But Tante Augustine was now presenting the woman who stood beside Guy and who, as she sketched a curtsy, still kept her left hand, bearing its gigantic diamond, with firm ownership on Guy’s arm.

Tessa scarcely heard the name because the woman, in her magnificent gold dress, was the most beautiful she had ever seen. Tall as Tessa herself was not, full-breasted as Tessa yearned uselessly to be, with an enchanting, heart-shaped face, long-lashed gentian eyes and jet-black hair. Thick, high-piled hair which caught the highlights from the chandeliers and would, when unloosed, reach to her knees in a ravishing cascade, thought Tessa as one of her own white-gloved hands stole for an instant to her own bare nape.

How stupid not to have remembered earlier Guy’s words at Sachers: ‘As for me, Tessa, I am waiting for someone I love and hope soon to marry.’

It was for this woman who was everything that Tessa herself could never be, that Guy had bought her home. This was the new mistress of Pfaffenstein.

And of course it had to be so. A man like Guy would love only a woman as beautiful as this, would want, when he had her by his side, to have nothing to do with someone like herself.

Fighting down the desolation which threatened her, she spoke a few friendly words to Nerine and then the reception began.

Ponderously announced, the guests came forward to be introduced to Guy and welcomed by him to Pfaffenstein. The obese Archduchess Frederica… the red-bearded Archduke Sava, smelling of bear… the aged, cadaverous Prince Monteforelli, squinting down the lovely widow’s décollétage…

Tessa faultlessly played her part, for she was in familiar country. How often in her short life had she stood thus, clamping down personal misery, to pursue a tedious and interminable duty.

‘His Highness, Prince Maximilian of Spittau,’ announced the master of ceremonies, and Maxi advanced.

All had gone well with Maxi. Only one of the dogs had been sick on the train, his uniforms had been redeemed from the ravages of mildew, his mother was incapacitated with a migraine. Of course there had been that panic when they thought Putzerl was not coming, but here she was and looking very fetching too. His mother had been shocked by her hair, but Maxi liked it.

Always correct, he kissed first of all the small hand of his intended (for Putzerl outranked her aunts), then those of the aunts themselves, and was introduced to Herr Farne and the luscious fiancée. The Englishman surprised him; he spoke excellent German and if one had not known better one would have taken him for a gentleman.

But it was Putzerl’s welcome that warmed Maxi’s manly and bemedalled chest. She really seemed pleased to see him.

And indeed she was. Too much had happened to Tessa that day, more overwhelmed than she realized by the sight of the home she would soon leave for ever. The shock of suddenly finding herself at Pfaffenstein, of being forced by her aunts’ eager entreaties into her old role, and the hurt of Guy’s rejection had left her, beneath the inbred poise, defenceless and forlorn.

So Maxi, coming towards her in the absurd Artillery uniform he loved so much, was safety and familiarity, was the whole landscape of childhood with its escapades and jokes. All the others were dead, the boys she had played with, but here now was Maxi.

The young Princess of Pfaffenstein, trained from the age of three in etiquette and protocol, gave no outward distinguishing sign of pleasure but her eyes were warm, the smile she gave him came from her heart, and as Maxi prepared to cede his place to the Duke of Oberkirchen, she leaned forward and whispered very softly, ‘Have you brought the dogs?’

8

In the arcaded Fountain Courtyard, the members of the International Opera Company were preparing for bed.

Their spirits were low. They had eaten excellently, for Guy had ordered that the same food should be served to the company as to the guests who were dining in the banqueting hall. But as they sat at the trestle tables put out in the courtyard, washing down the roast veal, the raspberries and cream, the luscious cheeses still unobtainable in Vienna, with unlimited supplies of Pfaf-fenstein’s wild, white wine, conversation was desultory and the nightingales who presently trilled from the darkening woods trilled in vain. For there was no news of Tessa and in her absence this first night, which should have been a triumph, had turned to ashes.

Witzler had spent the afternoon rushing through the castle, questioning every servant he could find, making a nuisance of himself to the steward and to Farne’s own staff. But no one had seen a vanished wardrobe mistress or seemed unduly interested in her fate. Boris had run down to the village to question the local policeman; Jacob had rung the mayor in Oberwent. No one had seen anything suspicious or found anything to report and the men who had marched her away had gone off duty and were nowhere to be found.

