“Not merely men with arms, but men on guard,” Luka said, in comfortably fluent German. “It seems clear to me that they were left there to restrict entry through the main gate.”
“Thank God the outer wall is so decayed we were not forced to use the door,” Friedrich said, “or else we would have been discovered by them when we made our approach.”
Luka cleared his throat. “No. We would not have been discovered.”
“But then the men might not be unconscious,” Iosef noted sardonically.
“It is a kind of sleep,” Luka repeated.
Friedrich frowned and interjected, “Those men are dead, aren’t they?”
At this Iosef smiled slightly and said in Svanish, “The boy is not completely stupid.”
“He remains a drunk,” Luka said, also lapsing back into Svanish.
“He remains my son,” Varanus reminded them. And having made the admonishment in defense of her blood, she returned to German. “If they were here with weapons in this place and at this time, I doubt that their intentions were good. Likely they work for Julius’s family and are here preparing the way for their lord.”
“I suppose that is…reasonable,” Friedrich admitted. “But still, my friends are in danger. We ought to hurry.”
“Indeed,” Iosef said. “We ought to hurry for the sake of your friends.”
And the mess they have gotten us into, Varanus added silently.
“I am glad that we agree,” Friedrich said, Iosef’s sarcasm evidently lost to him. That much was not surprising: it was difficult to discern the subtleties of humor and emotion among the Living unless one was very familiar with them, or the Shashavani in question made a special effort for their sentiments to be recognizable.
Iosef nodded toward the rows of lights leading into the darkness and said, “Come, we have dallied long enough. Let us determine what is happening here and just who is responsible. I do not wish to alert our quarry. If we have already disturbed the scene here, it is better we silence things before our disruption can be reported.”
There was no argument to this, neither from Varanus—who quite agreed with Iosef’s assessment—nor from Luka or Friedrich. As Iosef headed into the depths of the castle, Varanus took her son by the arm and led him along too, determined to keep him close. There was no telling what they might discover, and she did not intend for him to be put in any greater danger than he had already insisted upon.
The path of torches led through the castle in a serpentine route, certainly intended more for show than for practicality. The entire ambiance of the place—if one could even call it such—seemed almost calculated to be ominous. Deeper into the crumbling halls, Varanus saw more bits of pageantry. There were wreaths of flowers and holly cast by the wayside, and the skulls of animals were placed on poles where the torchlight could make the most of their presence.
Ekaterine would indeed be sad she was not there.
Midway along the length of the castle, a noise suddenly caught Varanus’s attention. It was the gentle cough of a man suffering the torments of the cold sea air. She quickly threw out her arm to stop Friedrich and Luka, who followed along behind. She was about to reach for Iosef when she saw that he had stopped as well. And of course he had. He must have heard the sound too, for his hearing was easily as keen as hers.
“More watchmen,” she murmured.
“Indeed,” Iosef agreed. “To be expected.”
Varanus glanced about them and saw an adjoining passage a few feet back, which split off from the torch-lit path and led into darkness. She nodded toward the passage and led the way into the darkness, only just able to see in the dim starlight. She felt Friedrich stumble several times as she led him along, but he trusted her enough not to protest. Indeed, Varanus almost found herself anticipating the lay of the floor and the curve of the walls as she went along, as if she was being guided by a stick that touched each protrusion or uneven stone a moment before she reached it.
After a minute or two of the oppressive near-darkness, the passage opened into something familiar: the great hall that Varanus had visited with Julius during her first journey to the castle. Open and roofless, the room was better lit by starlight than was the passage, though it remained oppressively dark. Varanus glanced toward the balcony that overlooked them, half expecting to see Korbinian there, gazing down at her amid a cloud of malice and black feathers.
Instead, she saw lamplight.
Curious, Varanus narrowed her eyes and allowed them to adjust to the unexpected brightness, stripping away the darkness around its unpleasant halo. She saw Count Erdelyi and young Erzsebet standing together in the company of Julius and a couple of armed men. In the lamplight, she could see that Julius and Erdelyi had covered their normal clothes with long black robes, which were woven through with delicate embroidery and golden thread. Each man wore a long bejeweled necklace adorned by the skull of some small creature, and on his head each man bore a wreath of holly and the skull of a ram. It was like some perverse transfiguration of their equinox festival.
Erzsebet, in contrast, was dressed in the manner of a May Queen, with a simple dress of white linen and a crown of flowers in her hair. She was sullen and hostile, her eyes downturned and her expression caught between resentment, resignation, and abject terror. Erdelyi held her by the back of the neck like she was an animal being taken to slaughter, rather than his own child.
“Will Augusta and the children be joining us?” Erdelyi asked Julius, his tone pleasant and jovial despite his callous attitude toward his daughter.
“Alas not,” Julius replied, sounding genuinely disappointed, as if his loved ones were missing some pleasant summer outing to the seaside. “We have guests from Berlin visiting for the week. I fear it would arouse suspicions if anyone was absent.”
“But not you?” Erdelyi asked. He chuckled, his question some manner of joke.
Julius shook his head, and as he did so, the light fell upon the other side of his face, and Varanus saw the one eye—where she was certain she had broken his skill—was purely crimson and gently leaking blood like teardrops.
