He jumped up, hugged and kissed her, clasping her tight to him. ‘God, you’ve made me so happy!’ he said. Then he pulled away. ‘What about Davey? He’s going to hate the idea.’
She sighed, her lips a thoughtful dash of red. ‘Can we not say anything about it till we get back to America? I will have to think how best to break the news to him.’ She turned from him, went over to stand at the balustrade and look at the lake. ‘And there’s something else you should know about him. About us. About me. It’s not as straightforward as it seems.’
‘Is there something you want to tell me? What’s wrong?’
‘Something that happened. An awful thing. If I tell you then you have to promise me you’ll never tell a living soul.’
‘I promise.’
She chewed at her lower lip. An eerie silence fell. Not even the sound of a bird broke it. ‘I can’t, Rick, I’m sorry. And you will not want to marry me because of it. Perhaps it was a foolish idea after all…’
She made as if to walk away but he grabbed her wrist. ‘You can tell me. I love you. I don’t care about anything that happened in your past. I only care about the woman I know now, and she’s the most beautiful, gifted woman I know. I’ll do anything for you, I promise. Whatever it takes for you to become my wife. Don’t do this to me, Betsy.’
Her wide eyes were sorrowful, edged with tears. She appeared to be wrestling with something inside. ‘Do you mean it, Rick?’
‘I mean every word. I don’t give a damn about anything that’s happened in the past. Look, whatever it is, you can tell me if you like, but if you can’t well that’s fine too. Just say you’ll marry me.’
‘I’ll marry you.’
But as she held him close her smile faded and she glanced out across the lake to the forlorn forests in the murky distance, to the snow-topped peaks of mountains, and tried not to dwell on the horrors of the past.
* * * *
14
The Mask of Antinous
‘You appear pleased with yourself,’ Franz Horvat observed as he beckoned Rick Mason to take a seat at the desk opposite him. It was a fair-sized room, lined with bookshelves containing dusty-looking tomes, and an array of furniture whose sole purpose was the storage of files and paperwork. ‘This used to be the office from which the estate business was run. It has not been used properly in a long time.’
‘So who runs the business?’ Mason asked, in truth his mind still ringing from his conversation with Betsy.
‘It has all fallen into disarray,’ he answered, putting on his spectacles and separating out a number of thick cardboard files. ‘Many things changed since the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismantled following the end of the Great War a decade ago. People lost positions, lost wealth, lost land, lost power. It had its effects on Baron Dragutin, naturally, but he weathered the storm better than most. The estate is not what it once was, but it is still, as you see, far from trifling.’
‘I need some answers, Mr Horvat…’
‘I am sure you must have many questions to ask, but first you must hear me out.’ His fingertips tapped on the desk, perhaps betraying some inner irritation. ‘I have had the privilege of tending to your father’s legal affairs since I myself was a young man. I first came to Castle Dragutin as a junior, but for reasons known only to Baron Dragutin he insisted his dealings with the firm I then worked for was done entirely through me. Perhaps it was my youth. He had a certain fondness, one might say fascination, with the young. You may come to hear many things about your father while you are here, but I urge you not to treat them all seriously. Myth, legend and superstition have conspired to create…’ He paused. The drumming of his fingertips increased in tempo. ‘…to create a situation where it has become difficult to separate out truth from falsehood.’
‘And has that anything to do with why the village woman spat at me yesterday, or why Zsigmund and Margit refuse to look me directly in the face?’
The old man studied Mason closely. ‘Alas, those things are symptomatic of what I say. Needless to say, you must remember that this is not California, Mr Mason; this is a remote community whose traditions and customs have little altered in many hundreds of years. It might be 1927, and we live in a so-called modern era with automobiles, ships, aeroplanes and trains that appear to be shrinking the world, but for people who live hereabouts the outside world is a rare intrusion, and in the villages it has made little or no impact. They hold true to their superstitious natures, as did their forebears. You will have to make allowances for their apparent backwardness. Not least because of his private nature, your father has become enmeshed into that superstitious fabric, so much so it is doubtful it will ever become untangled.’
