by David Wood
Wagner was about to ask whether such a thing would be acceptable for the coachman that had brought them to the village, but Fritz was already sauntering over to the man. Wagner smiled. His friend was wealthy, of course, and didn’t really need the Count’s employment. Fritz would just bribe the coach driver, and if that failed, he would buy the horses outright.
Fritz had agreed to come to Transylvania with the ladies, to make Wagner’s acceptance of the position with the Count a little easier. He had offered to help Wagner find local work, but after the death of his daughter, Wagner had initially lost any drive to perform work, but then when it returned, he was determined to start anew in a different locale. Besides, Wagner could never accept charity from his friend, and he knew that Fritz understood that, too, but the man had been decent enough to make the offer, regardless.
Wagner stood with the ladies for a few minutes while Fritz worked his magic with the coachman. Gretchen chatted nearly non-stop, and Wagner made the appropriate noises in reply, but his eyes kept darting to his wife, and she kept returning his looks with a sly smile. She seemed healthier already, in the few weeks they had been apart. Maybe the change of scenery was doing her good. Maybe she will even speak again soon, he thought.
“I suggest we step into the inn and order some food before the journey. It’s not far, but I am famished.”
“An excellent idea!” Gretchen said, and led them toward to door to the inn. Anneli lingered behind her for just a moment, smiling at Wagner, and he leaned in to place a gentle kiss on her cheek. Then she took his arm and they followed Gretchen into the small tavern.
Surly Miklos was at his post at the worn front desk, but a different girl was waiting the tables. Even though it was early afternoon, many of the same village men were already seated in the tavern and looking, with their steins of beer, as if they were settled in for the night.
“Hello, Herr Miklos. Can we get food for four? Your cooking the last time I was here, a few weeks ago, was so excellent, I thought I should introduce my friends to it.”
The man recognized Wagner and began to nod. Then he saw Anneli and Gretchen, and he looked stricken.
He pointed to Anneli. “Is…is this your wife, Herr Wagner?”
“Yes,” Wagner was suddenly suspicious of Miklos’s unusual interest. “My wife, Anneli Wagner. Dear, this is Herr Miklos, who runs this establishment. Is something wrong, Herr Miklos?”
The man composed himself and quickly replied, “No, sir. No. Nothing wrong. It’s just that it can be quite dangerous in the mountains for a woman, as I told you the last time we met.”
“I understand. In fact, I myself, had a brush with danger up at the castle, when a loose piece of masonry nearly crushed me.” Anneli whipped her head around to look at him with concern in her eyes. He gently laid his hand on her arm to assuage her. “I was fine, however.” He turned his eyes back to the innkeeper. “I’ve been making many improvements on the place, and while the journey up there is indeed perilous, I suspect we will all be fine.”
“Of course we’ll be fine!” Fritz’s voice boomed as he entered the tavern. “Drinks for everyone, barkeep! On me!”
This was met with a round of applause. He knows how to win a hostile room, Wagner thought. Indeed, the usually grouchy, fear-stricken men in the room were quite happy now.
Chapter 14
They ate quickly, knowing dusk was coming. The treacherous road to the castle would become even more deadly in the dark.
As they left the tavern, many of the patrons thanked Fritz, but some were so far into their drink, they could only nod or drool on the tables where they slept. Outside, the sun was already set behind the mountains, but light still filled the sky. The wide coach’s driver had been inside with them, drinking with the others. He joined them outside and released two of his four horses from their traces for Wagner and Fritz to ride. He explained that he had already transferred the luggage to Petran’s narrow coach, and indeed, the black narrow carriage was parked close to the inn’s door. Petran, gloomy, stood scowling in the deepening dusk. As soon as he saw the group approaching, he spoke.
“We must hurry. The light fails.” He turned and climbed up to the driver’s seat. Fritz helped the ladies into the black carriage, while Wagner took possession of the chestnut brown horses from the other coach driver. He climbed atop his steed, and held the reins of the second horse for Fritz. His job done, the coachman headed back into the inn, where Wagner supposed he would spend the night happily drinking Fritz’s money away.
