Steve steadied me and walked toward the window to look outside. “Oh, good lord!” He looked back at me and gaped. “The black tree scared you?”
“Tree? There is a tree here?” Julia interrupted. She walked to the window and peeked out herself to observe it. “That’s strange. Nothing can grow on this land, but there’s a tree?”
“Yeah but if you look at it, it’s a dead tree. Like somebody burned it,” Tyler said.
I took a deep breath and stood beside them. “That’s not what I saw!” I glanced outside. “For a moment, the tree looked like a woman with many arms, and she was moving.”
“All right, Myra.” Tyler raised his arms over his head. “Just because we believed your story in the chapel doesn’t mean we will buy this shit!”
“No.” I looked at Steve. My eyes pleaded with him to believe me. “You gotta believe me, Steve. I saw it moving its hands.”
“It’s not even important if it was moving,” Julia interrupted. “The point is, in this place where nothing can grow, there is a burned tree.” She had her own questions.
“Could it be the place where Andrew burned the babies?” Tyler’s sudden but intelligent question alarmed all of us.
“You know what?” Steve called out. “Let’s drop it for now and explore the rest of the place.” He walked out without even looking at us. We all followed him, and I didn’t dare to try looking out the window like I’d looked in the mirror in the chapel.
There were six doors in the corridor of the tower. One by one, we opened the doors and found nothing but the pungent smell of fresh blood.
In the last room, there was a rusted chain hanging down from the ceiling. “Are these just prison cells, or were they used for other purposes?” Steve looked at Julia.
“What I’ve read so far is that these rooms had different torture tools for punishing people. And then victims were kept here till their last breath—until the king disposed of them.” Julia’s voice sounded so natural, as if it was normal to punish people. “I believe the torture devices have been removed.”
“So I guess that’s it. We are finished with the tower. There’s nothing much in it.” Steve was disappointed not to have found anything thrilling, and walked out of the last room. To me, there was an unspoken terror, nestled in the walls like they had stored many cries, screams and pleas—or perhaps some hidden corpses. I had an idea what kind of torture methods they used to punish people in those days—there are so many books and so much information on the Internet, and many movies showing those ruthless, violent means of causing agony.
We headed down again, and the smell of foul blood dissipated. We decided to leave the passage on the other side of the stairs to explore tomorrow, and headed back to the hall.
The Great Hall led to a kitchen, which held a huge fireplace and an oven that had served for baking bread. There was a wine cellar, but it was empty. The kitchen had a huge countertop made of wooden slabs, and benches around it. The shelves were made of stone, built into the walls. We came out of the kitchen silently and were headed for the stairs when Tyler broke the ice.
“What’s this door?” He pointed to a door under the huge wide staircase on the main floor. We all halted, then followed Tyler, who had already reached the door.
He tried to move the handle but it didn’t work. “Do you have a key for that?” he asked Julia.
Steve tried to open it too.
I looked at the door carefully. “There’s no keyhole in it. It’s barred from the inside,” I commented.
Julia came close to the door and looked carefully at the handle. “The only key I have for this castle is for the main gate, that’s it.” She touched the door. “I didn’t see this door last time.”
“Okay then, let’s go upstairs and we will check tomorrow if we can open this.” I looked at Steve, who nodded in agreement. “We can bring some tools.”
We all walked up the wide, curved staircase to the top floor. The stairs were covered with dark green carpet, bordered by golden motifs. The walls on one side of the stairs were covered with portraits.
“Who are these?” I inquired. They were huge portraits, beautiful oil paintings looking as if they were about to speak. I had never seen such exquisite paintings in my life. They were more lively and vibrant than the scenic paintings in the chapel corridor. I noticed that they were fixed onto the wall, and not in the usual type of picture frames. They had the same type of frame as the haunted mirror, with the text carved in gold.
“Is this real gold?” Tyler touched one of the carvings on the frame.
“Yes, pure gold,” replied Julia. “They are childhood portraits of all the kings after King Andrew, who were born in this castle.”
Their names were embossed with gold on the base of each wooden frame.
“This is King Arthur. I think the boy is around twelve,” I suggested after reading the name. Their dates of birth were also mentioned.
“It was a ritual in the Hue family that they commissioned portraits of the boys when they reached puberty. That was the time when their actual training to be a strong king was begun.” Julia climbed a few stairs.
I kept looking at the boys’ portraits—Arthur, followed by Edgar, George, Alfred, William, Stefan and Edward.
“So Edward was the last king here?” I asked Julia.
“Edward was never a king. He died at young age, before his coronation. Some say he disappeared all of a sudden. No one knows where he went,” Julia responded.
Edward’s picture was on the landing of the stairway after the ascent. Steve’s gaze was locked on this portrait, and he wasn’t moving. He just kept staring at it, and then he looked at the portrait of Edward’s father, Stefan. He again tried to take pictures—took out his camera and started clicking.
“Is it coming?” Tyler asked.
“No, man! It’s strange. I’m gonna go home and check the camera.” His gaze was still locked on the portrait. He moved back a bit, and his gaze followed the trail of portraits of young boys.
