Left alone, he sank into the chair by the fire, closed his eyes, and tried to compose himself sufficiently to think. The conversation with Tom had at least allowed him a little distance, from which to contemplate matters with the princess and Stephan—save that they didn’t bear contemplation.
He felt mildly nauseated, and sat up to pour a glass of plum brandy from the decanter on the table. That helped, settling both his stomach and his mind.
He sat slowly sipping it, gradually bringing his mental faculties to bear on the less personal aspects of the situation.
Tom’s discoveries cast a new and most interesting light on matters. If Grey had ever believed in the existence of a succubus—and he was sufficiently honest to admit that there had been moments, both in the graveyard and in the dark-flickering halls of the Schloss—he believed no longer.
The attempted kidnapping was plainly the work of some human agency, and the revelation of the relationship between the two Koenigs—the vanished nursemaid and her dead husband—just as plainly indicated that the death of Private Koenig was part of the same affair, no matter what hocus-pocus had been contrived around it.
Grey’s father had died when he was twelve, but had succeeded in instilling in his son his own admiration for the philosophy of reason. In addition to the concept of Occam’s razor, his father had also introduced him to the useful doctrine of cui bono.
The plainly obvious answer there was the princess Louisa. Granting for the present that the gossip was true, and that Koenig had fathered little Siegfried…the last thing the woman could want was for Koenig to return and hang about where awkward resemblances could be noted.
He had no idea of the German law regarding paternity. In England, a child born in wedlock was legally the offspring of the husband, even when everyone and the dog’s mother knew that the wife had been openly unfaithful. By such means, several gentlemen of his acquaintance had children, even though he was quite sure that the men had never even thought of sharing their wives’ beds. Had Stephan perhaps—
He caught that thought by the scruff of the neck and shoved it aside. Besides, if the miniaturist had been faithful, Stephan’s son was the spitting image of his father. Though painters naturally would produce what image they thought most desired by the patron, in spite of the reality—
He picked up the glass and drank from it until he felt breathless and his ears buzzed.
“Koenig,” he said firmly, aloud. Whether the gossip was true or not—and having kissed the princess, he rather thought it was; no shrinking violet, she!—and whether or not Koenig’s reappearance might threaten Siggy’s legitimacy, the man’s presence must certainly have been unwelcome.
Unwelcome enough to have arranged his death?
Why, when he would be gone again soon? The troops were likely to move within the week—surely within the month. Had something happened that made the removal of Private Koenig urgent? Perhaps Koenig himself had been in ignorance of Siegfried’s parentage—and upon discovering the boy’s resemblance to himself on his visit to the castle, determined to extort money or favor from the princess?
And bringing the matter full circle…had the entire notion of the succubus been introduced merely to disguise Koenig’s death? If so, how? The rumor had seized the imagination of both troops and townspeople to a marked extent—and Koenig’s death had caused it to reach the proportions of a panic—but how had that rumor been started?
He dismissed that question for the moment, as there was no rational way of dealing with it. As for the death, though…
He could without much difficulty envision the princess Louisa conspiring in the death of Koenig; he had noticed before that women were quite without mercy where their offspring were concerned. Still…the princess had presumably not entered a soldier’s quarters and done a man to death with her own lily-white hands.
Who had done it? Someone with great ties of loyalty to the princess, presumably. Though, upon second thought, it need not have been anyone from the castle. Gundwitz was not the teeming boil that London was, but the town was still of sufficient size to sustain a reasonable number of criminals; one of these could likely have been induced to perform the actual murder—if it was a murder, he reminded himself. He must not lose sight of the null hypothesis, in his eagerness to reach a conclusion.
And further…even if the princess had in some way contrived both the rumor of the succubus and the death of Private Koenig—who was the witch in Siggy’s room? Had someone truly tried to abduct the child? Private Koenig was already dead; clearly he could have had nothing to do with it.
He ran a hand through his hair, rubbing his scalp slowly to assist thought.
Loyalties. Who was most loyal to the princess? Her butler? Stephan?
He grimaced, but examined the thought carefully. No. There were no circumstances conceivable under which Stephan would have conspired in the murder of one of his own men. Grey might be in doubt of many things concerning the Hanoverian, but not his honor.
