"It's a letter a wife ought to read before it goes to Vienna," Josefa said by way of explanation. She took another step back and favored Caterina with a malevolent grin.
As if trapped in a bad dream, Cat opened the letter and read:
* * *
My dear Konstanze:
This of necessity is to be brief, but I hope it puts to rest all the concerns in your last to me, the receipt of which was long delayed by mishandling. I will soon be leaving here, and should arrive at your door just after this arrives. Unwilling to let you go unanswered, I send a captain of my guard posthaste with this. You may take this letter directly to Herr Fassbender, the banker who is first floor at Unter Tuchlaben on the Judenplatz, and he will release immediately to you two hundred gulden, which should relieve the cruel importunity of your late husband's creditors. "
“My sister says this woman had four hundred gulden from him last spring. As much as any musiker can earn in a year." Josefa said it contemptuously.
"Herr Walter says the Graf is crazy about this woman. More than any of his others. She is always crying poverty and he's always running, purse in hand." Keeping a safe distance as she spoke, Josefa smiled, a smile of mad triumph.
And this triumph, Cat thought with a dreadful pang, is over me.
Lowering her head to escape her foe's awful pleasure, she numbly scanned the last paragraph.
* * *
Dear Konstanze, never feel shame or fear to ask a favor of me. Did I not swear to continue as protector? You have suffered much; now take heart and look for my arrival. Christoph von Hagen, Graf Heldenberg
* * *
"You needed your eyes opened." Josefa shouted. "When he took up with this woman it drove my sister crazy and sent her straight into the arms of that low captain! And now our noble Herr Graf makes love to his wife, but once you've dropped the son you've got in your belly, he'll forget all about you. Of course, he'll take care of you, exactly as he does my sister and all the others. He can't find you a new man to warm your bed, but I'm sure he'll see that you have plenty of pretty horses to play with. Perhaps that will provide sufficient consolation." Josefa's dark eyes blazed into Caterina's, filled with the exultation of hatred.
Cat, frozen by the words, didn't move, even when the Josefa suddenly darted forward and snatched the letter away. She simply stood motionless, her world crumbling around her.
It seemed as if a knife, one with a blade of pure ice, had been shoved into her heart.
Josefa letter in hand, went away, left her standing there, and a chilling vision came, one she'd not had since the hot joy of the New Year. It was a memory of Wili, pitifully weeping, prone on her bed.
"I always believe him. Always! Why am I such a fool? All he has to do is put his arms around me and I believe..."
* * *
"Grafin! Grafin!" Elsa was white-faced. "What has happened?"
"Oh, Elsa! Grosse Gott! I'm a fool!"
"A fool? Why—"
"Just like my sister and all the others! I'm leaving and I'm doing it right now."
"Leave? You can't! You mustn't!"
"Hush and help me," Caterina exclaimed, seeing the stricken look on the girl's face.
"Ach, Himmel! Where will you go? How will you get there? The roads are still so bad; a storm could come. What if robbers caught you? And the baby! Oh, Mistress, you must not go!"
Pushing past the frightened young woman, Cat flung herself upon her jewelry box. Yanking out the gold chains her mother had given, she dropped them over her head. As needed, she'd break them apart and exchange them for whatever was needed on her journey home...
"I saw a letter that he wrote to his mistress in Vienna. Josefa showed me."
"Josefa? Don't believe her, my Lady! She hates you!"
"Yes, she does. But this letter was in my husband's handwriting. Oh, Elsa!"
Choking back tears, Cat gave her maid a huge, heartfelt hug. "Elsa, you must be brave. As soon as I can, I'll send for you, I swear it. Now you must promise not to tell I've gone."
"Oh, Mistress—"
Another objection was about to be made, but Caterina didn't wait. Tearing out of Elsa's arms she flew down the stairs, across the great room and out towards the barn. Knowing that because it was near twilight, Rossmann wouldn't allow her to saddle up, Caterina dodged and ducked through the shadows, collecting saddle, blanket and bridle.
