On the Night of the Seventh Moon

by Victoria Holt

  Together we mounted the stairs to the bridal chamber which had been prepared for us.

  I shall never forget it; nor any moment of that night. It was the memory of this which afterwards I believed helped me retain my sanity. An inexperienced girl could not have imagined such a night. How could she have imagined Maximilian the lover if she had never experienced loving before?

  When I awoke to find him beside me, I lay very still for a long time thinking of this wonderful thing that had happened to me, the tears slowly started to fall down my cheeks.

  He awoke to see them.

  I told him they were tears of happiness and wonder because I had never known there could be anything in the world like marriage to him.

  He kissed them away and we lay quietly for a while; then we were gay again.

  What can I say of those days? Summer days in which so much happened and which seemed so brief. He said he would teach me to ride for I had never done anything but amble about on a pony. Riding was not one of the accomplishments the nuns had thought necessary to teach. I was a good pupil, being determined to excel at everything in his eyes. In the afternoons we walked in the forest; we lay under the trees in a close embrace. He talked of his love for me and I of mine for him—that subject seemed to absorb us both.

  But I must know more, I told him. The honeymoon would be over. I would go to his home. I wanted to know what would be expected of me there.

  “I am the only one who is allowed to expect anything of you,” he parried.

  “Of course, Sir Count. Yet presumably you have a family.”

  “I have a family,” he said.

  “And what of them?”

  “They will need to be prepared for you.”

  “Had they intended you to marry someone of their choice?”

  “But of course. That is the way with families.”

  “And they will not be pleased that you have married a girl you found in the mist.”

  “It is only important that I should be pleased—and I am.”

  “Thank you,” I said flippantly. “I’m glad I give satisfaction.”

  “Complete and utter satisfaction.”

  “So you do not regret?”

  He held me hungrily against him then and his embrace was as painful as I had found it before, but there was always an ecstasy in the pain.

  “I shall never regret.”

  “But I must prepare myself for your family.”

  “When the time is ripe you’ll meet them.”

  “It is not ripe yet?”

  “Hardly. They know nothing about you.”

  “Whom do we have to placate?”

  “Too many to enumerate.”

  “So it is a large family and your father is an ogre. Or is it your mother?”

  “She would be an ogress, wouldn’t she? The feminine, you know.”

  “How meticulous you have become.”

  “Now that I have an English wife I must master the language.”

  “You are already a master.”

  “In some respects, yes. In language not entirely.”

  I began to discover that whenever I tried to talk of his family the talk took a flippant turn. He did not wish to talk of it and for those first few days, which I wanted to be perfect, I did not insist.

  I knew that he came of a noble family. His father whom he mentioned briefly would probably have wished to arrange a marriage for him after the manner of noble families, and it would be a shock for him to learn that we were married. Naturally we would have to wait until he had warned them and the time, as Maximilian said, was ripe.

  So we joked and laughed and made love and that was enough for me.

  He told me stories of the forest in which the legends of the past played a great part. I learned more of the mischievous tricks of Loke and the amazing exploits of Thor with his hammer. There was only Hildegarde to wait on us and cook for us and Hans to manage the horses—apart from those two we were alone in our enchanted world.

  On the second day I went into one of the rooms and, opening the cupboard, found a lot of clothes. I knew that the white silk nightdress which I had been given on my first visit to the lodge had come from this store.

  Why, I asked myself, were they kept here?

  I asked Hildegarde to whom the clothes belonged and she shrugged her shoulders and pretended not to understand my German, which was absurd because I was fluent.

  That night when we lay together in the big bed I said: “Whose are the clothes in the blue room cupboards?”

  He took a piece of my hair and wound it round his finger.

  “Do you want them?” he said.

  “Want them? They must belong to someone else.”

  He laughed. “Someone I knew kept them here,” he said.

  “Because she came often?”

  “It saved carrying them to and fro.”

  “A friend of yours . . .”

  “A friend, yes.”

  “A great friend?”

  “I don’t have friends like that now.”

  “You mean of course that she was your mistress.”

  “My darling, that is over now. I have started a new life.”

  “But why are her clothes here?”

  “Because someone forgot to take them away.”

  “I wish they had not been here. I shall be afraid to open cupboards for fear of what I shall find.”

  “I was first Siegfried the hero,” he said. “After that I was the mischievous Loke followed by Odin and now it seems I have become Bluebeard. I believe he had a wife who looked where it would have been better if she had not. I’ve always forgotten what happened to the meddlesome lady but I believe it was something regrettable from her point of view.”

  “Are you telling me not to ask questions?”

  “It is always better not to when you have a good idea that the answer is not very pleasant.”

  “There have been many women, I believe. You waylaid them in the forest and brought them here.”

  “That only happened once and I did not waylay. I found my own true love.”

  “But many have come here.”

