by Sarah Rayne
At once the owner of the voice switched to English. ‘You may use the phone with pleasure,’ she said, and it was then that Michael recognised her.
‘But,’ said Bianca Bathory, smoothly, ‘I think we should stop playing games and be honest with one another. Mr Devlin, isn’t it? The English journalist? Yes, I thought it was. Won’t you come into the study?’
‘Or even the parlour,’ said Michael involuntarily, and felt a ripple of amusement from her.
But she only said, ‘Oh, I am no spider, Mr Devlin. I think you must be here to look for your runaway English lady?’ There was a sudden flurry of perfumed silk and Michael was aware that she had come to stand before him. ‘Do you know,’ said Bianca, softly after a moment, ‘if I were that English one, I should certainly not run away from you. Rather the reverse.’
‘Thank you,’ said Michael after a moment, and introduced Tobias, who said, ‘It is a delight to meet you, madame.’
‘Since you know who I am,’ said Michael taking the plunge without thinking too much about it, ‘perhaps you know why Sister Hilary did not return to Vienna? That’s really why I’m here.’
There was a brief silence, and Michael thought: if she knows that Hilary escaped from Csejthe I could be sunk. But she won’t know that I was there when it happened, so the odds are that she’ll believe me.
Bianca was silent as if she was considering how best to reply and Michael was aware, as he had been aware on the phone from the Red Angel, that this was a very alluring lady indeed. He found himself wishing very strongly that he could see her. Then Bianca said, ‘Please come into the study here, Mr Devlin. Both of you.’ There was the sound of a door being opened somewhere to the right, and then of a soft little hand being laid on his arm and guiding him into a room that felt small and warm.
‘It’s rather unfortunate,’ said Bianca, ‘that you have appeared like this.’
‘Unfortunate? For who?’
‘Well for you,’ said Bianca, and Michael felt her lead him to a chair. ‘You see,’ said Bianca, ‘we have such a very good plan nicely unfolding tonight. Everything in place. Everything allowed for. Only the one thing we did not allow for was trespassers.’ There was the drift of perfume again as she moved across the room and Michael heard Tobias half rise from a chair nearby. Bianca said, ‘Your presence is unexpected and quite frankly unwanted, and I think there is only one way to deal with it.’ Michael felt her cross the room on sudden swift catlike feet. He turned his head trying to gauge her movements.
The door of the small warm room was abruptly closed and there was the sound of the key turning in the lock.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Even in such comforting company, Hilary found it daunting to be approaching Csejthe again. This is the third time I have been on this road, she thought. Once alone, once with Michael, and now with the Viennese police. It was impossible to avoid wondering what Sister Veronica might have thought of all this.
The journey passed unexpectedly quickly. Hilary sat in the back with the alert young Bremner; the plump, avuncular Gustav, who seemed to be Armand Wagner’s second-in-command, was driving.
They were plainly comfortable with one another, these three and, as they went along, they discussed their plan for getting into the castle. Gustav seemed to be doubtful about the use of unmarked cars and said so, shaking his head dolefully several times.
They included Hilary in the discussions, which was nice of them, asking questions about Csejthe and once or twice even deferring to her – ‘Since,’ said Gustav, ‘you have been there already, Sister. That’s a great help.’ Hilary hoped she was remembering Csejthe’s layout and the approach accurately.
There was, it appeared, a cavalcade of five cars, each one holding four men, with Wagner’s car at the front. We’re spearheading the attack, thought Hilary, hanging on to reality. I suppose I am seated here and I suppose we really are going to raid Csejthe and rescue Catherine and her brother?
It was inevitable that they should approach Csejthe as night was drawing a purple veil over the ancient, ruined stones. Hilary thought it would not have been in keeping with this legend-drenched place that they would approach Csejthe other than by twilight, at the hour when you felt the strange half-life of the forests stirring. Whatever half-human creatures might lurk in the pine forests and the caves out here, they would certainly not be the cheesecloth and tinsel sprites of nursery tales. They would be the darker, more direful beings: creatures with three-cornered faces and slanting eyes . . . Leaving behind them not paw marks, but the prints of hoofs that were cloven . . . The greedy-featured goblins and long-fingered hags and hobgoblins that peered slyly from the illustrations of Arthur Rackham . . .
