“I have heard something of Ludwig.”
“He will not easily be forgotten. And there is Count Frederic to follow him. Trouble . . . trouble . . .”
“Why should there be trouble between the Duke and Count Frederic?”
“There is often trouble in families, particularly our old German ones. In the old days when the estates were so poor the brothers drew lots to see who should have what there was. An estate divided would have brought very little to brothers—if there were many of them—and there so often were—so that the only thing was to draw lots and let the winner take all. This has caused trouble through the ages. Those who have not inherited believe they owe their positions at the present day to the ill luck of their ancestors in the past. Many seek to win back by treachery what luck has denied them. Ludwig was such a one. He wanted to unseat Carl and rule Rochenstein himself.”
“And the boys’ father is his son?”
“Yes, Count Frederic will have to be careful. He will have the Prince to answer to. But Frederic is clever. He’ll bide his time.”
“So these are the dead ones,” I said. “Well, if they suffered when they were alive they have been given due homage here. The graves are lovely.”
“It’s my pride to keep them beautiful,” Franz said, his face lighting with a smile. “I’ll swear there are no more beautiful graves than mine in the whole of Europe.”
I walked down the line of graves and read the inscriptions. There were the Dukes of Rochenstein and Dorrenig and Counts Lokenburg. “Family titles all of them,” murmured Franz. As ever when I read that name I thought of myself back in the hunting lodge and the ceremony when Maximilian had slipped a ring on my finger . . . a ring which disappeared with my dreams . . . and the marriage lines which said I was his wife which had no substance either.
There were several avenues, all exquisitely kept—the grass weeded, the flowers blooming to perfection.
I saw the boys who called to me, and old Franz led me over to them. I passed through a gate and was in a walled graveyard. Here the graves were simple mounds with small gray stones at the head of them. I noticed some had no stones at all.
“These are the graves of those who are buried here with the permission of some member of the Family,” Franz explained.
“I’ll show you my mother’s grave,” said Dagobert.
I followed him, stepping cautiously between the graves to one with a headstone rather more elaborate than most of the others. On it was written Countess von Plinschen and the date of her death, 1858. Dagobert said: “She died when I was born . . . she died having me.”
“That’s sad,” I murmured, touched to see the reverent manner in which he laid the pink orchids on her grave.
Fritz said: “My mother died too. Can I show you where she is?”
He took my hand and we walked away from the others. I was conscious of the eyes of Franz following me and I thought what a gruesome place this was, and it was a pity that the Family, as they were called, hadn’t buried their dead in a churchyard like normal people.
I was deeply touched at the sight of Fritz kneeling by that grave. It simply said on it Luisa Freundsberg and nothing more.
“She loved me very much,” said Fritz, “but of course I was an embarrassment to her.”
“My dear Fritz,” I said. “You must have been a great joy to her.”
His eyes were suddenly touched by pain as he said: “I don’t remember her. I only remember Frau Lichen and then there was Frau Graben.”
“Well, I daresay they loved you dearly.”
“Yes,” he admitted shyly, “but it is not the same as a mother.”
“There will be others in your life to love you,” I assured him; and that seemed to please him.
We went back and joined the others.
Franz offered us refreshments and we went into his gingerbread-like house to partake of them. We stepped down into a room in which were several flowers in pots. The scent was almost overpowering. We sat at a table and from a cask he drew mugs of what tasted like beer. I didn’t greatly care for it but the boys drank it with relish.
Franz told me he had made it himself. He looked after himself. He never went to the mainland; his provisions were sent over once a week by the Family, and sometimes he saw no one for weeks on end. The boys visited the island regularly once a month and every now and then when there was a burial the body was brought over by night and laid in its grave.
He was gardener and stonemason. In the old days it had been easier. He had helped his father; his mother had died when he was quite a boy. Women didn’t take kindly to Gräber Insel. He himself had married a wife. He had gone to the mainland to find her, he said sadly. He brought her back and waited for his son. But there was no son. The island gave her the creeps, she said. She couldn’t live there; and one night when he was asleep she crept out and rowed herself over to the mainland, and in the morning he awoke to find her gone. She was never heard of since, and he was unable to take another wife—even if he could have found one to share his lonely life on the Island of Graves.
I was glad when we were in the boat again. There was something uncanny about Gräber Insel and I couldn’t stop thinking of the old man as Charon the ferryman of the dead.
That night I awoke with a start. I dreamed a great deal in the last eight years but never more vividly than since I had come to Klocksburg—except of course in the months directly following my adventures.
This time I had believed I was on the Island of Graves and in that avenue I found an inscription on which was written Maximilian Count Lokenburg, and as I watched the marble slab was lifted and Maximilian stepped out of the tomb. He came to me and took me in his arms and his embrace was a frozen one. I cried out: “You are dead?” and woke up.
I had thrown off all the bedclothes. I was shivering. The window was wide open to the mountain air. I lighted my candle. I knew I shouldn’t sleep for some time.