  “It’s a convenient meeting place.”

  “And you have told them that you would love them forever.”

  “Without any real conviction.”

  “And on this occasion?”

  “With the utmost conviction because if it were not so I would be the most unhappy instead of the happiest man alive.”

  “So there have been others . . . countless others.”

  “There have been no others.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “You don’t let me finish. There have been no others like you. There will never be another like you. Women have been here, yes. Not one but several and it has been . . . agreeable. But there is only one Lenchen.”

  “That is why you married me.”

  He kissed me fervently. “One day,” he said earnestly, “you will understand how much I love you.”

  “I know so little.”

  “What do you need to know but that I love you?”

  “In our everyday life there is more than that.”

  “There is never more than that.”

  “But I have to prepare myself for our life together. Am I really a Countess now? It seems rather a grand thing to be.”

  “We are a small country,” he said. “Do not imagine that we compete with your great one.”

  “But a count is a count and a countess a countess.”

  “Some are great, others are small. Remember this is a country with many principalities and little dukedoms. Why there are many people with high sounding titles which don’t count for very much. There are some dukedoms which consist of the big house, and a village street or two and that is the sole domain. In the not very distant days some of our estates were so small and so poor that if there were five or six brothers they would each have had only a pittance. They used to draw lots—or rather straws. The father would hold the
straws in his hand—one was a short one, the others all of the same length. The son who drew the short one inherited everything.”

  “Have you many brothers?”

  “I am an only son.”

  “Then they will be particularly eager for you to marry whom they choose for you.”

  “They will in time be enchanted with my choice.”

  “I wish I could be sure of it.”

  “You have only to rely on me . . . now and forever.”

  When I was about to ask more questions he kissed me again and again. I wondered whether it was to silence me.

  Three days had passed and the blissful existence continued. I had a strange feeling that I must cling to each moment, savor and treasure it so that I could relive it in the years to come. Was it a premonition? Did I really have it? Or was it all part of a fantastic dream?

  Those summer days were full of excitement and pleasure. The sun shone perpetually; we spent the afternoon in the forest and hardly ever saw anyone. Each evening we supped together and I wore the blue robe which he told me he had bought on impulse.

  “To give to one of your friends whom you brought to the lodge?” I asked.

  “I never gave it to anyone. It hung in the cupboard waiting for you.”

  “You speak as though you knew you were going to find me in the mist.”

  He leaned across the table then and said: “Doesn’t everyone dream of the day the only one in the world will come?”

  It was the sort of answer he could make so convincingly. He was indeed the perfect lover; he could capture the mood one needed at any particular time. At first he had been tender and gentle, almost as though he withheld a passion which he was aware might alarm me. My experiences in those three days and nights were many and varied and each was more revealing and exciting than what had gone before.

  It was small wonder that I preferred to forget the realities of life. Just for a while I wanted to live in this enchantment.

  Early on the morning of the fourth day after my marriage we were awakened at dawn by the sounds of horses’ hoofs and voices below.

  Maximilian went down and I lay listening, waiting for his return.

  When he did come, I knew that something was wrong. I rose and he took my hands in his and kissed me.

  “Bad news, Lenchen,” he said. “I have to go to my father.”

  “Is he ill?”

  “He’s in trouble. I’ll have to leave in an hour at the latest.”

  “Where?” I cried. “Where shall you go?”

  “Everything will be all right,” he said. “There’s not time for explanations now. I’ll have to get ready.”

  I ran round getting his things together. I put the blue velvet robe over my nightdress, for I had begun to use it as a dressing gown, and went to call Hildegarde.

  She was preparing coffee and the smell of it filled the kitchen.

  Maximilian, dressed and ready for a journey, was clearly very unhappy. “It’s unbearable, Lenchen, to leave you like this . . . during our honeymoon.”

  “Can’t I come with you?”

  He took my hands and gazed into my face. “If only that were possible!”

  “Why not?”

  He just shook his head and held me close to him.

  “Stay here, my darling, until I come back. It will be the very first moment that is possible.”

  “I shall be so unhappy without you.”

  “As I shall be without you. Oh, Lenchen, there are no regrets, none at all. There never will be. I know it.”

  Questions were on my lips. “I know nothing. Where is your father? Where are you going? How shall I be able to write to you?” There was so much I wanted to know. But he was telling me how much he loved me, how important I was to him, how once we had met it was clear to him that the rest of our lives must be lived together.

  He said, “My darling, I’ll be back with you very soon.”

  “Where can I write you?”

  “Don’t,” he said. “I’ll come back. Just wait here for me to come. That’s all, Lenchen.”

  Then he was gone and I was alone.

