If Maxi supposed, however, that by taking to the water he would be unobserved, he was mistaken. The news that the prince was about to put his fortunes to the test had spread like wildfire round the castle. In the West Tower his mother, the Swan Princess, was stationed behind the late Prince of Pfaffenstein’s telescope, which she had securely trained on her son. Putzerl’s aunts, though they would not have stooped to such tactics, stood on either side of her, more than ready to receive details at second hand. The Archduke Sava, aware of the importance of the occasion, had abandoned his watch on the sunbathing soprano and carried his telescope into Monteforelli’s bedroom which faced the lake. Maxi’s valet, exceptionally keen-sighted, had climbed on to the balustrade outside the servants’ attics and was relaying information back to the castle maids.

And down on the terrace overhanging the lake, Nerine picked up the field-glasses Guy had left when he went for his interview with Witzler. This was better than looking at some red-legged hawk as Guy had wanted her to do!

‘He’s doing it!’ cried the Swan Princess. ‘He’s proposing, I’m sure! He’s stopped rowing!’

And indeed the Prince of Spittau had, at that moment, shipped his oars.

‘Putzerl,’ he began. ‘Tessa…’

The Princess of Pfaffenstein, who had been sitting quietly in the stern with her hands on the tiller lines, raised her head. Maxi’s eyes were deeply poached, his duelling scar throbbed like a wound. It was coming, then. Steeling herself, feeling the familiar guilt creep over her, Tessa said, ‘Yes, Maxi?’

‘Putzerl, you know how fond of you I’ve always been,’ said Maxi, and indeed he spoke the truth. No one had played ‘Cowboys and Indians’ as willingly and as often as she had done.

‘I’m very fond of you, too,’ said Tessa, repressing a sigh.

A trout, a five-pounder by the sound of it, rose very close to them. Maxi resolutely ignored it, as did the older dogs who were perfectly trained. Not so the young setter, who raised her head from Tessa’s lap and moaned with agitation, setting off the swan who approached hissing in fury, causing the labrador who was of a heroic turn of mind to rush to the stern and emit a fusillade of barks. A period of considerable confusion followed as they beat off the swan, restrained the wolfhound who had scrambled over the oars to aid his friend, and shipped a considerable amount of water.

For a moment Maxi wondered whether, after all, it had been such a good idea to bring the dogs. Tessa now seemed more worried about the wolfhound, who had scratched his nose on a rowlock, than she was about him. She was also, as he was himself, extremely wet.

‘So don’t you think… Tessa… please? I know I’ve asked you before, but now Pfaffenstein’s sold… I mean, you can’t go on working for the opera company for ever, and—’ He broke off. ‘Sit!’ he ordered furiously.

The pointer, who had leapt to her feet and was gazing with an air of quivering attention at the wooded island, turned a reproachful head. She had, she wished to make this clear, heard something.

‘So Tessa, do please marry me. I would be so happy. Everyone would be so pleased. And we get on so well.’

Tessa had picked up the bailer and was trying to reduce the pool of water in which they sat and Maxi, determined to pursue his advantage — for she had not yet said ‘No’ — plunged into the delights of Spittau. ‘We would have such great times together. You could breed water spaniels, you know how you love them. Of course, I know Mother’s a bit difficult but… And I mean it isn’t as though you’re liable to rheumatism. You’re healthy, Putzerl, although you’re so little. That’s one of the things I like about you.’

The mallards now returned and foolishly approached the boat, quacking and fussing, while the dogs turned with desperate appeal to their master. Was nothing going to happen? How long were they expected to endure it?

Not for ever, it seemed. A long, high-pitched whistle sounded from the wooded island and without a second’s hesitation the pointer, the labrador and the spaniel leapt into the water.

‘Idiot! Half-wit! Moron!’ yelled Maxi, shaking his fist in the direction of the island, with its little temple, from which the sound had come.

Yet no one was to blame. That the noise, a piercing A flat, emitted by one of Klasky’s characters (the engine-greaser who has a fit in the second act) was the same as the whistle to which Maxi had trained his dogs, was a coincidence no one could have foreseen.

‘They’re having a little bit of trouble,’ reported the Swan Princess as the puzzled faces of the dogs, hauled back into the boat by an irate Maxi, swam into focus, followed by a dangerous rocking as the animals shook themselves. ‘But it’s all right now. Tessa’s got hold of the dogs and Maxi’s rowing again.’

And indeed Maxi was now in a state of desperation when nothing could stop him. Bracing his feet against the wolfhound and rowing strongly away from the island, he said, ‘And after all, we’re both descended from—’ But here he veered off again, because it was no good talking to Putzerl about lineage and breeding and all that. The fact that he could trace his descent straight back to Barbarossa cut absolutely no ice with Tessa, who was apt to go off at half-cock when he mentioned anything like that. He returned to the subject of Spittau. ‘Maybe we could put in some central heating…’

He flushed, on delicate ground, and Tessa, on whose lap the soaking and frustrated water spaniel had settled, felt the familiar guilt intensify.

Guy had paid generously for Pfaffenstein. The cheque she had been handed, signed by the Associated Investment Company, in these inflationary times ran into millions of kroner. Half of this would go in trust for the aunts, and there were debts to be paid, but even so it left her with enough money to shore up Maxi’s imperilled Wasserburg and put heating into the mouldering rooms.

‘Maxi, I haven’t got quite as much money as your mother thinks, perhaps. My father left a lot of debts and they have to be paid. But I’ve enough all the same to—’ She tried again. ‘Would you let me help a little with Spittau? Do the roof at least, so that it can be preserved? I mean, we’re almost relatives, aren’t we?’