Fritz stepped away from the narrow black coach to address Wagner. “Are you ready, my friend?”
Just then Petran snapped the reins, and the two obsidian stallions that sat at the front of the black carriage raced off down the road at top speed, just as they had done when Wagner had taken his original journey to the castle. Fritz was startled by the narrow coach’s sudden departure.
“He’s an impatient fellow, isn’t he?”
“Come on, Fritz. We’ve no time to lose if we are to catch up to them.” Wagner nudged his horse to step toward Fritz, and the other horse came with him.
Fritz took the reins to his own horse and swept up onto the back of his steed, as if he were born to do so. Wagner was no stranger to riding, but he admired the smooth grace of his friend’s way with animals. Fritz and beasts always took a liking to one another.
Pulling his coat closed against the chill air, Wagner put his heels into the mare. He and the horse took off down the dirt road in the oncoming dimness, and Fritz followed. They chased the coach through the alpine pastures, with it always just at the edge of sight. Wagner was surprised that no matter how fast he urged his horse onward, they were not able to catch up with the speeding black carriage in the distance.
When the fields gave way to gray rocky passages through the stone of the mountain, the deepening dusk already resembling the night and lit only by the brilliant starshine above them in the clear sky, Fritz pulled up by Wagner’s side.
“The man is flying! How will we catch him?”
It was then that Wagner recalled his first trip along the road and his walk on it earlier in the day.
“Fritz! Ride behind me, the road narrows to just a strip!” Wagner called.
Fritz glanced ahead and saw the danger just in time. He pulled back hard on his reins and his mare skittered and sputtered to a stop on the loose stone, as Wagner shot forward along the twisting path, as the wall of stone on their left disappeared to leave nothing but open sky on that side of them. Wagner wanted to glance again to the castle, but he didn’t dare take his eyes from the road, which was becoming difficult to see in the gloom.
Shortly, he could hear Fritz’s snorting steed just behind him on the trail. When they entered the thick forest, the night closed in around them like a cloak, and Wagner had to trust that his horse could find the way. He could see only the occasional glint of starshine off the branches of trees that reached out into the path. By the time he saw them, they were already whipping at his body as he blasted past them. His thoughts of being cold were gone now. The excitement of the chase and the hard riding was causing him to sweat.
They burst out of the forest and onto the long, twisting stripe of raised rock that acted as a natural bridge to the castle in the distance. The moon was full, but sat low over the horizon beyond the castle and the hills. It lit their way like a giant version of Wagner’s electric flashlight. Wagner could see the carriage just reaching the castle’s gates ahead. With more light to see, he urged his horse on faster along the tiny road, with Fritz still close on his heels.
As the two men raced through the castle’s gates into the darkened courtyard, Wagner could just see Anneli emerging from the coach’s door. Her face looked pale in the beam of the white moonlight. Petran was already out of sight. Pulling hard on the reins, Wagner pulled his mare up just shy of the carriage, its hooves scraping on the worn smooth stone floor of the wide courtyard.
Gretchen was stepping out of the coach now, letting a
very unladylike stream of choice words for her driver flow from her mouth, as if she were a Hamburg dock worker. Wagner had to smile. Fritz pulled up, dismounting, patting the horse long and hard as the beast breathed in terrible gulps after the fast run.
“Anneli, are you alright?” Wagner asked, moving to his wife. She was walking around the courtyard’s shadows as if in a daze. She took a step toward him, and something swooped at him out of the darkness.
It knocked him backward against the carriage. He struck at it with an arm, and the creature darted back.
It was a bat. A huge bat with a wingspan of at least a yard. Wagner’s hand darted to his neck, where the thing had scratched at him with its claws.
The foul creature screeched with a shrill, ear-piercing wail, and swooped in for another attempt at his throat. Its small eyes reflected the moonlight in a fiery shade of red. Fritz stepped up and clubbed the flying animal with his arm. It fluttered away to the far side of the courtyard and up into the sky, screeching all the while.
“Mein Gott! Did you see the size of that thing?” Fritz said.