There was mad elation in hide and seek. It was just like the old days of disobeying her father…
When she had what she needed, she slipped between the fence poles into a small, muddy barn side enclosure. A ride would surely assuage the awful thunder of her heart!
And here was deliverance. The Andalusian raised his sculpted silver head to stare.
"Come to me, my beauty." She focused upon her desire to the exclusion of all else. As she concentrated, she emptied her mind of everything but him. Calm, and the much needed control came, and so did the Andalusian, bobbing his head, in his customary dance of retreat and advance.
The instant he was within reach, Caterina caught his halter. In the next five busy minutes, she'd snapped on a lead, tied him to the fence and bridled and saddled him.
Usually he was difficult to tack up, but now he seemed to sense her urgency. All the hours she'd spent gaining his confidence this winter, Cat thought, were about to pay off.
In the next moment, she was up. There was a wonderful rush of excitement as she reined him away.
The Spanish stud obeyed her commands, rising straight to a rocking canter. It was ecstasy, the wind in her face, the drum beat of hooves resounding as the silver stallion took high tailed flight across the snow-patched, soggy pasture.
She rode a white whirlwind flying away from all her grief and trouble. She would escape! She would ride, ride, ride, until the pain, the shameful needing love, was hammered from her heart, her mind. She would hide at Aunt Teresina's ruined farm. Some of her Aunt's peasants were still on that land. They knew about keeping secrets…
"Caterina! Caterina!"
Alarmed, she looked over her shoulder. Behind, coming hell for leather, was a big dark man on a dark horse.
Christoph and Brandy! Once again, for the highest stakes, she was the fox!
As soon as she eased her grip on the reins, the Andalusian began a gallop, fairly flying toward the bottom of the pasture. There was a fence, of course, but Cat knew a place where the two top poles were down. Heading toward this, she urged him on with her heels and voice.
As he obediently gathered himself to make the jump, something darted, bolted, crashed away into the bracken on the edge of her vision. It was the headlong flight of a pair of deer who had been boldly mingling with the cattle, sharing their hay.
In this situation, her human eyes saw better than those of the horse. Although she, with all her skill, tried to signal confidence through her hands and legs, the Andalusian's attention was lost. His jump began off lead. There was a crash, then splintering, as the Andalusian's chest and legs hit wood.
"Gottverdammte!"
Snow and mud rushed toward her. From the bottom of her heart she was furious, furious at being caught, furious with herself for taking such a stupid risk with the horse. It was the last thought she had before her head slammed into the ground.
* * *
When she came to, there were lights swirling. She raised a hand to shield her eyes, then groaned at the pain. There was pain in her shoulder, in her back, in her neck, in her knees, in her head.
Everything outside felt skinned. Everything inside felt broken.
"She's coming around."
"Are those idiots ever going to get here with the wagon?"
The arm that supported her could have belonged to no other man, the oak tree feel belonging unmistakably to her Christoph. He was looming over her, studying her face with fearfully.
"Christoph!" She caught at his jacket, "The Andalusian?"
"He's got a long gash at the point of shoulder, but Rossmann says it's not deep. There doesn'
t seem to be any leg damage, though why, the way he hit that fence, I don't know."
"Thank God and all the saints."
"Yes. Now we've only got you to worry about." He was angry, but there was also fear in his eyes, which she'd never seen there before.
"Damn it, Caterina! What in hell were you were doing?"
"I have to get away from you," she said, despite the shattering headache.
"To where?"
"To where you'd never find me again."
"We thought you were going to get there, too, when the Andalusian failed the jump. Straight to heaven—a place where you certainly won't be bothered by me."
There was a wagon ride back to Heldenberg, then, cradled in her husband's great arms, a painful journey to bed. A drop of laudanum was administered by the Graf himself.
The next day was miserable, passed between pain and sleep. In the afternoon she was poked and prodded by the doctor who had ridden posthaste from far down in the valley. Like the Andalusian she was eventually pronounced "bruised, but essentially sound." Because she had hit her head and was enduring a relentless headache, she was ordered to stay flat in bed.
