“We ought to envy them that, I suppose. Tell me, do you have more responsibility under the present count?”
I am not certain what made me ask it, but Florian did not seem to mind the intrusion. “Count Andrei does not think so much about these things. Farmers pay the rents, and this is all the count is caring about. He gives me the harvest this year,” he said, his complexion flushing with pride. His eyes were downcast, but it was apparent he was deeply pleased to have been given such responsibility.
“Perhaps the coming of Count Andrei will be the making of you,” I said lightly.
He did not respond, but gave a low whistle. A tame pig trotted up to have its ears scratched. Florian hummed a folk song as he rubbed at the pig’s head, and I ventured a question I had been longing to ask.
“Florian, what do you make of the ceremony in the crypt? Do you think Count Bogdan will rest now?”
His hand faltered on the pig, then resumed its gentle stroking. “I pray God he will. All that must be done, it was not done,” he said carefully, “but perhaps what is done is enough.”
“I confess I am rather glad it all stopped when it did. I do not think I could have borne seeing a man’s heart taken out—” I broke off, sickened at the thought.
Florian gave me a sad smile. “It is their way, miss. I have lived here very long time. Roumanians are different to Germans. The magic and monsters are being real here. They say the waters of the Carpathian rivers must be your heart’s blood to understand it.”
“I want to understand it. It is a very beautiful land,” I told him truthfully.
“Then you must stop the thinking that Transylvania is like other places. It is different here. See what is. Not what you are wishing it.”
It was rather good advice, I decided. We left the piggery then and made our way to the village proper where, at Florian’s suggestion, we stopped to take refreshment. The village looked no better than it had during my previous visits; indeed it looked rather worse, for the recent storms had churned the sole street to a muddy expanse passable only at great risk to one’s shoes and hems. An enterprising soul had placed a bit of wood over the worst of the puddles and we reached the inn with scarcely more dirt than we had gathered at the piggery.
We were greeted by the innkeeper, a tall, thin man with a short, plump wife. He welcomed us heartily in German, speaking to Florian with some warmth and greeting me cordially, if not familiarly. Then he withdrew, shifting smoothly to Roumanian to call orders to his wife.
A few members of the local peasantry had also stopped to pass the time. They had fallen silent at our arrival, and though Florian nodded gravely to each of them in turn, they rewarded him with the merest inclination of the head in reply. To me they exhibited nothing but furtive curiosity, no friendliness or welcoming sally was forthcoming, and I wondered how much the villagers knew of the castle business.
The innkeeper and his wife alone greeted us with anything approaching warmth, but their custom depended upon good feeling, I reflected with some cynicism. They must pander a little to keep their business in good standing, and it was only after I caught the innkeeper’s wife flicking me a nervous glance that I realised the root of their worry: we were castle folk, and if we reported any ill feeling to the count, it would be a simple matter for him to see to it that the inn was shut, depriving the innkeeper and his family of their livelihood.
I darted a quick glance at Florian, thinking on Dr. Frankopan’s concerns about the dangers of loose talk. It would not do for any of us to share too freely the dark happenings at the castle with the innkeeper. Doubtless his position gave him the opportunity to spread a great deal of gossip in the valley, and I made a note to mind my tongue in his presence.
Florian, in spite of the cordiality of the innkeeper’s greeting, fell into a melancholy mood and said little. I asked him about his time in Vienna and his love of music, but even those topics did not rouse him, and after few more attempts to engage him, I was forced to admit defeat. He was preoccupied and turned in upon his thoughts, and it struck me then how similar he was to the villagers. For one of the castle folk, Florian seemed for all the world a simple farmer. He cared about his pigs and he dressed like a peasant, with the same tight white trousers and embroidered shirt rather than a gentleman’s tweeds.
