by Lorelei Bell
“Yes?” she prodded. Pulling her hands from the knot she'd made of her fingers, they turned to fists and went automatically to her hips in defiance.
“Your being here poses a somewhat delicate problem. In more ways than I am at liberty to say, for now, but in one way, you must agree.” He opened up his hands and held them out to his sides. “Three men and one woman under one roof? All of us unrelated.” He paused, and then added, “I am unmarried.”
“Oh!” Sudden understanding blossomed. Three men and one woman—her. Even in a castle this size—and it was large, but not as large as most—Saint Germain's properness of conduct would be compromised now.
“Yes, you understand, then, there will be talk of it in the village. They already have seen you with me.” He shrugged, eyes drifting up and then coming back to rest on her. “It is not that I mind, but the bad mouthing will be about you, as well.”
“Yes, I see,” she said. Being proper on her world was very important. Stephen had placed her here as a Knight, thus, it was part of her job as spy to be in close quarters. But to everyone else she was supposed to be Saint Germain's librarian, after all, and this is what the rest of the population of Ravenwood would see and remember. Even as his employee, she wasn't required to live here. This situation would not be as bad if he had a wife, and maybe a whole family living here, it wouldn't seem so improper. But he was a widower, which is the same as if he were single. Perhaps worse.
Was that what the argument had been about this morning? She wondered—and would have to keep wondering, since she had to pretend she'd not overheard any of it. Not that it had made any sense to her. The bit about Jacques really threw her, though.
“I understand what you mean, but how are people going to know that I'm staying inside the castle, unless someone says something?”
“It would never be known from myself, nor by my servant, nor even from Jacques, my most trusted friend. However, some how, as you must know, rumors get started, and they are very hard to stop—even when they are not true.”
“So, what do you suggest we do? Would it be better that I stay at one of the inns in the village?”
“No. Do not even presume this is what I am hinting at. You would not be safe there, if this phantom wizard has made a play for you in such a bold way, here under my protection, he would most certainly find you and take you away while unprotected at one of the dingy inn's rooms. No. This is not even an option, and we will not even discuss it again.”
She glanced down. There was no help for it, she was here to stay, apparently.
“I cannot begin to understand why someone would intend to harm, or kidnap you,” he said. “Unless you can shed some light on this, my dear, we have nothing to go on.” His shoulders bunched in a shrug and fell. She only now took in his apparel. He was in black, save for his shirt. Pure white, no ruffles—which was almost startling—save at the very ends of the cuffs. The collar was open, but his neck was ensconced in a blood red ascot. He looked appealing in whatever he wore, be it a dirty pair of trousers, or rich velvet and silk. She realized she had more than a real attraction for him. More so now than when she'd first met him. It wasn't just the way he spoke or the way he dressed. His apparent kindness toward her was a plus. She hadn't known him for very long, and yet she realized, even this morning she couldn't wait to see him again. A silly crush. Perhaps it was hormones gone wild, while pregnant. She really had to watch herself from here on out.
“I appreciate your taking me in, Count Saint Germain—”
“Franz, please,” he insisted.
“Franz. Yes. But if this wizard can Evanish, he will be able to come and find me, no matter where I am.”
“True,” he said. “But he will have to go through every room, and if he comes to mine, my dear, there will be hell to pay.”
She had to hide her smile. A hero, Saint Germain was. A mortal hero—as far as she could determine—and so couldn't possibly go up against the Powers of even a minor wizard, let alone an evil one with a small band of others behind him.
“And, while we are on the subject,” he dug into his side pocket and produced a cloth. “I have found his modis operendi to be highly interesting. This,” he held up the rag between a first and second finger, “I found on the floor near your bed.” He sniffed it quickly. “It smells of chloroform.”
She stared at it as though she couldn't make out what he meant. Yes. The rag that beast had held over her mouth.
“Why would he need to sedate you if you were in the Nest, where no one could possibly hear your screams, and if he is able to Evanish, I must presume he could have swept you away with him, am I not correct?”
This hadn't even crossed her mind. “Yes. He could have grabbed me and taken me wherever he'd wanted to.”
“I thought as much. Then we must assume his plans were to take you to somewhere that others might be able to overhear your screams for help. I dare not voice my own concerns over what he wanted you for, my dear.”
Me neither, she thought distractedly.
Saint Germain stepped over to the table where she had breakfasted. “I see you enjoyed a little something to eat. Did you keep it all down?”
“So far,” she said, smiling weakly. Bringing her hands down in front of herself again, entwining her fingers she hedged, and didn't know why she was being shy about it. “I-I have a prescription for my, uh, problem?”
“Yes, as you have told me last night,” he said, staring at her, perfect brows made a crease between them. She decided no man's brows could be that perfectly contoured. He must go to a beautician who plucks them. They were the kind of eyebrows women spent agonizing minutes before the mirror plucking them to help create what nature did not give them.