Elsa ran back and forth to the kitchen, carrying potions and broths from the hand of Ekkehard, clucking over her mistress like a hen. Christoph sat by her side too. He never left, not even while she slept.
“Elsa says you saw a letter I had written."
"Yes."
"And that was why you were running away?"
Cat, her face swollen and bruised, was lying flat as the doctor had ordered. Tears that she couldn't seem to stop were steadily coursing down her cheeks.
"Why, Caterina? Don't you think I can visit Widow Gottlieb, help her in her trouble and not make love to her?"
"That was a love letter. You said you were done with mistresses. You swore. To Wili! To me!"
"I am done with mistresses, and that was not a love letter."
"You visited her on your last trip."
"I did not. Her very talented and very improvident husband was ill. So ill he died just after I got back from Vienna. When she wrote of her difficulties, I had to help."
"Did I not swear at our parting to continue your protector?" Cat quoted the words that had burnt themselves into her memory, throwing them like a handful of rocks.
"The word is tainted, but I am no longer her lover. I wanted to give the widow entree to a banker as soon as possible. I will even show you what she wrote to me—"
Cat waved her hands in the negative, clenched her red brows. The very idea of adding to the nearly unbearable pain!
"My sorry past has left me with obligations, obligations I will not, must not shirk. This lady and her two small children, the youngest of whom, I confess, may be mine, are in danger of debtor's prison."
"The Saint Anne's boy?"
"What?" His eyes flashed rage, a rage which he mastered. He brought his powerful hands to his face and rubbed fiercely.
"A child conceived while you were writing Wili those penitent love letters on your way to fight the Turks!" Caterina accused him. "By Saint Brigitte, Christoph von Hagen," she cried, squeezing her locket, "I will not close my eyes the way you expected Wili to."
"It was my last, crowning folly, the jewel in my crown. Nevertheless, without my help, this lady will end in debtor's prison, along with her children. Consider it, Caterina. Or are you like all the other so-called virtuous people I've ever met? Not a drop of real charity in you?" Feeling pity, yet fearing his maneuvering, Caterina began to sob. She didn't want to, but it was impossible to stop. Her head was pounding as if someone had driven a stake into it.
"I'm sorry that you have found this out because I knew exactly how you'd see it. As did Josefa."
"I've been fool enough to love you, even when I know very well that as soon as a woman does that, you are gone."
His handsome face darkened. "So, you believe that I have spent the last three months toying with you, like Furst does with those wretched mice he catches?"
Caterina, tears flowing like a river, nodded.
"Grosse Gott! Justice miscarries when she settles her scores with me by breaking your heart."
Cat, feeling nothing but stony disbelief, replied, "You've made a fool of me, just as you did to poor Wili. Go to your Viennese woman and leave me alone."
"In a few days, Lady Wife, I will. I want some time to visit with my boys and I've got to get to my regiment, or pay a stiff fine for being late. Beyond that, I've a responsibility to my soldiers. We're going to fight the Turks and we must have each other's confidence before we get there."
He leaned against the bedpost and stared at her.
"What a mess! And most of it's my fault as usual, but don't you see that you've a part in it too? God, Caterina, how I wish you could find it in your heart to trust me just a little. Since the day the Wili died, I've tried to do right."
"Go away. You're making my head ache. I want Elsa." Memories of his love making, of the helpless surrender she'd made of her heart and body, filled her mind. How shameful it seemed now, the memory of being rocked, over and over again, night after night, to that glorious annihilation. His pursuit of amorous variety, how he'd had her, always naked, in all those ways, his whispered teasing about her 'long, long filly's legs'...!
There was a pain in her chest that didn't seem to have anything to do with her injuries. It felt as if her guts had been pulled out and were being tossed into a fire before her eyes.
* * *
On the night following, Caterina awoke crying, crying with a new pain, one that swiftly overcame all the others. At the first sound both Elsa and Christoph were beside her. After some terrible cramps, the worst she'd ever felt in her life, a gush of blood filled Caterina's maidenly bed.
