Magic Flutes

One last task, then: to take the Lily to Pfaffenstein and give it to Martha Hodge. Thank heavens she would not have to get out of the train, not have to see the castle en fête for the wedding; not have to meet Nerine, hanging with proud ownership on to Guy’s arm. Martha had promised to be waiting on the platform, and all Tessa would have to do was lean out of the train, hand over the heirloom and continue her journey to Vienna.

‘You’ll know me all right,’ Martha had written in reply to Tessa’s letter, ‘for I’m as broad as I’m long! But to make sure, I’ll wear my navy coat and skirt and my fox fur.’

The train had left the plain and the great, grey lake and was climbing past vineyards pruned for winter, past chequered fields, into the hills. Her own country, now: fir woods mantling green slopes, glittering rivers tumbling through ravines and high on the horizon, a constant pearly cloud that revealed itself breathtakingly as the first of the snow peaks.

An hour later, the train puffed into the station that served Pfaffenstein. Tessa had lowered the window and was leaning out eagerly, the casket in her hand. An old man with a basket of eggs climbed into the third-class carriage at the back; a young man and a black-clad woman with two children got out but the platform itself was curiously empty. Certainly no one as broad as they were long – no one at all now that the passengers had dispersed, which was strange because Anton, the station master, nearly always came out to have a quick chat with the driver.

Uncertainly, she opened the door of her compartment and stepped down. Martha had promised. The dates and times in her letter were perfectly clear. Already, doors were slamming again and the wheezing engine was giving its pre-departure squeaks. Then, running along the platform, came Steffi, the postmaster’s ferret-faced son, the only one of the five boys who had turned out badly.

‘Your Highness!’ He touched his cap. ‘There’s a message from the English gentleman’s foster-mother. She’s ill. She can’t come.’

‘Oh, dear!’

A minute in which to act. To anyone else in the village she could have entrusted the Lily, but not to Steffi who had already been in trouble with the police.

Nothing for it, then . . . Quickly, she took out her small portmanteau, shut the door of her compartment and stood ruefully watching the train draw out. A few minutes later, she had pushed open the white wicket gate which led from the station enclosure and set off on the path along the lake.

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.’