Post by Lorpius Prime on Mar 19, 2009 1:28:40 GMT -5
The palace was even bigger than Martin had imagined. The Herrenchiemsee had been the crown jewel of the Swan King's building projects. When construction started in 1870, it had initially been conceived as a replica of the Louis XIV's palace at Versailles. But Ludwig's reign had continued, it had grown into something even grander, the physical embodiment of the Swan King's glory. While Ludwig lived, the Herrenchiemsee had been at the beating heart of his empire. Popular legend had said that no man who stood inside its halls could resist the power of Ludwig's will. It was in Herrenchiemsee where he held his court. It was there that the princes of Germany had knelt at the Swan King's feet and sworn their allegiance to him.
After Ludwig disappeared and the occupation began, the first Empress Victoria had nearly ordered the entire palace demolished. She had only been convinced to let the structure remain by a petition from the curators of just about every British museum, as well as the request of her own son. The salvation of the palace had come as great news for Bavaria's first military governor, who had immediately declared it to be his official headquarters and residence. Since the palace had a larger footprint than Windsor Castle—and a far bigger floor plan—the governor had been skirting the boundaries of lèse majesté. His only saving grace had been making its generous residential wings open to other high-ranking visitors and members of the occupation staff. It was a small enough sacrifice to make for the ability to host outrageously glamorous parties in the biggest palace in the world.
Martin was disgusted by the whole attitude of the place; he would have been one of the ones arguing for its destruction if he'd been around in 1886. Still, he couldn't help but feel proud of himself for securing three luxurious rooms on the second floor of the south wing for himself and the Blake siblings. It hadn't been terribly hard; a lot of the administrative staff and their guests had fled the island, leaving more vacancies than usual, but being able to get a room there under any circumstances was still a mark of status. Martin did not often care about such symbols, but he did now. And on the rare occasions that he was moved to use it, Colonel Martin Bozeman Holland of Her Majesty's Security Service wielded considerable power over lesser officials and weaker men.
For a while longer, at least.
Martin knew the end was coming for him. His career had ended two hours ago at the Herreninsel docks when he had shaken hands with Jay Thomson Blake. When he had failed to carry out his mission. He would have been punished for abandoning his assignment and flying to Germany, but he would have kept his job. And if he'd come back successful, even that transgression might have been overlooked, perhaps even rewarded as "proper initiative" or even "decisive action befitting an agent". Instead, Martin would be lucky to get off with a summary discharge, and a full court martial was not out of the question. They might even charge him with treason.
Martin didn't care, though, and that fact alone was bringing him no end of amusement. Even just a few days ago, he would have been horrified to think that he could so completely and so casually betray his mission and his agency. But he was. Martin didn't want to kill Jay Thomson, it was as simple as that. His reasons were personal, he had to admit, but even professionally there was no longer any real need for the assignment. The damage was clearly already done.
Martin's superiors wouldn't see it that way, of course. And that was a problem which would cause Martin some serious consternation in the days to come. He would have to deal with it soon, and not least because it would be an even bigger problem for the Blakes. For the moment, however, Martin intended to enjoy himself.
When they had first reached the palace, they had run into a small crowd of students from the University of Edinburgh. The students were on an excursion for their history program, and had been stranded on the island when the fighting broke out on the mainland. Their professor had clearly been trying to make the best of a difficult situation by spending some extra time touring the palace and lecturing about its history. He seemed like a cheerful fellow, but had an unfortunately dull voice, and most of his students just looked bored. He was a fascinating enough diversion for Jay and Margaret, who had never seen the place before, and Martin had left them with the old man while he went to speak to the garrison commander.
Martin found them again half an hour later still standing in the same spot, but presumably much more enlightened about the relevant history. After that, they had only to wander for another hour around the massive palace complex looking for the right staircase in right building. That part wasn't actually all that difficult; most of the delays were due to Margaret stopping every few yards to gawk at the artwork which lined the walls, or just to take in the architecture of the palace itself. She was less than sympathetic when her brother tried to hurry her along.
"You've had two weeks to play tourist," she said, "I just got here."
Jay Thomson rolled his eyes. "By all means, enjoy yourself. But your friend here has our room keys," he jerked his head towards Martin, "and I'm really looking forward to sleeping in a real bed for the first time in days. So do you think you could wait ten minutes and then come back?"
Martin kept his face locked down as always, but he found Margaret's grumbling quite amusing.
