He led me down the stairs and into a spacious and handsomely appointed dining room. The walls were a pale spring green, with recesses on three sides for marble busts of unattractive men. Four of Valentin’s soldiers stood clustered around a wide, gleaming sideboard, pouring themselves aperitifs from a crystal decanter. They each wore similar suits of dark blue, and though they had not changed for dinner, all but one of them seemed comfortable in these genteel surroundings. The biggest of them, a ruddy, simple-looking fellow, held his glass as though he was sure his grip would break it. They froze in the midst of their actions when we came in, staring at me bluntly. I wished I were wearing a less crushed and dusty gown, and then sternly reminded myself that I did not care.
“Miss Hope, may I introduce you to Herr Martin,” said Valentin, indicating the German nearest us. The tall, dark-haired man made a shallow bow without setting down his sherry. His smile curled up on one side, showing teeth like a wolf. I looked away quickly.
Valentin introduced me to each of the men in turn, and I in turn immediately forgot their names. I said nothing. I did not curtsy. If the men noticed, they pretended not to.
We took our seats around the table, Valentin across from me and the man called Martin on my right. The chair at the head of the table was empty. I glanced at Martin, and my eyes fell on his fingers. They were long, rough, and pink from a recent and vigorous scrubbing. Perhaps they’d recently had blood on them. Perhaps the blood had been Will’s.
I felt Martin’s eyes on me, but I refused to meet them. Instead I glared at Valentin. He had seated me next to the torturer. How did he expect me to eat?
“Is she coming?” one of the men asked in German. Valentin glanced at the door.
“She said she would,” he said. “She wanted to meet Miss Hope.”
As if on cue, the dining room door opened, and a young woman in a fashionable satin gown appeared. The men jumped to their feet at once and folded themselves into bows quite a bit more respectful than the ones they had made for me. The young woman nodded her perfectly coiffed and powdered head at them, then made her way to me. Another woman, older but with an unadorned, severe beauty, followed her in. I rose slowly to my feet, more to prevent them from towering over me than from courtesy. The younger woman was an inch or two shorter than I, which left her still above average height for a woman. Her face and hair were powdered, a fashion my mother had never let me indulge in, nor one that much tempted me. Her cheeks were much pinker than natural. She was good-looking, but with a stern set to her jaw and a coldness in her eyes that might make it hard to call her pretty.
“So,” said the woman in English. “You are the young lady who ’as come to rescue William Percy. What did you call her, Valentin? Theo—?”
“Miss Theosebeia Hope,” said Valentin. “Meet Miss Rahel, the older daughter of Burggraf Ludwig.”
“And this is my companion, Miss Berit. You have a strange name,” said Rahel.
“My mother is an alchemist,” I said.
“I know that.” Rahel nodded. “And your father?”
I thought of my father. I imagined him in his beautiful Oxonian study, poring over my notes, trying to break my mother’s code. Or perhaps he had broken it already. Perhaps he was in the laboratory, performing the steps that would soon drive him mad. If he was, it was his own fault. I had warned him.
“I have no father.”
Rahel pursed her lips, looking for a moment like an unhappy German governess I once had. She had stayed less than a year, but she was the reason I spoke German with a Bavarian accent.
“Some man caused your birth, whether he accepted the responsibility or not.”
“He did not,” I said. “Hope is my mother’s family name.”
Rahel nodded thoughtfully. “Ein hübsches uneheliches Kind. Einfach zu nehmen.”
A pretty bastard child. Easy prey.
Rahel raised her eyebrows at me for a moment, and I held back my anger and attempted to look puzzled. Rahel seemed to accept this and moved to her place at the head of the table. The men all sat as she did, and Berit sat beside her. Rahel began to speak to the men in German, and for the moment I was forgotten.
Dinner was veal in a heavy cream sauce, served with lavishly buttered potatoes and boiled peas. It was delicious, but I decided to find it too rich. It was useful to have the occupation of pushing food around on my plate while I listened intently to the conversation and pretended not to understand it.
They spoke of their king, Frederick William II, and his plans to join with the Austrians in the invasion of France. The leaden mass of dread that had settled in my stomach turned over at the talk of war. The Germans rattled off the names of the nations allied against France with easy certainty that this war was theirs to win. Prussia, Austria, Britain: the great powers of Europe saw France in its time of weakness and circled like vultures. The only thing left to be determined, in their minds, was who would take which part.
“Frederick William should not let Austria march first. He is too occupied with Poland—he does not see what can be gained in France,” Rahel said in German. She took as avid an interest as each of the former military men at the table.
“Austria may be too much tempted to give France back to its fool of a king,” said Martin.
“Perhaps,” said Valentin. “But there is no doubt that Leopold made promises to his sister and her husband, and even more to the émigrés. Louis is not a bad man.”
“No, but he is incompetent. There is
