The Lightstep (37 page)

'I do not want to talk,' she said bluntly.

'I know that,' said Franz, and gawked out of the other window
at the leading coach, which carried Father, Mother and Anna, and
also Icht, so that Lady Adelsheim would have someone to
converse with during the day.

At length the grooms stirred the horses, and the coaches
lumbered into motion. Maria stared hard at the house front as it
rolled past, as if she could hook herself to it with her eyes,
Dietrich, Johann, Pirenne and the other servants drawn up at the
door. She wondered if she would ever see them again. She
wondered, too, what instructions Lady Adelsheim had given to
them should the French come. Very likely she had told them
to count the spoons!

They crossed the bridges, climbed to the Church of Saint
Simeon, and passed on down the broad Bamberg Way towards the
eastern gate of the city. There they were halted and soldiers asked
to see their papers. Maria prayed that they would be turned back.
Her hopes grew when she heard her mother beginning to protest
to the officer from the window of the leading coach.

'I beg your pardon, my Lady,' came the officer's voice. 'It's the
siege, you see.'

'There is no siege,' said Lady Adelsheim. 'And, Captain, I am
not used to being treated this way.'

'I beg your pardon, my Lady, but we have our orders.'

'Do not speak to me of your orders. I see no sense in them. I
see no sense in what you are doing on these walls, sir. Your duty
is folly, Captain, and I think your uniform a butcher's apron.'

'Damn her,' muttered Maria aloud. 'I am going to scream.'

Franz gave her a startled look. Then he went back to leaning
out of the window.

The grooms must have found the papers, for the voices sank
to murmurs. Maria sat, fists clenched, waiting for more
expostulations from her mother. There were none. Perhaps Anna
had managed to soothe her. Perhaps she was simply preparing her
next salvo.

The next salvo did not come. There were friendly calls ahead,
and suddenly the sound of the leading coach beginning to move.
The next moment their own followed it. They passed out of the
city. Goodbye, thought Maria, looking at the faces of the soldiers
and the last few people at the roadside.

Goodbye. We are abandoning you. I cannot ask you to forgive
us.

The faces were gone. No one called after them.

'How far is it now?' asked Franz sullenly.

She was silent for a moment longer. And then she realized that
with Franz there was no point.

'It will be most of the day,' she said. 'You must be patient. We
are going to spend the night at Adelsheim. If we stop before that,
it will only be for horses.' She supposed that there were still
horses to be found on the roads that ran to war.

Franz's face brightened. 'Can I go riding when we get there?'

'It will be dark.'

The roads were busy. They passed cart after cart heading for
the city. Some were in trains with what must have been supplies
for the garrison. Others carried families with their belongings:
people who had heard that invaders were coming and feared to
wait in their villages to find if it were true. They also passed small
columns of soldiers on the march – poorly uniformed peasants,
for the most part, led by some landlord or landlord's bailiff on his
horse to assist in the defence.

Goodbye, thought Maria bitterly. I would be with you. I
would carry a pack and a musket gladly. I have seen a man die,
and I am not afraid of it. But I am luggage, no more.

An hour and a half from Erzberg the coaches stopped at an
unmarked turning in the road. Craning through her window,
Maria saw that another file of soldiers was approaching down one
of the roads. The way was narrow. The coaches had checked at
the junction to allow the men to pass.

On they came. She could hear the patient squelch, squelch,
squelch of their feet as they legged another mile away. She heard
the horse blow and the rhythm of the noises change as they sidled
past the coaches. She heard calls exchanged between the grooms
and the horseman – friendly, surprised calls, as if the men had
recognized one another. She leaned from her window again. It
was a very small file – twenty men at most, and one on horse. The
horseman was guiding his mount past at that instant.

And she did know him. It was Windhofer, the bailiff from
Adelsheim.

They were from Adelsheim! From their own estate, going up
to the war.

She pulled herself hurriedly back from the window, thinking,
Please! Mother Mary, please! Don't let her realize! Don't let her
see!