“I fear my presence would raise more suspicions before our business tonight,” he explained, “though I shall be ‘arriving on a late train’ once I am whole again.”
“Of course,” Erdelyi said, as though this was a perfectly normal thing to say to a man whose eye was slowly leaking blood and who should not even have been able to stand in light of his injury.
In the darkness below them, Varanus was silent as her mind worked to process what she was seeing. Behind her, she sensed that same astonishment in the others.
“Von Raabe,” Iosef noted, his voice barely above a whisper. “That is unexpected.”
“How could they have arrived before us?” Varanus asked.
“By the light of the moon,” Iosef murmured, though from his tone it sounded like a half-hearted joke born of uncertainty. With more confidence, he replied, “They must have secured a private train last night. They would have arrived hours before we did.”
“On such short notice and without raising any questions?” Luka asked. “That suggests influence.”
“Influence is the last thing I would expect such men to have in short supply,” Varanus noted.
Beside her, she sensed Friedrich leaning forward, his eyes straining against the darkness to be certain of what he saw.
“My God!” he breathed. “Erzsebet!”
In a flash, Friedrich had drawn his pistol and taken a step forward, rushing to the aid of a friend he could neither reach nor rescue. Varanus grabbed him and pulled him back. As an afterthought, Luka and Iosef did the same, so that, together, their ability to restrain him did not arouse his suspicions. Varanus clamped her hand over Friedrich’s mouth.
“No!” she hissed in his ear.
“But Erzsebet!” Friedrich protested through her fingertips, though he showed enough sen
se to keep his voice quiet despite his agitation, which only grew and grew as he struggled against the hands that held him.
“You cannot reach her,” Varanus whispered. “Not yet. And if we give ourselves away now, we will never be able to save her, nor will we discover what has become of your other friend.”
It took Friedrich only a moment to register the wisdom in her words, and he quickly gave up fighting. He holstered his pistol and was rewarded by being released.
“Well, the boy has some sense,” Luka said in Svanish.
“The boy listens to reason,” Iosef replied in the same tongue. “But it must be told to him first.”
“True.”
Varanus took Friedrich’s hand in hers—partly to comfort him and partly to prevent him from drawing his pistol again—and gave him a reassuring squeeze.
“We will rescue them,” she said. “But we must judge the situation calmly or else we will be undone.”
Friedrich nodded slowly, though he did not look pleased with inaction.
On the balcony above them, the conversation had continued:
“Are you certain you are well enough for this, Julius?” Erdelyi asked.
Julius laughed. “If I do not do it now, I suspect I will not last to see the sunrise. Certainly not the week.” He turned to Erzsebet and smiled at her, lovingly like an uncle. “But you will see to my salvation, won’t you, my dear?”
He touched Erzsebet’s cheek with his fingertips, and she cringed away from him.
“I will not do it,” she snarled.
“Wicked child!” Erdelyi snapped. He struck her across the face with his open palm. “Do not speak to your elders so!”
Erzsebet whimpered in pain and tears flooded her eyes, but her snarl did not abate. “I will not do it!” she repeated.
Erdelyi raised his hand to strike again, but Julius caught him and smiled.
“Patience, Istvan, patience,” he said. “Erzsebet is simply frightened. But she is a good girl. She will do as she must when the appointed hour arrives.”
“I will not,” Erzsebet protested. “I refuse!”
“You should have thought of that before you ran off with that mongrel!” Erdelyi roared. “Sullying yourself with him, letting him pollute your body! It is a disgrace! How dare you bring such shame upon me? In the eyes of my friends, my brethren—”
Again, Julius interrupted his friend with a soothing tone. “Patience, patience. Give the girl a chance to redeem her soul.” He touched Erzsebet’s cheek with his hand. His motion was tender at first, but as she pulled away, he took her firmly by the jaw and held her there. “But it must be done, child, to undo the wrong that you allowed to be visited upon your family and upon your husband.”
“He is not my husband!” Erzsebet cried.
“Not if your ill judgment has any say in the matter,” Erdelyi said disdainfully. “But thankfully, Count von Steiersberg has generously agreed to forgive your shameful transgression and welcome you back into the fold, which is welcome news for our family. But you must be the one to carry out the ritual that you might plead with God to restore your…your tainted virtue.” Erdelyi stuttered over the words and finally spat them out, seething with rage. “After allowing that peasant to defile your body, this is the only way to make you whole again. So you will do it, and you will be grateful for our mercy.”
“I will not!” Erzsebet insisted.
Erdelyi tightened his grip on her neck. “We will see if you are so impudent when the hour has come and the knife is before you,” he growled as he dragged her off toward the next set of rooms.
Julius and the guardsmen fell in behind them and departed into the shadows.
For a few moments, silence filled the hall. Presently Luka spoke, his moustache twitching at having seen such virulence directed at one so meek.
“I am permitted to kill them, am I not?” he asked.
“Not if I reach them first,” Friedrich said, his hand on the grip of his pistol.
“I think we will all kill them for the manifold things they have done,” Varanus noted, “as soon as we are able to catch them unawares and kill them without any of them escaping.”
