'So,' he said, 'we have guests!' And he added, smiling with the arrogance of a young man who knows that he is vastly superior to any other person in the world. 'Welcome, guests, welcome to you both.'
Somewhere in the depths of the Schloss a great bell began tolling. It had no funereal sound about it, but it had a disciplinary air. The feeling of a monastery summoned to some holy office.
'We must sleep now,' said old Charlotte. 'Sleep. We will meet again tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock.'
She looked towards Renata and Sir Stafford Nye.
'You will be shown to your rooms. I hope you will sleep well.'
It was the Royal dismissal.
Stafford Nye saw Renata's arm fly up in the Fascist salute but it was addressed not to Charlotte, but to this fair-haired boy. He thought she said: 'Heil Franz Joseph!', copied her gesture and he, too, said 'Heil!'
Charlotte spoke to them.
'Would it please you tomorrow morning to start the day with a ride through the forest?'
'I should like it of all things,' said Stafford Nye.
'And you, child?'
'Yes, I too.'
'Very good then. It shall be arranged. Good night to you both. I am glad to welcome you here. Franz Joseph - give me your arm. We will go into the Chinese Boudoir. We have much to discuss, and you will have to leave in good time tomorrow morning.'
The menservants escorted Renata and Stafford Nye to their apartments. Nye hesitated for a moment on the threshold. Would it be possible for them to have a word or two now? He decided against it. As long as the castle walls surrounded them it was well to be careful. One never knew - each room might be wired with microphones.
Sooner or later, though, he had to ask questions. Certain things aroused a new and sinister apprehension in his mind. He was being persuaded, inveigled into something. But what? And whose doing was it?
The bedrooms were handsome, yet oppressive. The rich hangings of satin and Velvets, some of them antique, gave out a faint perfume of decay, tempered by spices. He wondered how often Renata had stayed here before.
Chapter 11
THE YOUNG AND LOVELY
After breakfasting on the following morning in a small breakfast-room downstairs, he found Renata waiting for him. The horses were at the door.
Both of them had brought riding clothes with them. Everything they could possibly require seemed to have been intelligently anticipated.
They mounted and rode away down the castle drive. Renata spoke with the groom at some length.
'He asked if we would like him to accompany us but I said no. I know the tracks round here fairly well.'
'I see. You have been here before?'
'Not very often of late years. Early in my life I knew this place very well.'
He gave her a sharp look. She did not return it. As she rode beside him, he watched her profile - the thin, aquiline nose, the head carried so proudly on the slender neck. She rode a horse well, he saw that.
All the same, there was a sense of ill ease in his mind this morning. He wasn't sure why...
His mind went back to the Airport Lounge. The woman who had come to stand beside him. The glass of Pilsner on the table... Nothing in it that there shouldn't have been - neither then, nor later. A risk he had accepted. Why, when all that was long over, should it rouse uneasiness in him now?
They had a brief canter following a ride through the trees. A beautiful property, beautiful woods. In the distance he saw horned animals. A paradise for a sportsman, a paradise for the old way of living, a paradise that contained - what? A serpent? As it was in the beginning - with Paradise went a serpent. He drew rein and the horses fell to a walk. He and Renata were alone - no microphones, no listening walls - the time had come for his questions.
'Who is she?' he said urgently. 'What is she?'
'It's easy to answer. So easy that it's hardly believable.'
'Well?' he said.
'She's oil. Copper. Goldmines in South Africa. Armaments in Sweden. Uranium deposits in the north. Nuclear development, vast stretches of cobalt. She's all those things.'
'And yet, I hadn't heard about her, I didn't know her name, I didn't know -'
'She has not wanted people to know.'
'Can one keep such things quiet?'
'Easily, if you have enough copper and oil and nuclear deposits and armaments and all the rest of it. Money can advertise, or money can keep secrets, can hush things up.'
'But who actually is she?'
'Her grandfather was American. He was mainly railways, I think. Possibly Chicago hogs in those times. It's like going back into history, finding out. He married a German woman You've heard of her, I expect. Big Belinda, they used to christen her. Armaments, shipping, the whole industries of Europe. She was her father's heiress.'
'Between those two, unbelievable wealth,' said Sir Stafford Nye. 'And so - power. Is that what you're telling me?'
'Yes. She didn't just inherit things, you know. She made money as well. She'd inherited brains, she was a big financier in her own right. Everything she touched multiplied itself. Turned to incredible sums of money, and she invested them. Taking advice, taking other people's judgment, but in the end always using her own. And always prospering. Always adding to her wealth so that it was too fabulous to be believed. Money creates money.'
'Yes, I can understand that. Wealth has to increase if there's a superfluity of it. But - what did she want? What has she got?'
'You said it just now. Power.'
'And she lives here? Or does she -?'
'She visits America and Sweden. Oh yes, she visits places, but not often. This is where she prefers to be, in the centre of a web like a vast spider controlling all the threads. The threads of finance. Other threads too.'
'When you say, other threads -'
'The arts. Music, pictures, writers. Human beings - young human beings.'
'Yes. One might know that. Those pictures, a wonderful collection.'
'There are galleries of them upstairs in the Schloss. There are Rembrandts and Giottos and Raphaels and there are cases of jewels - some of the most wonderful jewels in the world.'
'All belonging to one ugly, gross old woman. Is she satisfied?'
'Not yet, but well on the way to being.'
'Where is she going, what does she want?'
'She loves youth. That is her mode of power. To control youth. The world is full of rebellious youth at this moment. That's been helped on. Modern philosophy, modern thought, writers and others whom she finances and controls.'
'But how can -?' He stopped.
'I can't tell you because I don't know. It's an enormous ramification. She's behind it in one sense, supports rather curious charities, earnest philanthropists and idealists, raises innumerable grants for students and artists and writers.'
