth. He had ridden to hounds at the invitation of the earl when he was home from Cambridge, and his facility in the saddle had been one of the factors that had led to James’s offer of the clerkship to Freddie.
‘Bien milord, we acquired a number of beasts from that stable recently. You shouldn’t have normally had the hiring of him, as he was on approval for a sale and he had been taken out of the rental stalls, but we were hard-pressed this morning.’
‘I was lucky then. He was one of those rare beasts who seems to listen to what’s going on about him. Very responsive to the bit. I didn’t need to use the spurs once, just a nudge of the heels.’
The man pulled out a stock book from the shelf over his desk and leafed through it. ‘Let me see. Ah yes! Quite the lineage. Back to the famous Brunhild, and her foals from Erebus.’
‘Brunhild? Why famous?’
‘I don’t suppose she’d be known as far away as London, milord. But she’s well-known to our trade in the Empire. Indeed, hers is the only line where the dam is reckoned as more important and dominant than the sire. Her descendants may not be particularly notable for strength and speed, but they’re amongst the most intelligent animals you’re likely to meet. Highly prized for military purposes, indeed this gelding is destined for a colonel of artillery if he meets our terms. We acquired a dozen stallions and geldings from the Wollherz stables six months ago. All but this one sold on since for good prices.’
‘The Wollherz stables?’ Freddie exclaimed in surprise.
‘You know them, monsieur?’
‘Well no, but the name came up recently. Is it a Bavarian enterprise?’
‘It does a lot of trade in the southern Empire and Hungary, to be sure, but the studs and stables are in and around Strelsau.’
‘In Ruritania?’ Freddie’s mind began working at a fast pace. ‘Well I never. So it’s a family business?’
‘I believe it began to come to fame about fifty years ago. The original Wollherz made his fortune in breeding for the military and the quality of his blood stock was exceptional. The story goes he got hold of some remarkable mares from captured Ottoman stock at the time of the War of the League. Whether or no, the man was a genius at breeding and I have his handbook on equine husbandry here. Every serious stableman has it. Those that can read, I mean. The Wollherz method is the only effective means of countering the murrain in a herd.’
‘And do his family still run the business?’ Freddie asked, with rising interest.
‘In a way, milord. I think the stables passed to his godchildren, but they took the Wollherz name for good commercial as well as personal reasons. It would be one of their children who now runs it. Last I heard only one of them was still involved: the Baron Willem Jonas Wollherz von Stock, who’s nearly as famous in breeding circles as the founder of the firm. His father was ennobled by the old king, Henry the Lion, which tells you how wealthy the family became.’
Freddie wandered out on to the streets of Munich in deep thought. Sebastienne was a noblewoman who roamed the city at night in boys’ clothing looking for sex and excitement. Never had he heard of such a dangerous woman or – he had to admit to himself – a more erotically fascinating one. He had gone hard again at the very thought of her escapades, and especially that he had himself been part of one of them. What on earth had Sebastienne been thinking when she fixed on him on the night of Karneval? What had she seen in him? More to the present point, what did her association with Prince Henry mean?
***
James was not entirely surprised when his major domo politely knocked on the library door and presented a carte d’adresse on a gold salver instead of the usual silver. He knew what that meant, even if the slight smile on Herr Abentauer’s face had not already given him a clue. The printed device on the card featured the impaled arms of the houses of Elphberg and Ruric under a ducal coronet and robe of estate, supported by an Elphberg lion and Glottenburger griffin. There was a thin black border around the card, appropriate for a duchess and princess widowed within the year gone by. In other words it was the card of his aunt, Osra Madeleine, Princess of Ruritania and Dowager Duchess of Glottenburg.
Nothing was written on the card, but James promptly trimmed a pen, and got out one of his own. He wrote Votre Altesse Royale. Avec réspectueuses félicitations. Burlesdon. and placed it in a small envelope. A second card arrived two hours later expressing Her Royal Highness’s intention to call on the earl at six that evening, which signalled the visit would occupy her hour before dinner, and no more.
