The Left-Handed God by I. J. Parker Page B

was ashamed of what he had thought to do with her not so long ago. “Yes, miss,” he lied humbly. “Took a bullet in my leg. ’T wasn’t nothin’, but I fell and must’ve been kicked by a horse. Now my head gets dizzy with the pain sometimes.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry for you. I know it’s hard for a man to come back from the war and have no work and feel the constant pain. Well, come into the kitchen. The soup’s not ready, but I have bread and butter, and some sausages. We won’t need them all for our dinner. I can cut up a bit of bacon instead.” She drew him after her into the well-lit kitchen and made him sit at the table. Here they looked at each other properly. Max saw a young woman, or rather a girl just at the point of turning into a young woman, with a dainty figure in a faded dress and large white kitchen apron. Shining brown hair was pinned under a white ruffled cap, but a few curls escaped and trembled against the rosy cheeks. Amazingly‌—‌to Max, who thought brown-haired girls had brown eyes‌—‌her eyes were a clear, deep blue. And now she smiled at him with those pretty lips and white teeth, and Max fell in love.
    *
    Franz’s life fell into a routine that would have given him pleasure if he had not still woken up on a strangled scream most nights. The days at least took on some semblance of normalcy, though that was not the word to use for Doctor Stiebel.
    Nepomuk Stiebel had never been married. He slept above his chambers and kept no servants. His only companion was the small goldfinch who lived in the gilded cage which its master carried daily from bedchamber to work chamber and back again.
    In time, Franz became aware of other eccentricities. At first glance, the legal chambers had seemed ordinary enough: six large rooms that occupied the lower floor of the house and were arranged on either side of a hallway that contained only the pale stone floor, dark oak wainscoting, dark oak staircase to the upper floors, and a dark oak bench where callers awaited their turn. The room to the right of the front door was Stiebel’s office. The other two on that side communicated with it and each other and contained bookcases filled with leather-bound legal tomes. To the left of the entrance was a meeting room with a large oak table and six plain side chairs presided over by a carved settle with grotesques snarling from its back and the arm rests. Its dark green velvet upholstery bore traces of the same white powder as Stiebel’s velvet coat. The rest of the downstairs was taken up by a legal documents room and a storage room.
    It was the latter that contained an odd assortment of objects that seemed to have no purpose there. A dusty glass case held a dead snake, a moth-eaten owl looked down from its wooden perch, a gilded harp leaned against one wall and a violin against the other, a series of stands held wigs of every description and color, a clothes’ form was dressed in an old-fashioned white silk court suit, the skirt of its coat and waistcoat heavily embroidered and trimmed with tarnished silver. The walls were covered with pictures, some of them oil portraits of frowning old men, darkened with age, and others prints of famous places. The rest of the collection, if that was what it was, resided in a number of carved trunks and two large wardrobes.
    Franz had little time to inspect the hidden treasures. He was put to work in the first of the two book rooms, at a chair and table under the window. Here he resided for the next months under the benevolent but strict eye of councilor Stiebel.
    He arrived punctually at seven every morning to receive his instructions for the day. At eight, the waiter from the Goldene Löwe across the square arrived with a pot of steaming coffee, two cups and plates, hot rolls fresh from the bakery, and butter. Stiebel produced a jar of jam made from plums or strawberries, and they would share a pleasant breakfast discussing politics or the state of the postal system.