Max & Anna

-CHAPTER I-

As I stepped out onto the jetty I was struck by an overwhelming stench of effluence from the docks around me. In London this is no mere trifle, especially as the city maintains a generic, manure like odour for the majority of the time. This is especially true of days in late August, such as this was, when the sun is beating down and the heat becomes so unbearable that a gentleman has to undo his collar in order to prevent his shirt from clinging to him through a nauseating mixture of grime and sweat. Had I visited the locale before this moment I would certainly have not chosen it as a place to receive a royal princess. I would not have accepted the word of my housekeeper’s husband that it was as good a place as any other. Then again, I supposed, if this was to be her first whiff of the great imperial power house then the remainder of the city, for however brief a time she spent here, would smell like a meadow of lavender by comparison.

At the same time as arriving at the end of the jetty I saw the small steamer which carried my princess approaching from down river, from the direction of Deptford. It was no glorious or stately pleasure craft but a working barge, dirtied and worn almost to scrap by a great many years of carrying coal up and down stream. Its name was The Coxcomb and for the price of three guineas I had been able to have my princess brought, quite discretely, into the city from the luxurious surrounds of her yacht moored off the Isle of Thanet.

Secrecy and discretion were vital to the enterprise for she was in grave peril. There were men, fanatical men, revolutionaries, pursuing her and they wanted nothing more than to see her dead. They had dogged her across much of Europe, first catching her in Firenze, and then chasing her through the Lago Italiano into Switzerland and then up through France and to Paris where my own people had finally taken her in hand. We arranged for her yacht, which had been somewhere in the Baltic at the time, to be brought to Calais from where the princess was then shipped across the channel.

But even here in England she was far from out of danger. The revolutionaries would know that she was bound across the channel and they would have sent word to their local allies to watch out for any sign of the yacht.

I had made sure that she would not be caught by them. As soon as the yacht was within sight of England I had the steamer dispatched to Thanet and the princess brought along the Thames to this foul smelling dock on the Isle of Dogs, suggested by my housekeeper’s husband as I have already divulged to you.

Before the steamer had even moored, as it was approaching from down river, I saw her standing proud on the prow with her nose in the air and a haughty expression across her face. Her beauty did not strike me but she was by no means foul looking. Her eyes were what first caught my attention; they were brown and betrayed a bewitching wickedness that I could not help but take to my heart. I could not see her hair at this stage, for it was covered by a grey bonnet, but it was of the same brown colour as her eyes and naturally curly. Her mouth, meanwhile, was rather large and her lips crossed much of her face. The fact that those lips were pursed and turned downwards did not help her appearance any great deal.

The steamer moored and the gangplank lowered, she hurriedly moved from her position at the prow and as fast as she could she barged her way onto the jetty, brutally knocking the crew of the steamer aside with no consideration for where they might end up. I saw now that she had defied one of my most important instructions and was wearing an expensive and highly fashionable summer gown. This was highly inappropriate given the situation. It made her appear as she was; classy and well to do. It made her stand out. If the revolutionaries were anywhere nearby, which was always a possibility, they would know her in a moment. Something would have to be done about that. I could not take her through the streets of London looking like that as it would place her life in extreme danger.

‘Miss Anna,’ I doffed my hat as she approached and she gave me a silent, unamused expression. I am sorry to ask this, but do you, by any chance, have with you any clothes that might be somewhat less... ostentatious? The expression on her face told me that I had offended her.

‘No I certainly do not. I cannot be seen to walk around in low person’s garb. It would be highly undignified.’

‘'Undignified it may be, but it is a necessity if we are to prevent the revolutionaries from discovering your whereabouts.' The princess harrumphed a great deal before, with much protest on her part, she surrendered.

'Very well. Do you have any low born clothes which I might wear?' she questioned. AH! Therein lay a problem. I had considered that she would have brought her own, that she would have been sensible enough to follow my instructions and disguise herself from the revolutionaries.

'I gots some you’m might ‘ave miss,' the steamship captain cried from the gangplank. 'My daughter Ginny, she done goes leave a spare clothes set on here for when she goes to visit her aunt in Canvey. They be not as glam’rous as your current garb but they’s quite pretty all the same.' The princess, I thought I heard, growled. She quite clearly disapproved but she had little choice in the matter if she wished to deflect the gaze of the revolutionaries.