This was not an incognito visit by a royal princess, so servants in full livery lined the steps to the embassy doors, which were wide open, and James’s staff in court dress awaited within the entrance behind the earl as her carriage drew up on Theatinerstrasse. All bowed as she entered. When Freddie looked up, his breath caught in his throat. He had expected a woman in her fifties who had been beautiful and maybe was well preserved, but a blown rose. Instead he encountered a woman of fifty-three who was undeniably flawless and beautiful, something he had not realised was possible. She wore no piled-up powdered wig, as was the Versailles fashion. Her hair, dressed high, was an Elphberg red untouched by grey and her complexion was pale. She was dressed in grey figured silk with a white fur cape against the chill of the evening. Black ribbons in her hair, a jet necklace and black trimmings on her dress indicated that she was in the last stages of mourning for her late husband, Duke John Casimir.
So taken with the princess was Freddie, he was quite unprepared for the sight of the maid of honour who followed her. The room seemed to reel around him as his eyes met full on those of the lady Sebastienne Wollherz von Stock. He was quite mute while he made his bow to the princess and was offered the hand of her young companion. He did not think he imagined the knowing edge to her smile as he was formally introduced to the girl. It seemed she was perfectly shameless.
As he brought up the tail of the group entering the reception room, Freddie’s bicep was gripped by an excited Frank Potts, who hissed loudly in his ear. ‘Dammit. It’s her! The Wollherz girl. She’s an Elphberg hanger-on. Well, what d’you know, eh? And what a looker. Here’s a chance to find out more about her.’
Two groups formed in the reception, the younger attachés clustering eagerly around Sebastienne Wollherz, though not Freddie, who stood alongside the ambassador with a sober Albrecht Mossinger. Freddie determinedly ignored the laughter and chatter from the other group as he tried to concentrate on the first meeting between nephew and aunt, thankfully conducted in French.
The princess did not openly acknowledge the relationship on this occasion, though there was no doubt of her friendly interest in the earl. Freddie listened carefully to her explanation as to why she was in Munich.
‘And how do you find your posting here, your excellency? she had asked in her warm contralto.
‘It’s my first, madame, so I have little to compare it with, but I’m finding Munich a congenial city so far.’
‘Ah yes. You are Catholic of course, and it must be a pleasant change to be in a place where yours is the religion of the people. But how strange that a Protestant realm such as your England should appoint a Catholic ambassador at all.’
‘I believe I am unique in the diplomatic service, which is why I took the posting when it was offered. Things are not good for those of our faith in my homeland, but this is the first crack in a dam erected now for centuries against loyal English Catholics serving their king. Better days are coming maybe. I had to answer the call.’
‘I understand something of this. Of course the existence of the Stuart claimant to the crown of Great Britain has not helped, since he too is a Catholic. My father was very ill-advised to welcome at his court the late James Francis Edward ... what can I call him in this company, the Prince of Wales?’
‘The Old Pretender is how he is referred to in Britain, madame.’
‘He was resident at Strelsau in some state in the Vesterborg Palace as – forgive me – King James III and VIII of Great Britain in the year I was born. My brother the present king remembers him as a courteous gentleman who treated him kindly as a child.’
‘That I can attest to myself, madame. When I was at Rome in ’65 he was still alive, and his court was very welcoming to Britons abroad. Any subject of King George, whether Whig or Tory, could be sure of his assistance in their need. Though I perhaps was wise not to seek an audience.’
‘Unfortunately for my father, the British and French concordat led to very bad relations with London through most of his reign, and it took much effort by my brother to ease things.’
The earl smiled. ‘As I understand it, madame, much of the success was down to yourself, and your long friendship with the second King George’s daughter, the Princess Royal and Princess of Orange.’
‘I would not exaggerate my influence, my dear Lord Burlesdon.’
