The Pierced Heart: A Novel

CHAPTER ONE
 

T
HE
A
USTRIAN
E
MPIRE
, M
ARCH
1851

T
HE TRAIN LEFT
P
RAGUE
at 8:35
PM
on 15 March, arriving at Vienna before noon. It is the fifth day since Charles Maddox left London under grey skies and a louring rain, and he could have done the whole journey in little more than two, had he been so minded, but he had reasons of his own for prolonging this first excursion beyond his native shores. His passage has been paid for, for one thing—and handsomely, which is why we see him stepping down not from the back of the train, stinking of pipe smoke and garlic from hours pent up with squawking chickens, raucous soldiers, and mumbling old nuns, but from the rarefied atmosphere (in every sense) of the carriage labelled
ERSTE KLASSE
. On the platform he finds a porter already waiting to take his bag, though that exchange does not take place, it must be said, without a somewhat condescending lift of the eyebrow when it becomes clear that one rather battered trunk is all the English Herr possesses. He has learned, this luggage lackey, that a great deal can be deduced from the state—and scale—of a gentleman’s baggage, but the lamentably little this particular passenger carries sits rather oddly with the arrogance in his air and the lift of his chin. And there is, on the
other hand, no question at all that Charles Maddox’s clothes are far too unkempt for the company he has kept, hour after hour, in the well-upholstered surroundings of his designated compartment, watching out the window, and being watched in his turn—did he but know it—by each succeeding change of fellow travellers. And what would they have seen, the thoughtful French priest, the two plumply self-satisfied Belgian merchants, the family of pretty and excitable Flemish daughters with pinch-faced governess in vigilant attendance? A grimly beautiful young man, with a head of rowdy dark-bronze curls, and a film of something very like despair that greys his skin and dulls what must otherwise be the most arresting blue stare. Looking at him, you might well deduce—as the priest did, having studied him intermittently over the pages of his Aquinas for most of the distance from Liège to Cologne—that this is a young man who keeps his griefs close, for whom pain is a private matter for himself alone. And you would be right. For his part, Charles has studiously avoided contact of any kind with his companions, rather to the annoyance of the eldest Flemish daughter, resplendent in her ribbons, who has been scrutinising him every bit as intently as the Monsignor, though with quite another motive in mind.

Charles’s interest, insofar as he had one, has been in the landscape—the miles of lined flat fields that run here and there into whitewashed red-roofed villages, then dissolve again into darkly thick-quilled forests, and distant glimpses of domed churches and sun-glinting spires. It is so common for us now, to travel by train, that we cannot imagine what it was like then, to watch a whole new world at such unprecedented speed—to observe a continent unroll in a rectangle of glass, and see with a cinematic eye, long before that word was even coined. For a man like Charles, blessed with what a later century will call a photographic memory (and for a man of his profession
blessed
is indeed the word), the rush of images is almost too much, and it is with some relief that he spends a slow day of exploration at a foot’s pace,
first in Antwerp, and then in Leipzig, though rather more frugally the second time, since his allowance will not otherwise suffice. And now he comes at last to his final destination tired and claustrophobic, and in need of a bath. But there will, it seems, be no time for that. He has barely left the platform of the Eisenbahnhof when he is accosted, with the utmost courtesy, by a small thin man wearing impeccable livery, who addresses him by name and then gives a low bow. The man—it seems—has no English, and Charles no German, so he is uneasy at first, to find his bag seized in a surprisingly vigorous grip, but when he follows the man out into bright sunshine and a row of standing carriages, he is relieved to find that the one he is led to bears the same crest as the letter of invitation he has in his jacket pocket. The battlements and barred helm of the armorial bearings of the Baron Von Reisenberg.

Now what, you might be wondering, could a peer of so proud and ancient a lineage want with the company of a struggling and rather scruffy young private detective? And why, moreover, should he be so earnest to secure it that he is prepared to pay his passage half-way across Europe? Pertinent questions, I agree, though to answer them I will have to take you backwards some three months, to that room on the first floor of the tall elegant house off the Strand which for thirty years served Charles’s great-uncle as his office, when he was universally acknowledged to be the foremost thief taker in England. The self-same room where we would have found Charles himself, that cold day at the turn of last year, deep in discussion with a portly balding man in a sombre suit of black of a decidedly clerical appearance, but who was not, as it transpired, the clergyman Charles first took him for, but the official representative of the Bodleian Library in the University of Oxford. It is an institution with a proud and ancient lineage of its own, and unique collections that, as this Mr Turnbull carefully explained, are not only priceless but ever more costly to maintain. So if a foreign gentleman—a nobleman no less—should unexpectedly approach
the Curators with the offer of a quite alarmingly large sum towards the upkeep of one of the Bodleian’s finest and most famous bequests, it would be a rash custodian indeed who dismissed such an offer out of hand. Just as it would be a most imprudent one who failed to ensure that judicious enquiries were made before such a very conspicuous donation was accepted. Enquiries, Mr Turnbull conceded at once, which the Curators themselves were clearly not in a position to conduct, but which a man like Charles—energetic, discreet, intelligent—was admirably placed to undertake on their behalf. And enquiries, as it turned out, that have been both foreseen and forestalled, since the Baron Von Reisenberg accompanied his offer with an invitation to anyone the Curators might wish to appoint, to visit him at his ancestral home, and verify his credentials to their full satisfaction. As for Charles, he did not hesitate. Even though his great-uncle’s health is frail and his mind failing, Charles has leapt at the chance of being weeks away, a thousand miles from London, and his memories, and that house just off the Strand. It may be that you know what has driven him so desperate to be gone, but know or not, it will not be a secret long.

The coachman straps Charles’s trunk to the roof of the heavy and rather old-fashioned coach, then opens the door and fusses about with blankets and a flask of brandy, both of which seem to Charles to be irritatingly unnecessary, since even if there is a chill breeze the sun is bright, and inside the carriage the air is warm. As they move slowly away, Charles lowers the glass so that he can see the city, fighting down what he knows is rather an unreasonable exasperation that he wasn’t able to snatch a few hours to see it for himself. They cross the slow deep blue of the Wien River, and then skirt the huge fortifications that for a few years yet will circle old Vienna in a many-pointed star. Perhaps the coachman senses his passenger’s impatience, because all at once they turn off the main road and take one of the slower and more winding routes across the gardens that ring the ramparts like a
grassy moat, and were once no less vital to the city’s defences than the towering walls above. There is a fair there today—the air is loud with the blare of barrel-organs and hurdy-gurdies, and as they pass along the ranks of brightly striped booths with their jugglers, glass-blowers, and puppet theatres, Charles is struck by how far he has come and yet how familiar this all seems. The old city may shimmer above them like a citadel from chivalry, but there is nothing to distinguish this Sunday show or the crowds of smiling and strolling promenaders, from those Charles sees every week in the streets of London. Children rolling hoops, fathers in tall hats, and matrons in their trailing silks—even the damn fashions are the same. He sits back again in his seat, obscurely disappointed, but it is a sensation that does not far outlast the city boundaries. As the carriage heads out of town and into the hinterland of forests and vineyards, neither the landscape nor the little flower-decked shrines he glimpses at the side of the road resemble anything Charles will ever see in England. And as the valleys narrow, the skies darken overhead, and Charles looks up to waterfalls springing from mossy stones, and vines planted terrace-wise on sheer slopes, and once or twice an abandoned monastery clinging perilously to the overhanging cliffs, where crows cackle and flap about the ruined choirs.