‘Herr Tremayne will find her in the morning,’ soothed the Rhinemaiden now, lowering her vast bulk, encased in a nightdress of shirred mattress ticking, on to the bed and allowing her flaxen hair to ripple over the pillows in a way that her husband frequently found soothing.

But nothing at that moment could soothe Jacob, who blamed himself ceaselessly for Tessa’s fate.

There was a knock on the door and Klasky’s dark and tortured face appeared.

‘Any news?’

Jacob shook his head.

‘Capitalist swine,’ said the conductor, a dedicated Marxist. ‘She’s probably in a dungeon somewhere.’ Entering gloomily, ignoring the Rhinemaiden in bed, he proved — despite his political principles — to be wearing jet-black silk pyjamas monogrammed in gold, and to be carrying a briefcase containing his opera. He flinched as the sound of ‘Wiener Blut’, played by the local hired band, wafted over the battlements and closed the Witz-lers’ window without asking permission. Tomorrow he was taking over the music. His orchestra would play during the firework display; he himself had agreed to accompany Raisa in a recital of lieder — but without Tessa, now, to turn the music. Only Tessa turned the pages at the right time. Only Tessa did not have to be grimaced at for being too late or too soon.

‘There has been heard nothing?’ enquired Pino, arriving in a resplendent Paisley dressing-gown lightly streaked with egg.

The stage-hands, in their dormitory under the rafters, were still muttering mutinously.

‘If they’ve done anything to her I’ll murder them. I’ll murder the whole lot of them,’ said Stefan.

‘Do you remember that night we took her to the jazz club and she danced till four in the morning and then we found her asleep in the cloakroom curled up on her coat?’ said Georg.

But at last sleep overtook the company which had, after all, laboured since dawn. In his room Jacob slumbered, one hirsute arm buried in the tresses of his Rhinemaiden. Boris slept, The Mother flocculating quietly on his bedside table. Frau Pollack slept, whimpering and wracked by her dreams. Klasky, his ears stuffed with cotton-wool against the noise of the yokel band, finally put down the pencil-stabbed score of his opera before he, too, closed his eyes.

But in his cot in the small room assigned to Witzler’s under wardrobe mistress, Bubi, the Witzlers’ infant son, now woke.

The nightlight, glowing on soul-filled, coal-black eyes and an ear strangulated by the blond curl he was winding desperately round it, illuminated a scene of despair. Bubi was wearing new, utterly masculine pyjamas that replaced his infantile nightdress and had been bought in the flush of affluence that Guy’s commission had brought to his papa. Bubi had cleaned his teeth; he had prayed; everything that could be done had been done and where was she? They had said that if he went to sleep like a good boy she would be there when he woke — and he had, and she was not there. The unfairness of it was beyond belief. He had been promised Tessa. She was going to tell him about the giant whose stomach rumbles caused the thunderstorms; she was going to play the game where he crawled under the bedclothes and she had to guess what animal he was being. She was going to be there all night!

And where was she? Nowhere. Her bed was flat and empty: there were no clothes on it, nothing.

Pondering on the wickedness of mankind and on promises betrayed, Bubi, biting his lip, now heard the soft but unmistakable sound of music. Unwinding a fat finger from the coil of his hair, he listened. Hope dawned. Music meant people, and rows of chairs to crawl between. It meant men with hammers who let him bang things — and it meant Tessa.

Carefully he climbed out of his cot, padded along the landing and emerged in the courtyard. There were lanterns in brackets lighting the fountain, and flares in the archway from which the sound of music came. Hitching up his striped pyjamas, which had been bought to last, he set off resolutely across the cobbles. Bubi’s first word after ‘Mama’, ‘Papa’ and ‘No’ had been ‘Bailiffs’ and men in bowler hats still made him cry, but the shadows behind the flaring lamps held no terrors for him.

Passing through an arch he found himself in an even larger courtyard; at the sight of the vast, dark expanse which faced him, and the looming statue of someone on a horse, he did for a moment hesitate. But it was from the long building opposite, with the light streaming from the windows, that music came, and with a last resolute hitch of his pyjama trousers Bubi set off staunchly in the direction of the open double doors.

‘Oh, Guy, isn’t it wonderful!’ breathed Nerine, circling the brilliantly lit ballroom in Guy’s arms.