"Thank you, sister dearest," Jay said once they started walking again. Margaret almost punched him. If she had, Martin didn't think he could have resisted cracking a smile.
"Here we are," he said once they reached what he thought was the right hallway.
The bedrooms in this wing had been intended to house the Swan King's honored guests while he held court at Herrenchiemsee, and each one was built like a luxury flat in the nicer districts of London. They were rather nice indeed, and Martin had gotten them entirely free of charge. Someday, the governor would probably start renting out the flats to bring in some extra revenue, but until then it was just another perk for anyone with influence.
"Mr. Blake," Martin handed his first key to Jay Thomson when they reached the appropriate room. "The caretaker told me each of these rooms has a different name, but I'm afraid I didn't think to ask what they were."
The Blake brother sighed, "Great, so Margaret's probably going to spend half an hour trying to guess." He shook his head and took the key from Martin. Turning it in the lock above, he pushed open the heavy wooden door.
"Oh my God," Margaret said, and Martin shared her sentiments. The room was even bigger than he had expected. In fact, it appeared that it was not one bedroom after all, it was three. There was a master bedroom with a single large bed, and two smaller bedrooms each with two smaller beds. Presumably the latter were for children and servants.
Actually, Martin realized, the level of luxury was not all that different from what he himself had seen back at the Blake manor. Margaret herself should be used to this sort of thing. Although, Martin thought as he leaned forward to look around some more, the marble bathroom is a little excessive even by the normal standards of the rich and famous.
"I don't think it's any mystery as to what this room is called, though," Margaret said. She waved her hand at the murals which adorned the walls of the bedrooms, "This is the dryad what's-her-name and the one Greek God, so-and-so."
"Daphne, being pursued by Apollo," Martin said. Margaret raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. "I had a schoolteacher who took classical mythology very seriously."
Jay Thomson clapped his hands together. "Well I'm glad that mystery is solved now," he said, speaking a little loudly. "But since I'm wearing two days' worth of mud, I think I'd like to go for a swim in this pool here," he nodded towards the impressive bathroom. "And then I think I'll get some sleep." He waved Martin and Margaret back towards the door. "Feel free not to wake me for another day or three."
After Martin and Margaret had backed out the door, he shut it in their faces. Margaret sniffed.
"Oh," she said, and turned around, "let's go see what's in mine."
Margaret's room was across the hall from her brother's, Martin opened it with the key to let her in. The layout was much the same as before, although the bedrooms had been moved slightly so that each had windows looking out onto the palace's western gardens. And the mural was… different.
"All right, Colonel Classical Mythology," Margaret said in a subdued voice, "what do you think this is?"
"I have no idea," Martin said. He was staring at the walls himself.
"This must be the room the King gave to people he didn't like."
Martin had to admit that it was a little disturbing, creepy even. The subject of the paintings was a single man, a medieval knight in black armor. He was leering out from every wall with a small, sadistic grin, and his helmet sported horns that gave him a vaguely demonic appearance. There were no other clues to his identity or story, the murals simply showed him standing around in empty fields, watching whoever had the misfortune to be in his presence.
"I'm sure he just wants to be your friend," Martin said dryly.
Margaret glared at him. "All right," she said, "show me what you've got. I hope it's some sort of horrible monster looking to eat you."
She was partly right. The room Martin had chosen for himself was next to Jay Thomson's, and had an identical floor plan. But the paintings inside were easy to recognize, even for Margaret. They told the story of Saint George and the Dragon.
Margaret folded her arms in front of a depiction of Saint George brandishing his lance from horseback, and sighed.
"So, would you prefer to stay in this one?" Martin offered her his key.
"It's all right," she closed her eyes and shook her head.
Martin nodded, and slipped the key into his pocket. He looked out one of the room's windows. It was already dark out the eastern side, and the moon's reflection was clear in the vast waters of the lake beyond the forest.
Martin reached into his sling to scratch at his left arm. "I suppose I ought to sleep, then. Unless you really do want to go back and look around some more."
He turned back to Margaret, who was running one hand along the painted walls. She glanced at him for a moment, but didn't say anything.
"Here," Martin said, "it's no trouble. I'll take the room with the black knight." He took the key out of his pocket again. "You can stay here."
Margaret laughed softly, and gave him a little smile. "That's very noble of you," she said. "But I don't think I can allow that."
"I really don't mind," he said as Margaret walked past him to the doorway.