None of these creatures were real, of course. The legends were nothing more than folklore, stories handed down and handed on and embroidered and exaggerated as they went. Ogres and goblins and werewolves had never really walked abroad in the world.
But Elizabeth had walked abroad in the world. Elizabeth had walked these mountains and prowled these forests and Elizabeth’s legend was as grisly as anything ever depicted by Rackham or created by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
They parked about half a mile from the concealed path, and Wagner, using what Hilary thought was a small intercom, gave soft-voiced orders to the men in the other cars. She listened carefully, so as to be sure of not getting in anybody’s way. The thing to do would be to simply sit quietly in the car until Wagner or one of the others told her to do otherwise. A masterly policy of inactivity. Would Michael be adopting a policy of inactivity? No, of course he wouldn’t.
It appeared that a dozen or so of the men were going to climb the mountain path to the castle – ‘Fan out as you go,’ Wagner had said – and would try to get inside and see what was happening without being seen themselves. They were to keep in radio-contact, but they were not to put themselves at risk, and very particularly they were not to do anything that might put the two prisoners, Catherine and Pietro Bathory, at risk.
Wagner said, ‘You know the plan, all of you. Don’t deviate by a whisker. All right?’ He glanced at his watch, and Hilary thought that if he said: Synchronise watches, the bubble of mirth that was probably hysteria would erupt.
Wagner did not say it. He simply nodded to Gustav and Bremner, and gave a brief, incisive order, and at once a dozen dark shapes detached themselves from the cars and vanished into the night.
Wagner watched them, and just as Hilary was thinking how remarkably silent they were, said irritably that a herd of elephants would have been quieter. He turned to look at her. ‘This is where you help us,’ he said, and handed her one of the small intercoms. ‘I’m going to ask you to be our eyes as we go into the castle. Normally, we’d have made a reconnoitre, but—’
‘You can’t reconnoitre a castle,’ finished Hilary. ‘Particularly not with two people inside who have to be got out.’
‘Exactly. But if you can give us directions as we go – guide us around the back of the place, it’ll be just as if we’d mapped it out for ourselves.’ He flicked the switch of the phone, demonstrating. ‘This is a personal radio – what used to be called a walkie-talkie, and very simple to operate. It won’t reach headquarters – that was one of the problems. No kind of radio or mobile phone could operate out here because of the mountains.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Also,’ he said, ‘we’re keeping our heads a bit low on this. If everybody had their rights, we’re trespassing on Romanian police territory.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, not quite,’ said Wagner. ‘We’ve got clearance to be here – you saw that we were waved through the boundary – but we might have forgotten to explain precisely what we intend to do here.’
‘A Freudian forget?’
‘Yes. But don’t worry about that side of things.’ He handed her the walkie-talkie. ‘Here’s the switch; you hold it down to speak and then release it to listen. Only one side can talk at a time, so you have to remember to say “over” or something like that when you finish speaking, so t
hat the other end knows you’ve finished. It’s what’s called encrypted, which means that short-wave radio enthusiasts can’t eavesdrop.’
‘“Encrypted”? Scrambled?’ Hilary was beginning to feel as if she had fallen into a time-warp and landed somewhere in the middle of 1940.
But Wagner said, quite seriously, ‘Yes, exactly that. But all you’ve got to remember is to keep listening and answer anything any of the men ask you. You’ll be able to hear them talking to one another as they go, of course.’ There was a sudden smile. ‘You’ll forgive any obscenities, I daresay,’ said Wagner. ‘There’ll be a bit of stress and if somebody – probably Burghen – trips up and stubs his toe, he’ll swear.’
‘I have heard obscenities before, Chief Inspector.’
‘Good girl. Don’t hesitate to shout for help if you have to.’