She retired up the gangplank and a considerable time later she returned, her previous attire folded underneath one arm, and was now dressed in a quite passable but old and faded white cotton dress that was hardly big enough to fit her. As she came back down the gangplank, once more knocking the crewmen out of her way, she looked far more sour and haughty than she had done previously. She thrust her discarded gown into my grasp and folded her arms.

'I do hope,' she remarked, 'that you shall be taking me somewhere where I do not need to dress in this hideous fashion.'

'Of course,' I smiled. 'I shall be taking you to my family home. The revolutionaries will not, or should I say hopefully not, find you there.'

'Will there be society? High end society I mean?'

'At the present moment in time. When the season ends, however, there shall be considerably less.'

'I see. And when the season ends is there somewhere else you may take me?'

'That depends on developments concerning these revolutionaries. We shall have to see when the time approaches.'

'What of the climate? Is it agreeable?'

'When I left three weeks ago, almost certainly. But the weather in those parts can change in a heartbeat. Today it could be bright and wondrous sunshine but tomorrow it might be blowing a tempest the likes of which you have never seen in your entire life.'

'It sounds dreadfully ghastly,' she remarked. 'At least tell me it does not smell so foul as here!'

'No. It does not. The odour is far more agreeable.'

'And what of my retinue?'

'They shall not be joining us for the moment,' I explained. 'When the threat of the revolutionaries has passed, perhaps then.'

'Do you have servants of your own?'

'Some. I do not have as many as other householders as at present there is only myself to attend.'

'I see. Well... The sooner we get there the sooner we may arrange the place to my own satisfaction.'

She began to march me off down the jetty, hooking my arm into hers as though we were promenading along the pier at Llandudno. At the end we came to the dockyard, full of workers loading and unloading and checking cargo, going about their daily business. The princess looked to be quite afraid of them and almost stopped dead in her tracks but kept moving when she saw that they were paying us little heed. As far as they were concerned I was no more than a gentleman escorting his lady friend from the steamer that had just moored. They would never know that she was a princess, not even from the crew of the steamer who had all promised that they would each be the very soul of discretion.

On the road that ran by the front of the docks our hansom cab was waiting. Or at least, that is what it appeared to be. It was, in actuality, a private vehicle made up to look like a hansom cab. This was once again all for the protection of the princess. The driver, who was of course dressed to look like the driver of a hansom cab in order to complete the illusion, was stood awaiting us and he doffed his cloth cap as we approached. He was my regular driver, my chauffeur if you will, and he was a very dear man by the name of Codswallop. Short and plump with a thick grey beard, he looked rather like something you might see in a children’s fairytale picture book.

'Afternoon sir. Afternoon miss... You’ll be wanting Euston station I presume? Grand! Grand!' He opened the door to the cab and stood aside to allow us entrance.

'I am a highness, not a miss,' the princess corrected him rudely. It was, thus, then my job to correct her.

'Unfortunately, Miss Anna, that cannot be allowed. We must keep your station under wraps for the foreseeable future. Even when we reach my home we must keep up the illusion that you are a miss and not a highness.' The princess was much aggrieved by this and made several huffing noises as we entered the cab.

Once seated and with the door closed Codswallop seated himself ahind the horses and with a great ’Gee up’ myself and the princess found ourselves rattling along the cobblestones of London and away from that foul smelling dockyard.

-CHAPTER II-

I cannot, I suppose, keep referring to her as ‘the princess’ and I should tell you of who she was and where she came from. Her full title was ‘Her Royal Highness the Princess Anna Von Carrolus of Ardeluta’ but as a matter of convenience I shall hereby refer to her as Anna. Ardeluta, her kingdom, or principality as it should correctly be termed, was one of those small, insignificant European states that one hears vague mention of from time to time but has little clue as to where they are. It is a tiny enclave completely surrounded by Rumania and it is comprised of one small town, a single village and the royal palace. Having never been there myself I cannot describe it to you in my own words so you will instead have to rely on second hand testimony.

Ardeluta is a mountainous area, full of forests which climb right to the top of the high slopes and block out the shape of the escarpments beneath. Within these forests you will discover an assortment of glades, babbling brooks and cave systems, each with a story or legend attached. It is a land of mystery and magic, a land where the people are deeply suspicious and well set in their traditions and ways.