"Remember what I told you at the air station, Colonel Holland?"
"When you were angry at me for trying to keep you safe?"
She turned around and gave him a pensive look, "I told you that I was not going to let you take one step out my sight."
Martin was starting to have trouble focusing, but he maintained just enough presence of mind to reply, "Until we found your brother."
"I think I'll overlook that part for now. Not one step out of my sight, Colonel Holland."
Margaret closed the door.
Jay woke up very suddenly. The utter darkness outside his window told him that the sun had set completely; he had woken up in the middle of the night. That meant he had slept for several hours at the very least, but since Jay had felt like he could sleep for an entire day, he was a little disappointed.
He sat up in the middle of the oversized bed. Even if he had only slept a few hours, Jay felt rested, although he wasn't sure that was a good thing at this hour. For a few minutes, he considered lying back down and trying to sleep again, but he knew that would be futile. For whatever reason, Jay was awake now, he couldn't undo that.
Sighing, he shifted over to one side of the bed, and felt for the floor with his feet. The one drawback he could identify about the room was the fact that its floor was all hard wood and stone. No one had even bothered to lay down some rugs, although Jay couldn't fathom why not.
He found the floor, but couldn't find his shoes or socks in the dark no matter how much he fumbled around. Jay got up and walked carefully around the room until he could find the doorway and the little hallway in the front. He turned the knob and cracked the door slightly to let in some light from the hall outside. With that small illumination, Jay was able to locate some matches in a holder and light the gas lamps around the room.
That gave him enough light to locate his clothes, which he had abandoned in little piles across the floor. Jay frowned at the scattered garments. He had been wearing the same outfit since he spent the night at Ernst Brauer's house back in Donauwörth so many days ago. Jay really wished that he hadn't lost his suitcase on the train from Augsburg, or at least that he had gotten another pair of pants out before losing it.
Jay flopped backwards onto the bed. From the ceiling, a creature that was part woman and part tree stared down at him. It was all finally ending, this nightmarish adventure. Margaret's rescue had come as such a shock that Jay still didn't quite know what he was going to do with himself. It was difficult for him to imagine the transition back to his ordinary duties as a correspondent for the Times. Somehow the idea of roving around the Continent again just didn't seem the same anymore. Jay wondered if he was going to be constantly looking over his shoulder on every assignment from now on.
"Assuming I still have a job," he said to himself. Jay had no idea how Barry was going to react to his return. The editor could have already replaced Jay, for all he knew.
Jay sat up again and started pulling on his pants. At least they'd dried a little, although that wasn't saying much. After his pants came his socks, then shoes, and then his shirt which was by some miracle still a passable shade of white. Jay left the heavy coat which he'd gotten from Baron Münchhausen on the rack where he'd first put it. He ran his fingers through his hair with a sigh. Jay swore to himself that after this trip he would never go hatless again, even if that meant he had to carry folded paper hats in his pockets at all times.
He finished buttoning up his shirt and pulled his suspenders over his shoulders, and then he looked over at the big chest of drawers which sat near the bed. On top of the chest he had laid the only two objects he still possessed which were not clothes: the sword he had recently been given, and his grandfather's prayer book. Jay picked up the sword in its scabbard and turned it around in his hands a few times before slipping it through his suspenders to hang from his waist again. He left the black prayer book in its spot on the chest.
Jay wasn't sure where he was going, or why he would need the sword, but for whatever reason he felt more comfortable carrying it with him. He stepped out through the bedroom door and closed it behind him. Then he stood for a moment in the cool air which was blowing down the length of the palace hall. Jay looked at the room across the hall from his and considered knocking, but dismissed the idea almost as soon as he thought of it. He might have woken, but Margaret probably had no wish to do the same. And there was certainly no way that he was going to wake Colonel Holland, Jay glanced at the door several yards down to his right.
Instead, Jay wandered the palace, walking south down the hall towards the staircase. The palace complex was by far the largest building Jay had ever seen, and he'd only gotten a glimpse of a tiny portion of it on the way to his room. This particular wing resembled some of the nicer hotels that Jay had been in, but there had to be other parts which were even more impressive.
The first floor of this wing was mostly taken up by a grand hallway lined with two rows of bronze sculptures. At first Jay thought the sculptures were meaningless abstract pieces, but as he walked he realized that the ones on his right were actually supposed to be large birds—presumably swans—in various poses. This made him suspect that the line of sculptures on the left represented something concrete as well, but Jay couldn't decide what that might be.