Eventually, I tired of making conversation and amused myself by looking about the inn, careful to avoid the avid glances of the other patrons. It was a modest little establishment, only the front room of a private family home, but neat as a pin, with a row of polished metal tankards hanging from the ceiling and an immaculate blue-tiled stove sitting in the corner for warmth. But as I looked more closely, I saw that several of the tankard hooks were empty, as if their occupants had been sold off, and the clothing of our host and his wife, while clean and tidy, bore the hallmarks of long use, the colours faded with much washing and telltale patches at the elbows and knees.
The innkeeper’s wife came then bearing mugs of dark beer and platters of sausages and ham, cheese and bread. She brought pickled cabbage and beets and a great bowl full of mushroom soup. The other patrons ate nothing and drank only beer or the local plum brandy, and for an uncomfortable moment, I wondered if we had been served the family’s supper. But it would be an unthinkable breach of courtesy to send it back, and I nodded to her in thanks. She bobbed a clumsy curtsey, and as she left I saw strapped to her back a peculiar contraption, a little wooden box where a swaddled infant slept.
“How clever,” I observed. “It would keep the child close to the mother and not interfere with her work. Like the Indians in America.”
“Have you been to America?” Florian asked.
“No. Indeed, apart from my time at school, this is my first sojourn out of Scotland, although I mean to travel more. I find I have a taste for it.”
“I do not know why there is travel,” he said, his expression one of genuine puzzlement. “To love one’s home, one could not leave it and be happy.”
“And do you love your home so much?” I asked, reaching for another crisp, sizzling sausage.
“I speak of Austria,” he said softly.
“Of course, how stupid of me. You were but a child when you left, yet still it must be home to you.”
“Many things may make a man’s home,” he told me, his face sober, even anguished. He paused for a moment as if gathering his emotions close, then continued, his mien lighter and more conversational. “I hate this place when we come, but I learn to love Transylvania. We have everything here, here there is mountains, sky, forests. And we have the best music.”
“You have never heard a bagpipe,” I put in teasingly, the remnants of my Scottish pride pricked only a little.
“But I have!” Florian protested. “We have here a bagpipe, and the flute, made from the shinbone of the sheep, with music so sweet, it would charm the leaves from trees.”
A spirited debate on the merits of Scottish versus Roumanian music followed, and I discovered through the innkeeper that Florian was rather famous in the district for the sweetness of his tenor voice besides his other musical accomplishments. The innkeeper’s wife and I prevailed upon him to sing for us, and the innkeeper fetched a sort of lute, pear-shaped and rather medieval-looking, to accompany him. The other patrons, whose conversations had never risen above guttural whispers, fell entirely silent and assumed expressions of mournful interest as he began to sing.
We settled in to listen to him, and I was entranced from the first note. He sang in Roumanian, and I longed to understand the words. The innkeeper’s wife leaned near to me, her lips close to my ear as she translated into German.
“He is singing the miorita, a sorrowful song of three shepherds. One learns that his two friends are planning to kill him. He does not resist, for it is his philosophy to accept death. Just before he dies, he asks them to carry a message to his mother, to tell her he has married a beautiful woman—Lady Death.”
I felt a frisson of emotion at her words, but she went on, murmurin
g softly as Florian sang the shepherd’s lament. “I have gone to marry a princess, my bride. Firs and maple trees were my guests; my priests were the mountains high; fiddlers, birds that fly; torchlight, stars on high.”
When he finished we applauded and the innkeeper’s wife daubed at her eyes with her apron. It was very like the songs of the Highlands, full of woe and lamentation, and I wondered if poverty and oppression were necessary to create such music.
He sang again, a more cheerful song about death dancing through a field of flowers—the souls of children who had died—and by the time he finished, I had had my fill of Roumanian music, no matter how beautiful the melodies.
He must have caught something of my mood, for he gave the lute back to the innkeeper and gestured for me to rise. “We will go now to reach the castle before dark,” he advised.