‘Oh? I had heard you were King Rudolf’s representative in a meeting at Leeuwarden in the year ’43 which led to the formal Ruritanian recognition of the Guelfs as the rightful kings of Great Britain?’
‘You’ve been studying in your new profession, I see sir. Well, people do exaggerate.’
‘May I ask, your royal highness, what brings you to Munich?’
‘You may, your excellency, though it is a personal matter. My preference has been to return to Ruritania since my husband’s death, and it is my brother’s wish also that I do so. There has been some ... difficulty ... with my son over the dower lands in the duchy promised on my marriage. To some extent I can have sympathy with him, as the settlement on me was extravagant, and I have indicated that I’m open to negotiation on the subject. So there is to be an arbitration, and my son impressed me by nominating Elector Max Joseph for the task. As he rather amusingly said, no one would suspect a Bavarian of undue sympathy towards Strelsau. But the fact is the elector is a good man, and will be fair, so I was perfectly happy about it.’
‘And is Prince Henry in Munich to act on his father’s behalf?’
‘Yes he is. Now tell me, Lord Burlesdon, will you be available at some time in the next week for a private dinner? Nothing particularly elaborate, you understand, and there will be only a few guests, still I’m sure you will find the company interesting. It will be at my lodgings, but do not be put off by that.’
Freddie caught the meaningful look the princess gave her unacknowledged nephew. The earl must have too, as he hastened to say he was entirely at her disposal. At this point servants appeared with a tea service, silver stands of cake and trays of sweet wine. The ladies were comfortably seated, and Freddie gravitated towards the young men hanging over the Lady Sebastienne.
She looked up at Freddie with a charming and perfectly innocent smile. ‘My dear young sir, your colleagues have been quite shocking me as to what happens on the streets of Munich at mardi gras. I had no idea of the debauchery. I do hope you stayed free of it, like le bon curé, monsieur Dunbar.’
Frank Potts winked, as Freddie silently cursed the man. ‘I am afraid not, mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘my esteemed colleagues did little to prevent an inexperienced youth such as myself drinking far more than was good for me. I was lucky. Thankfully there were kind people out that night who took pity on me and made sure I got back to the embassy safely.’
‘I can certainly attest to poor Freddie’s state in the morning,’ grinned Dr Constable, ‘he was barely human.’
Perhaps because of the subtext in which he and this mysterious girl were talking, Freddie was unusually confident in company that evening. It was as if he was in the know, and his elders were not.
‘Mademoiselle, Frank and I were talking about monasteries in the city this morning. I believe he took my signs of interest as evidence I might go over to Rome. I understand there’s a particularly famous nunnery called ... er ... Saint James?’
He countered the sharp look up from the girl with the blandest of smiles. ‘Yes. Sankt Jakob am Anger. What of it?’ she responded curtly.
‘Pardon my Protestant ignorance. But is it possible for a male to enter and view their churches?’
‘Yes sir. Lay people can enter the churches at mass times, but otherwise it is courteous to request entry from the prioress in advance. Now Monsieur Carfax, I’m told you were at the British embassy in Strelsau for several years. We must have acquaintances in common ...’.
***
‘What were you playing at last night?’ Frank challenged Freddie as they set up for the morning’s work, which that day was to collect materials for Lord Burlesdon to use in drafting the first ambassadorial dispatch from Munich to London.
Freddie looked up from the big new ledger which had been bought as the embassy’s official register. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘You and the Wollherz girl seemed to have something going on.’
‘What me, the embassy innocent? What could I possibly know?’
Frank gave him a considering look. ‘Maybe we overdo the patronising, still what d’you expect? You’re only just twenty, Freddie, and a bit of a Tristram Shandy.’
‘So tell me why a sophisticated lady of the court might be interested in an accident-prone, rural hobbledehoy like me, then.’
‘So you admit she was,’ Frank insisted. ‘And there is the matter of your age. She can’t be more than eighteen, so you and she share your relative youth compared to us older fellows. But it’s not to flatter you to admit that you’re not a bad looker yourself, Freddie. Teasing a likely young lad might appeal to a certain sort of courtesan, it’s about the power of the unattainable over the desirous, isn’t it. It’s how Guinevere made Lancelot’s life a misery.’
