The Ludwig Conspiracy(142)
Suddenly he remembered what Sara had said about him back at Linderhof.
Sometimes I think you’re living in the wrong century, Herr Lukas . . .
“I admit it’s hard to grasp, Steven,” Luise said gently. Still wearing the royal white cloak, which dragged over the floor behind her, she had come down a flight of steps and entered the throne room.
“I myself have known who I am since my earliest childhood. My grandfather was always telling me about it, the way other children get told the story of Baby Jesus. It never meant much to Papa, but I spent most of my time with my dear grandpa. He and I were . . . very like each other.” Luise looked at Steven with a spark in her eye. “My grandfather and yours were brothers, Steven. Brothers and at the same time mortal enemies. May I?” She picked up the bloodstained family tree from the mosaic floor and examined it, wrinkling her brow.
“Leopold, son of Ludwig the Second,” she murmured, running her finger down the line of her and Steven’s forebears. “To the day of his early death on the battlefields of Verdun, Leopold never knew anything about his real father. Marot thought it too dangerous. The prince regent’s agents never rested.” Luise shook her head, lost in thought; she now seemed to be in an entirely different world.
“When the good Theodor died a short time later, working as an army doctor on the Somme, only Maria still knew the secret of the diary. On her deathbed, she left it to her two grandsons. Lothar and Anton, the legitimate heirs of Ludwig, were to bring the truth to light after so many years.”
“If you’ve inherited anything from Ludwig yourself, dear cousin, it can only be insanity,” Steven said. “Insanity and, I hope, an early death.”
“Quiet!” she snapped. “You still don’t understand anything. You and your whole despicable branch of the family. My grandfather Lothar was telling people about his true origins back in the 1930s, but the folk of Oberammergau thought he was crazy, just fantasizing.” She shook her head indignantly. “Your grandfather Anton didn’t want to know anything about it. He disowned his family. They quarreled, and then . . .”
Her voice rose again; her eyes seemed to be spraying fiery sparks. “And then your damn grandfather went to the States and simply took the diary with him, like a cheap souvenir, that . . . that thief, that bastard!” She tore the copied family tree into small pieces and threw them in the air, where they sailed down to the floor like a rain of white paper sprinkled with red. “He stole the diary. Grandfather Lothar told me all about it. He described the book and the treasure chest to me in such detail that I saw them in my dreams. He even sent detectives to the States, but they failed to find his damn brother and the book.” She watched the scraps of paper sucking up Zöller’s blood from the floor.
“Unfortunately, my grandfather left us far too early.” She sighed. “Only a few months before you and your wretched family came back to Germany. He’d been looking for his brother’s descendants all that time, and now there, they suddenly were in Cologne, smiling at a housewarming party and trying to shake my hand.” She laughed, and it sounded like the squeal of a ten-year-old. “I kept my eye on you at that party, Steven. After all, you were one of the family of that brood who cheated us of our greatest treasure. When you went up to the library, I followed you. And then I saw you with that book, the one Grandfather was always talking about. My book.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You got away from me then, Steven. I thought the book had been burned. And you may as well have disappeared from the face of the earth.”
“Because I had taken the surname of Lukas,” Steven said. “My adoptive parents’ surname.” Images from the past went through his head again, like drifting mist, and he instinctively shivered. “The book reminded me of that time again. That was why I couldn’t stop reading it. It really is a book of magic, a book of magic with a curse on it. The curse of my descent.”
“Well, ultimately that . . . book of magic has come back to me,” Luise said, closing her eyes as if in prayer. “And now it’s time to go on a little journey. I was going to show you the castle, wasn’t I?” Smiling, the industrialist pointed to the door. “I know a place where you can see the building in all its glory.”
39
ALONG WITH LANCELOT, the three armed bodyguards, and Luise Manstein, they left the throne room and climbed down the broad spiral staircase to the first floor.
Steven and Sara staggered rather than walked. The experiences of the night made the paintings, arched doorways, vaults, and theatrical backdrops around them freeze into a single nightmare. As they felt the muzzles of the semiautomatics in their backs, they stumbled along the branching system of corridors until they finally came out into the open air.