“It nearly took my head off,” Wagner said, running to Anneli, who only now looked as if she were snapping out of the daze she had been in. “Are you alright, my dear?”
She blinked a few times, as if working away sleepiness, then turned to him and smiled a soft reassuring smile. Yes, she would be fine, it said.
Darkness had fallen completely on the courtyard now, with the moon slipping behind a cloud. Fritz looked amused at the escapade. Gretchen looked terrified. Anneli looked simply tired. Wagner rubbed his hand at his throat, feeling the scratches that hadn’t drawn blood, but which would leave a mark.
“Let us get indoors, my friends.”
Chapter 15
The men settled the ladies with their own rooms. Despite Wagner and Anneli being married, Fritz and Gretchen were not. The decision was made to avoid any signs of impropriety, despite the fact that Wagner had lied to the Count and referred to Gretchen as Fritz’s wife. With the castle having as many unused rooms as it did, the choice seemed optimal to all four of them.
With both women safely ensconced in Gretchen’s room, Fritz and Wagner left to make arrangements with Petran for food for all of them in the morning—or as Wagner explained to Fritz, to leave a written request for the normally invisible servant. As the door to the room closed, Gretchen turned to Anneli like an excited school girl. “Did you see the size of that bat? My goodness! It was so horrible!”
Anneli nodded dutifully. Although conversation was beyond her means, she would nod and smile, and Gretchen would hold up both sides of the conversation on her own just fine.
“This place is amazing, though. I wonder what the mysterious Count looks like. Did Andreas describe him?” Gretchen prattled as she began unpacking clothes from her valise.
Anneli shrugged from her seat on the bed. Gretchen didn’t even see the movement, but continued on as if she had.
“I bet he’s old and crusty. Or maybe he’s a delicious young man with dark eyes and moody, pouty lips.”
Anneli looked sharply at her friend, but Gretchen was still going on about her fantasies while putting away her belongings. Anneli had dreamt of the Count in Munich—a young man with dark eyes and sensual lips. Nearly exactly the way Gretchen had described the man. She wondered for a moment whether it was possible they had both shared some kind of dream, but then she dismissed the notion. She smiled to herself. The image of their mysteriously absent host was simply a schoolgirl stereotype—the tall, dark, European image of royalty. A prince to sweep a woman off her feet and onto his beautiful horse. She laughed to herself at the ludicrousness of it. And what would she need of a man like that?
Her thoughts turned to her husband. Thoughtful, hard working, pleasant, and gentle. He was clever and shrewd with money. He was also a very handsome man. He wasn’t royalty, or wealthy, by any stretch of her imagination, but Andreas had provided for her and their child. Her thoughts darkened momentarily at the thought of her lost baby, her Britta, but she quickly turned those thoughts away to more pleasant things, as she had learned to do. She could dwell on the horrors of what had happened to her baby or she could move on. It had been a year. It was time for her to start thinking forward. She and Andreas would have other children. They had traveled across the mountains of Europe to come to this new land of farms and craggy rocks to begin again. She knew her husband’s heart was in the right place. His solution was to break from nearly everything and start again anew. Somewhere else. Something different. She was grateful that approach had not applied to her. He could very well have left me, too. But that was not the sort of man he was. Besides, she could tell that he was still madly in love with her, and she still loved him deeply as well. No, she didn’t need any mystery men. Her husband was her world, and together they would find their way into the future.
“…he’s just afraid to commit and seal the deal. But I told him, ‘Fritzie, this thing is good for you and for me. We should just go with them to Transylvania for the fun of it.’ I told him the change of climate would be good for both of us, and once separated from his familiar environs in Munich, he would see how much he needed me. I’m sure marriage will follow soon.”
Gretchen had managed to put away most of her belongings, even positioning her hairbrush and hand mirror on the dressing table just so, before she turned to Anneli for approval.