‘Maybe. But you assume I’m interested. I thought I could rattle her with the reference to her hidey-hole amongst the nuns of St James, and I think I did. Also I’ve found out some more about her. Oddly, it was when I returned my horse to the stable.’ Freddie repeated his conversation with the stablemaster about the Wollherz family, to Frank’s intense interest.
‘That’s worth knowing. So she’s from the commercial aristocracy, the noblesse d’argent. A very unusual person to find attached to a royal court, I’d say, and it just adds to the mystery.’
‘It’s one I want to get to the bottom of if I have a chance, especially as that particular royal court is getting more and more tangled up with our lord and master.’
‘You’re right, Freddie, and it’s the sort of thing we signed up for.’
***
After nearly a month in the German lands, Freddie was beginning to get a grasp on using the language in his daily life, even without any formal teaching. He could navigate routine encounters with tradespeople by now, and knew the way to greet polite folk. His colleagues gave him fitful tutorials, the most patient and good-humoured of them being Philip Constable, the embassy physician.
They were sitting in what the doctor liked to call his ‘hospital’ in the rear wing of the embassy, where Philip kept his anatomical jars and books, including an articulated skeleton hung from a hook. Freddie was receiving German tuition on the parts of the body when a knock came at the door. It was Herr Abentauer with a note from His Excellency.
‘Well, here’s a thing Freddie. I have a genuine patient!’ said the doctor. ‘An Irish gentleman called Mr FitzEmond passing through Munich has been taken ill at the Goldene Gans on Unterer Anger. The innkeeper has heard there is now a British Embassy and the man is distressed for money, so he asks King George for help on both counts. I doubt King George would necessarily open his purse for the man, but I suppose I can attempt to doctor him for no charge. His Excellency upstairs believes the Irishman has a claim on us, so let me get my bag. Come along. And Goldene Gans means ...?’
‘The Golden Goose, Philip.’
‘Excellent, child. You’ll be able to spot the house sign when we get down there.’
‘Unterer Anger’ was outside the circuit of the medieval walls of Munich. The name meant ‘The Lower Meadows’, for this area south west of the city was once an unfortified suburb on the meadows which had been taken within the lines in the early seventeenth century. It included the medieval precinct of the convent of the Jakobskloster.
When they arrived they found a wide street down the middle of which ran a rather fetid open drain which issued out of the old city and seemed to carry a lot of its waste. The Golden Goose was on the other side of the way to the convent, several doors down from the Anger Tor. It did not look the most salubrious of hostels when they found it. The landlord however did seem more concerned than inconvenienced by his sick guest, and was grateful to the embassy for responding.
‘At a guess, young Freddie, I would suspect the nature of the disease in this unhealthy part of the town is likely to be feverish, so I would suggest you do not accompany me up to the room. Try your linguistic skills out on the landlord, who knows no English, and see if you can get an account of what the man owes him. I shall hope to find out from Mr FitzEmond what his destination is and what friends he may have there.’
Freddie found the landlord a friendly soul, and even friendlier when he began to have hopes that the embassy might help him recover his charges. Freddie bought a beer and he and Herr Ublick had quite an instructive conversation in which he felt he had made himself reasonably clear in German. But it was over long before Dr Constable had finished with his patient. So Freddie took a courteous leave of the landlord and wandered out on to the street, picked his way across a narrow bridge over the stinking drain and walked up the road and on to a lane which led to the convent gate, a pedimented arch in a high wall, which was open.
Within was a cobbled yard and the south face of the nave of the church was opposite the gate, an elaborate doorway being set in the central of its five tall bays. It seemed there was nothing to prevent his entry and so he pushed open the door, removed his hat and entered for the first time in his life into a Catholic church. It smelled very odd: mingled candle wax and a heavy perfumed scent which he assumed was incense. There was painted statuary everywhere and tall dark canvases of saints over the altars set against several pillars.