It was all coming back so vividly to me as it always did after dreams and with it that aching sadness with which I had become familiar. It brought with it a fearful sense of loss from which I believed I should never recover. There could never be anyone in my life to take his place.
Then I heard footsteps on the landing outside my room. I looked at my watch. It was just after one o’clock. Who could be walking about at this time? There were only the children and two maids in the fortress, the rest of the household had their quarters in the Randhausburg.
The steps were stealthy as though someone was carefully picking a way toward my room. They stopped. I saw my door handle slowly turn. I remembered that I had locked the door. Since my adventure in the mist I had made a habit of this and even at home I did it.
“Who is that?” I asked. There was no answer. I listened, then I heard the footsteps going on. They were mounting the stairs, I believed. I felt the goose pimples rising on my skin; if I was right and those footsteps were mounting the stairs they could only be going to one place—the room in the turret—the haunted room.
The two maids in the fortress and the children were all afraid of the haunted room. So . . . who could it be who was now stealthily making for it?
My curiosity was greater than my fear. Since I had come here the conviction had grown up within me that I was going to make some great discovery. I could not help feeling that I was a stranger to myself and I must be so to a certain extent because I did not know whether I had actually lived through the greatest adventure of my life or dreamed it. I knew that until I could satisfy myself as to what really happened on the Night of the Seventh Moon, I could never understand myself and therefore never know real peace of mind.
Why investigating uncanny footsteps on the stairs should help me, I did not know. All I was aware of was that these pine forests were the scene of my lost six days and somewhere here I would find the secret. So I must leave nothing unexplored however remote it might seem to my personal affairs.
I hastily wrapped a dressing gown about myself and picke
d up a candle. I unlocked the door; I looked out along the landing to the winding staircase. I could distinctly hear the footsteps on the stairs above.
I sped up there, holding my candle as firmly as my trembling hand would allow. Someone was there. Could it be the ghost of the woman whose lover had deceived her and who had thrown herself down from the turret windows?
The candlelight flickered on the spiral stone stairs which were worn in the middle by hundreds of years of use. I was almost at the turret. There was the door. My heart leaped with fear, the candle tipped sideways and almost went out. A figure was standing at the door of the haunted room.
I saw a hand reach out to turn the knob.
Then I realized who it was. “Fritzi!” I whispered, using the pet diminutive.
He did not look round.
I went up to him, all fear evaporated. “Mutter,” he whispered. He had turned to me and seemed to stare without seeing. Then I realized. Fritz was walking in his sleep.
I took his hand firmly in mine. I led him down the stairs and back to his room. I put him into his bed, tucked him up, and kissed him lightly on the forehead.
I whispered: “Everything is all right, Fritzi. I’m here to look after you.”
He whispered: “Mutter? Mutter meine . . .”
I sat by his bed. He was very quiet and after a while appeared to be sleeping peacefully. I went to my own room. I was very cold so I got into bed and tried to warm myself.
I slept little for the rest of that night; I kept straining my ears for the sound of footsteps. In the morning I decided to talk to Frau Graben.
“He was always a nervous child,” she said, beaming at me. In her sitting room she kept a fire going most of the time and invariably had a kettle singing on it. She also kept what she called a stockpot and this provided a most appetizing smelling soup.
She made tea for me. She always did this with a kind of smug delight as though to say “See how I look after you?”
As we sat sipping the brew I was telling her about last night.
“It’s not the first time he’s walked in his sleep,” she said.
“It’s dangerous, I should think.”
“They say that people who walk in their sleep rarely hurt themselves. There was one of the maids . . . so the story goes . . . who got out of one of the windows and walked along the parapet of the tower without coming to any harm.”
I shivered.
“No, Fritzi’s never come to any harm sleepwalking. They say they step over anything that’s in their way.”
“But he must be in a disturbed state to sleepwalk, don’t you think?”
“Poor Fritzi, he’s the sensitive one. He feels things more than the other two.”
“Yesterday they took me to the Island of Graves.”
“Oh, that upset him. It always does. I don’t like them going there, but don’t like to stop it. After all it’s right they should respect their dead mothers.”
“I think it’s a pity there has to be so much talk about the haunted room. The fact that it’s kept locked makes them imagine all sorts of horrors behind those closed doors. Have the children ever been in the room?”
“No.”
“It’s no wonder they’re overawed. The fact that Fritz made his way up there shows that it’s on his mind and he connects it in some way with his dead mother, because he was at the Island of Graves yesterday.”
“He seems to have been better since you came. Learning English agrees with him. Or perhaps it’s you. He seems to have taken a real fancy to you—and you to him.” She gave me that rather sly look of hers. “I reckon he’s your favorite among the children. I’m glad, for Fritzi’s sake.”
“I’m interested in him. He’s a clever boy.”
“I’ll agree with you.”
“I think he needs to be a member of a big uncomplicated family.”
“They say all children do.”
“I was wondering about that room. What is it like?”
“It’s just a room. It’s in the turret and so it’s circular. There are several windows, the lattice type that open out. That was why it was so easy for her to open one and get out.”