He settled the bill with the innkeeper and accepted the muted blessings he and his wife insisted upon giving. I did not know if this was a Roumanian custom or if we were particularly vulnerable as we were returning to the castle, but I was glad of the gesture. The rest of the company watched us in heavy silence, and for the first time, I felt the weight of it, an ominous thing. Not to speak in the presence of others struck me as the purest form of aversion, but even as we took our leave, I saw one or two of them cross themselves Orthodox-fashion and cast us pitying glances.
I raised the subject as soon as Florian and I gained the muddy road. “The local folk do not seem hospitable toward strangers,” I ventured.
“They hear what happens at the castle.”
“So soon?”
Florian shrugged. “Gossip travels on the wind. Of course they hear. But they will say little to castle people. They belong to the master. He makes life good or bad for them.”
“You mean the count?”
His mouth worked, but he said nothing.
“Florian, let us speak plainly. The count could make life better for his people, and they resent him because he has not?”
He gave a single short nod, but even as he acknowledged the truth of what I said, his words denied it. “It is for him to rule as he is pleased.”
“Rule? He is a nobleman, but he is no prince.”
“I say again, Transylvania is different place. The old ways are the only ways. The count rules. What he wants, he will do. The peasants are tired. They are hungry and poor. He can be helping them. He does little.”
I felt a swift stab of fear. “Might they rebel then, if they are angered enough by his neglect of them?”
He shrugged. “Count Bogdan was not good. They do nothing. They drink sorrow and wait for the better times. They are sad now because Count Andrei, he is not better.”
“He has only been here a few weeks,” I argued, wondering even as I said the words why I felt compelled to defend him. “There has scarce been time for him to make changes to improve their lot.”
Florian met my eyes then, and I was struck once more by the fathomless sorrow I saw there. “They know the strigoi walks here. It is an omen. Evil things will happen.” Florian looked at the sky, noting the angle of the sun. “We must go. It grows late.”
But however I pressed him, he sank once more into his solitude, and I took his arm in silence as we started up the mountain path. The dying afternoon was a beautiful one, with the great blaze of turning leaves flaming over the valley. Gold and scarlet grasshoppers leapt in the dying grasses whilst bronze beetles winged their way to sanctuary for the night. The sun warmed our faces and the crisp air was full of birdsong. It would have been perfect, but for the fact that the hand I held was not the count’s, I reflected ruefully.
Suddenly, a roll of thunder echoed over the mountaintops. A cluster of dark grey clouds had gathered in the east and was rolling slowly towards the mountain.
I must have started, for Florian hastened to reassure me. “Do not fear. We are safe yet. Thunder sounds from far away. But some say it is Scholomance,” he added. “Do you know the Scholomance?”
“It is a bit of folklore,” I said, casting my mind back to my grandfather’s library. “It is a very old superstition, is it not? I seem to remember a lake.”
Florian nodded. “In the mountains south of Hermannstadt, there is lake, deep and black. Here the Devil has school for teaching dark magic. There is taught secrets of nature, language of animals, magic spells. The Devil gives learning to ten pupils. When learning is finished, the Devil says to nine to go home. But the tenth must stay with the Devil. He must ride a dragon and he prepares thunderbolts for the Devil. He brews thunder in the black lake. When the weather is fine, his dragon sleeps under the black lake.”
He paused and stared upward at the high stones of the castle, the sharp pointed towers piercing the sky above. “Here the people say, one time in a hundred years a Dragulescu goes to the Scholomance to learn the Devil’s ways,” he finished bitterly.
I took a deep breath and wrapped my shawl more closely about my body. For some unaccountable reason, all the talk of the occult and curses had overcome me, and I felt bowed with foreboding. “I think I have heard quite enough about the Devil for one day.”
I started up the Devil’s Staircase and Florian followed. We did not speak again.
