‘I believed it. I believed it all,’ said Tessa. ‘That you served music, all of you, because it was above pettiness and rank. Because it makes everybody one: rich and poor, sick and well. Because it comes to us from God. I believed it — but not you. Not one of you.’

She paused and momentarily passed a hand across her eyes.

‘The Princess Lichnovsky knelt to Beethoven; she knelt to beg him to give back the score of Fidelio which the Viennese had sneered at. She knelt, and she was right to kneel. Well, I won’t kneel for my right to work. I won’t kneel because I don’t kneel to hypocrites and time-servers and snobs!’

Silence. Total, unbroken silence as Tessa bent to pick up her basket, her can of milk. Then, suddenly, it began. The stage-hands started it, clapping first; then stamping and shouting as if the theatre was packed to the roof, and the orchestra banging on their music stands and Boris, dabbing his eyes with the end of his muffler and leading the yells of ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Bis!’

It was left to Raisa to bring some sense into the proceedings. Ovations were all very well but they belonged, in general, to her.

‘’er ’ighness is being perfectly correct,’ she stated. ‘In art all is being of equalness.’ She pushed aside the people now crowding round Tessa and said firmly, ‘In zis bodice ’ighness, I cannot zink. I cannot zink even an ’igh C, and an ’igh F you can forget absolutely it.’

Tessa finished blowing her nose on Jacob’s handkerchief and turned a radiant countenance on the soprano. ‘Yes, Frau Romola. I quite understand, Frau Romola. If you will give me the bodice now, I can have it ready for this evening. It only needs a gusset…’

9

The forest that stretched away on the spur behind the castle might have been invented by the Brothers Grimm. Pines and ferns, larches, moss, little rills of crystal water, shafts of sunlight on silvered cones, the tang of resin…

And in a clearing the feathers of pigeons drifting to the ground and the scent of gunpowder, as Guy provided for his guests such limited sport as the month of June offered. In felden green with silver buttons, in lederhosen or field uniforms, all those of his guests who could walk and had not preferred fishing or billiards were in the forest cheerfully pursuing birds whose lowly status did not prevent them from being amazingly difficult to hit.

Guy, sharing a hide with Prince Maximilian and despatching with accuracy but relatively little enthusiasm such pigeons as fell to his lot, found himself an unwilling recipient for Maxi’s low-voiced confidences.

‘Jolly good party, this,’ said Maxi. ‘Everyone says what a good party this is. Everything laid on as it should be.’

Temporarily exhausted by so much conversation, he aimed and brought down his bird. That he should have left the dogs behind merely because they were unnecessary for this type of sport was not to be expected. Now he sent off the pointer, directed the labrador to a runner in the bushes, whistled the water spaniel out of the stream and spoke a manly word of sympathy to the wolfhound rendered gloomy by the lack of serious booty.

‘I’m glad you’re enjoying it.’

In the distance the Countess Waaltraut, who had been steering her mother’s Bath chair between the larches in relentless pursuit of Guy, was brought to a halt by the silver ribbon of a stream and stood, melancholy and baulked, staring at the trees which hid him from her sight.

‘Pity Putzerl couldn’t come. Tessa, I mean.’

‘Does she care for shooting?’

‘No, she doesn’t,’ said Maxi, frowning down at his half-grown setter bitch. ‘She’s a jolly good shot, though. Her father taught her. I taught her too, at Spittau. Had her out in a punt when she was six. You wouldn’t believe it,’ said Maxi earnestly, ‘but she can imitate a mallard like no one I’ve ever met. Got a perfect ear. You don’t need a call duck in the boat if you’ve got Putzerl. It’s uncanny. It’s all that music she goes in for, I suppose.’

He sighed. His mother would not be at all pleased about this business with the opera company. ‘And the dogs,’ he continued, taking the bird out of the pointer’s mouth and looking with surprise at the dead squirrel brought in by the labrador. ‘You wouldn’t think it, because she’s so little and quiet, but they’d do anything for her.’

‘Really?’

Guy’s cool and slightly contemptuous tone was lost on Maxi who patted the pointer, commended the labrador, told the spaniel to stay… and aimed once more and hit once more, sending the whole cavalcade in motion once again. ‘They’re trained for the water, of course,’ he commented. Then continued, ‘It’s all this art and music I worry about. She’ll grow out of it, I suppose?’

