‘I have to congratulate you, then,’ he said, blocking her path. ‘And indeed you are most heartily to be congratulated. You certainly took me in, in a most impressive way. You know, I actually believed what you said.’

‘What I said?’ repeated Tessa, completely bewildered. She put down the basket and stared at him.

‘Your remarks about being a republican. About art making everybody equal. Doesn’t your own hypocrisy ever sicken you? All that rubbish about Schönbrunn: how constrained you were, how unhappy.’

‘I didn’t…’ But it seemed impossible to speak. The lump in her throat was too obtrusive — and anyway Guy was far too angry to hear a word she said.

‘No doubt you will find it amusing, but I actually believed you for a while. I thought you truly wanted to escape from the limitations of your upbringing. I thought you wanted to be free — that all this clap-trap of rank and ceremony meant nothing to you.’ He laughed, and it was an amazingly unattractive sound. ‘Yes, I believed you. I was quite touched. I even believed what you told me at Sachers.’

She flushed, staggered at his bad manners in referring to her confidence. ‘What… have I done?’ she managed to falter. ‘Why are you like this?’

‘Oh, you’ve done nothing. All is as it should be,’ he jeered. ‘Sixteen quarterings — or is it thirty-two? An impeccable lineage, rejoicing all round.’

‘I cannot help… my lineage.’

‘It doesn’t happen to be your lineage that I am referring to.’

But it was necessary now to curtail this interview before his mind registered what his eyes were already seeing: a weary child leaning her head against the side of the lorry as though the weight of it was suddenly too much for her to bear. Did it matter, after all, that she had succumbed to the pressure of her relatives? Maximilian was a fool but he was neither venal nor cruel.

He shrugged. ‘Well, I hope you’ll be happy,’ he said.

Boris, coming out a few minutes later, found Tessa still leaning against the lorry. Not crying, just standing there with the wicker basket lying at her feet.

‘Jesus!’ said Boris, looking at her face, and led her away.

Installed in Boris’s cubby-hole behind the stage, Tessa dutifully swallowed the scalding tea he brewed for her on his samovar, but when he handed her a saucer of yoghurt she managed a ghost of a smile and shook her head.

‘Thank you, you are very kind,’ she said carefully. ‘But I don’t think… I really want to live to be very old. You eat it, Boris.’

Boris, as he took the spoon from her, continued to stare at her in consternation. What was all this? Like everyone else he had heard about the events in the rowing-boat, but when she had come up from the lake Tessa had said nothing, just begun in her usual way to throw herself into her work, and no one in the company had ventured to congratulate her, waiting for the news to be official. Then Witzler had come with his bombshell: the news of Farne’s rejection and instructions that they were to pack and leave at once. Even then, in the misery and disappointment that had followed, the tears of the Rhinemaiden, the hurt and shock on the artists’ faces, Boris had held on to the idea that Tessa, at least, would be all right. But if being engaged to the Prince of Spittau was going to make her look like that…

‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,’ he said now. ‘No one can force you.’

But Tessa had not really heard him, caught as she was in the toils of her private nightmare. A nightmare out of which she now visibly tried to lift herself, putting a hand on his arm to say, ‘It will be all right about the company, Boris, I’m sure. Herr Witzler’s so clever. He’ll work something out, you’ll see.’

‘Yes,’ said Boris to reassure her. But he knew rather more about the company’s finances than she did and his view of the future was bleak indeed. ‘I’ll never learn to yodel now,’ thought Boris, and began to eat.

An hour later, the farewell banquet was in full swing. A mood of particular elation and jollity was evident among the guests. The news of Putzerl’s engagement, along with the desire to eat and drink as much as possible before they had to depart and take up the burden of their lives again, kept them happily absorbed. Never had uniforms glittered so brightly, jokes been so deliciously risqué, flirtations so skilfully pursued.

Herr Farne, beside his lovely widow, seemed as everyone noted to be in particularly high spirits. Presently he rose to make a speech: witty, brilliant, of exactly the right length. He announced the date of his own wedding, at the end of October, thanked all those present for the pleasure of their company and with a gallant bow raised his glass to the health and happiness of ‘Absent Friends’.