As he walked, Jay tried to think on what he should do about Theodore. He felt rather bad for stopping his search to spend the night in this place. Hopefully his friend was still all right, but he couldn't be nearly as comfortable as Jay if he was still in the custody of the Army. Margaret would be sympathetic if Jay told her about the German, but he was not at all sure that her companion from the Security Service would agree. If Colonel Holland could be convinced to help Theodore, then Jay had no doubt that he would be released at once. The problem was that Colonel Holland was just as likely to view Theodore as his enemy. No, it was more likely that Colonel Holland would see him as such.
Jay frowned as he reached the end of the hallway and turned to cross over into the palace's central building. He couldn't even honestly say that the Security Service man would be wrong in his views. Regardless of how much Theodore and others had helped Jay Thomson personally; they had been quite clear about their opposition to his country and the occupation. Which meant that telling Colonel Holland might end up doing Theodore more harm than good.
His frown deepened. And it might make the Colonel suspicious of Jay's intentions as well. Regardless of how much he had helped Jay and Margaret, Jay couldn't forget that he was an officer in the service of the British military. Whatever rosy picture Martin might have painted about the government's intentions, Jay wasn't quite ready to completely trust them again after what he'd been through. And he had to admit that, considering the company he had been keeping, the government really didn't have all that many reasons to trust him.
Jay shook his head. The hallway he was currently in was smaller than the central halls of the palace, but no less elaborately decorated. Artwork on the ceiling made it appear much taller than it really could have been, and much more populated with cherubs and pegasi and all manner of other flying creatures. On a whim, Jay turned right to descend a wide, curving stone staircase to a basement level. He had seen roughly what the palace looked like aboveground, and he wondered how much underground space it occupied.
At first he thought it must be just a wine cellar. An impressive wine cellar, to be sure, but still just a—relatively—small, functional area. The stone walls were unpapered and unpainted, and decoration instead consisted of a few marble statues, and an occasional design carved into the walls themselves.
It quickly became clear, however, that despite the simplified décor Jay had entered another complete level of the palace. Actually, Jay thought it must have been designed to a somewhat more medieval theme. Although the halls down here were lit with gas lamps like the rest of the palace, the walls were lined with torch racks containing actual torches. If lit, they would probably change the atmosphere altogether.
The hallway opened up into a large central room. Jay was standing at the northwest corner, at the southwest there was another identical hallway which probably led back to another staircase like the one he had walked down. The other two corners of the big room led to a pair of narrower, straight staircases. These were covered in a red carpet that ran down to the floor, and then covered the center of the room in a broad ribbon.
At the back of the room were several shallow steps that led up to a raised dais. Jay would have called it a throne room, except that the dais was empty. There was no throne. Instead, the wall behind the platform had an enormous, set of arching wooden doors.
There was no one down here to turn him away, and Jay was curious. He skipped up the steps to the raised platform and inspected the big doors. They were reinforced with iron bars, but apart from their size were not otherwise unusual. Jay wrapped his hand around the large black handle of one of the doors, and pulled.
The door did not budge. Jay frowned, turned his head to look at the hinges, and pushed on the door instead.
The door had been well-made, and there was remarkably little resistance from friction, but the sheer weight of the door meant that it only swung open very slowly as Jay pushed. After a moment, he set his feet and pulled the door to a stop before it could crash into anything on the other side. With that accomplished, Jay stepped through to the other side.
Beyond the doors was a long and dimly-lit chamber. The air inside was different than in the other parts of the palace, colder and crisper, which made Jay think the chamber must be open to the outside. The chamber was made of plain gray stone of a rougher cut than the hallway behind him. To either side were two thin passages that stretched away into darkness. The passages seemed to be the source of the outside air, as a light breeze was coming down them.
In front of Jay, however, was a single hallway lined with stone pillars. The pillars had torch racks and the torches inside these were lit, providing the only light in the entire chamber.
Intrigued, Jay stepped forward to walk down the hallway. It was only about twenty yards long, and ended in a stone wall. As Jay approached, however, he could see that it was not a plain dead end. Standing out from the wall was a grand archway as big as the doors he had just passed through. But there were no doors beneath the archway, just flat, smooth stone.
Jay came to a stop in front of this curious structure. There was an inscription above the archway, written in large block letters. Jay didn't know what the inscription said. Partly because it seemed to be written in German, but also because most of the letters were obscured by a large bird's nest that had been built at the peak of the arch.