This led back to the princess’s behavior toward himself. Did she act from attraction? Grey was modest about his own endowments, but also honest enough to admit that he possessed some and that his person was reasonably attractive to women.
He thought it more likely, if the princess had indeed conspired in Koenig’s removal, that her actions toward himself were intended as distraction. Though there was yet another explanation. One of the minor corollaries to Occam’s razor that he had himself derived suggested that quite often, the observed result of an action really was the intended end of that action. The end result of that encounter in the hallway was that Stephan von Namtzen had discovered him in embrace with the princess, and been noticeably annoyed by said discovery.
Had Louisa’s motive been the very simple one of making von Namtzen jealous?
And if Stephan was jealous…of whom? And what, if anything, did Bodger’s death have to do with any of this?
The room had grown intolerably stuffy, and he rose, restless, and went to the window, unlatching the shutters. The moon was full, a great, fecund yellow orb that hung low above the darkened fields and cast its light over the slated roofs of Gundwitz and the paler sea of canvas tents that lay beyond.
Did Ruysdale’s troops sleep soundly tonight, exhausted from their healthful exercise? He felt as though he would profit from such exercise himself. He braced himself in the window frame and pushed, feeling the muscles pop in his arms, envisioning escape into that freshening night, running naked and silent as a wolf, soft earth cool, yielding to his feet.
Cold air rushed past his body, raising the coarse hairs on his skin, but his core felt molten. Between the heat of fire and brandy, the nightshirt’s original grateful warmth had become oppressive; sweat bloomed upon his body, and the woolen cloth hung limp upon him.
Suddenly impatient, he stripped it off, and stood in the open window, fierce and restless, the cold air caressing his nakedness.
There was a whir and rustle in the ivy nearby, and then something—several somethings—passed in absolute silence so close and so swiftly by his face that he had not even time to start backward, though his heart leapt to his throat, strangling his involuntary cry.
Bats. The creatures had disappeared in an instant, long before his startled mind had collected itself sufficiently to put a name to them.
He leaned out, searching, but the bats had disappeared at once into the dark, swift about their hunting. It was no wonder that legends of succubi abounded, in a place so bat-haunted. The behavior of the creatures indeed seemed supernatural.
The bounds of the small chamber seemed at once intolerably confining. He could imagine himself some demon of the air, taking wing to haunt the dreams of a man, seize upon a sleeping body and ride it—could he fly as far as England? he wondered. Was the night long enough?
The trees at the edge of the garden tossed uneasily, stirred by the wind. The night itself seemed tormented by an autumn restlessness, the sense of things moving, changing, fermenting.
His blood was still hot, having now reached a sort of full, rolling boil, but there was no outlet for it. He did not know whether Stephan’s anger was on his own behalf—or Louisa’s. In neither case, though, could he make any open demonstration of feeling toward von Namtzen now; it was too dangerous. He was unsure of the German attitude toward sodomites, but felt it unlikely to be more forgiving than the English stance. Whether stolid Protestant morality or a wilder Catholic mysticism—he cast a brief look at the reliquary—neither was likely to have sympathy with his own predilections.
The mere contemplation of revelation and the loss of its possibility, though, had shown him something important.
Stephan von Namtzen both attracted and aroused him, but it was not because of his own undoubted physical qualities. It was, rather, the degree to which those qualities reminded Grey of James Fraser.
Von Namtzen was nearly the same height as Fraser, a powerful man with broad shoulders, long legs, and an instantly commanding presence. However, Stephan was heavier, more crudely constructed, and less graceful than the Scot. And while Stephan warmed Grey’s blood, the fact remained that the Hanoverian did not burn his heart like living flame.
He lay down finally upon his bed, and put out the candle. Lay watching the play of firelight on the walls, seeing not the flicker of wood flame, but the play of sun upon red hair, the sheen of sweat on a pale bronzed body…
A brief and brutal dose of Mr. Keegan’s remedy left him drained, if not yet peaceful. He lay staring upward into the shadows of the carved wooden ceiling, able at least to think once more.
The only conclusion of which he was sure was that he needed very much to talk to someone who had seen Koenig’s body.