'Stop!' said Mother's voice. 'You there, stop, all of you!'

The door of the leading coach swung open. Lady Adelsheim
stood on the step, steadying herself with a hand on the door. The
horseman checked his mount and looked back at her.

'My Lady!' he exclaimed.

'Down you come, my man. Come and speak with me.'

He dismounted obediently.

'Where are you going?'

'To the city, my Lady. Lord Harzen, he says all militias in our
district to go up to the city.'

'You are not Harzen's people but mine.'

'No, my Lady, but Harzen always . . .'

'If Harzen has orders from the Prince, he can furnish him with
his own men. But it is wrong of him, and wrong of you to go
without my let—'

Franz suddenly exclaimed, 'That's my horse.'

Maria looked at it. And yes, it was Dominus, the horse that had
been Albrecht's: a great, brown, handsome animal, waiting
patiently there in the road.

Windhofer had taken Albrecht's horse! That was impertinent
of him. But perhaps there had not been much choice. And
perhaps Albrecht would have given it to him freely, if he had
known where Windhofer was planning to go.

Yes, he would have done. Albrecht – the real Albrecht – had
been like that.

Franz had climbed out to pet the animal. But Dominus lifted
his head away from Franz's hand, as if there was no time for that
now, and other things that an honest horse should be thinking
about.

'It is a shameful thing – shameful – that he is calling you to
do. I will have no part in it. I will not sully myself with support
for what this Prince does . . .'

Maria's fists were clenched. She could not shut her mother's
voice out. She looked at the horse, Albrecht's horse, still facing
back the way they had come, waiting to continue his journey.
The memory of her brother sat in that long, gentle face.

Where are you going, Dominus? she thought suddenly,
remembering the apostle Peter on the road outside Rome.
Domine, quo vadis?

Venio Romam,
the Lord had replied.
Iterum crucifigi.

To be crucified again.

'My Lady, I have been sent papers . . .'

'He's taken my horse, Mother,' said Franz. 'This is my horse,
from the stables there.'

'Begging your pardon, my Lady, but there were not many
suitable . . .'

'It is an outrageous liberty,' said Mother. 'I will not
countenance it. Now, you will turn these men around and we
will proceed to Adelsheim together. And when we are there . . .'

'They are not your people!' Maria cried aloud.

She jerked herself out of the coach and stood swaying on the
step. All the faces were turned to her. Mother, on the step of
the other coach. The factor, the men, even Franz looking up from
where he stood at the horse's head.

'They are not your people!' she screamed. 'They are Father's!
Have you asked
him?'

She swayed, and nearly lost her balance. To steady herself she
put out her hand and touched the horse's saddle. It shifted. The
stirrup was near her foot.

'Maria!'

It began as an effort to save herself from falling. Her toe found
the stirrup, her hands the saddle. And then it was just natural, one
move following another with the inevitability of a dance, that she
should swing herself up onto the horse's back.

At once she found that her dress was wrong and the saddle was
wrong too. She swayed. Her hand reached instinctively for the
rein. Everyone was staring at her. No one, not even she, knew
what was going to happen. (And whatever happened she must
not fall!) She controlled the beast beneath her.

'Let go!' she cried to Franz.

Gawping, he obeyed.

'Maria – get down at once!'

'I will not get down,' she said over her shoulder. She had her
voice under control now. 'I will not get down for you.'

She steadied the horse, swayed – it was impossible to ride sidesaddle
in a seat like this! – and spoke over her shoulder again. 'I
am going back,' she said.

'You will not!' exclaimed Lady Adelsheim's voice.

Maria laughed, and set the horse at a walk along the road.

'Stop her!' commanded her mother from behind her. 'Stop
her! Catch that horse!' Lady Adelsheim repeated.