“Oh, did I? I guess I forgot that I mentioned it. But it's from the alchemist at Castle Restormell.” She was trying to sound matter of factly about it. Somehow, to her ears, she sounded a little on the pathetic side. “Is there any place I could get these ingredients?” She turned toward the bed, rummaging through the duffel bags, first one, and then the other, and then she remembered she'd kept it in the portfolio. She snatched it and opened it, using her body trying to shield its contents from him. “Here it is.” She turned to find him almost right behind her. She hadn't heard his approach, and tried, unsuccessfully to hide her shock.
“Let me see,” he said gently, in that deep chocolate velvet voice of his.
She handed him the bit of parchment. Baruche's scribbles for all she could see, in an illegible, thick handwriting.
Saint Germain squinted at it as he read it—or tried to read it. He mumbled more to himself, “Mint, valerian, chamomile, catnip. Hmm. Black cohosh. I would leave out the elderberry syrup, however,” he pointed out. “Skullcap and lady's slipper instead of valerian. And hops instead of chamomile. Otherwise, yes. I can fill this for you,” he said looking up at her.
She rearranged the expression on her face from one of wild concern to a blank one. He'd virtually re-written every ingredient on the parchment, and she wondered why. But she did agree that the elderberry syrup had to go—that's what had tasted so nasty to her!
“I will make this for you tonight, if that is agreeable?” he said.
“Sure—uh—certainly,” she said, pressing her lips against her inarticulation. She hoped he hadn't noticed, or if nothing else, would find her bizarre behavior endearing.
He turned and strode half way to the door, and paused. Turning back to her, he said, “May I ask you something? It is quite personal, and if you'd rather not answer I will understand.”
“I'll try and answer it, if I can,” she responded.
“Why was it that you and your husband divorced?”
Stumped, she brooded on that one. Having not thought up a good response ahead of time, she averted her gaze to the floor. “I'd rather not say, if you don't mind.” She didn't know why he would need to know. Curiosity? Or fear the husband might come looking for her? The question had her mind whirling on his reason for wanting t
o know.
“I understand,” he said. “I understand that there are things best kept secret for now. I hope that in time we can be open and frank with one another.” He gave her a slight bow. “A very good day to you, Zofia.” And he left the room.
Chapter 23
The only thing that broke up Zofia's day was mid-day meal, which she took at her desk. She hoped she would be able to keep from vomiting everything she'd eaten for breakfast. So far, so good. So, she ate a light lunch.
While she worked, she worried about Biddle's trip back to Restormell Castle, and where she would be dining tonight, and if Saint Germain would be dining with her as well. Or was last night just a little too much for him to go through it all again?
Returning to her work after lunch, she plopped into her chair and realized why she had not continued this line of work. It was tedious, and really boring work. She enjoyed spell casting, and herbal remedies much better, as well as being a mother and wife.
Wife. She wasn't even that, now. Her life had changed dramatically in just the past week. She had to stay those thoughts before her emotions could go off the deep end.
But the spying part of her Knight duties had to begin soon, she reminded herself. Tonight, in fact. She realized that she could not be in better position to spy on Saint Germain. It sounded as though Saint Germain worked in one of his secret laboratories at night. An alchemist could be busy doing lots of things, most of which she didn't have an inkling about, besides turning metal into gold—as he himself said they all did. The Elixir seemed to not be a current project, since he'd already managed to cheat death. But for sure, she knew now that he had a way to get to and from First World, and his machine had to be somewhere below his castle.
But where? And how would she find the way to the bowels of the castle? Most likely the entrance would be hidden. She didn't think she'd missed anything old Barty had said in his book, but perhaps it would be a good idea to read it through again. She had fallen asleep a few times while trying to read it, but thought that she'd read it over carefully once more.
Zofia finished mending a pile of several books, sighed and glanced around herself. Yesterday, Biddle had been the worst look-out. He'd probably gone up into the chimney and napped himself. She picked up an armload of repaired books and took the stairs to the top. She had never really gone all the way to the top of the stairs, and found it was a conservatory, a botanical garden, with plants of every kind growing all around the little room. Her friend, Monique (on First World), would have loved this; a florist's dream. She could see that many of the potted plants held various herbs. Things Zofia would grow—not for cooking, but for healing. She spotted tansy, boneset, feverwort, catnip, comfrey, and many more. All very useful in every ailment known to man, and womankind. Well, it should not have surprised her to find that Saint Germain had his own pharmacology growing in a sun room.
She glanced back down the stairs into the three-story-deep library and became dizzy. She had to look away while grasping the handrail a little tighter. Once the episode let up, she invoked, “Locomote!” and all the books in her arms flew onto the empty shelf. To hell with it. She didn't care if Saint Germain himself came sauntering in, she couldn't do this all by herself.
She descended to the bottom of the stairs and made a decision on what she should do about her snooping, and how to go about it. She needed a plan.
What she really needed was a map. She'd thought about this while she re-shelved the books—magically, of course—and felt that there was no reason she shouldn't have a map, since she was unfamiliar with Dark Castle's many twisting corridors of masoned, or natural stone.
Because Barty's book had not given her any map of Dark Castle, she would have a hard time finding her way around. She would probably get lost without one. She wasn't really sure how she'd found her way to the library, now, except through trial and error.