Being so remote Ardeluta is, quite naturally, a wild place and all kinds of creatures roam the countryside. For example, wolves and the sounds of their howlings can be heard on many a winter’s night. It is small wonder, as a result, that the people of these parts talk of werewolves and do not dare set foot outside after dark. There are bears here also, not the great brown grizzly ones of Alaska and Canada, which I have seen with my own eyes, but the smaller, darker, European variety. They are no less deadly than the grizzly, however, and I have heard Anna tell of groups of children who went off into the woods to play and only one to returning, crying of bears snatching his fellows away in their jaws.

Of the town, it is called Tarcau; a humble place, no larger than somewhere we ourselves might call a village. There is a mill and a traders, several traders in fact, and a place where the young are educated, though not a school as such. It has, I am told, no architectural merit. All of its buildings are plain and most typical of the surrounding area. The village meanwhile, after which the principality is named, is of but a few houses and hardly worth mentioning.

The palace is said to be an architectural marvel. It is built in the style of an Italian renaissance villa, residing on the plateau of a mountain which overlooks the village. All the trees about it have been cleared so that the building can be seen from a great distance, a statement declaring the supreme authority of the Crown Prince of Ardeluta, who at this time was Anna’s father, Prince Gustaff.

Down the mountainside before it lay a series of sweeping terraces and gardens. Each was elaborately planted, full of well trimmed hedges and so perfectly manicured that it took no less than twenty gardeners to maintain. On a central terrace stood a great fountain that shot its load to twenty feet over the mountainside (so I am told) and came down again to join a magnificent, thundering cascade which then ran in a stream down towards and eventually through the village.

Opulence was the key word when it came to matters concerning the interior. Not one room was humble or decorated in a quiet style. All was gold or silver or exquisite marble and each room was covered from floor to ceiling in frescoes, art works and huge paintings by the great Italian masters; the likes of Canolleti and Titian and Bartolenni. The ballroom was the grandest of them all, measuring the same length as the nave of York Minster. It was not so high as that place but from its ceiling, which was entirely covered with gold leaf, hung five huge chandeliers of the finest crystal cut glass. On each wall were one hundred mirrors in which the dancers could see themselves dancing to the strains of music from the royal orchestra, music which filled the room from one end to the other. It was, in a word, a very ostentatious and over the top sort of place.

And yet, despite all this extravagance and expense, the royal family were only ever in residence during the months of June and July. They spent the remainder of the year flitting about the fashionable resorts of Europe. They spent April and May in Italy and in August they could be found with the Grimaldi of Monaco, swanning about the Mediterranean and hosting huge banquets aboard their sailing yachts. In September they would decamp to the Baltic, to the Swedish archipelago and to Copenhagen, before working their way down through France and Switzerland to their private winter resort in the Alps.

The family were not of Rumanian origin. They could claim direct descent from the first Crown Prince of Ardeluta, Titus I, but this was through a female line and the current dynasty were of mainly Austrian descent. My readings would have me believe that they first inherited the title upon the death of Prince Amreich in the year 1730. Their dynasty had never accustomed themselves to the Ardelutian people or their way of life and they had wasted no time in spending all of the limited crown revenues and raising up magnificent debts for which they had to squeeze their subjects to the last penny in order to pay off those aforementioned debts.

Anna’s father, Prince Gustaff, was more frugal than his predecessors and he at least understood what the crown could and could not afford to spend. Early in his reign he settled the acquired debts of the crown by the personal fortune he had acquired through marriage and as a result he was able to ease the financial pressures upon his people. However, the damage had already been done by the actions of his predecessors. The Ardelutians were bitter and resentful towards their rulers after over a century of extortionate taxation, a bitterness not helped by the fact that the royal family were only ever present in the principality for no more than two months of the year.

As tensions are ripe to do this one had snapped the previous summer at the time when the royal family were in attendance. With the backing and support of a ne’er-do-well mercenary group by the name of SHEMBLE, the local populace stormed the palace with the intent to seize and kill the royal family as payment for their uncaring attitudes and years of high taxation. Word had reached the family of this coup, however, and the night before the storming they had fled the palace, never to return.

Bitterness increased as a result of their escape, especially amongst those who felt they had been wronged on a personal level,