Maria looked back. The men were still standing there,
astounded. Now three or four of them were moving towards her.
She kicked the horse, and it lumbered into a short trot that nearly
threw her from the saddle. There was nothing for it but to bring
her leg, dresses and all, over the beast's neck and sit astride with
all her skirts rucking up and her shins and ankles in view to every
man's eyes.

'Maria, it's my horse!' called Franz plaintively. But he had
stopped coming after her, knowing it was hopeless. Some of the
militia, weapons discarded, were still chasing her. She could not
stay.

'Catch me if you can,' she called cheerfully to the men.

Then a last look, back at the coaches. Mother still on the step,
watching her go. Anna, dismounted on the far side. Franz. Father
was the only one she could not see. Only the hulk of the coach,
like a sturdy old gentleman oblivious to all around him, faced on
down the road to Bohemia.

'Goodbye,' she whispered.

And then she rode, hard, until the last of the militiamen gave
up their vain pursuit.

Never in her life, never in her dreams, had she been so alone.
There was no one to help her but Dominus (a good, responsive
animal). There was no one to point the way – she must find it for
herself, making her own choices when her memory of the morning's
journey failed. There was no one to house her, dress her, feed
her. She had no money, unless by the mercy of some saint,
Windhofer had been carrying his wallet in his saddlebags. She
should stop and search them. There might be many useful things.
But she did not want to stop. If she stopped she would have to
think. She would have to think about what she had done, and
about what could possibly happen now.

They might be pursuing her. They could have turned the
carriages around and be hurrying after her. They would not move
very much slower than she. So of course she could not stop.
Because she was never, never going back. She saw again her
mother's face, looking at her from the coach step.

'Never,' she said aloud.

She would starve or drown herself first, she thought.

She was going to the city. That was what she was doing. She
was going back to be one of the people there. Perhaps people
under siege all cared for one another in a way that they did not
when at peace. She did not know. Whether or not they did, the
city was the only place to go.

Saints grant that the enemy had not already arrived!
The long miles passed. She grew saddle-sore because she was
not used to this way of riding.

She saw people in fields and on wagons. They stared at her.
They stared at the long white gleam of her stockings exposed by
her rucked-up travelling gown. She looked firmly ahead. Let
them think as they wished. This was war, was it not? And they did
not know who she was. They could not possibly know, because
she no longer knew herself.

But when she saw a file of militia ahead of her, struggling
under load towards the city, she turned off the road and made a
wide circle across country. She did not want to be stopped and
have questions asked of her. And she was not sure she would be
safe with soldiers, even those of her own side. So it was that when
she finally approached the city, it was from the north-east and not
the north, and it was to the Saxon Gate that she came.

There was a crowd there, and many soldiers drawn up in
ranks, wearing their packs and grey overcoats. On the opposite
side of the road was a full squadron of hussars, facing north. The
horses tossed their heads. Stirrups and steel gleamed in the sun.
Officers were moving to and fro, checking boots, straps and
horseshoes. The men were preparing to march. The crowd around
them were families and townspeople, come to wave them goodbye.
Where could they be going? Heads turned to stare at her as
she came up, and went on staring. She felt awkward; obvious and
at the same time indecent on her perch with her legs showing at
her horse's flanks. Stiffly, she dismounted.

There was no one to hold Dominus for her. She would have
to hold him herself, or let him go.

'Stay,' she murmured to him and made her way into the
crowd. She moved slowly, for she realized now that she was very
sore indeed.

The people had come out to see the soldiers. They were calling
to them, some weeping, some laughing. She saw ragged
children run up and hug a man in the back rank by the leg. He
fluffed their heads, and told them to leave him, but they went on
hugging his leg and calling up to him until a sergeant yelled at
the man and the children ran away.

An officer was standing near her. She knew him. It was Karl
von Uhnen. He had not looked her way.

Her first instinct was to shrink back a little. She could not have
said why, but she did not want him to see her. He was too much
part of her old life. He would only be shocked by what she had
done. Besides, he must be busy. He must be about to depart with
them. He could hardly help her find her way in the city.