  How desolate the lodge seemed. It was quiet, almost eerie. I did not know how to pass the time. I went from room to room. There was the first one in which I had spent that uneasy night. I touched the door handle and thought of his standing outside wanting me to have left it unlocked. Then I went to that other room in which were another woman’s clothes and wondered what she was like; and I thought of all the women whom he had loved or professed to love. They would be beautiful, gay, experienced, and clever probably; I was wildly jealous, and deeply aware of my own inadequacies. But I was the one whom he had married.

  I would have to learn a great deal. Countess Lokenburg! Could that grand sounding title really be mine? I turned the ring on my finger and thought of the paper which I kept carefully in my bag which said that on the 20th July of the year 1860 Helena Trant had married Maximilian Count Lokenburg and the witnesses to their union were Ernst and Ilse Gleiberg.

  There was the day to be lived through. How desolate the house was; how lonely was I!

  I went into the forest. I walked down to the grove of pine trees; I sat down under one of them and thought of all that had happened to me.

  I wondered what the aunts would say when they heard that I had become the wife of a count. What would the Grevilles say, and the Cleeses? It all seemed so fantastic when one considered those people. It was the sort of thing that could only have happened in an enchanted forest.

  When I went back to the lodge to my surprise Ilse and Ernst had arrived.

  “The Count called on us on his way,” they explained. “He had suddenly made up his mind that he did not want you to stay at the lodge while he was away. He said it was too lonely. He wants you to come back to us. He’ll come straight to us on his return.”

  I was only too pleased. I put my things together and in the late afternoon we left. It was a relief in a way to get away from the lodge in which I had known such happiness; it would be easier to wait in the company of Ilse.

  It was dark when we reached the house.

  Ilse said I must be tired out and she insisted on my going straight to bed.

  She came to me with the inevitable glass of hot milk.

  I drank it and was very quickly in a deep slumber.

  And when I awoke, of course, the forest idyll was over and the nightmare had begun.

  The Nightmare

  1860–1861

  ONE

  When I awoke it appeared to be late afternoon. For the moment I could not think where I was; then I remembered that Ilse and Ernst had brought me from the lodge yesterday. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It said a quarter to five.

  I raised myself and a pain shot through my head; I could not think what had happened to me. The walls of the room seemed to close in on me, my head was swimming, and I felt sick.

  I’m ill, I thought. Worse still, my mind seemed confused. Only yesterday I had awakened glowing with good health with Maximilian beside me. I must have caught some sickness.

  I tried to get up but I could not stand. I sank back into bed.

  I called feebly: “Ilse!”

  She came in looking very worried.

  “Ilse. What’s happened to me?”

  She studied me intently. “You don’t remember . . . ?”

  “But I was all right when we came back here last evening.”

  She bit her lips and looked uncertain.

  “My dear,” she said, “don’t worry, we’ll look after you.”

  “But . . .”

  “You are feeling ill. Try to rest. Try to go back to sleep.”

  “Rest! How can I? What’s happened? Why have you suddenly become so mysterious?”

  “It’s all right, Helena. You mustn’t worry. You must try to sleep and forget . . .”

  “Forget! What do you mean? Forget? Forget what?”

  Ilse said: “I’m going to call Ernst.”

&nbs
p; As she went to the door, a terrible feeling of foreboding came to me. I thought: Maximilian is dead. Is that what they are trying to tell me?

  Ernst came in, looking very grave. He took my wrist and felt my pulse as though he were a doctor. He looked significantly at Ilse.

  “Are you trying to tell me that I’ve got some disease?” I demanded.

  “You had better tell her, Ilse,” he said.

  “You have been in bed since you came back on that night. It is six days since then.”

  “I’ve been in bed for six days! Has anyone told Maximilian?”

  Ilse put her hand on my forehead. “Helena, you have been delirious. It was a terrible thing that happened to you. I blame myself. I should never have allowed you to go in the first place and then to lose you there.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think it would be better if she knew the truth,” said Ernst.

  “On the Night of the Seventh Moon,” said Ilse, “we went out. You remember that?”

  “But of course.”

  “You remember our being in the square and watching the revelers?”

  I nodded.

  “We were separated and I was frantic. I searched everywhere for you but I couldn’t find you. I wandered round looking over the town for you and then I thought you might have come back to the house so I came back, but you weren’t here. Ernst and I went out then looking for you. When we couldn’t find you we were frantic with anxiety. We were going out again to search for you when you came back. Oh, Helena, I shall never forget the sight of you. That we should have allowed it.”

  “But when I came back you understood that I had been brought back by Maximilian.”

  Ilse was looking at me shaking her head. “You came back in a pitiable condition. Your clothes were torn; you were dazed with shock. You were delirious. You were incoherent, but we knew what had happened. It has happened to young girls before on such nights . . . but that it should have happened to you, Helena, in our charge . . . a carefully nurtured girl with little knowledge of the world—I could not face your aunts. Oh, Helena, Ernst and I have been beside ourselves with anxiety.”