A map was indeed what she needed. Returning to her table, she took out a piece of clean parchment and dipped her pen into the inkwell. She began with the library, since it seemed central enough. She drew a square in the center of her page and wrote in the word LIBRARY. She drew in the stairway, and made an arrow, noting it went up into the conservatory. Next, she made the exit and drew in the hallway, marking that huge canted window. From memory she drew the turns of this corridor, and added the rooms, or drew doors with a question mark or left them blank so that she would be able to mark them later.
She then had to walk the corridors to discover where they went, and then return to the library and pen these in. She began to see that drawing the rest of the castle would need a lot of leg work, and possibly three or four separate pages, devoting each page to a level, or another section. After a shadowpass of this, she decided she'd bring the pen, ink and parchment with her. It was getting ridiculous going back and forth.
She spent the better part of the afternoon on creating her map. Before the sun angled toward the horizon, she had the first floor done, and most of the second floor and also had a few rooms and corridors of the third done. She realized that many of those third floor rooms were either locked, or led no where. Some halls led to dead ends, grottoes, or another strange looking door that was locked.
What she discovered was that the curiously shaped area where her, and Jacques' bedrooms were—and the stairway that lead up to Saint Germain's rooms—with the three hallways leading away from it, seemed to be the very center of the second floor. Throughout, every hallway she followed either branched into another hallway, or lead to a new room, and sometimes that room opened up to yet another room where she would encounter a locked door, or another stairway that went either up or down. She found herself coming back to familiar places, the more times she walked through the castle. She was beginning to find the pattern, and recognize the places she'd been. Halls branched out in a radius, and more times than not, bent counter clockwise until they connected either with a room or a stairs. How very odd.
The whole place, she decided, was a virtual maze. It wasn't so much a castle as it was a meandering monstrosity of wild architecture designed by one or possibly several deranged people. In construction alone it was less an actual castle than more of a palace. There were no battlements, no towers, no turrets even—as most castles would have—but she reasoned that the Nest was probably, at one time, the Gate House. The mote would be the waterfalls, and the pools that surrounded the base. The mountain peeks beyond—whence the water came—were wild and thick and probably dangerous, since, as Saint Germain had told her, was home to the Phaethontrodites—Bird People. It would be a difficult place to attack, especially if there were no stairs climbing up the side of the first monolith. Better yet, it was protected by the ley lines that allowed a Portal to open up at any moment and deposit the person who was unlucky enough to be standing there, somewhere else. She suspected that Saint Germain was in total control of it, and that was why she and Myron, that first night, had wound up inside the Nest, and not a gazillion kilometers away.
She returned to the library, knowing instinctively that Percival would be announcing last meal very soon. She did not want to be found wandering the hallways—or have him hunt for her, thinking she was lost. Earlier, she had been lost for more than a shadowpass, but had found her way back to what she would now refer to as the Pentagon, and was her new starting base, not the library. From it, all corridors were connected on that floor. The right hallway, leading from her room, eventually lead to the stairway that went down to the first floor and all the rooms there. Other stairways led back up, but she still had not explored that floor very extensively, as yet. This hallway was the one she now knew would eventually lead her to the library, and she finally discovered a short cut through the very room in which she came across Saint Germain and Jacques dueling in that first day.
She was just finishing up some of the last sections of the castle when Percival entered the room, announcing that it was time for last meal.
Zofia rose, and stretched. She stuffed the sheets of her map in
to her portfolio—she would not leave this out in plain view while she was out, if she could help it.
“Thank you, Percival,” she said, smiling. “Where will I be dining tonight?”
“Last meal will be served in your room,” he said. He must have seen her deflated look because he added, “If that is alright, madam?”
“Of course, Percival. I'll be there momentarily. I just want to tidy up a bit.”
“As you wish.” He bowed and left her.
After stoppering the ink well, and gathering up all her parchment, and making certain her maps were well secured in the portfolio, she followed the hallway out, and took the short cut through the—what she had penned on her map—the Weapons Room. Every medieval weapon that ever existed—and possibly beyond—hung on the walls in that room. She moved swiftly through, giving the suits of armor quick glances, almost certain that they might move to chop her head off with their horrifying axes or swords.
Entering her room, she found that Percival had set the small table in her room for dinner, the usual dome lid over her plate of food, and a carafe of water, in place of wine. Saint Germain, she suspected, had probably told Percival of the incident last night with the wine.
She was famished, naturally, but when she pulled off the lid, and found that there was a very nicely cooked squab on the plate, with all the trimmings, she became nauseous again. Replacing the lid, she stepped away, leaving her meal uneaten. She couldn't understand this, since she'd been fine all day. She really wished Saint Germain had brought her the concoction which would free her of this malady. The only thing she could keep down was water.
Left alone to her own devices, she padded to her door, and listened. Hearing nothing, she opened it and looked out into the empty atrium. She had not, during her whole day, encountered Jacques, or even Percival, or knew where they spent their day. The stair way that led to Saint Germain's private quarters had been on her mind the whole time. She knew that within she would find the painting of the woman Biddle had told her about. What else she would find, she could only guess. But whatever his rooms looked like, the temptation was gnawing at her to go and snoop.