“What’s wrong, Steve?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said instantly. “I feel like there’s something common to all those portraits.” He went back down the stairway and started back up, looking at each portrait from bottom to top. I followed him the same way. He was right—there was something common to all those portraits.
“They are painted with exactly the same colors,” I pointed out. Steve acknowledged my idea and looked back at the portraits. “See, their faces and clothes are different, but the texture of the paintings and the place where the subjects were painted look the same.”
Tyler and Julia followed the portraits’ trail and examined the pictures closely.
“You’re right, Miss Farrow.” Julia looked up at me. “They all have the same background.”
I looked closely at the portrait of Arthur, and tried to read the name of the painter. It was signed in a strange language I was not familiar with. I looked at Julia. “Can you read what’s written here?” I pointed toward the painter’s signature.
“Not a language I understand,” Julia responded.
We all examined the paintings again, and then looked at each other in astonishment.
“Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?” Steve asked.
“Shit! How this is possible?” Tyler rubbed his temples. “There are eight kings in the royal line, ruling for more than two hundred years, and they were all painted by the same artist?”
Fear was crawling inside us. How it was even possible that only one artist painted all the portraits for kings ruling over eight generations?
“I suggest we all head upstairs, because I remember there were other portraits of these kings when they matured,” Julia said.
Steve still stood there, looking at the portrait of Edward, the last one before the landing of the upper floor.
Tyler was on the last stair near the lower floor. When he climbed back up, he stopped for a moment on the stair I was on. He grabbed me by the arm.
/> “Myra, don’t you feel like the boys’ eyes are following us?” he whispered. My eyes were glued on Steve, wondering what he was seeing. He was staring at Edward’s portrait with great concentration. Then he opened his phone and looked at it, as if trying to check something. “Myra?” Tyler broke into my thoughts. I looked at Tyler, and he repeated what he’d said before. I looked again at the paintings that lined the stairway. He was right; their eyes were following us.
Julia, who was ahead of us, heard us. “That’s an optical illusion. The Mona Lisa has the same effect.” She turned around and continued, “No matter what part of the room you’re standing in, she watches you, which is creepy sometimes.”
“I know…I’ve been to the Louvre,” Tyler said. “But here, eight pairs of eyes are watching you.” He glanced back at one of the paintings. “Now the last one, near the lower floor, is watching, and the one that Steve is staring at, that boy is also watching us. And THAT is creepy. And apparently all these boys are watching all of us.” He rubbed his neck. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
I kept watching the way Steve was looking back and forth between the portrait and his phone. We continued up the stairs until we were on the step below the one where Edward’s portrait was hanging.
“What’s wrong, Steve?” I asked in a friendly tone. He looked up at me, his face flushed.
“Look closely in his eyes for a moment.” He pointed me toward Edward’s portrait. I walked closer to the boy’s face and stared right into his eyes. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t tell why. I looked back at Steve quizzically. “Now look at this.” He showed me his phone screen.
I gulped as soon as I saw the screen. I suddenly felt faint and was about to crumple on the stairs when Tyler grabbed me. Luckily, he was standing just behind me. “Oh man! What the fuck is that, Myra?”
Julia sagged and sank on the last stair. “I think I should go back. It’s more than I can take.” She sighed and watched me. “From the moment I saw you, I was trying to remember where I had seen those eyes.”
The screen Steve had showed me a moment ago was a close-up of my picture, which he had taken from Facebook. Edward’s eyes were exactly like mine—as grey as steel. I had always heard from people around me that it was a very rare eye color. Many people had complimented me on my eyes in the past, saying that they had never seen this color before, and now standing in front of me was the portrait of the younger version of King Edward, who had eyes exactly the same shape and color as mine. Julia was right…it was more than I could take in one day.
“This is more than we assumed earlier.” Steve’s gaze was still locked on Edward’s painting. “Now I’m thinking that you’ve got some connection with this place.” He looked at me. “My meeting with you, and then bringing you here, and you seeing unusual things in the mirror, and now the shape and color of your eyes being so close to Edward’s as if you were part of his family.”
“Steve.” I grabbed his arm. “You’re talking about a person who died six hundred years ago. It could be a coincidence.” I sighed. “You’re just making it worse by fixating on all these little details.” I took another step and reached the corridor of the upper level. I turned around and watched all three of them, who were staring back at me. “Shall we see the rest?”
“And if you see the bright side of it,” Tyler continued, “all the other boys have different eye colors so she’s right, it could be a coincidence that her eyes match his.”
The green carpet continued down the wide corridor. There were light sconces along the walls, in between massive portraits of deceased kings. They were placed in the same order. The adult versions of Arthur, Edgar, George, Alfred, William, and Stefan looked more lethal. They’d looked innocent in childhood, but these portraits were all painted when the men were the same age, around forty. We were again surprised to see that the backgrounds were similar to those of the child paintings, and the painter was the same too. All of the paintings carried the same signature.
“Do you guys see Edward’s portrait anywhere?” I asked my friends, looking along the trail of paintings. I wanted to know how the boy with eyes so similar to mine looked as a man.
“I don’t see it either. I don’t think he lived that long,” Julia replied.
We all were quiet for a moment, examining the paintings one by one now. I felt sorry for Edward.