‘You say they feared him. Why is that? And why has that fear passed to me?’
‘We move ahead of ourselves,’ Horvat said, holding up a hand as if to stem the flow of the conversation. ‘We shall return to the business of the will.’
‘Before we get into details,’ Mason interrupted firmly, ‘what I really need to know is how I came to be separated from my real mother and father, how I never even knew all this existed and was led to believe that another woman was my real mother. As you can understand, my life has been turned completely upside down and part of me is as angry as hell. I want some answers.’
‘Yes,’ he returned, adjusting his spectacles. ‘I can appreciate that, Mr Mason.’
‘I want you to tell me more about my father,’ he insisted. ‘Who was Baron Jozsef Dragutin? You’ve avoided telling me much about him, and I want to know why.’
Horvat stroked his chin. ‘Very well. The truth, Mr Mason, is that not a lot is known about your father’s early life. Even his exact age at his death is under dispute. He was born around the year 1821 or ‘22 in Budapest, apparently into a family boasting a noble lineage, perhaps even having links to the Boyars, the indigenous Hungarian aristocracy. Yet before his death he burned many of his papers which might have confirmed this.
‘As I say, his younger life is shrouded in mystery, but it was Baron Dragutin himself who told me about his time as a mercenary, joining whatever war was to hand. It is true he appeared to revel in his tales of the bloodletting of his youth, and I confess he became greatly excited and animated whenever he related these stories. But as to which European wars he was involved in, he was careful never to reveal, and it was none of my business to pursue it. He once told me the war itself and the reason why it was being fought was unimportant; it was the opportunity of taking part which drew him like a moth to a flame. He spoke freely of the cruelty committed in the name of war, as if it were a sport, hounds setting about a cornered stag or fox.
‘Castle Dragutin had long been in his family’s possession, and he had resided here many years as an older man, but around 1880, when Hungary gained unrestrained rule over the Slavs, Baron Dragutin acquired more land by ousting its Slavonian owners, and even more power and control over the people. He was already aged about sixty. German and Hungarian landowners, your father amongst them, brought in labour from outside, forcing Slavs into greater poverty, and with no employment, their lands reduced, this persecution and oppression, as Slavs call it, left them little choice and caused a mass exodus to America to seek better lives.
‘Your father relished this addition to his already considerable power and influence. Exactly what his role was for the Budapest authorities we shall never know for certain; but he was hated by the Slavs as a sadistic symbol of Hungarian Imperialism.’
‘Sadistic?’ Mason said.
‘There are many tales told about your father, Mr Mason, as I said earlier. They tend to filter down like water through rock, and as such sometimes it takes many years for them to come to light. Rumour started to circulate that during his time as a mercenary he had taken much pleasure in the torturing of his prisoners. He would devise ever more cruel methods to inflict pain, for no other reason than to inflict pain itself, and he would calmly observe its results. One such tale told how a favourite method of his was t
o strip the skin off his victims using pliers.’
‘Christ!’ Mason said. ‘That’s inhuman!’
‘The victim could take days to die. But of course, you must understand they are only tales told by old men who said they knew your father, and their details become richer and ever more gruesome with every telling. Hate amplifies even the tiniest rumour. Yet what little your father told me about his time at war, or the reasons he included himself in it, did nothing to water down those rumours.’
‘Are you saying you think he was actually capable of such terrible acts? Even relished them?’
‘I am saying it is not without the bounds of possibility.’
‘But for that hatred to pass down to me there has to be more. I mean, hatred has become fear, hasn’t it? They had a reason to fear him, even fear me. What’s driving that?’
Horvat sighed. His lips looked thin and pale, his eyes were troubled pools. ‘The devil is driving that fear, Mr Mason, as the devil drives much that is still to be feared in Slavonia – or so the locals will have you believe.’
‘That’s crazy,’ Mason said dismissively. ‘Who believes so strongly in the devil these days?’