Maxi’s eyes became vibrantly convex; his duelling scar turned livid. His manhood had been outraged, his honour impugned. ‘How can you suggest such a thing, Putzerl?’

‘I’m sorry, Maxi. I didn’t mean any harm. Only, I don’t know any other way to marry except for love. A particular kind of love. And that isn’t… how I love you,’ said Tessa, her voice very low.

‘But Tessa, we aren’t like that. Like ordinary people. I mean, being in love.’

‘I’m an ordinary person.’

He sighed. Her republicanism again.

‘I don’t think I am going to marry at all, Maxi. I think I’m going to live for art and bring music and theatre into people’s lives.’

A slight tightening of the jaw — the beginning of a yawn, which always attacked him at the mention of art — now troubled the prince. Bending to conceal it, he incited the wolfhound who caught Maxi rather painfully under the chin as he reared up in hope of land.

‘Are you sure, Putzerl? Are you absolutely sure?’ said Maxi when he had quietened the animal. ‘Couldn’t you please, please say yes?’

Tessa’s heart smote her. She knew only too well what Maxi would have to endure if his suit did not prosper. ‘I’m so sorry, Maxi.’ She put down the tiller lines, pushed the spaniel gently from her lap and, overwhelmed by pity, leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead. She too could perform life’s most varied actions in a boat.

The kiss was seen by Nerine on the terrace, by the Swan Princess and thus the aunts in the West Tower, by Monteforelli and Maxi’s valet and many others in the castle — and misinterpreted by all of them.

Witzler sat in the small room in the East Tower, adjoining the theatre, which he had used as an office since he came to Pfaffenstein. Out in the courtyard the men were loading scenery. The stage crew would leave at dawn for Vienna, with the principals and orchestra following by train.

But only for a while, Jacob was sure of that. His eyes closed in a moment of blissful remembrance. If he lived to be a hundred, nothing could dim the triumph of the previous night: old Monteforelli, that reprobate who knew every Mozart score by heart, hobbling backstage to throw his arms round him… the Comte d’Antibes throwing his diamond tie-pin on to the stage… But it was not only that, or the half-hour of applause, or the quick emotional handshake of Mendelov before that acid-penned critic went back to Vienna. It was the justification of a life spent in pursuit of an ideal. The journey that had begun with the visit of that tatty touring company playing Carmen had been justified last night.

What a week it had been altogether! Bubi was sunburnt and well, the Rhinemaiden’s nerves were such that she could probably sustain an entire performance of The Ring. And this morning Klasky had stolen off with his brief-case and a look in his eyes that Jacob, who had nursed many talents, had recognized with excitement. If this glorious week should also see the completion of Klasky’s opera!

Should he suggest to Farne that he install the company permanently at Pfaffenstein, or would it be best to keep a base in Vienna? Suppose he bought a little house in the village? They could keep a cow; Bubi would go to bed in time and wear lederhosen, mused Jacob, as the sound of Boris practising his yodelling floated in at the window. Everyone was out there waiting for the result of his interview. He glanced at his watch, but punctual to the minute Farne knocked and entered.

Guy, too, was sunburnt and fit. Since the previous night’s conversation with Nerine, he had taken a satisfactory amount of exercise: a pre-breakfast game of squash, tennis with one of his guests, then a ride in a neighbouring valley. Nevertheless, it was not the picture of a sporting gentleman relaxing on his estate that Guy suggested to Jacob, who felt rather that he was about to be interviewed by some beast of prey.

He rallied, however, and said, ‘Well, Herr Farne, you are satisfied, I think, eh?’

‘Yes. The performance was outstanding! I told you so last night. The interpretation was right, the balance, the detail too. I’ve never seen a better Magic Flute and I never will.’

He had got out his cheque book but even this object, so beautiful in Jacob’s eyes, did not deflect the impresario into hasty or impatient greed.

‘Of course, in this theatre, Figaro would be perfect. The Marriage of Figaro for your marriage.’ He waxed eloquent on the scoring, the ensemble writing of this most human and moving of operas. ‘Though of course it would be unwise to concentrate too much on Mozart because of competition with Salzburg. And in any case you may prefer something very light. Rossini, say… The Barber…

Once again he elaborated and only noticed after a while that Guy was silent. He had unscrewed his fountain-pen and was writing a cheque. ‘This is the balance of what I owe you. Will you see that it is correct?’

‘Yes,’ said Jacob, looking down. ‘It’s perfectly correct. Thank you.’

But for once money, so deeply a part of Jacob’s life, was not what he wanted to discuss. Indeed, Farne’s pragmatic and almost mercenary attitude shocked him a little. Genuinely, vociferously, Jacob was gripped by the vision of the music he and the Englishman would make here at Pfaffenstein.

‘Of course it would be possible, for the actual wedding, to stage a performance out of doors. On the lake, even, on a raft as in Boden. I don’t usually care for this because of standards and it will be difficult to persuade Klasky: the acoustics… the mosquitos… and he cannot swim. But if you wished—’

Guy had screwed up his pen, returned it to his pocket and straightened up. His voice when it came was harsh, his appearance more Mephistophelean than ever.

‘Let me make myself clear, Witzler. There will be no more opera staged here at Pfaffenstein… And no more music. Not for my wedding. Not ever.’

Jacob stared at him, sweat breaking out on his forehead. His ulcer, which he had hardly noticed during the last few days, bit agonizingly into his gut.

‘There was something wrong?’ he stammered. ‘Was it because Sarastro did not sing the E below stave? You see, I think what Mozart wanted there was not a trick but—’

‘I have told you,’ interrupted Guy, ‘the opera was perfect. That has nothing to do with it. My contract with your company is now terminated and it will not be renewed.’