“And this room has been locked for years and years.”
“I don’t think so. The fortress wasn’t used much before Count Frederic brought the children here. Then there was this story about the haunting and I thought it better to keep the door locked.”
I hardly liked to go against her authority so I was silent but she pressed me. “You think it’s wrong to keep it locked, then?” she went on.
“If it was treated just like an ordinary room people would forget the story,” I said. “Such stories are best forgotten surely.”
She shrugged her shoulders. Then she said: “Would you like me to leave it unlocked?”
“I have an idea it would be better. Then I’ll try to make light of it and perhaps go up there occasionally with the children.”
“Come with me now and I’ll unlock it.”
She kept her keys dangling from her belt like a good châtelaine; she delighted in those keys. I suppose she regarded them as a sign of her authority.
I put down my cup and we went up to the turret room together; she unlocked the door. I must confess I caught my breath as we entered, though why I could not imagine. There was nothing eerie about the room; the windows and its extremely elevated position made it very light. There were several beautiful rugs on the wooden floor, a table, a few chairs, a settee, and a bureau. It looked as though it had been recently occupied.
“It’s not been used since . . .” said Frau Graben.
“It’s a beautiful room,” I said.
“You can use it if you like.”
I did not know that I wanted to do that. Approached only by the narrow spiral staircase which led to the turret it was isolated and although it was easy to feel comfortable here during the day with a companion I remembered the uneasy feeling I had experienced last night when I had followed Fritz up here.
“Perhaps we can use it . . . later,” I said. I imagined lessons up here; laborious conversations in English as to the beauty of the view which was, as from all the windows in the fortress, magnificent.
“Which was the window from which the lady fell?” I asked.
She led me across the room.
“This one.”
She unlatched it and pushed it outwards. I leaned out. I was looking straight down the mountainside, for like so many of the castles in these parts the mountain’s side had been used to form a wall. The drop was sheer. I could see right down to the valley.
Frau Graben moved close to me.
“Silly girl she was!” she whispered.
“She would have been dead before she reached the valley,” I said.
“Silly girl!” she repeated. “She could have had so much and she chose to kill herself.”
“She must have been very unhappy.”
“No reason to be. This castle was her home. All she had to do was keep in her place and she could have gone on here . . . the mistress of Klocksburg.”
“Except when the owner called with his wife.”
“She should have had more sense. He was fond of her or he wouldn’t have brought her here. He would have protected her. But she had to go and jump down there . . . to her end.”
I said: “Is she in the Island of Graves?”
“She’d be there. There is one grave. It just says one name on the tombstone: ‘Girda.’ They say that’s the one. What a silly girl! It need never have been. It’s a lesson to girls though.”
“To make sure they can trust their lovers.”
She smiled her fat comfortable smile and gave me a little nudge in the ribs. “To accept what’s what, and make the best of it. If a count loves you enough to set you up in a castle shouldn’t that satisfy you?”
I said: “It didn’t satisfy her.”
“Some have had more sense,” she said.
I turned away from the window. I wanted to s
top thinking of that girl who had discovered her lover to have tricked her. I understood too well how she must have felt.
Frau Graben understood my feelings. “Silly girl,” she insisted once more. “Don’t go on feeling too sorry for her. You’d have had more sense in her place, I know.” Again that sly smile. “It is a pleasant room. So you’d like it left unlocked and you’ll come up here now and then. I think you’re right. Yes, it’s a good notion.”
. . .
The room fascinated me. I was soon feeling an urge to go there alone. I must admit that on the first occasion I went, I had to fight a lurking reluctance, but once I was there I experienced a certain excitement. It was a delightful room, perhaps the most attractive in the fortress. Even the view seemed more magnificent seen from these windows. I opened the one from which Girda was alleged to have thrown herself. It opened with a little squeaking protest. It needs oiling, I thought, forcing myself to be practical.
How grand the ducal castle looked, a mighty impregnable fortress guarding the town. After frequent conversations with the boys who had on very special occasions been allowed to visit the castle, I could make out the features which they had described. I could see the walls with their flanking turrets and the gate tower fortress. There it stood dating back in some parts to the eleventh century, guarding the town, ready to defend itself from marauders. What an uneasy life people must have led in those days when their greatest concern was to defend themselves. The boys had described the grandeur of the Rittersaal and the tapestries which adorned the walls; there were gardens with fountains and statues which their father had told them were like those of Versailles, for it had been the desire of every German princeling to follow the example of the great Sun King, and in his little domain to see himself as the mighty French monarch.
I reminded the boys what had become of the monarchy of France. Dagobert replied: “Oh yes, old Kratz told us all about that.”
Looking out across the sweep of the valley to the town and then up again to the royal castle, I could make out the outhouses of the Randhausburg where I presumed many of the outdoor servants lived; and there were the barracks too. Across the valley would come the trumpet call to wake them in the morning; I often heard it soon after dawn, and sometimes when the wind was in the right direction I would hear the band playing in the ducal gardens.
On the Night of the Seventh Moon Page 18