'And yet you say it's not -'
'No, it's not yet complete. It's a great upheaval that's being planned. It's believed in, it's the new heaven and the new earth. That's what's been promised by leaders for thousands of years. Promised by religions, promised by those who support Messiahs, promised by those who come back to teach the law, like the Buddha. Promised by politicians. The crude heaven of an easy attainment such as the Assassins believed in, and the Old Man of the Assassins promised his followers and, from their point of view, gave to them.'
'Is she behind drugs as well?'
"Yes. Without conviction, of course. Only a means of having people bent to her will. It's one way, too, of destroying people. The weak ones. The ones she thinks are no good, although they had once shown promise. She'd never take drugs herself - she's strong. But drugs destroy weak people more easily and naturally than anything else.'
'And force? What about force? You can't do everything by propaganda.'
'No, of course not. Propaganda is the first stage and behind it there are vast armaments piling up. Arms that go to deprived countries and then on elsewhere. Tanks and guns and nuclear weapons that go to Africa and the South Seas and South America. In South America there's a lot building up. Forces of young men and women drilling and training. Enormous arms dumps - means of chemical warfare -'
'It's a nightmare! How do you know all this, Renata?' 'Partly because I've been told it; from information received, partly because I have been instrumental in proving some of it.'
'But you. You and she?'
There's always something idiotic behind all great and vast projects.' She laughed suddenly. 'Once, you see, she was in love with my grandfather. A foolish story. He lived in this part of the world. He had a castle a mile or two from here.'
'Was he a man of genius?'
'Not at all. He was just a very good sportsman. Handsome, dissolute and attractive to women. And so, because of that, she is in a sense my protectress. And I am one of her converts or slaves! I work for her. I find people for her. I carry out her commands in different parts of the world.'
'Do you?'
'What do you mean by that?'
'I wondered,' said Sir Stafford Nye. He did wonder. He looked at Renata and he thought again of the airport. He was working for Renata, was working with Renata. She had brought him to this Schloss. Who had told her to bring him here? Big, gross Charlotte in the middle of her spider's web? He had had a reputation, a reputation of being unsound in certain diplomatic quarters. He could be useful to these people perhaps, but useful in a small and rather humiliating way. And he thought suddenly, in a kind of fog of question marks: Renata ? I took a risk with her at Frankfurt airport. But I was right. It came off. Nothing happened to me. But all the same, he thought, who is she? What is she? I don't know. I can't be sure. One can't in the world today be sure of anyone. Anyone at all. She was told perhaps to get me. To get me into the hollow of her hand, so that business at Frankfurt might have been cleverly thought out. It fitted in with my sense of risk, and it would make me sure of her. It would make me trust her.
'Let's canter again,' she said. 'We've walked the horses too long.'
'I haven't asked you what you are in all this?'
'I take orders.'
'From whom?'
'There's an opposition. There's always an opposition. There are people who have a suspicion of what's going on, of how the world is going to be made to change, of how with money, wealth, armaments, idealism, great trumpeting words of power what's going to happen. There are people who say it shall not happen.'
'And you are with them?'
'I say so.'
'What do you mean by that, Renata?'
She said, 'I say so.'
He said: 'That young man last night -'
'Franz Joseph?'
'Is that his name?'
'It is the name he is known by.'
'But he has another name, hasn't he?'
'Do you think so?'
'He is, isn't he, the young Siegfried?'
'You saw him like that? You realized that's what he was, what he stands for?'
'I think so. Youth. Heroic youth. Aryan youth, it has to be Aryan youth in this part of the world. There is still that point of view. A super race, the supermen. They must be of Aryan descent.'
'Oh yes, it's lasted on from the time of Hitler. It doesn't always come out into the open much and, in other places all over the world, it isn't stressed so much. South America, they say, is one of the strongholds. And Peru and South Africa also.'
'And what does young Siegfried do? I mean, besides being handsome and kissing his benefactor's hand?'
'Oh, he is a great orator. When he speaks, his admirers follow him even to death.'
'Is that true?'
'He believes it.'
'And you?'
'I think I might believe it.' She added: 'Oratory is very frightening, you know. What a voice can do, what words can do, and not particularly convincing words at that. The way they are said. his voice rings like a bell, and women cry and scream and faint away when he adresses them - you'll see that for yourself.'
'You saw Charlotte's bodyguard last night all dressed up - people do love dressing up nowadays. You'll see them all over the world in their own chosen get-up, different in different places, some with their long hair and their beards, and girls in their streaming white nightgowns, talking of peace and beauty, and the wonderful world that is the world of the young which is to be theirs when they've destroyed enough of the old world. The original Country of the Young was west of the Irish Sea, wasn't it? A very simple place, a different place, a different Country of the Young from what we're planning now - It was silver sands, and sunshine and singing in the waves...
'But now we want anarchy, and breaking down and destroying. Only anarchy can benefit those who march behind it. It's frightening, it's also wonderful - because of its violence, because it's bought with pain and suffering -'
'So that is how you see the world today?'
'Sometimes.'
'And what am I to do next?'
'Come with your guide. I'm your guide. Like Virgil with Dante, I'll take you down into hell, I'll show you the sadistic films partly copied from the old SS, show you cruelty and pain and violence worshipped. And I'll show you the great dreams of paradise in peace and beauty. You won't know which is which and what is what. But you'll have to make up your mind.'
'Do I trust you, Renata?'
'That will be your choice. You can run away from me if you like, or you can stay with me and see the the new world - the new world that's in the making.'
'Pasteboard,' said Sir Stafford Nye violently.
She looked at him inquiringly.
'Like Alice in Wonderland. The cards, the pasteboard cards all rising up in the air. Flying about. Kings and Queens and Knaves. All sorts of things.'