‘Do you want her to?’

‘Well… when we’re married… Spittau isn’t… Of course, she could play the piano. It’s a bit warped but I expect it could be put right. Spittau,’ he explained, ‘is very low-lying.’

Guy did not answer. ‘When we are married’, the prince had said. Everyone was right, then, to take the engagement for granted. Well, it was none of his business. He too aimed; he, too, fired and hit — and in the lull that followed, turned to attend to the sprightly, skeletal Prince Monteforelli, fresh from his morning’s injection of monkey gland, and to parry with courtesy and skill the old courtier’s questions about Guy’s business with the Chancellery.

By the time Guy’s guests met at luncheon, a meal served informally at small tables in the yellow salon, there was no doubt that the house party was a resounding success. The buzz of talk, the laughter, the popping of champagne corks bespoke a total satisfaction with the hospitality of the Englishman. The members of the shooting party did not find themselves impeded, by the consumption of their English breakfast, from partaking of the staggering quantities of food fetched for them from the sideboard. The guests who had been fishing commented on the excellence of the catch, those who had played billiards on the beautifully renovated tables.

The presence of an entire opera company was also noted with approval. This was a return to the great days of patronage to which they themselves had once been accustomed. A glimpse from his bedroom window of the Middle Heidi doing her pliés had affected the Uhlan captain with the wooden leg so powerfully that he had choked on his Odol mouthwash, and the Archduke Sava, sitting beside Monteforelli, was in a state of glazed fulfilment. On the way to visiting his bear in the stables, he had crossed the Fountain Courtyard and found Raisa Romola splayed on a rush mat, sunbathing. A music lover and a bosom man, finding his two passions thus united in a single body had proved almost too much for the Archduke who, with gestures, was trying to convey to the old prince just what the sight had meant to him.

Only on the table containing the aunts, the Swan Princess and the Archduchess Frederica, was there a slightly less abandoned and roistering air. Not that the Archduchess was off her food: on the contrary, she was systematically concealing in a bag specially brought down for the purpose, all the more durable delicacies which the servants piled on her plate. But the revelation of Putzerl’s activities in Vienna had naturally come as something of a shock, and Tante Augustine and Tante Tilda could not help feeling that their niece, dearly as they loved her, had been a little bit inaccurate in her description of her work, for ‘studying music’ did not seem adequately to describe the moving of furniture, combing of wigs and stitching of hems.

‘If only we could see her settled,’ said the Duchess. ‘Of course she will always have a home with us but…’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the Swan Princess grimly, beckoning the flunkey to demand another slice of ham. ‘Maxi knows his duty. We shall have an announcement any minute now.’

Nerine, sitting between Guy and her brother Arthur, looked round with utter satisfaction. Twenty-four hours had completely changed her view of Guy. For Mama had been mistaken about him: low-born or not, he seemed to have an extraordinary power of attracting people — and not only young Tremayne and the rest of his staff who obviously worshipped him. One could say that Guy had simply bought the company of these aristocrats, but she could see in none of his guests the slightest sign of contempt despite the fact that he made no secret of his origins. In fact, some of the women were already being extremely silly: that oil-stained dowd and the fat Italian marchesa who had fluttered her eyelashes at him at the ball. As for the young Princess of Pfaffenstein, Nerine intended to make sure that she never set foot in the castle after the house party was over, which meant that her aunts, too, would have to go. True, Guy in explaining their past encounter had spoken of her with obvious dislike, but Nerine had seen Tessa’s face when she had first caught sight of him — and there was going to be no more of that!

Yes, Guy must marry her here and marry her soon, thought Nerine. Later, of course, they would return to England: ‘abroad’ was never quite the same, but as a setting for a wedding, Pfaffenstein was unbeatable. She would need a few months to get an adequate trousseau together, but then… And turning to her brother Arthur, she found that he was able to inform her of the exact cost of the fireworks purchased for the night’s display.

The aunts had offered to accompany Guy on a tour of the picture gallery, suggesting that he and his fiancée might care to know a little of the history and background of the family. After luncheon, therefore, they set off — together with David Tremayne who was now almost as familiar with the castle as the ladies themselves — for the long, panelled room which adjoined the great hall and connected it, on the eastern side, with the ante-room to the theatre.