mad Mikolaj and the Austrian infiltration iv bonus

 

IV

 

“Let me practice my Telemann concerto until you hit notes no horn can manage,” said Mikołaj. Gosia giggled.

“I might have to practice my fingerwork on you,” she said.

“Sweetness! A musical interlude!” said Mikołaj, happily. “Oh, how outraged that little fircyk would be if we were audible, I could wish he was the spy with all the outrage he and his damp flower meadow of a title could muster at the suggestive comments Frydek and I were managing about horns and lip work!”

Gosia gave a dirty snigger.

“I need a demonstration,” she said. “And how you manipulate those valves.”

“My wife works me very hard,” said Mikołaj.

Further conversation ceased, though music was made.

 

oOoOo

 

“Feeling better?” asked Friedrich, when they emerged.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” said Gosia.

“I’d like to boast about how good my influence is, but I’d just be blowing my own trumpcard[1],” said Mikołaj. “OW!” he added as both Gosia and Friedrich poked him. Then he giggled as they both found sensitive parts of his midriff.

“I have observed your towarzysze undertaking such discipline when you are out of hand,” said Friedrich. “It is extraordinarily satisfying, especially when you are so ticklish.”

“Fiend!” cried Mikołaj. “Pax! I could not resist the pun!”

“Go and eat something to fortify you for our musical evening,” said Friedrich. “I have word that a letter was left by one of our suspects; I do not know who, and as yet the letter is being read, transcribed, and then heated to reveal any secrets. Von Frettchen will report after the music.”

“I remember doing that the first time we met,” said Mikołaj.

“Yes; you bowed to me like a Polish gentleman, and knelt to Bach. And probably justified in that choice,” said Friedrich. “I don’t like it on the odd occasion you’ve knelt to me, it means you’re apologising for having upset me, and it makes me uncomfortable that you care that much.”

“I do care, you know,” said Mikołaj.

“Oh, go away and do Polish war on your appetite,” said Friedrich, rudely.

“A lance charge at the wurst!” said Mikołaj, happily.

 

oOoOo

 

They were playing Telemann’s gigue, suite 1 in D major for trumpet and strings. Mikołaj had switched to his rather battered military cornet, which he felt happier playing, as the trumpet did not have any valves[2], and if he made up what he did not know, only Friedrich rolled his eyes and put up with it because Mikołaj improvised well enough for the sound to be pleasant. Friedrich played the horn part on his flute, and Gosia joined the string part with the harpsichord.

Mikołaj might rest then, as Friedrich showed how he was equal to the most demanding of Bach’s flute concertos.

“Maestro!” said Mikołaj, in deep respect, bowing to the ground, as the king got his breath back.

“The old man forgot at times that his puppets have to breathe,” laughed the king. “But the exquisite torture is sublime.”

“This musical weekend is one neither of us will ever forget,” said Mikołaj. “Ah, if only there was a way to capture a memory of how it sounds.”

“Ah, but who then would listen to real musicians?” said Friedrich.

“Those who know that sublime comes in different flavours,” said Mikołaj.

They played on until  half an hour before dinner, and Mikołaj and Gosia retired with the king to find Von Distelkamp waiting.

“One of your pages retrieved a message from a summer house in the garden, and took it to the Austrian Embassy in Berlin,” said Von Distelkamp. “He was stopped, and was much upset. He is under the impression that he has been carrying love letters. I have detained him; but he was frank, he said that when a strip of cloth was hung from a particular window, he was to go and find a letter. The window in question is that of the linen closet, so no clue to the writer. Unlike some people, he does not brazenly reveal personal details or sign it floridly.”

“It’s pick on Mikołaj day again,” said Mikołaj, mournfully. “I knew you were going to do that,” he added, when Friedrich and Gosia both poked him.

“It’s your own fault for being ticklish,” said Friedrich. “Well, we can see which spy it was when we know which story he told; we used a different one for each.”

“Ah, ingenious,” said Von Distelkamp. “Ostensibly, this is a love letter to the Austrian ambassador, in nauseatingly servile tones. However, the application of heat to the document produced something else.”

“So, is it the talks with Russia, or the submarine vessel?” asked Friedrich.