“He will ask me soon, don’t you think?” Gretchen’s face began to fall, as if without Anneli’s agreement, her entire constructed fantasy would crumble. Anneli knew this approach from her friend quite well. She smiled widely, and nodded enthusiastically for her friend, while privately thinking to herself, Not a chance, Gretch. He’ll probably have moved on to a new woman—or twenty—before the year is up. She liked Fritz, but she knew his type, and she knew that Gretchen wasn’t it. She had probably seemed it on the surface. Pretty, curvy, and readily willing. But if Gretchen’s nonstop babbling annoyed her, what must it be doing to Fritz? She had spied him a few times with that helpless look on his face she had seen henpecked men in Munich wear. He hid the look well, when he knew she or Andreas were looking at him. Especially when he knew that Gretchen was looking at him. But she had seen it often enough to know it for what it was. That look, combined with his appreciative appraisals of other women on the sly? He would soon be looking for a way out. She knew his pattern.
Anneli put her hand on her friend’s arm and patted gently. Gretchen was mollified and smiled widely, before embarking on her next topic of discussion. Anneli shook her head to herself. She would listen for another half an hour or so before demurring and indicating with a yawn that she needed to go to her bedroom.
Then she would instead go to her husband’s room. Propriety be damned.
Gretchen was arranging some of her extensive jewelry collection on her dressing table, and going on about the home she and Fritz would have in the Bavarian country after the job here in Transylvania was done.
Maybe I need to make that yawn sooner rather than later, Anneli thought.
She stepped over to her friend, and a gleam of candlelight reflected off a tiny glittering chain and a plain silver cross on the end of it. The desk was covered with more and nicer pieces of jewelry, but the reflection of light hit her eye, and Anneli reached out to pick up the cross. Gretchen noticed, and stopped her incessant talking to sadly examine her friend. Anneli rubbed the silver of the cross with her thumb, before noticing Gretchen’s attention.
“You like that one, Sweetie? I haven’t worn it for ages. Here, let’s put it on you.” Gretchen took the cross and slid the delicate chain around Anneli’s neck and clasped it with the practiced hands of an expert jeweler.
Anneli looked at herself in the mirror. The tip of the cross rested just at the bottom edge of her ample cleavage, the light glittering off the necklace and drawing the eye irresistibly to her feminine charms. She smiled, with thoughts of her reunion with her husband going through her head. Gretchen misunderst
ood her entirely.
“You look wonderful, dear. You keep that one. It suits you far better than it ever suited me. Oh, Anneli, I just know things are going to get better for you.”
Chapter 16
Gretchen startled when the door behind her opened. Anneli had left her almost an hour ago. She had just been changing into her nightgown, and quickly pulled her dress up off the table and held it in front of her as a shield.
The door swung wide open, and a man with dark hair stepped into the room. Gretchen had no idea who this man was, and she was about to scream. She could feel the scream crawling up her throat, about to pounce onto her tongue for its lunge past her teeth. But the scream stopped at the back of her throat, when the man lifted his face to her, and their eyes locked. The eyes were dark, but she could not look away, as if they were sucking her in, pulling her toward them.
The man stepped into the room, and the door closed behind him. He swept toward her, then stopped, tilting his head slightly. His eyes held her like a magnet reaching out for the iron in her soul. He was gorgeous. Young, and handsome, wearing an open dark suit, with a white waistcoat, and a high-collared shirt. His long black hair framed his white skin, and his mouth was a tight line on his face, the lips bloodless. His look portrayed need and lust, and she instantly found herself wanting him.
She dropped the dress she was holding in front of her nightgown, now showing this strange man her form through just the one layer of cloth. She found it hard to breathe, and wanted so much to know the man, to fall forever into his embrace.
“Come,” he said. His voice was powerful, and brooked no argument, yet the tone was no more than a hissing whisper.
Gretchen walked slowly toward him, as if in a daze. She wasn’t controlling her own feet, even though they took her precisely where she wanted to go—into the arms of this handsome, mysterious man, with all thoughts of Fritz having vanished from her mind. She wanted to ask his name. To ask him a million questions, but each one fell away from her thoughts as it occurred to her. Although normally one of the most talkative women she knew, she found herself without anything meaningful to say. The only thing that mattered was his stare. His touch.