The Ludwig Conspiracy(43)

With a tingling sense of excitement and anticipation, the bookseller turned to the coded notes. As he leafed through the pages, flecked with age, he once again felt the familiar slight dizziness. But his fear of silence had gone, giving way to a quiet longing. In Steven’s eyes, the past really was more colorful and exciting than the gray twenty-first century.

Especially the past of Theodor Marot.





13





FALKHQR





On that September evening of the year 1885, in some dark corner of the Munich suburb of Au, I found myself in greater difficulties than ever before in my life. The king must be warned at once! I was sure that as soon as he discovered the ministers’ intentions, he would come to Munich by the fastest possible route to confront his enemies.

The power of the bureaucracy had grown apace over the last few years. Ludwig himself had played a part in that by avoiding the capital city of Bavaria, which he regarded as a stinking sewer. It was years since he had been in Munich, and he took no interest at all in politics. So his ministers concocted their own plans, placing only treaties and other such documents that needed the royal signature before the king, and in other respects determining the fate of the country on their own. They were the real monarchs; Ludwig was no more than a shadow king living in his own world of dreams.

What could I do? I was sure that von Strelitz already had the rail stations and telegraph offices watched. My one chance of reaching the king, therefore, was a fast horse. I stole back to the cab and unharnessed the exhausted nag. But I soon realized that I would never get back to Linderhof on this lame horse. I needed another, faster mount—but where would I find one? With my head bent so as not to attract attention, I went through the streets with the lame horse, under the eyes of the hungry, dirty inhabitants of that part of the city.

The poorest of the poor lived in the Au district. Like ghosts shunning the light of day, the houses huddled low by the steep wall of the valley of the Isar River. Many of them were no more than tiny hostelries where the families of day laborers lived, sometimes ten to a single room. The millstream of the Au flowed sluggishly past; refuse and dead rats drifted in its clouded waters. A gray cloud of smoke from the wood stoves of the houses and the countless coal-burning furnaces of the factories hung over the whole district.

After a while, I found an inn that did not look quite as dilapidated as the others. It was called Lilienbräu and lay close to the millstream. The small windows were smeared with soot, but the enamel inn sign looked new. The noise of drinkers came out of the taproom now that it was early evening, and a few people were bawling out a song to the music of an untuned fiddle.

I tied up my nag to a hook and entered the inn. A dozen eyes turned at once to stare at me suspiciously, and conversations and the song died away. I was looking into the faces of debilitated factory workers, drinking away their meager wages here before staggering home to their hungry families.

“A fine gentleman, eh?” growled a sturdy, bald man in a dirty leather apron, obviously a driver for a brewery. “Don’t he like it no more up there in the city, or what brings him here?”

Laughter broke out. I looked down at my black overcoat, slightly torn now. I had lost my top hat during the wild pursuit, but all the same the workmen realized at once that I came from a higher social class.

“I’m a cabby, no fine gentleman,” I said. “My horse is lame, and I need . . .”

“Better take Hartinger’s donkey,” crowed one of the men. “You won’t find nothing better, not here in the Au, you won’t!”

Once again the men roared with laugher. Some of them banged their tankards heavily on the scratched tables, but soon their fleeting interest in me was gone. I was about to go out again and look for another inn when an elderly gray-haired man, who had been standing at the bar in silence, turned to me, bowing and scraping. He wore a shabby black tailcoat and a battered bowler hat, and there was an impertinent glint in his eye.

“Could be I might have a hoss for the gennelman,” he growled, drawing on a stumpy cigar. “Could be, could be. Wouldn’t come cheap, though.”

“As I mentioned before, I’m a cabdriver, and . . .”

“Huh!” The man spat into a bowl on the bar counter. “You don’t fool me, my young dandy! I been a cabby myself, and you talk like the nobs, not like us. So what’ll you pay?”

I decided not to let myself in for any more argument and brought a few coins from my coat pocket.

The old cabby chuckled. “That all you got? Guess you could buy a calf and ride away on that.”

“I’m afraid I have no more at the moment. You can have the horse that’s tied up outside.”