‘Idolatry,’ Freddie muttered, one of the words his father, the rector of Burlesdon, most frequently associated with Roman worship. Burlesdon church was by contrast spartan and whitewashed, crammed with box pews and galleries in dark wood, with no colour at all, apart from the painted royal arms set above the chancel arch. The only thing the two churches had in common was that they both possessed tall pulpits with sounding boards, but the pulpit here was a fantastic confection of carving and statuary, set high on Corinthian columns climbing most of the way to the vaulted roof, and its sounding board was like the baroque pinnacle of a church tower.
The east end of the church was blocked by a tall, carved wooden screen surmounted by the double case of an organ. Freddie hazarded a guess that beyond that was the church of the nuns, to which only they and their clergy had access. So he strolled the aisles and scrutinised the altars, each dedicated to a different saint, and tried to work out who each was from the portrayal on the canvas that backed it or from the sculpted and painted image set to one side. Most were women saints in nuns’ robes, though an exception was the only one for which he could hazard an identity: Mary Magdalene with her box of perfumed oil. Her altar and a couple of others had little stands of votive tapers lit up in front of them.
Freddie had satisfied his curiosity and was left wondering what on earth was Sebastienne Wollherz’s connection with this convent. Readying himself to leave he paused in his perambulation at the west end of the church, where a very elaborate marble font placed on several steps was situated. He climbed up and looked in to find it full of water, not empty and dry like the tub of the Norman font in Burlesdon church. The door of the church creaked open at that point, and feeling embarrassed for some reason Freddie leapt down to the floor and moved briskly to conceal himself behind an aisle pillar, as if he were a burglar caught in the act.
Feeling very foolish, he surreptitiously looked round the pillar. Two military officers had entered the church and were pacing towards the east end in low conversation. One was an elderly gentleman in a white periwig and fur-trimmed cloak, whose rich frogging rather hinted he was in fact a very senior officer. The other was a short and slim young fellow without a cloak, in a white uniform coat faced with red, with enough gold lace to indicate he had rank of his own; perhaps he was an adjutant. He was in top boots, a sword was at his waist and his dark hair was his own, tied back in a queue with a wide black silk ribbon.
The two officers paused at the altar set against the easternmost pillar on the south. They paused for a while as if in prayer and when they moved on several new lights had been lit before its image, that of a nun in white robes, a pair of children clinging to her skirts. The pair took seats on a stone bench in the aisle and carried on their conversation for some minutes, then walked back up the nave and headed out again. This time their faces were towards Freddie, and as they turned to leave there was no mistaking the handsome profile of the younger officer. It was unquestionably that of Sebastienne Wollherz.
Could that damned girl not cease to confuse and astound him? Freddie had never heard of the like. Sebastienne was living a double life, or was she a boy? What if she were in fact a male whose perversion was to dress up and live as a girl. But whichever guise she appeared in, she was convincing. The voice was maybe the only giveaway, a little too throaty for a girl’s and yet too light for a boy’s. What was the word? Hermaphrodite. Neither one thing nor the other. Then in which guise had she swallowed his cock? Had he been having sex with another boy or with a girl? And did he care that much which it was?
Eventually Freddie left the church and made his way back to the Golden Goose, where he found Dr Constable impatiently looking round for him outside the inn. He only half attended to the doctor’s account of Mr FitzEmond, who was an expatriate travelling from Paris to Vienna and appeared to have a touch of the slow fever. The doctor believed he had brought it to Munich with him, but he still must inform the city authorities. Bad news for Herr Ublick, nonetheless. The doctor would recommend that at least the embassy settle FitzEmond’s bills in the city, which pleased Freddie. He took notes of what the doctor had learned about the Irishman, and duly added them to the day book when he got back to the clerks’ office.
***
James was becoming increasingly intrigued as his invitation to dinner with his Rothenian relatives came closer. How personally or officially should he treat it? The morning before he called Teddie Carfax to the library.