Jay blinked. The nest was inhabited. A single black bird—a large and bearded raven—was staring down at him from the edge of the nest. The raven extended its wings and shook them a couple times as Jay gazed up at it.
And then it spoke.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Blake," the bird said in perfect English. "I had worried that you might not come."
After Ludwig disappeared and the occupation began, the first Empress Victoria had nearly ordered the entire palace demolished. She had only been convinced to let the structure remain by a petition from the curators of just about every British museum, as well as the request of her own son. The salvation of the palace had come as great news for Bavaria's first military governor, who had immediately declared it to be his official headquarters and residence. Since the palace had a larger footprint than Windsor Castle—and a far bigger floor plan—the governor had been skirting the boundaries of lèse majesté. His only saving grace had been making its generous residential wings open to other high-ranking visitors and members of the occupation staff. It was a small enough sacrifice to make for the ability to host outrageously glamorous parties in the biggest palace in the world.
Martin was disgusted by the whole attitude of the place; he would have been one of the ones arguing for its destruction if he'd been around in 1886. Still, he couldn't help but feel proud of himself for securing three luxurious rooms on the second floor of the south wing for himself and the Blake siblings. It hadn't been terribly hard; a lot of the administrative staff and their guests had fled the island, leaving more vacancies than usual, but being able to get a room there under any circumstances was still a mark of status. Martin did not often care about such symbols, but he did now. And on the rare occasions that he was moved to use it, Colonel Martin Bozeman Holland of Her Majesty's Security Service wielded considerable power over lesser officials and weaker men.
For a while longer, at least.
Martin knew the end was coming for him. His career had ended two hours ago at the Herreninsel docks when he had shaken hands with Jay Thomson Blake. When he had failed to carry out his mission. He would have been punished for abandoning his assignment and flying to Germany, but he would have kept his job. And if he'd come back successful, even that transgression might have been overlooked, perhaps even rewarded as "proper initiative" or even "decisive action befitting an agent". Instead, Martin would be lucky to get off with a summary discharge, and a full court martial was not out of the question. They might even charge him with treason.
Martin didn't care, though, and that fact alone was bringing him no end of amusement. Even just a few days ago, he would have been horrified to think that he could so completely and so casually betray his mission and his agency. But he was. Martin didn't want to kill Jay Thomson, it was as simple as that. His reasons were personal, he had to admit, but even professionally there was no longer any real need for the assignment. The damage was clearly already done.
Martin's superiors wouldn't see it that way, of course. And that was a problem which would cause Martin some serious consternation in the days to come. He would have to deal with it soon, and not least because it would be an even bigger problem for the Blakes. For the moment, however, Martin intended to enjoy himself.
When they had first reached the palace, they had run into a small crowd of students from the University of Edinburgh. The students were on an excursion for their history program, and had been stranded on the island when the fighting broke out on the mainland. Their professor had clearly been trying to make the best of a difficult situation by spending some extra time touring the palace and lecturing about its history. He seemed like a cheerful fellow, but had an unfortunately dull voice, and most of his students just looked bored. He was a fascinating enough diversion for Jay and Margaret, who had never seen the place before, and Martin had left them with the old man while he went to speak to the garrison commander.
Martin found them again half an hour later still standing in the same spot, but presumably much more enlightened about the relevant history. After that, they had only to wander for another hour around the massive palace complex looking for the right staircase in right building. That part wasn't actually all that difficult; most of the delays were due to Margaret stopping every few yards to gawk at the artwork which lined the walls, or just to take in the architecture of the palace itself. She was less than sympathetic when her brother tried to hurry her along.
"You've had two weeks to play tourist," she said, "I just got here."
Jay Thomson rolled his eyes. "By all means, enjoy yourself. But your friend here has our room keys," he jerked his head towards Martin, "and I'm really looking forward to sleeping in a real bed for the first time in days. So do you think you could wait ten minutes and then come back?"
Martin kept his face locked down as always, but he found Margaret's grumbling quite amusing.
"Thank you, sister dearest," Jay said once they started walking again. Margaret almost punched him. If she had, Martin didn't think he could have resisted cracking a smile.
"Here we are," he said once they reached what he thought was the right hallway.