‘Absent Friends!’ cried the guests, following suit, raising their glasses with meaningful glances and nudges at the two empty places on the long centre table with its priceless epergne, fluted napery and bowls of roses. For both the Prince of Spittau and the Princess of Pfaffenstein were absent from their usual places, a circumstance which the guests found both delightful and amusing.

‘Do you remember,’ whispered the Count of Winterthur to his portly wife, ‘how we crept away after we were engaged? Your Papa tried to find us but we were hiding away in the orangery?’

‘They’ll be in the woods somewhere, hand in hand,’ cooed the Archduchess Frederica, in a good mood for once.

Here she was partly correct. Maxi was in the woods, but not with Tessa. It was the Littlest Heidi who was cradled in his arms, the Littlest Heidi who soothed his hurt and promised to keep secret the news of his rejection until the guests had left and everyone was home again.

‘It’s the fuss,’ said the weary prince. ‘I just can’t face the fuss.’

‘I understand, Your Highness,’ said Heidi and did indeed keep her promise. And when she had comforted him in the only way she knew (and there is certainly no better) they spoke not of the future but of Tom Mix and Buck Jones and the incomparable Pearl White in The Perils of Pauline and Maxi, stroking the golden curls, was comforted and soothed.

For Tessa the way was harder. She had waited until everybody was at dinner before slipping into the deserted chapel, and now knelt at the altar rail with her head in her hands. In the light of the candles, the church sang with gold: gold on the haloes of the saints, gold on the ceiling, on the chalices and goblets on the altar. Gold soaring and swirling on the pillars, on the family crests decorating the pew ends, on the Virgin’s mantle, as though in the darkness someone was giving a great party for God.

‘Help me to bear it,’ prayed Tessa. With her shorn head, her smock, she might have been a lone shepherd boy come down from the hills. ‘Help me not to make a fuss. Help me not to let anyone see how I feel. Help me just to work hard — to work and to work and not to ask anything else. And please, God, keep them safe here, all of them.’

She rose and fetched three votive candles from the box. Carefully, she lit them and placed them in their holders. One for the aunts she was leaving and whom she loved. One for the people she had cared for here. And one other, the tallest, which she did not offer up even in her mind, knowing that God would understand.

There was nothing left to do now except pack a small bag, leave a note in her room and make her way to the station. There was a last train which stopped at Pfaffenstein Halt before crawling on to Neustadt. She would catch that and wait there for the milk train to Vienna. Nothing mattered now except to get away.

Thus Guy, waking next morning with a heavy head, looked out of the window at the gatehouse tower and frowned. What was it that was different? Of course — the bright flag, with its griffin, its lily, its crimson glove, was gone.

14

Guy’s guests departed with considerable reluctance. The Uhlan captain left his spare leg, in striped socks and regimental boots, leaning against the Bühl commode in his room until the last moment, as though in hope of a reprieve from banishment to his leaking hunting lodge in Styria. The Countess Waaltraut snuffled her way, with many a backwards glance, towards the embossed automobile into which her mother’s Bath chair was being lifted. The Archduke Sava thanked Guy, with tears in his eyes, for saving his bear, and promised him the best wolf-hunting in Archangelskaya as soon as the Bolsheviks had been deposed.

But at last they left; the castle fell silent, for the opera company too had gone and the aunts kept to the West Tower.

To Guy, the departure of his guests was nothing but a relief and he made no secret of it to David as he thanked his young secretary for what he had done.

‘You were a Trojan, David. Everything went off splendidly. Even the Archduchess Frederica was kind enough to tell me that she had enjoyed herself.’

David smiled. ‘Yes, it seems to have gone off all right. And—’ he looked sideways at his employer, ‘Mrs Hurlingham was happy? It all worked out, didn’t it?’

‘Yes. It worked out exactly as I had anticipated,’ said Guy, looking with total absorption at a buzzard wheeling above the chapel roof. ‘I’m off to Vienna on Monday; I’ve managed to persuade those lazy brutes from the Treasury to cut short their holiday and do some work, and I want to have the documents ready for the League by the end of September. I shall want you to come with me — there are enough people here to look after things and I’m not wasting you on any more of this domestic stuff. I’ve a few ideas about the Metallic Mining Consortium in Bayern, but we shall have to move fast if we’re to get ahead of those Armenian twisters…’