The Lightstep (20 page)

Lady Jenz declared once again that it was very bad.
Nevertheless she allowed herself to be manoeuvred to a card
table, with an ill grace. She must have suspected all along that her
hostess would abandon her that evening. No doubt she would
have liked to break with convention herself, but she knew – and
perhaps this was what truly rankled with her – that she had
neither the wit nor the character to imitate Lady Adelsheim
without seeming ridiculous.

To be truly free, Maria thought, one must free oneself early,
and live so ever after. There was no hope now for Lady Jenz, who
had ambled placidly within the hedges of convention all her life.

Maria should have taken the fourth hand herself. It would
have been proper. But instead she summoned Anna to the table
with her eyes, and partnered her with the good-humoured
Lady Machting. Father was still on the settee, Karl von Uhnen
on the stool, and the space that she had abandoned lay
between them. When she looked more closely she realized that
Father was asleep. So for the moment she was indeed free – at
least within the confines of the drawing room. She could
entertain herself as she chose. And she chose her entertainment
with a purpose.

Karl was craning round at the double doors. He must be
wondering what was brewing in there. He looked back and raised
an eyebrow at her.

'Perhaps you, too, would enjoy a hand of cards, sir?' she asked.

'Gladly,' he said.

'We are watching, you two love-birds,' said Lady Machting,
from her seat at the card table. 'You must behave yourselves!'

Karl frowned. Maria smiled. She meant her smile as a
challenge. She did not want Karl to follow the other men. He
could be pleasant company for her. But better still, he had a
convenient habit of playing for high stakes.

She signed to Dietrich for another table and pack. They came,
with the automatic efficiency of a cripple's stick clicking into
place to support another stride. She settled to her place.

'A gulden to a point?' she suggested.

'That makes it worth the play' he agreed.

The room had fallen quiet. Beyond the double doors a voice
was speaking, but in tones so low that there was no hope of hearing
what was said. Cards were already flicking to and fro on the
other table. She returned her attention to the young man
opposite her. She would start by shocking him a little.

'I am to go to Mainz next week,' she said.

'Are you!'

'Indeed. And beyond it into the occupied territory Anna is
visiting her cousins there.'

She had allowed Mother to exult over the passport for an
hour. Then she had sent Anna in to see her, equipped with the latest
letter from the Jürichs. In less than five minutes Lady Adelsheim had
given her consent. House servants who had scurried to prepare
these rooms today, would be scurrying to engage a coach, horses,
additional trunks and travelling gear tomorrow.

Provided that there was money. Not even in her triumph had
Mother slackened her grip on the purse. Funds for the journey
must come from Anna's and Maria's allowances. These were not
adequate, whatever Mother might think. And Maria knew that if
she went begging to Mother for money now she would only risk
having the precious consent withdrawn again. There would have
to be another way.

A gulden a point . . .

She must not think about losing.

'This is – most adventurous!'

'I own that I am more nervous than I expected.'

'I must say that I wonder whether it is wise.'

She looked at him sharply.

He shrugged. 'Oh! No, I meant only that the Emperor has not
yet concluded his peace with France. The fate of the Rhineland
is not yet clear. Anything may yet happen.'

'That is no concern of ours,' she said firmly.

'Mainz . . . From all I have heard, I am glad I had no part in
that affair.'

Affair? thought Maria.

Oh, he meant the siege. Why was everyone so obsessed with
sieges at the moment? Come, Karl. You should pay attention to
me,
now, since I have been so good as to put myself in your way
for the evening!

His eyes had swung to the window. From the street below
came the sounds of a cart passing. Voices called cheerfully, with
words that did not quite carry. The sounds reminded Maria how
many people there were in the houses around her. And beyond
this street there were a hundred others in Erzberg, where people
passed and called and dined in their houses while the dusk grew
outside: people, people all around them, and every one of them
striving, like her, to love, laugh, live and be a little bit free. And
still Karl stared at the window, as if he thought to see a cannonball
crashing inward in a cloud of dust and plaster.