The bedrooms in this wing had been intended to house the Swan King's honored guests while he held court at Herrenchiemsee, and each one was built like a luxury flat in the nicer districts of London. They were rather nice indeed, and Martin had gotten them entirely free of charge. Someday, the governor would probably start renting out the flats to bring in some extra revenue, but until then it was just another perk for anyone with influence.
"Mr. Blake," Martin handed his first key to Jay Thomson when they reached the appropriate room. "The caretaker told me each of these rooms has a different name, but I'm afraid I didn't think to ask what they were."
The Blake brother sighed, "Great, so Margaret's probably going to spend half an hour trying to guess." He shook his head and took the key from Martin. Turning it in the lock above, he pushed open the heavy wooden door.
"Oh my God," Margaret said, and Martin shared her sentiments. The room was even bigger than he had expected. In fact, it appeared that it was not one bedroom after all, it was three. There was a master bedroom with a single large bed, and two smaller bedrooms each with two smaller beds. Presumably the latter were for children and servants.
Actually, Martin realized, the level of luxury was not all that different from what he himself had seen back at the Blake manor. Margaret herself should be used to this sort of thing. Although, Martin thought as he leaned forward to look around some more, the marble bathroom is a little excessive even by the normal standards of the rich and famous.
"I don't think it's any mystery as to what this room is called, though," Margaret said. She waved her hand at the murals which adorned the walls of the bedrooms, "This is the dryad what's-her-name and the one Greek God, so-and-so."
"Daphne, being pursued by Apollo," Martin said. Margaret raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. "I had a schoolteacher who took classical mythology very seriously."
Jay Thomson clapped his hands together. "Well I'm glad that mystery is solved now," he said, speaking a little loudly. "But since I'm wearing two days' worth of mud, I think I'd like to go for a swim in this pool here," he nodded towards the impressive bathroom. "And then I think I'll get some sleep." He waved Martin and Margaret back towards the door. "Feel free not to wake me for another day or three."
After Martin and Margaret had backed out the door, he shut it in their faces. Margaret sniffed.
"Oh," she said, and turned around, "let's go see what's in mine."
Margaret's room was across the hall from her brother's, Martin opened it with the key to let her in. The layout was much the same as before, although the bedrooms had been moved slightly so that each had windows looking out onto the palace's western gardens. And the mural was… different.
"All right, Colonel Classical Mythology," Margaret said in a subdued voice, "what do you think this is?"
"I have no idea," Martin said. He was staring at the walls himself.
"This must be the room the King gave to people he didn't like."
Martin had to admit that it was a little disturbing, creepy even. The subject of the paintings was a single man, a medieval knight in black armor. He was leering out from every wall with a small, sadistic grin, and his helmet sported horns that gave him a vaguely demonic appearance. There were no other clues to his identity or story, the murals simply showed him standing around in empty fields, watching whoever had the misfortune to be in his presence.
"I'm sure he just wants to be your friend," Martin said dryly.
Margaret glared at him. "All right," she said, "show me what you've got. I hope it's some sort of horrible monster looking to eat you."
She was partly right. The room Martin had chosen for himself was next to Jay Thomson's, and had an identical floor plan. But the paintings inside were easy to recognize, even for Margaret. They told the story of Saint George and the Dragon.
Margaret folded her arms in front of a depiction of Saint George brandishing his lance from horseback, and sighed.
"So, would you prefer to stay in this one?" Martin offered her his key.
"It's all right," she closed her eyes and shook her head.
Martin nodded, and slipped the key into his pocket. He looked out one of the room's windows. It was already dark out the eastern side, and the moon's reflection was clear in the vast waters of the lake beyond the forest.
Martin reached into his sling to scratch at his left arm. "I suppose I ought to sleep, then. Unless you really do want to go back and look around some more."
He turned back to Margaret, who was running one hand along the painted walls. She glanced at him for a moment, but didn't say anything.
"Here," Martin said, "it's no trouble. I'll take the room with the black knight." He took the key out of his pocket again. "You can stay here."
Margaret laughed softly, and gave him a little smile. "That's very noble of you," she said. "But I don't think I can allow that."
"I really don't mind," he said as Margaret walked past him to the doorway.
"Remember what I told you at the air station, Colonel Holland?"
"When you were angry at me for trying to keep you safe?"
She turned around and gave him a pensive look, "I told you that I was not going to let you take one step out my sight."
Martin was starting to have trouble focusing, but he maintained just enough presence of mind to reply, "Until we found your brother."
"I think I'll overlook that part for now. Not one step out of my sight, Colonel Holland."