“Neither, sire,” said Von Distelkamp. “A submarine vessel, really? Isn’t that unlikely?”

“You didn’t have to escape from one which was heading for the bottom of the Baltic,” said Mikołaj, with feeling. “Deliberately holing a vessel in the middle of the sea is one thing, doing it underwater is something entirely different. Nearest I’ve ever come to dying.”

“Mikołaj! You did not mention that, only that you’d gone fishing and caught a submarine vessel!” said Gosia, indignantly.

“I’m sorry, sweetness. I didn’t want to worry you,” said Mikołaj, contrite.

“There was a submarine vessel, it was Swedish, and Mikołaj discouraged the practice,” said Friedrich. “I am only relieved that he was not kidnapped by mermaids who wanted his beautiful body.”

“There is that to be grateful for,” said Mikołaj.

Von Distelkamp sighed, heavily, and cleared his throat.

“Well, the story was neither of those. This is a rather unlikely story about combining with Poland to seize the Holy Roman Empress, supposedly for ransom, but that you are not aware that the Polish king purposes to divorce his own wife and forcibly marry Maria Teresa, having declared her divorced by fiat,” said Von Distelkamp.

Friedrich sat up straight.

“That wasn’t one we discussed,” he said.

“That was the third story, we let an eavesdropper overhear whilst you slept earlier,” said Mikołaj, grimly. “I’m sorry, Frydek, my pet. You aren’t going to like who it was.”

A bleak look crossed the king’s face.

“Hansel,” he said.

“We heard him come back to spy on what high jinks we might be up to with you,” said Mikołaj. “It seemed a good idea to test him too, so Gosia and I just improvised. And if he already has a means set up to carry letters... did not the page boy know who it was?”

“He thought it was the king as he was detained one night by a figure in a mask and cloak who came out of the king’s rooms. It was the boy’s idea to use the linen closet. He thought it prodigiously good fun. He is very young.”

“A potential recruit for you, Von Distelkamp,” said Mikołaj.

The spy looked startled.

“I suppose so,” he said.  “Actually, it’s my nephew who was serving as a page before he enters the military, but I could do worse than train him up. He’s such an innocent, he thought your majesty had assignations with the Ambassador’s wife.”

“He’ll lose that soon enough,” said Friedrich, cynically. “I am glad he is only involved peripherally and relatively innocently. Well, my friend, I have already got Han... Johann Wurfel... confined, because he attacked the Lady Gosia with intent to break her hands, under the impression that my new keyboard player was after my body.”

“I’ll find out if that was just the excuse or if he wanted to torture her to find out more,” said Von Distelkamp.”

“I am sure you will find out everything,” said Friedrich, with distaste. “Must I attend?”

“Don’t ask it of him; I’ll question the little shit,” said Mikołaj. “I’m still angry enough about him trying to hurt my treasure and take away her music from her. I wager I can make him talk without any use of torture.”

“Mikołaj...I am angered by him, but... please.” Friedrich was relieved.

 

oOoOo

 

Mikołaj travelled to Berlin in the morning, after Wurfel had had the night to reflect in a cell. On Mikołaj’s instructions, several young soldiers had been indulging in a bit of amateur dramatics down the corridor, with groans and cries. One of them had hired a whore, known for her inarticulate vocalisation, and she had been paid well for, as she put it, a nice easy night.

The young page, one Hasso Finsternacht, had volunteered to be thrown into the cell with Wurfel, apparently completely broken. He had been dragged out of the cell at dawn, seemingly unable to walk without aid, and had been tied to a stake outside the window, where a rattle of musket fire made him sag in his bonds.  He was carried away, to be slapped on the back by both Friedrich and Mikołaj.

“That was fun in a gruesome sort of way,” said the boy. He was all of nine.

“The more you can scare people, the less you have to hurt them,” said Mikołaj.

“He’s scared,” said Hasso. “I snivelled all night, and he kept saying ‘but he’s just a boy! What will they do to me?’ so I think he might just talk. I wondered if he’d talk to me, but I pretended not to know him, like you told me.”

“Good lad. Did he apologise to you, at all?”

Hasso’s eyes flashed.

“No,” he said.