12
That evening we were a smaller company at table, for the countess had kept to her room and Frau Amsel dined with her. The count was distracted, eating nothing but pouring out several glasses of amber Tokay. Cosmina bravely attempted to keep the conversation light and engaging, but although the count replied to her pleasantly enough, the conversation eventually faltered, and when the meal was at last concluded, she excused herself and went directly to bed. Florian followed soon after, and I made a motion to withdraw, but the count intervened.
“I have something to show you in my workroom,” he said, and although his tone was conversational, there was no mistaking the note of command.
Wordlessly I followed him up to the workroom. The candles had been lit and Tycho slumbered peacefully on the hearth.
“Come and see what I have found,” the count said eagerly. I went to the worktable where he had taken up a pretty box of pale wood inlaid with darker wood in an intricate pattern. The front of it was set with a series of knobs, half a dozen, and when he raised the lid I could see they were attached to corresponding rods carved with symbols. A table of similar symbols had been incised on the lid of the box.
I put out a tentative finger. “It is very curious. I’ve never seen the like. Is this ivory?” I asked, touching one of the rods.
“It is. It is a device for making astronomical calculations. The rods are fashioned of bone or ivory, and the whole of it is known as Napier’s bones after the astronomer who designed it.”
“A macabre name,” I observed.
He slanted me a knowing look. “It is the fatal flaw of Transylvanians that we have a fondness for the macabre. Surely you discovered that last night.”
“I cannot begin to understand what happened last night,” I said slowly.
He waved to the sofa by the fire. “Sit. I will try to make sense of it for you.”
I had intended to make my excuses, plead a headache or some other trifling indisposition and effect an escape. But as always, the power of his personality persuaded me to something I had not intended.
But I was determined to preserve some vestige of formality, and as I perched upon the edge of the sofa, spreading my skirts wide between us, I saw his lips twitch in amusement.
He settled himself as far from me as the narrow sofa would permit.
“You think us barbaric,” he began.
“I do,” I acknowledged. “But it is a barbarism I would know better. I do not come from a modern city. Edinburgh is a place where ideas are exchanged and philosophies are born, but no one looks to us for the latest fashions or the most modern conveniences. The Highlands are more backwards still, with folk content to live as they have for a thousand years. And yet Transylvania is a place apart. It is nothing so simple as manner of dress or
speech or whether a railway has been put through a valley. It is an acceptance of mythology and feudalism, the two of them tied together in such a way as I cannot separate them, warp and weft of the same peculiar cloth.”
“You think we nobles keep the stories of monsters circulating in order to keep the peasants under our thumbs?” he asked, his tone mildly amused.
“Not deliberately, but I think it suits both master and serf to preserve the old ways. And the worst of it is, all of you and the land itself, conspire to make me believe it as well.”
“Is it so terrible to believe in the dark and terrible things you have been told of? Fear and passion walk hand in hand, you know. We are afraid of being destroyed, being possessed, and yet we crave it. What child has not thrilled to ghost stories whispered under the bedclothes by the dark of the moon? And what man or woman has not longed to be lost in the wood and found again?”
I shook my head. “You speak in riddles and I do not understand you.”
He leaned forward, his grey eyes quite black in the shadowy room. “Then let me speak plainly. You are afraid here and you do not know what to believe. I have told you I will protect you. You have only to trust me and you will be free to enjoy your fears.”
“Enjoy them!”
He gave a little shrug. “Everything may be enjoyed in life, my dear Miss Lestrange. Even fear. It wants only a change in one’s perspective.”
“And what ought my perspective to be?” I demanded.
“That this is an adventure,” he replied, leaning closer still. He was more animated than I had ever seen him, alight with something that nourished and strengthened him. Had he given over taking opium for something stronger still? Or had he begun to feel his power as master of this dark place?
He raised his head slightly, as if catching the scent of me in the air. “You are not thinking as a writer or as a woman,” he chided. “You are trembling and shrinking like a schoolgirl from your fears. If you embraced them, faced them down, you would see the opportunities that lie before you.”
The Dead Travel Fast Page 15