"Well, if you were thinking that I'd lose interest as soon as you'd produced an heir," Christoph observed miserably, after the servants had gone out with the bloody sheets and clothes, "the time has been postponed."
"It wasn't a miscarriage!" Cat shrieked at him. She felt like an animal harried to death, the quarry at the end of a hunt. "I was never carrying anything of yours! It's just another of your lies. To make me feel worse than I already do!"
Her husband arose from the bed beside her, his handsome face filled with despair.
"If you really think that, then God help us both."
* * *
Christoph stood by Cat's bed, dressed in his uniform. He looked anguished, but every bit as masterful and lordly as he had on the day on which they'd married.
"When you get up, Cat, you'll find that the house has been almost emptied, "from kitchen to the door keepers. Everyone who appears to have more of an allegiance to the past than to me has been dismissed. I've no time to find more staff and, frankly, my confidence in Walter has been shaken. Stocke will be sharing responsibility with him now, and if anyone new is hired, he will be the one to do it. We have a new woman to cook, one from Heldenruhe. Ekkehard will be leaving with me, to begin his apprenticeship in my Cousin Wagensperg's kitchens in Vienna. Fraulein Josefa will go to Heldenruhe tonight with her sister and from there to Passau. I have told them, and I think they understand, that her enmity has robbed me of the ability to do anything more for her. I cannot predict who she will next harm. I'm taking horses, so there will be fewer grooms. I shall sell the trotters and some of the mares and yearlings in Vienna."
"Your beautiful trotters?" This surprised Cat more than anything else he'd said. The removal of staff she'd been hearing about from Elsa.
"I'm a bit short of cash this spring, little wife. And four are an unnecessary bachelor's indulgence. I had intended to take the Andalusian along with Brandy, but now he's not fit. I'll get another war horse from my father on the way."
She felt sorry, knowing how proud he'd been of his matched pairs, so she stretched out her hand. He accepted it, tenderly kissed her fingers.
"It may be an entire year before I return. If, when you are better, you still think you ought to return to your parents, you ar
e at liberty to do so. Herr Goran, whom I've left here to care for you, will accompany you."
Surprised, she opened her mouth to speak, but he reached down and rested the gentle tips of his fingers against her lips. "This is quite a long speech, so let me finish. I don't think that running home is wise, but do whatever it is you think you must. As long as you remain here at Heldenberg, you are the lady of the house and my wife. Perhaps you will decide to wait until I return. If you do, then we will try once again to regain what I hoped we'd found."
He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. His eyes were sad, almost bereft of any but the darkest color.
"Now, Caterina, I intend to lecture. It seems to me that just as much as a man owes his wife fidelity and all his tenderness, she owes him trust. If you can't find it in your heart to trust me and believe in my love a little, I think it would be best if you did return to your father." He gently tilted her chin and brushed her lips very softly with his.
"Aufweidersehen, little wild cat. Apply yourself to your lessons. I've told Herr Walter that everything is to be open to you, particularly the accounts. If he is uncooperative, tell Herr Stocke. Please write to me often, tell me about Heldenberg. If worse comes to worst and the Turks finish me, you shall at least end as an educated widow."
"Oh, Christoph, don't say—"
"Perhaps these are words spoken to the wind," he interrupted, "but let me repeat one last time that I love you, Caterina Maria Brigitte."
Caterina couldn't believe it when the door closed behind him. Would he ever return? And would she be there to meet him?
* * *
Lying in her bed, head aching, surveying parts of herself where various swellings, cuts and bruises changed color daily, Caterina felt as isolated as if she were marooned. Elsa was poor company, all her thoughts on Ekkehard, now gone to Vienna. Not three days after Christoph and his entourage of soldiers, servants and horses left, another huge spring storm swept the mountain, blanketing the land in white and cutting them off from the outside world again. The manor seemed eerie now, with its closed doors and silent passages. When she was up and around, the similar emptiness in the great barn and at the barracks surprised her as well. So many people and animals were gone.
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