‘Tell me what you know about the current state of relations between the Elphberg and Ruritanid courts, Teddie,’ he asked.
‘You mean how friendly they are? I don’t know about the new duke, but the first John Casimir and King Rudolf were cordial, being both cousins and brothers-in-law. It was a legacy of the marriage of Willem Stanislas IV and Princess Dorothea Sophia, Rudolf’s aunt. There was a time when old Duke Staszek and Dorothea were more or less happily resident in Strelsau in the time of Rudolf II. It cooled a lot in Henry the Lion’s reign, and things remained distant even though old Staszek rallied to young Rudolf in the succession crisis of ’39. The low point was in the few years Willem Stanislas V was duke, but when John Casimir succeeded his brother things looked up. Princess Osra Madeleine was adored as much in Glottenburg as Strelsau, and John Casimir and his brother-in-law were genuinely friendly.’
‘But John Casimir II ...?’
‘He’s a bit of a blank, my lord. The news about the dower dispute isn’t encouraging, and there’s always the legitimacy question. The Ruritanids won’t ever let go their claim to be the genuine dukes of the Rothenians, with a direct male line of descent from old Ruric himself. In the bad old days of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was an open invitation to every discontented Rothenian nobleman to rebel in favour of the dukes in Glottenburg against the dukes in Strelsau, who inherited through the female line. The inheritance was perfectly legitimate. The Salic law never applied to Old Rothenia, but the charisma of Ruric’s blood was toxic to the Elphberg succession. And now there’s the Rothenian question.’
‘Perhaps you can explain, Teddie.’
‘It’s a question of identity, sir. The German element of the population is stronger in Ruritania, the western Rothenian lands, and it became dominant under the rule of the German Elphbergs. The Slavic nobility there Germanised itself, like the Tarlenheims did, sir. Actually they’re an ancient Slavic house, Rothenian through and through despite the choice of German baptismal names. And naturally enough the court of Glottenburg as being opposed to the Elphbergs was less friendly to German and more friendly to the native culture, which has revived in both lands since the last century.
‘Many saw the baptism of your aunt as “Osra” to be significant. It’s an old Rothenian name, the same as was carried by the last ruler of all the Rothenians, the Duchess Osra who married Rudolf Elphberg over three centuries ago. It’s the first explicit recognition by the Elphbergs that they see themselves as a Rothenian family, and many in the aristocracy have taken their cue from it. Rudolf III has copied the Glottenburger custom of delivering the pensk pozechnen at the conclusion of a court. It’s a Slavic blessing given by the ancient dukes as fathers of their people to any assembly. On one level it’s political. It contests the Glottenburg legitimacy claim amongst Rothenian speakers. But it’s also a genuine response to the rise of Rothenian culture across its divided lands, and here your aunt is a major player. Both she and her brother the king were brought up to speak Rothenian, and while Rothenian had always been the main language of the court in Glottenburg, German ceased to be used at all there under her and John Casimir.’
James pondered this as he played with his paper knife. He looked up and thanked Teddie. ‘Very instructive,’ he said. ‘It puts a new light for me on the place. It’s rather like the way Erse and Welsh have been resurrected by scholars and native aristocrats back home in Britain, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yes my lord, though frankly I would say that the Rothenian Question has more potential for unrest than the cases you mention. There are now many people, both Ruritanian and Glottenburger, who would like to see Rothenia as one land again. But which family would they unite under?’
***
Princess Osra was occupying a rather large house to the west of the Poor Clare convent in the Anger district. As James descended from his carriage he wondered whether she had rented or borrowed it for the duration of her stay. The servants at the door wore a red livery, not the olive green of the Elphbergs or dark green of the dukes of Glottenburg. To his surprise he was greeted in the entrance hall by Sebastienne Wollherz, who welcomed him to the house in a way that indicated this in fact was her home.