‘Wouldn’t that alert anyone inside the castle?’
‘That’s something else you don’t have to worry about. If anything comes along that you don’t like the look of, sing out and we’ll come to the rescue. You understand it all?’
‘I – yes.’
‘Good girl.’ He brushed her arm lightly. ‘Stay put, won’t you?’ he said, and followed his men into the night. The silence and the shadows closed about Hilary.
To Catherine, entering Csejthe was like coming home after a long absence. So this is the wild, bleak fortress in the mountains that Elizabeth loved best. This is where she had her torture chambers and her dungeons and her slaughter sheds. This is where she cooped up her prey until she should have need of them.
As Ladislas pulled her beneath the yawning portcullis, one of the shark-mouthed attendants grasping her other arm, the shadows thickened and swelled and became threaded with crimson . . .
The Blood Countess walking again, wearing the scarlet mantle . . .
And then they were through the portcullis and across the courtyard, and there, ahead of them, was the great stone hall, the grey walls softened with firelight and lit by dozens of candles. There was the scent of burning applewood, sweet and evocative of a dozen parties in Varanno. Only this was not Varanno, safe and familiar; this was Csejthe, the stark, ruined castle.
The hall was filled with people. Catherine, her sight adjusting to the brilliance after the long dark road, saw the cousins and the aunts and uncles all assembled at the far end. Some were seated, but in the main they stood in rows on a small dais. She recognised distant relatives: fourth and fifth cousins whose faces were dimly familiar from photographs or occasional visits. How many were here? A hundred? More? The hall was so vast that it could easily hold two hundred people and not feel crowded.
Stefan was seated at the table and Catherine looked automatically for Franz-Josef and Bianca and could not see them. Panic spiralled because, whatever this gathering was, whatever it meant, surely Franz-Josef should have been leading it. Surely Bianca should be with him? Above all, where was Pietro?
Ladislas and the guard pushed her back against the wall on the left of the great door, into a half alcove which partly hid her from the view of the others. There was the cold feel of steel chains about her wrists.
‘A further precaution, my dear,’ whispered Ladislas. Catherine heard the lock snap home, and saw the guard bend down to attach the gyves to an iron ring embedded in the stone wall. Chained and fettered to Elizabeth’s castle. Hidden in a wretched, shadowy corner.
Ladislas moved across the hall, arrogant as a cat, nodding to people as he went. The panic shifted gear and became anger, for Ladislas was walking through the throng as Pietro had once walked, he was pulling about him the mantle that had once been Pietro’s, except that if he practised before a mirror for a hundred years, he would never possess a tenth of Pietro’s charm. When Ladislas took the chair at the head of the table, Catherine heard a murmur go through the assembly. Ladislas in Franz-Josef’s place?
Ladislas nodded to the two guards standing at the far end of the hall, and at once a door was flung open, and there was the sound of chanting, and the spillage of more candlelight from beyond. Catherine, aware again that Ladislas seemed to be manipulating this entire assembly, leaned out of the stone niche as far as she could.
Through the door came a procession of grotesque, shuffling creatures; impossibly old, unbelievably bent and frail, but with the remnants of something that had once been charm and with the shreds of an old, old authority. They chanted as they came, and Catherine heard with fresh horror that it was the eerily familiar song of the poor mad Orsolya. Elizabeth’s own song:
‘The blood . . . Never failed us yet . . .
Never failed us yet . . .
Though I die, I shall live . . .’
They ranged themselves along the table, and Catherine saw that places had been left for them. As they made their pitiful way to the seats, the assembly turned and every head bowed, not quite in subservience or humility, but with deep respect.
A stir of anticipation rippled through the hall and several of the Family joined in the chant, so that it echoed and spun about the old castle.
‘The blood . . . The blood . . .
Never failed us yet, never failed us yet . . .
Let us live though we die . . .’
The attendants were bringing in a group of young women: Catherine saw that they were perhaps fourteen or fifteen. They had sallow skins and dark eyes and it was clear that they were very frightened and also that they barely understood what was going on. She caught the murmured word, ‘Tranz’.