And rumours thickened around the presence of d'Erles and
the other émigrés. The men talked of sieges. Mother's criticism
of the Prince just now had been far louder and sharper than ever
before. Then they all retreated to inner rooms and spoke behind
closed doors.

She suppressed her thoughts, and waited.

At last Karl looked back, and with a smile he said,
'Nevertheless, a siege may be instructive.'

'How so?'

'Why, it shows that if you are persistent in the pursuit of your
objective, in the end you may be met with surrender.' And he
smiled more broadly at her.

(So, he was bold now! But this was better than gloom. She had
business to do here. And she would use every advantage she could
to get what she needed.)

'Surrender?' she responded, lingering on the word. 'Why do
you insist upon surrender? Will you not treat with your foe upon
even terms?'

'That depends on whether the objective may be so obtained.
But the greater the prize, the greater you must expect the
struggle to be. I think of Troy, with the beautiful Helen as the
reward . . .'

'I believe it is your lead, sir,' she said brightly.

A gulden a point was enough to keep their minds on the play.
But while he was reckoning the score she teased him by looking
away across the room, allowing him to throw glance after glance
at her in a vain effort to catch her eye.

He held out the cards to her. His fingers lay upon them in
such a way that she might, if she wished, brush them with hers as
she took the pack from him. And she looked at them for a
moment, with her head cocked on one side, and then carefully
took them without touching him, but with an air that said that
next
time, perhaps, she might choose to do so.

She dealt. She gathered her cards and studied them. It was a
difficult hand.

There was nothing she could discard without risk. And yet
she must discard. The diamonds were the least likely to help her.
They must go. After that, what?

Resolutely she threw away her hearts and drew five more
cards. Her hand was a cloud of the black suits. Very well.

'I have a point of six,' she said.

'Good,' came the reply.

Nothing else was good. Not her tierce, not her three queens.
Both were overpowered by his hand. Then, when it came to the
tricks, she made only her six clubs and the ace of spades. After
that his red suits swept her hand away. The score was nearly even,
but she should have done better. Now it was his turn to have the
advantage.

'My heart suit conquered,' he said. 'I am encouraged.'

'You should not be,' she murmured.

'If a man's hearts are true in his hand, then perhaps the heart
in his breast is true also. I wonder if it is the same with a woman.
Or do they always prefer the diamonds?'

She frowned.

'Sir, my suits were black,' she said.

'But they will not be so forever.'

'Sir,' she said, quite sharply. 'I shall play as I wish.'

And cut, and deal. And declare, play, and then there would be
more banter. Card-play was like a dance. It had the same
inevitability. Both went through prescribed figures, turn in, turn
out . . . Who was it who had said to her that a dance was like a
courtship? It was apt. Although she remembered that the dance
they had been speaking of was the Lightstep. In the Lightstep
there was no partner, only a candle – an undisclosed hope in the
hand. Now she remembered who it had been: Michel Wéry.

Something in her heart kicked at the thought.

Something kicked, and she saw that she was in chains. She
might dream of travels, or of handsome young men. She might
even dream, as suddenly she longed to, of someone low-born,
unpolished and deadly, who dealt in secret things and would deal
with her. Yet after every night's dreaming she would wake to find
herself the possession of a fine house, able to come and go only
at the behest of others, and destined to be wed to poor, pathetic
cousin Julius. She might win little victories in her drawing room,
but she was no more free to move outside it than a dancer was
free to alter the dance.

And she was not winning. She knew she was the better player,
and that in the long run she would come out ahead of Karl. But
the game turned on luck and now, just when she needed it, the
luck was not good. The hands held no promise. She must throw
away cards that were valuable and the cards she drew were not the
ones she wanted. The score was mounting. The Rhine was
getting further away. And still she smiled brightly and flashed her
eyes at him and kept up the little bouts of banter, while she
waited for the luck to change.