“A sensible voice of pragmatism,” Iosef noted, sounding pleased.
“Justice is pragmatic, if nothing else,” Varanus replied.
“But I will get to kill someone, yes?” Luka asked.
Iosef looked at him with pronounced seriousness and asked, straight-faced, “Don’t you mean, ‘put them to sleep’?”
The corner of Luka’s mouth twisted upward.
“It is a kind of sleep.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Friedrich understood the wisdom in remaining hidden until they located both prisoners and had a proper advantage over their enemies, but it chafed him to watch silently as Erzsebet was so abused by her father and Count von Raabe. Once it was safe to move again, he followed Iosef and his mother through the hall and into the adjoining passage. Luka took up the rear, carefully checking the bullets in his revolver.
Friedrich was not certain what to make of the man. He had presented himself in London as a sort of ill-tempered good Samaritan, protecting the poor in the East End from the local gangs that troubled them. But Friedrich suspected that Luka’s motivation was as much a thirst for violence as an eagerness to see justice done.
And Iosef was even more of a peculiarity: the same fair youth that Friedrich had met a decade ago, almost unchanged by the passing years. It was yet another peculiarity, just like Mother and her perpetual youth, or indeed like Aunt Ekaterine for that matter. Ten years seemed to have passed the entire household without effect. Of course, Friedrich had unlocked the secret to that mystery, only to have lost it yet again.
But now was not the time for such thoughts. Erzsebet was in danger, and Stanislav was yet to be found. As Friedrich followed Iosef through the darkness, he kept his Mauser ready, his fingers flexing around the pistol’s handle to be certain of their grip. He would not fire until the moment was right, but when that moment came, he would not hesitate and he would not miss.
As they passed beyond the great hall, Mother seemed to have a much clearer sense of where they were and where they were going. And though she tried to hide the fact, Friedrich noticed that this troubled her. She had been here before, it seemed, and she had reason to suspect what was afoot. This troubled Friedrich as he wondered how she had come to be here and what she knew, but he did not inquire. Now was not the time for unnecessary talk.
They soon came to the main corridor again, which was wide and still lit by the two rows of torches. There were more men here, standing guard attentively but without any real indication of concern. And why should they fear intrusion? Who in his right mind would be poking about in a decrepit ruin at such an hour? But they were armed and it would not do to draw attention, so Friedrich and the others made their way through another side route that passed through a collection of abandoned rooms that might once have been private chambers.
After a tangle of darkened chambers, Friedrich and the others passed into a cloistered court that ran between the castle keep and the outer wall. Friedrich gazed up at the keep and saw tall windows of stained glass above him. They were broken and weathered, but their meaning was plain: this was the castle’s chapel, where knights praised God before sallying forth to kill those who sang praises to another.
There was another man on guard just inside the side door to the chapel, but again he seemed present more as a precaution than for the expectation of intrusion. Either way, the man would soon have cause to regret his unfortunate placement. Friedrich went to deal with the guard himself, but Luka was the quicker. He darted past Friedrich and the others and drew alongside the doorway. Pausing and listening for a moment, Luka pulled a knife from inside his coat. He stepped into the doorway and took hold of the guard, plunging the knife into the man before he could cry out.
Turning in a flash, Luka stabbed again several times for good measure and then threw the body into the darkness of the courtyard.
With one bloody hand, Luka motioned for the others to follow him inside. The chapel was tremendously large, rather the size of a proper church, though like the rest of the castle it was in horrible disrepair. Friedrich saw the stars through the broken roof, and the pillars that lined the nave were like stone trees in a bare forest. And like a scene in a forest, the chapel was distorted into a hideous display of pagan fantasy. A great bonfire in the center of the transept lit the chapel, and piles of flowers and skulls had been heaped about the pillars and at the base of the altar in profane ornamentation.
Friedrich stared speechless at the display while the others did the same. Varanus in particular seemed to be disturbed by what she saw, and her eyes darted around, taking in every detail, comparing it to some unspoken memory.
As Friedrich watched, he saw Count Erdelyi pass by the bonfire, pulling Erzsebet along with him. Erzsebet went unwillingly but obediently, her head downcast and her expression resigned. Friedrich clenched the Mauser in his hand and took a step forward, preparing to run to his friend’s rescue. He felt a hand grab his arm and hold him fast. A glance told him that it was Iosef, who looked at him with disapproval.
“Calm yourself, young man,” Iosef said.
“But—” Friedrich protested, though he found enough reason to keep his voice low.
“We must proceed with caution,” Iosef told him coolly. “These men are armed and they are capable, and it would be unwise to lose our advantage. We must take them by surprise and kill them all at once, or else this will be an unpleasant fight.”
Friedrich might have protested again, but he heard voices passing nearby. Julius von Raabe had arrived, and he walked toward the altar along the nearest row of columns with Von Steiersberg. Both men were strangely casual in their manner and speech, a most curious thing given their garments and adornments, for Von Steiersberg was dressed the same as his cohorts, in a black robe, a holly wreath, and a skull.
A Sojourn in Bohemia Page 25