Margaret closed the door.
* * *
Jay woke up very suddenly. The utter darkness outside his window told him that the sun had set completely; he had woken up in the middle of the night. That meant he had slept for several hours at the very least, but since Jay had felt like he could sleep for an entire day, he was a little disappointed.
He sat up in the middle of the oversized bed. Even if he had only slept a few hours, Jay felt rested, although he wasn't sure that was a good thing at this hour. For a few minutes, he considered lying back down and trying to sleep again, but he knew that would be futile. For whatever reason, Jay was awake now, he couldn't undo that.
Sighing, he shifted over to one side of the bed, and felt for the floor with his feet. The one drawback he could identify about the room was the fact that its floor was all hard wood and stone. No one had even bothered to lay down some rugs, although Jay couldn't fathom why not.
He found the floor, but couldn't find his shoes or socks in the dark no matter how much he fumbled around. Jay got up and walked carefully around the room until he could find the doorway and the little hallway in the front. He turned the knob and cracked the door slightly to let in some light from the hall outside. With that small illumination, Jay was able to locate some matches in a holder and light the gas lamps around the room.
That gave him enough light to locate his clothes, which he had abandoned in little piles across the floor. Jay frowned at the scattered garments. He had been wearing the same outfit since he spent the night at Ernst Brauer's house back in Donauwörth so many days ago. Jay really wished that he hadn't lost his suitcase on the train from Augsburg, or at least that he had gotten another pair of pants out before losing it.
Jay flopped backwards onto the bed. From the ceiling, a creature that was part woman and part tree stared down at him. It was all finally ending, this nightmarish adventure. Margaret's rescue had come as such a shock that Jay still didn't quite know what he was going to do with himself. It was difficult for him to imagine the transition back to his ordinary duties as a correspondent for the Times. Somehow the idea of roving around the Continent again just didn't seem the same anymore. Jay wondered if he was going to be constantly looking over his shoulder on every assignment from now on.
"Assuming I still have a job," he said to himself. Jay had no idea how Barry was going to react to his return. The editor could have already replaced Jay, for all he knew.
Jay sat up again and started pulling on his pants. At least they'd dried a little, although that wasn't saying much. After his pants came his socks, then shoes, and then his shirt which was by some miracle still a passable shade of white. Jay left the heavy coat which he'd gotten from Baron Münchhausen on the rack where he'd first put it. He ran his fingers through his hair with a sigh. Jay swore to himself that after this trip he would never go hatless again, even if that meant he had to carry folded paper hats in his pockets at all times.
He finished buttoning up his shirt and pulled his suspenders over his shoulders, and then he looked over at the big chest of drawers which sat near the bed. On top of the chest he had laid the only two objects he still possessed which were not clothes: the sword he had recently been given, and his grandfather's prayer book. Jay picked up the sword in its scabbard and turned it around in his hands a few times before slipping it through his suspenders to hang from his waist again. He left the black prayer book in its spot on the chest.
Jay wasn't sure where he was going, or why he would need the sword, but for whatever reason he felt more comfortable carrying it with him. He stepped out through the bedroom door and closed it behind him. Then he stood for a moment in the cool air which was blowing down the length of the palace hall. Jay looked at the room across the hall from his and considered knocking, but dismissed the idea almost as soon as he thought of it. He might have woken, but Margaret probably had no wish to do the same. And there was certainly no way that he was going to wake Colonel Holland, Jay glanced at the door several yards down to his right.
Instead, Jay wandered the palace, walking south down the hall towards the staircase. The palace complex was by far the largest building Jay had ever seen, and he'd only gotten a glimpse of a tiny portion of it on the way to his room. This particular wing resembled some of the nicer hotels that Jay had been in, but there had to be other parts which were even more impressive.
The first floor of this wing was mostly taken up by a grand hallway lined with two rows of bronze sculptures. At first Jay thought the sculptures were meaningless abstract pieces, but as he walked he realized that the ones on his right were actually supposed to be large birds—presumably swans—in various poses. This made him suspect that the line of sculptures on the left represented something concrete as well, but Jay couldn't decide what that might be.
As he walked, Jay tried to think on what he should do about Theodore. He felt rather bad for stopping his search to spend the night in this place. Hopefully his friend was still all right, but he couldn't be nearly as comfortable as Jay if he was still in the custody of the Army. Margaret would be sympathetic if Jay told her about the German, but he was not at all sure that her companion from the Security Service would agree. If Colonel Holland could be convinced to help Theodore, then Jay had no doubt that he would be released at once. The problem was that Colonel Holland was just as likely to view Theodore as his enemy. No, it was more likely that Colonel Holland would see him as such.