‘Indeed, your excellency,’ she said when he asked, ‘this property was bought by my grandfather, who did a lot of business in the city, though we’re a Ruritanian family. I was schooled at the Clare convent just around the corner till the age of fourteen, for my father, who is now the second Baron von Stock, resided in Munich for a good number of years before he came into the estate.’
‘So you are not in fact attached to the Elphberg court?’
The girl smiled. ‘My connections are more to do with Glottenburg, sir. And I was in fact the princess’s maid of honour at the court there before the death of the late duke. We were very happy to loan her this house till final arrangements have been concluded for her future, when it was deemed politic for her to leave Glottenburg after the first period of mourning. Now, your excellency, do come through to the reception room, as dinner is a little delayed while we await our other guests.’
The Princess Osra Madeleine was standing awaiting him at the mantelpiece alongside Prince Henry. ‘Welcome, dear nephew,’ she smiled, ‘and it does my heart good to be able to say that openly.’
James bowed to kiss the princess’s hand. ‘And I also to be so addressed, aunt. I have not much family in my life, but Heinz has been a true brother to me for years now.’
‘Not at all, Jimmy,’ Henry laughed, ‘we don’t squabble, fight over toys and conspire against each other to win our parents’ favour. Not like brothers at all.’
‘He is a cynic, aunt,’ James laughed back. ‘But I love him, and he keeps me in balance. Did he tell you what he got up to on his last visit to Burlesdon?’
‘Ah ... was this the perilous expedition to find ... what are they called in English ... moss balls? If you’re anything like me, my dear James, you would not have seen the romance.’
Henry feigned a wounded look. ‘Barbarians both. Is it nothing to you that Cladophora aegagropila has only otherwise been found on the other side of the world in the kingdom of Japan, where the Jesuits first found and catalogued it?’
‘Aunt, this is the man who deplores his own native land because it is deficient in marshlands and swamps.’ He paused. ‘May I ask if your intention is to return to Ruritania when all is settled?’
‘That is the plan, James. Though precisely how it is to be done is yet to be worked out. However, your father the king is urging me to. He has already designated for my occupation in Strelsau the Vesterborg palace, which was formerly the house of the Duchess of Zenda, and has been unoccupied since her death in ’57, when she left it to the royal estate. Rudolf is having it rebuilt in hopes I’ll take up the offer.’
‘Do you have other plans?’
The princess smiled and gave a slight shrug. ‘There are other possibilities, but they very much depend on the success of Friday’s meeting at the Residenz, on which I shall say no more at present.’
There was a bustle in the entrance hall as other arrivals were admitted.
‘Ah Jimmy!’ declared Henry. ‘Here’s the fellow!’
Though it was not a formal dinner, a red-coated chamberlain nonetheless entered and announced ceremoniously in French: ‘Son altesse sereine, le prince François de Tarlenheim, général feldmareschal de la Sainte Empire!’ and then turned to bow as the great man passed into the room.
‘Franz! A delight!’ said the princess and walked to meet the distinguished old man, who bowed low over her hand and kissed it. ‘Do come and meet my new nephew.’
She brought him over to James and the prince took his hand. ‘So it’s Rudolf’s other boy, and don’t you have the look of your father, sir. A great pleasure to meet you at last, not that Henry hasn’t been singing your praises to me for several years. I almost feel I know you, and here you are as a British ambassador in the Empire, so I am delighted that I can get to know you in truth.’
The old man made a very good impression. Like all the best military men he radiated frankness and intelligence. He was tall and evidently very fit, not having run to a great belly as so many others of his age, class and profession did.
The field marshal had been followed in by a junior officer, and James momentarily found it odd that he had brought his aide with him to a private dinner, but then he saw the youth’s face.
‘Ah, your excellency, may I introduce Captain the Baron Sebastian Wollherz von Stock of the Leibgarde of the King of Ruritania. I believe you don’t need to have him introduced as our hostess’s twin brother.’
It took a moment for James to master his astonishment. The faces of brother and sister were perfectly identical.