Horvat shook his head. ‘Good and evil, Mr Mason. Two forces perpetually waging war against each other. That’s what people here believe. As they believe your father, on the side of evil, made a pact with the devil to further his own earthly aims.’
Mason laughed out loud. ‘He did a deal with the devil? You can’t be serious.’
‘I am never anything but. I relate the facts as I know them. This story was told by a man who knew you father personally, a fellow mercenary, who was also responsible for relating many of the so-called truths circulated about your father, about his sadistic pleasures, about his unbridled lust for great wealth, great power.
‘The story goes that Baron Dragutin openly confessed he would willingly sell his soul to the devil to have eternal youth, to indulge his perverse passions without regret or ramifications. He was heard to brag – whether to strike fear and awe into people, as was his way – that he had found a means of conjuring up Satan, that he’d relinquished his soul to the beast in return for all he desired. But as is the way with such things, there would be a price to pay. That price, he said, was to forfeit the soul of every Dragutin heir. His entire line, he confessed was cursed to do the work of the devil for all eternity. The last clause, he said, was that he must produce an heir before he died so that the devil’s curse might continue.
‘And so it is said that Baron Dragutin did indulge every vice he wished, no matter how vile or inhuman. Tales abound. Tales, even, of him torturing people in ways so brutal they were said to be the acts of the devil himself; and a habit of bathing in tubs full of the hot blood of freshly murdered young women, which he believed helped keep him young and handsome.’
‘But that’s absurd, surely?’ said Mason. ‘Even if any of these violent acts had been true he’d have been found out, put on trial at some point. It’s a case of drunken tongues wagging in order to get another beer, that’s what I think.’
‘Ah, but think on, Mr Mason. What if the pact with the devil were true? He might commit any crime without consequence.’
‘Which of course is total baloney. As a logical man in the legal profession you know it to be nothing more than foolish superstition.’
‘I know of three men who came forward independent of each other, relating details of such crimes it caused the blood to freezer, so logic would then ask me to consider such stories as having a basis in reality. Then there are more recent local tales – admittedly tales that might be the product of the resentment of so-called Hungarian Imperialism – but still in circulation nonetheless. Young women going missing, and fingers pointing in Castle Dragutin’s direction…’
‘He was old, in heaven’s name! He wasn’t young enough to gallop around the countryside abducting Slavonian peasant girls. Pure nonsense! The stuff of old gothic novels.’
‘Old, you say?’ He smiled a knowing smile. ‘You asked and I am telling, Mr Mason. Do you wish me to go on?’
He waved a hand. ‘Sure, let’s hear it; there’s nothing showing at the Roxy.’
Horvat raised his brow. ‘Quite. Well, whatever version of the truth you prefer one truth is without question and that is the fact of his disfigurement.’
‘Disfigured? In what way?’
‘One day Baron Dragutin was confronted by a prostitute he once knew. She was a woman who had been turned from vice because she said she had been called by God to do his work. One day she meets Baron Dragutin, swore the man looked as young as the day she met him thirty years before, and, in carrying out God’s work, sought him out again and threw acid in his face in an effort to purge him of the devil. It is said his flesh melted away almost to the bone, that he was blinded in one eye and lost a great deal of his hair that would never grow back. You see, perhaps the devil has a twisted sense of humour. Baron Dragutin never expected to lose his looks so young; he expected them to vanish with age. Anyhow, from that day forward he took to wearing a specially crafted porcelain mask and never left the house. No one ever saw his real disfigured face.’
‘That’s a mighty fine story, Mr Horvat,’ said Mason. ‘But it’s just that.’
Horvat rose from his seat and went across to a large cupboard. Taking out a set of keys he unlocked one of the drawers and took out a box covered in black velvet. He laid it carefully on the desk, opened the lid. Inside was a mask in pristine white porcelain, ribbon threaded through holes so that it could be fastened to the face.
‘Do you recognise the face?’ he asked Mason.
He screwed his eyes up in thought. ‘Yeah, it looks vaguely familiar.’