“If he had, I might have gone easier on him,” said Mikołaj.

 

Mikołaj slid into the cell.

“Hello, precious,” he said. “Now, I’m still very peeved with you for threatening  to break my wife’s fingers, you know, as well as you being unfaithful to my pet, Frydek.”

“Wha... wife?” Wurfel stared.

“Well, I couldn’t bring her to Sans Souci in her usual clothes, could I? It’s in the rules. No women. So I put her in boy’s clothes. What, did you think she was my catamite? How delicious. But if I’d been that way inclined, a catamite under my protection would still have been in the situation of a wife, you know. Now, they’re leaving you to stew and reflect on how much trouble you got that poor little boy into. And yet, I don’t see any remorse in your face.”

“Why should I care?” said Wurfel. “He ignored me when I hinted that I could give him a good time.”

“Of course he did; he’s too young to understand what you meant, you child-spoiler,” said Mikołaj, with scorn. “What a whore you are; taking Frydek’s love gifts, but also writing passionate letters to the Austrian ambassador, and trying to seduce little boys. He shouldn’t have been here, but his father’s busy and it was supposed to be a safe place.”

“Shut up about him! What are they going to do to me?”

“Well, they’ll have a job doing anything, precious, because I got to you first, whilst Von Distelkamp mourns his nephew. The page, you know.  Now, I’m Polish, and we take attacks on our family members very seriously.  Frydek wouldn’t hand you over to me yesterday, but I suspect right now, he wouldn’t care that I got to you before the official torturers. Now, what I’m going to do is to break all your finger bones as you threatened Gosia, and I brought along some blacksmith tools to do it a bit more efficiently, and an interesting box here which I can put your hand in, and turn this screw at the top, and it settles down on whatever body part I have in mind, and I keep turning this handle until it’s thoroughly crushed. And we don’t have to stop at your hands, precious.” Mikołaj had borrowed a rather clumsy nut cracker. He smiled, brightly. “And I don’t have a need to keep you alive, you know, because I only care peripherally why you hurt Frydek. What I care about is that you planned to torture my wife to find out how much she knew about any plot to kidnap the Austrian woman. You wouldn’t be about to break the hands of a musician if you didn’t plan to question her.”

“I didn’t know she was a woman! How should I? But how can she be? She beat me up and she pulled sword on me!”

“My treasure! She’s such a good little towarzysz,” said Mikołaj delighted. “Oh, she might be ill at the moment, but even sick she’s more than a match for a worm like you. So, you planned her torture...”

“No, it wasn’t! I was jealous!”

 “No, precious, you weren’t jealous. Jealousy implies love, and if you loved Frydek, you wouldn’t be betraying him so thoroughly. I mean, if you were Austrian, the spying is understandable, even forgivable, but you were busy rogering the Austrian   ambassador as well, which is a nasty betrayal.”

“I never! He never! He told me to write as if to the king, so it looked like a love letter; he only likes women. I might have used the odd page or servant, it’s nice not to be submissive all the time, but that’s not the same.”

“It’s exactly the same,” said Mikołaj. “Well, if you weren’t doing it for the love of the ambassador’s muddy brown eyes, why would you sell out your country?”

“For money of course! I want to live the sort of lifestyle you useless noblemen live! I... I can pay you to leave me alone! I’ve put it all aside....” he was sobbing. “I lay with the king for his money too, I hate it, he disgusts me, he’s old and he’s boring. Always talking about music, or battles or some idiot called Katte.”

Mikołaj drifted out of the cell before he did anything fatal.

“You got all that?” he said to Von Distelkamp.

“Yes. No ideals, only money. Filthy little swine.”

“Oh, well, you can hang him now.”

 

Mikołaj went back to Sans Souci to calm his nerves, and he broke the news to Friedrich that Wurfel had been purely mercenary. He left out most of the details.

And then he and Gosia played for the monarch.

 

---

[1] Trumpf in German and so an even better pun.

[2] The baroque era trumpet was like a long cornet which makes the works of the likes of Telemann even more extraordinary, and the players worthy of much kudos. 

 

 

and that, folks, is all I have prepared. I've been singularly disinclined on the writing frnt.