Another hand ended. She looked up. She saw Karl watching
her. And she saw what she was doing to him.

His mild brown eyes were fixed on her. They were pleading
with her, just as they had last summer in the orangery at
Effenpanz when he had gone down on his knees to her on the
blue-arid-white tiled floor.'
You must allow me to say this . . . I adore
you, Maria. I cannot think of anything else. Sometimes I do not even
remember to eat
. . .' It had been painful to hear him. It was painful
to see him now. His feelings had not changed. Why in Heaven
had she expected them to? And because she was flirting with
him, he was beginning to hope once more. In a moment, in a
murmur, he would tell her so.

Oh, there would be no need to approach Mother to fund her
losses to Karl. (Losses! There, she had thought it now. Adieu, the
Rhine!) He would allow her all the time she asked for to pay her
debt. He would never mention it. He would carry it all his life, if
she allowed it, and absolve her of it on his deathbed. It would
always be there between them, like the words she had spoken at
Effenpanz. And in his eyes the nobility with which he endured it
would only strengthen his right to her. It would be a reproach to
her, a final, unanswerable argument why she should turn to him
at last.

How could she have been so blind?

He had caught her look. He was leaning forward. She dropped
her eyes.

'May I say something?' he said, in a low voice.

'Not yet,' she said, holding up her hand and looking hard at
her cards.

A weak pretence. She had won herself only seconds. In an
instant she must look up again, and he would speak.

And then rescue came. Father woke on the settee. He heaved
himself upright and looked around, making a slight grumbling
noise in his throat like a sleepy, embroidered bear. His eyes
wandered dully around the room, absorbing the lights,
the servants, the party of women. He had no memory of the
gathering. He was wondering what they were all doing here.

He saw her, and his face split into a beam of childish
pleasure.

It warmed her like the sun, that smile. It told her, whatever she
did and whoever she disappointed, that the biggest, kindest and
most important man left in her life loved her, and was pleased that
she was near.

Then he saw what she was doing.

'Cards!' he said.

'It is piquet, Father,' she said. 'Do you wish to play? If so, you
must take my hand. I am losing; you must come to my aid.'

Karl von Uhnen looked startled. She smiled a hostess's smile
that fixed him in his seat, and rose smoothly to let her father lever
himself into her place.

'The gentleman is a very good player, Father,' she murmured.

'Is he? So, so. My major?'

'You are minor, father. And the gentleman approaches his
hundred.'

'Ah.'

Dutifully, Karl picked up his cards. If the woman he adored
required him to play with her demented father, then he would
play, whatever came of it. She saw him glance across, and register
that the old gentleman could at least still hold his hand straight.
Then he looked up expectantly at her, standing behind her
father's chair. Perhaps he thought she would give the old man
hints. She would do nothing of the kind.

It only needed the luck to change. If it was set on dogging
Maria all evening, might it not smile on Father instead? Of course
there was no reason why it should. But Luck and Reason were
enemies after all . . .

Karl exchanged only four cards. Father took the remaining
four. They went through the declarations, Father rumbling his
answers, 'Not good . . . Good . . . Not good . . .' and proceeded to
the play. Maria watched Karl's face as the tricks fell. She saw him
understand that, addled or not, there was still a part of his host's
mind that knew the game.

Indeed he knew. He brooded over his cards like Jove looking
down from Olympus. His eyes never left them, even when he
spoke. His big fingers moved as if of their own will, playing the
cards flick, flick, flick
with barely a pause between. And his score
lengthened, and the tricks lined up before him. Maria let her
fingers rest upon his shoulder, and watched.

And she loved him. She loved to see him like this, with his
mind ruling the things that it could still rule. He had woken
when she needed him, like some ancient knight from an
enchanted sleep in a cave. And although so much had been lost,
and so much had turned to bitterness, he was still her champion
– a champion she had almost forgotten – ready to rise and do
battle for her in a world that was altogether changed.