Magic Flutes

Hearing the name, the pug shot like a squeezed pip from his golden cope and began to run round the room yapping excitedly, causing Guy to exchange an apprehensive glance with his secretary. If Putzerl was the name of the little dog they were in trouble.

The danger passed. For Putzerl, as the ladies now explained, was the great-niece in Vienna, more precisely the Princess of Pfaffenstein and (her mother having been an archduchess) of quite a few other places, and now the sole and legal owner of the castle with its dairies, sawmills, brewery, villages, salt-mine (now defunct) and 56,627 hectares of land.

‘Because, you see, when her father went off to fight he managed to break the entail on the male heir and a great fuss it was. He had to go and see poor cousin Pippi in the end,’ said the Margravine.

‘But we’re certain she’ll agree. She’s been urging us to sell. Putzerl is extremely modern,’ said the Duchess. ‘And of course the money will be invaluable for her dowry because poor Maxi really doesn’t have a kreutzer to bless himself with.’

The dizzying capacity of the Austrians to refer to absolutely everybody by some appalling diminutive or nickname, which Guy had forgotten, now returned to his mind. Having gathered that cousin Pippi was Pope Pius XV, he was now informed, though he had been careful not to ask, that Maxi (alias Maximilian Ferdinand, Prince of Spittau and Neusiedel) was the young man they had picked for Putzerl to marry, there being – owing to the cruel war and the sordid revolutions in various places which had followed it – quite simply no one else.

‘The Gastini-Bernardi boy would have done quite well, actually,’ said the Duchess, on whom the thought of Maxi seemed to be working adversely. ‘But he’s dead. And I must say there always seems to be cholera in Trieste.’

‘Or Schweini,’ said the Margravine, her voice soft. ‘Such a sweet-looking boy.’

‘Don’t be silly, Tilda. The Trautenstaufers only have twelve quarterings.’

‘Still, they’re in the Almanach . . .’

The argument that followed seemed a little pointless since Schweini, though destined for the Uhlans, had apparently been speared to death by one of his own boars before he could cover himself with glory. Guy, while not wishing to appear indifferent to Putzerl’s matrimonial prospects, now felt free to indicate that he would like to look round the castle.

If he had hoped that he and David would be allowed to roam at will, his hopes were dashed. The retainer was rung for, the pug lowered on to the ground again; shawls, walking sticks and bunches of keys were fetched and the expedition set off.

Within ten minutes Guy realized that Pffaffenstein, inside and out, was exactly what he had been looking for. Its neglect, though spectacular, was recent. In the three months he had set aside for the task he could easily restore it to its former splendour. The huge, baroque state rooms with their breathtaking views over the lake were ideal for his purpose; the guest rooms in the loggia were sound and the outer courtyards with their stables, coachhouses and servants’ quarters would house his workmen without inconveniencing the villagers. Above all, the private theatre with its aquamarine curtains, gilded boxes and ceiling frescoes by Tiepolo was a jewel which would be the perfect setting for the entertainment that was to set the seal on his plans.

But if he had seen enough to satisfy himself almost at once, there was no way of hurrying the ladies.

‘This,’ announced the Duchess unnecessarily as they entered a low building piled from floor to ceiling with skulls, ‘is the charnel house.’

‘Those skulls on the right are from the Black Death,’ said the Margravine helpfully.

‘And the ones on the left are Protestants,’ said the Duchess, murmuring, as she recalled the probable Anglicanism of Guy and his secretary, that there had been a ‘little bit of trouble’ during the Thirty Years War.

But it was before a lone skull displayed on a plinth in a kind of bird-cage and still boasting fragments of a mummified ear, that both ladies stopped with an especial pride.

‘Putzerl found this one when she climbed out through the dungeons on to the south face, the naughty girl.’

‘She believes it’s a Turk and we never had the heart to contradict her, though it is most unlikely. The Turks were all impaled on the eastern wall.’

‘We think it was probably a commercial traveller who came to see her great-grandfather.’

‘About saddle soap,’ put in the Margravine.

‘He came by the front entrance, you see. And poor Rudi was always so impulsive.’