The Blue Diamond Read Free Page A

shifted from day to day, depending on the current rumors. Prince Talleyrand was there for France, trying to insinuate himself in where he was not wanted, and having very good success too. Spain, Italy and Portugal were in a pucker at being left out of important meetings. The independent German states, ignored by the major powers, united in a federal league. It was enough to make the most sober head reel.
    Baron Hager had been put in charge of policing the international meeting, to look into the daily threats of kidnapping, assassination, intrigue, espionage, counterespionage, treason and revolt. And despite all this converging of the powers, there was really no Congress going on at all, but a series of secret meetings. It was said amongst the wits that the only time the national representatives were likely to get together was when Isabey, the Congress artist, had got them all individually painted, and assembled on canvas.
    Moncrief glanced at the slip of paper in his hand, wondering what “urgent matter” Castlereagh could wish to discuss with him. He was soon tapping at a carved oaken door nine feet high and being shown into the Foreign Minister’s office. Castlereagh sat behind a mammoth desk littered with reports. He was paring his nails. He was a handsome gentleman in his early forties, his face already lined from the weight of his responsibilities, his hair turning gray.
    “Come in, Moncrief. Come in,” he said. “You have heard the latest?”
    Moncrief shrugged his shoulders and advanced to the desk. He was tall and slender, dark-haired and dark-eyed, but with no flavor of the Latin in his appearance. He had prominent cheek bones and a prominent nose and was seldom seen wearing any but a haughty expression. “My most recent news is eight hours old. I expect I am seven hours and fifty-nine minutes behind the times.”
    He sat down and crossed one long leg over the other, carefully arranging his trousers to avoid wrinkling. “I was at the Prussian do last night, at the Schweizerhof Wing,” he mentioned. All the visiting monarchs were put up at the Hofburg, each allotted its own wing.
    “I refer to domestic affairs,” Castlereagh informed him. “It is Crowell.”
    “Yes?” Moncrief asked, searching his mind to put a face to this name.
    “An informer!” Castlereagh went on. “One of my own household, imagine! A trusted footman—I have used him dozens of times for carrying highly secret documents. My wife caught him red-handed opening a billet she was sending to a friend. Fortunately it was no more than a request for the name of a modiste, but it could as easily have been a matter of more importance. You see how it is. He was in Baron Hager’s pay—the chief of Austrian police. Every delegation is rife with informers. God only knows what they do with all the scraps of paper they snitch out of the waste baskets, and all the private correspondence they have copies. As though anyone would be fool enough to entrust anything of real importance to the mails! We require another servant we can trust. I hope you don’t mind that I have borrowed Wragge from you. It wouldn’t do to hire a foreigner, and Wragge will still see to your toilette, as a matter of course. Or perhaps you can borrow a valet from your cousin. I hear Palgrave brought his own private domestic army with him.”
    “Ah, they have arrived, have they? I did not hear it at the Hofburg last night.”
    “Did you not? That’s odd. They have been here a couple of days. They were at the other party last night at the Hofburg—the Amalia Wing, with the Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenberg. There is some bit of spite simmering between Catherine and the Prussian King. I believe he neglected to flirt with her in passing, or some such detail. Never mind, any cooling between those two is to the good. The Duchess might even talk her brother into welcoming Louis back on the throne of France, if King William comes out strongly enough against it. Anyway, that