“When we were coming from the ground floor to this floor, the boys’ paintings were in descending order.” I said, breaking the silence. They all turned to listen to me. “I mean, it started from King Arthur, the first king born in this castle. And it ended at Edward, who was the last born in the Hue family. Right?” I looked at Julia.
“Right,” she agreed.
“Now, the trail has started with King Stefan—the second to last king—and logically it should end at King Andrew,” I commented.
“Agreed,” Julia said.
“Logically, it should then start with Edward from here,” Steve pointed out. “There’s no adult portrait of Edward.” That’s what I thought too.
We examined the portraits one by one, their eyes pooled with darkness, the proud stances of treacherous kings—all of them looked brutal. Their faces screamed that they desired lust and death. Although they were dead, gone long ago, still their demeanor was scary. If I were living with these men, I would have lived in dread all my life.
The very last portrait was of King Andrew, which stood tall and proud, his very aura emanating animosity through his black eyes. He looked like a killer who’d not spare his own blood brother if he wanted to achieve something—who knows if Jasmine killed her husband, or if Andrew killed his brother to get Jasmine? I believed the second option was more likely, since he looked like a killer who was capable of murdering innocent kids.
“Where are the paintings of the couple who built this castle?” Tyler asked, looking at Julia.
“You mean David and Jasmine?” I confirmed.
“You won’t find any paintings of any woman in this castle. For the Hue family, it was forbidden for a woman to sit in front of an artist who wanted to capture their beauty,” Julia replied.
“What hypocrites!” Steve exclaimed. “They got their portraits done, but none of their wives?”
The corridor didn’t end at Andrew’s portrait. There were doors on the opposite side at regular intervals, all in the same black ebony wood. I wondered how people living in this castle could figure out which room was which.
I didn’t bother opening the doors, but trailed down the long corridor. My friends were still discussing brutal King Andrew’s portrait. The passage ended at an archway connecting to a solarium, which opened to the south of the castle. The solarium had a vaulted ceiling, and a huge chandelier hung from its ceiling. The walls were decorated with honey-colored paint and beige wainscots on one side, with large windows overlooking the courtyard and a huge painting of a man on the opposite wall. The frame of the painting was different from those in the corridor, but it was made of solid wood inlaid into the wall.
I walked to the windows first. Bare, deserted grounds spread over many acres of land, enclosed by the tall boundary walls. A gate opened into the fields beyond, and I could see a lake further on. It looked so serene, and deep enough to hold so many secrets from the past.
I turned around and walked toward the painting. The portrait was more than ten feet tall, fixed above the wainscot—one of the largest paintings I had seen in my life. And this was not an art gallery I was standing in. It was someone’s residence in a past century. The frame was fitted so perfectly inside the wall—maybe that was the reason that the portraits had not been removed to be displayed in any of the museums or art galleries in the UK.
I kept looking at the man in the picture, who was so lifelike that I felt he’d step out any moment and talk to me. The signature was that of the same artist, but the wooden frame was engraved in pure gold with the name of the king—King David Hue. The other sides of the frame had the same cursive text
sculpted in gold.
So this was the man who had built this castle, but I wished I could see a portrait of Jasmine. What did Queen Jasmine look like, and what was it about her that made King David fall in love so intensely that he gave up everything to be with her?
What made King Andrew fight for that woman? What was in her beauty that made Andrew a demon and tempted him to kill her babies? Was it only for lust that he chose to kill, or was it the healing power Jasmine had that tempted Andrew to own her? But if she truly had healing powers, why didn’t she save her own husband?
Everything in this castle was such a mystery!
I kept staring at the man, who looked right back at me. His eyes caught my attention. They were as steel-grey as mine—similar to the eyes of the little boy Edward in the stairway. So apparently, Edward and I were not the only ones with the steely eyes. But besides his eyes, there was something else David and Edward had in common.
I took a deep breath and decided to look at Edward’s portrait again. I came out of the solarium just as my friends were entering it.
“What were you doing?” Steve asked.
“Nothing. I will be right back,” I replied hastily and walked toward the end of the corridor where the stairs started.
“What’s wrong with her?” I heard Tyler’s voice fading behind me.
I stood by Edward’s portrait and opened my phone to take his picture. I experienced same trouble Steve had—the pictures not coming up—although it wasn’t that dark inside here. If our naked eyes were able to see everything, why weren’t the camera lenses able to capture it?
I stared at Edward’s portrait for a long time, with his eyes the same shape as mine, but the straight nose of a dignified man even at the age of twelve, and a chiseled jaw, which made him a very beautiful boy overall. I memorized his image and walked back to David’s massive painting.
They were all watching me when I entered the solarium.
“What are you up to?” Steve asked again. I didn’t reply. Instead, I looked back at David, the owner of this castle, and tried to memorize his image. He had the same eyes as Edward and me, but his nose was also straight like Edward’s, and his jaw—it was just like Edward’s. If Edward had grown into a man, he would have looked exactly like his forefather King David. The only difference was that this man had dark blond hair down to his shoulders, and a beard.
Once Upon A [Stolen] Time (Stolen Series Book 1) Page 9