‘That’s because the face belongs to Antinous. It is the same as the statue downstairs. Antinous was born to a Greek family in the Roman province of Bithynia. He was Emperor Hadrian’s lover. Antinous drowned in the Nile. Hadrian was so grief stricken at his untimely death that he proclaimed him a god, out of which a cult of Antinous grew. Cities have been named in his honour, coins minted bearing his likeness, and many, many statues erected to the handsome young man. Your father said the face of Antinous was the most beautiful face he’d ever seen, and so had this mask cast in his likeness. It became the face he wore until his death. A god’s face. I knew your father from being a young man, and I never once saw him without this mask, or one of its copies. All I saw were glimpses of his one good eye…’ He pointed; one of the mask’s eyes was blocked in, the other a blank hole. ‘Here,’ he said, offering Mason the mask. ‘Careful, it is eggshell-thin, light as a feather. There are two others, in the drawer, which your father kept as spares. Take a look inside…’
Mason gingerly held it before him, looking deep into the sightless eye. He turned it around to inspect the interior of the mask. He frowned and then flinched involuntarily. ‘Is this…?’
‘Yes. He made a plaster cast of his face to ensure the inside of the mask fitted the contours of his disfigured face exactly. On the one side there is beauty; on the other side there is ugliness. If you were to make a cast of the inside of the mask you would get an impression as to what your father looked like in real life, but the little I can make out makes me shudder as it is.’
Staring into the inside of the mask it gave the optical illusion that he was staring straight at an image of the man himself and he almost dropped the mask in repulsion. He handed it quickly back to Horvat. ‘That’s plain grotesque,’ he said.
‘Yes, it is. Perhaps it is wise not to make pacts with the devil, eh, Mr Mason?’ he said with a touch of cold humour, putting the macabre mask into its velvet-lined coffin and closing the lid.
* * * *
15
The Breath of the Dead
Franz Horvat led Rick Mason outside. The sky was white, the land ash-grey.
‘Snow,’ said Horvat flatly. ‘It’ll be upon us before the day is done.’
Mason shivered, but it was more than the frigid air that brought i
t on. They were standing before a huge building, squarely constructed in austere grey stone, a metal-studded oak door flanked on either side by thick Corinthian-style pillars. Above the door was a crest carved in stone – the Dragutin crest, Horvat said – a sinuous dragon swallowing a lamb against a shield background; a variety of swords and spears forming an intricate lattice-work behind the shield. There was a magnificent bronze dome topping off the building, now turned green.
Doleful yew trees, their gnarled trunks twisted as if in agony and testament to their great age, stood on either side of the mausoleum, their shaggy branches reaching over the dome to touch in the middle, as if embracing it protectively. Horvat lit an oil lamp and inserted a finger-thick key into the iron lock of the door. The branches of the yew trees shuddered in a breeze as he turned the key, the noise of the mechanism sounding like some great machine part. A mound of dead leaves had accumulated near the entrance and his boots disturbed them as he opened the door, some of them scuttling inside the mausoleum like so many mice. Holding the lamp high, he bade Mason follow him inside.
It took a moment or two for his eyes to grow accustomed to the almost pitch-black interior, the feeble light from the lamp failing to penetrate the darkest recesses. A strong odour of damp and decay pervaded the room. In the room’s centre was a large stone sarcophagus, the stone intricately carved with curling representations of ivy wrapped around a number of open-mouthed skulls. As with the crest outside, there were also representations of a number of weapons, from rifles to spears and swords, banners and military sashes, and a repetition of the Dragutin crest. Atop the sarcophagus was the marble figure of a dead man lying in state, covered by richly ornamented, flowing marble robes. Horvat brought the lamp closer to the statue to reveal the face of Baron Jozsef Dragutin.
‘It is a face that is still young,’ said Horvat. ‘Forever so. A face that is uncorrupted, vibrant and healthy, at least on the outside.’
SILENT (a psychological thriller, combining mystery, crime and suspense) Page 9