Jay frowned as he reached the end of the hallway and turned to cross over into the palace's central building. He couldn't even honestly say that the Security Service man would be wrong in his views. Regardless of how much Theodore and others had helped Jay Thomson personally; they had been quite clear about their opposition to his country and the occupation. Which meant that telling Colonel Holland might end up doing Theodore more harm than good.
His frown deepened. And it might make the Colonel suspicious of Jay's intentions as well. Regardless of how much he had helped Jay and Margaret, Jay couldn't forget that he was an officer in the service of the British military. Whatever rosy picture Martin might have painted about the government's intentions, Jay wasn't quite ready to completely trust them again after what he'd been through. And he had to admit that, considering the company he had been keeping, the government really didn't have all that many reasons to trust him.
Jay shook his head. The hallway he was currently in was smaller than the central halls of the palace, but no less elaborately decorated. Artwork on the ceiling made it appear much taller than it really could have been, and much more populated with cherubs and pegasi and all manner of other flying creatures. On a whim, Jay turned right to descend a wide, curving stone staircase to a basement level. He had seen roughly what the palace looked like aboveground, and he wondered how much underground space it occupied.
At first he thought it must be just a wine cellar. An impressive wine cellar, to be sure, but still just a—relatively—small, functional area. The stone walls were unpapered and unpainted, and decoration instead consisted of a few marble statues, and an occasional design carved into the walls themselves.
It quickly became clear, however, that despite the simplified décor Jay had entered another complete level of the palace. Actually, Jay thought it must have been designed to a somewhat more medieval theme. Although the halls down here were lit with gas lamps like the rest of the palace, the walls were lined with torch racks containing actual torches. If lit, they would probably change the atmosphere altogether.
The hallway opened up into a large central room. Jay was standing at the northwest corner, at the southwest there was another identical hallway which probably led back to another staircase like the one he had walked down. The other two corners of the big room led to a pair of narrower, straight staircases. These were covered in a red carpet that ran down to the floor, and then covered the center of the room in a broad ribbon.
At the back of the room were several shallow steps that led up to a raised dais. Jay would have called it a throne room, except that the dais was empty. There was no throne. Instead, the wall behind the platform had an enormous, set of arching wooden doors.
There was no one down here to turn him away, and Jay was curious. He skipped up the steps to the raised platform and inspected the big doors. They were reinforced with iron bars, but apart from their size were not otherwise unusual. Jay wrapped his hand around the large black handle of one of the doors, and pulled.
The door did not budge. Jay frowned, turned his head to look at the hinges, and pushed on the door instead.
The door had been well-made, and there was remarkably little resistance from friction, but the sheer weight of the door meant that it only swung open very slowly as Jay pushed. After a moment, he set his feet and pulled the door to a stop before it could crash into anything on the other side. With that accomplished, Jay stepped through to the other side.
Beyond the doors was a long and dimly-lit chamber. The air inside was different than in the other parts of the palace, colder and crisper, which made Jay think the chamber must be open to the outside. The chamber was made of plain gray stone of a rougher cut than the hallway behind him. To either side were two thin passages that stretched away into darkness. The passages seemed to be the source of the outside air, as a light breeze was coming down them.
In front of Jay, however, was a single hallway lined with stone pillars. The pillars had torch racks and the torches inside these were lit, providing the only light in the entire chamber.
Intrigued, Jay stepped forward to walk down the hallway. It was only about twenty yards long, and ended in a stone wall. As Jay approached, however, he could see that it was not a plain dead end. Standing out from the wall was a grand archway as big as the doors he had just passed through. But there were no doors beneath the archway, just flat, smooth stone.
Jay came to a stop in front of this curious structure. There was an inscription above the archway, written in large block letters. Jay didn't know what the inscription said. Partly because it seemed to be written in German, but also because most of the letters were obscured by a large bird's nest that had been built at the peak of the arch.
Jay blinked. The nest was inhabited. A single black bird—a large and bearded raven—was staring down at him from the edge of the nest. The raven extended its wings and shook them a couple times as Jay gazed up at it.
And then it spoke.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Blake," the bird said in perfect English. "I had worried that you might not come."