The old man who seemed to lead the ancient creatures looked across at Stefan and smiled. ‘The gleanings of Tranz once again?’
‘Yes.’
‘A master-stroke, my son.’
Stefan said, ‘These are from the lands sometime known as Yugoslavia, Pál.’
‘I have read of the war there,’ said the man called Pál. ‘And these are pretty creatures.’
The woman next to him said, ‘Peasant stock. Exactly as it should be.’
Because peasant blood was ever the stronger, my dears . . .
Pál said, ‘You have done well, Stefan. We shall enjoy them,’ and with the words, Catherine felt the anticipation go through the hall again. ‘And,’ said Pál, ‘are we safe, Stefan? Have the prying police been satisfactorily dealt with?’
Stefan glanced at Ladislas who said, ‘The police will not reach us.’
‘Ah. The machine is in place?’
‘It is in place, Pál,’ said Ladislas softly.
The old man held out his hands. ‘Then begin the exemplum,’ he said. ‘Bring out the renegade, and in the name of the Lady of Csejthe, begin the exemplum.’
Chapter Forty
Armand Wagner thought that things were going pretty well. He had been uncomfortable about leaving Sister Hilary on her own on the road below the castle, but it would have been far worse to let her return to St Luke’s. In any other case where a witness stood in danger from a killer, he would have booked her into one of the small anonymous hotels known and used by the Viennese police, but this was not like any case that Wagner had ever come across. They needed Hilary’s inside knowledge of the castle to help them. Entering a medieval castle was not like entering your average murderer’s lair. He touched the small walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, glad that at least Hilary could be in touch with them.
Bremner and a few of the younger men had almost reached the castle, and Gustav was puffing along in their wake. He would have to slim down, that Gustav, if he was to continue in properly active service. He was one of Wagner’s best officers, but he preferred cosy predictable raids where you were near to headquarters, able to phone for help if you needed it without obstructive mountains getting in your way and without the need to deceive the local men.
The castle was not quite in darkness. As Wagner drew nearer, he could see a red flickering light within and he could hear a faint, far-off chanting. He frowned, trying to make out the words.
Hilary responded instantly when he flicked the button, almost as if she might h
ave been climbing the hillside with him. When Wagner said, softly, ‘We’re two-thirds of the way there. I can see the portcullis – over,’ Hilary at once said:
‘Keep the castle on your right. Is the portcullis raised?’ And remembered to add ‘over’.
Wagner squinted through the darkness. ‘Damn. No, it’s down.’
Hilary said, ‘There’s a narrow path – hardly more than a track – that winds around to the back of the castle. On the left.’
Apart from the portcullis being lowered, this was all more or less in accordance with what they had planned. They had hoped that most of the men could go in through the main entrance, as Hilary had done, while Bremner and Burghen, who were both agile enough to climb through windows, would try to find a means of ingress at the rear. Hilary had described a door leading to the sculleries which at this time of day – eight o’clock in the evening – would hopefully be deserted. They went on, cautiously.
Great pools of shadow lay around the castle, and the huge iron grille of the portcullis cast its chequered shadow on the ground. Wagner found it unexpectedly daunting. So much iron, such sharp teeth . . . Was it completely impassable? He had long since learned to check everything for himself, and he moved stealthily nearer.
The portcullis was not completely lowered. The iron teeth were actually a couple of feet short of the ground, as if the machinery that operated the grille might be faulty or rusting. Wagner could see the deep holes where each spike would slide home. Holes gouged by centuries of usage. Was there sufficient space for the men to crawl under the portcullis? Wagner thought there was, but he put it to them, a quick, low-voiced question into the intercom.
The men had already seen and appraised the situation and they thought they could get in.
‘It’ll be a squeeze, but we can do it,’ said one.
‘Plenty enough space, Chief,’ said another.
‘So long as Gustav doesn’t get stuck halfway,’ put in somebody else, and Wagner felt the faint stir of affectionate amusement.