Castle Rouge

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  40.

  Fleeing Prague

  Then a quicker note to the music; the galloping hoofs of another horse, the finest of them all, and “Buffalo Bill”…enters under the Hash of the lime-light…

  —HELEN CODY WELMORE, LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS, 1899

  FROM A JOURNAL

  The ticket taker gazed morosely at the sketch of James Kelly, and nodded.

  Out of the corner of our eyes, we noticed the uniformed guards observing our query. Irene listened intently, then translated for us.

  “The ticket taker recognizes Kelly. He took a train to Transylvania two days ago. Another train does not depart until tomorrow.”

  “Do you believe him?” Quentin asked.

  Irene glanced caustically to the uniformed guards. “Two of King Willie’s finest. Nell and I left them in our dust the first time we fled Bohemia. There are three more secret agents decorating the station, possibly the King’s, possibly belonging to other interests. We are encouraged to depart, but not to depart for Transylvania.”

  Quentin nodded. “You travel with one carpetbag each?”

  “Yes, but mine is very heavy.” Irene smiled wickedly.

  “We will want a warm-blood then. Can you be prepared to leave, in men’s dress, in two hours?”

  I glanced at Irene. This sounded exciting.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “It will be rough and arduous.”

  “As long as it is effective transportation to Transylvania, I have no complaints, dear Quentin.”

  He smiled. “We will see what you think afterward.”

  I gulped after he had left. “Do you think that he has something impetuous in mind?”

  “I am counting on it, Pink. It is high time we became impetuous.”

  We took our time wending our way back to the hotel. There was much stopping to munch pastries and poppy-seed buns. I could barely pretend to swallow a poppy seed, I was that excited.

  By the time we ambled into our hotel, an hour and a half had gone by.

  We reached our room and then the clothes and carpetbags flew. Irene stuffed Nell’s portfolio into my bag, as her cosmetic case was essential to her packing.

  Booted, trousered, capped, and mufflered, we slipped down the hotel’s rear service stairs to the back alley.

  Quentin was waiting in peasant dress with a pair of huge horses not accoutered in the fluttering fringes of Magyar harnesses.

  I had never ridden in a Wild West Show but suspected I was about to now. Quentin leaned down to yank me up and there I was astride an embroidered saddle atop two thousand pounds of mincing, nervous horseflesh.

  My heart was pounding and my trousered legs were cursing the day they had been born. Sidesaddle had never looked so sensible.

  But Irene had been handed up atop an even bigger, muscular mount, and her carpetbag hooked over the elaborate saddle horn.

  I felt like a rough rider in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The horses’ shod hooves clattered on the cobblestones as we trod the back ways of Prague, unnoticed by carriages and more conventional conveyances.

  Amazingly soon we were pounding along the dirt byways leaving the city. Our bone-jarring trot escalated into a rolling lope that threatened to hurl me, at least, headfirst over pommel and horse ears into the road.

  “Hold on tight,” Irene urged. “Don’t try to be graceful about it. Just hold on.”

  The best advice that I have ever heard, and a motto I resolved to adopt for my future adventures, should I live to have any.

  41.

  A Guest

  Then worst than all last Friday…you came to me…& spoke & looked in such a manner which has upset me…. My only hope…is that you with the power you have now will not when before god someday be accused of not raising & keeping up those that have fallen…. I remain Yours Truly

  —JAMES KELLY, LETTER TO A BROADMOOR ASYLUM OFFICIAL, 1884

  That evening as the swallows began their sunset swoops around the castle turrets, the answering wail of Gypsy violins echoed them from the courtyard.

  Godfrey joined me at my window to share the spectacle. Despite our deep forebodings about everything surrounding this castle and the creatures in it, nature and music had blended to raise the curtain on a splendid sunset accompanied by the heartfelt cries of the unseen violinists.

  We were so taken by the sights and sounds that we apparently did not hear the latch being withdrawn from my door, nor the knock that must have followed it.

  Godfrey sensed a presence and turned, ready to attack or defend.

  “C’est Mignon,” came a timid voice, as if the French girl had detected our nerves teetering on the very brink of erratic action.

  I also had turned by then, so she curtsied by rote. “Madame expect you for dinner.”

  “We had our dinner last night,” Godfrey said.

  Mignon shrugged. “It is an occasion sudden. A visitor from the village.”

  Of course the phrase set both of us trembling unseen like tuning forks. Visitor. Village. Unexpected. Had any of our dear ones…dear one, that is…fallen into Tatyana’s hands? Or was this some village elder who required soothing? Either way, were we to be brought down for further torture, or would we learn some crumb of information that would serve our ultimate purpose of escape?

  Godfrey had pulled his watch from his vest pocket to consult the time. We had resumed our daily garb: Godfrey in his traveling tweeds, I in my braids and borrowed Gypsy costume.

  “Full dress not nécessaire,” Mignon said hastily, curtseying again as if the gesture was a nervous tic, and perhaps it was when Tatyana was one’s mistress.

  We heard an indoor set of violins wailing from below like banshees.

  The castle vibrated with sound and a certain nervous tremor that the shrieking birds outside the windows did little to calm.

  It was as if the mountain were coming alive tonight.

  “Eh…trente minutes?” Mignon suggested.

  Godfrey nodded. “Half an hour.”

  We watched the dainty little maid curtsy one last time and mince from the room…and once she was in the hall, we heard her dainty hands lift the imprisoning bar back into place.

  Such a bizarre blend of the civilized and the savage were Tatyana and those she surrounded herself with!

  “Expect to be tormented, Nell,” Godfrey said, his mouth a taut line. “Our hostess plays with those in her power as a cat taunts mice. But she knows we cannot risk being ignorant of any occasion in the castle, especially an outside visitor who might somehow aid us.”

  I went to the window again. In this little time the vibrant color of sunset had faded into gray and black. The birds still wheeled, too high for their screams to be heard, as we also were.

  “Perhaps some Gypsy could be bribed.”

  “They took my money.”

  “But I have my chatelaine. Perhaps a silver trinket from it could be wrapped in a message to the village.” I thought for a moment, then hesitated.

  “Yes, Nell?”

  “The man who brought our food the other day winked at me. Perhaps if I saw him again—?”

  “Winked at you? You said nothing before about this.”

  “That is not the sort of thing one reports as an accomplishment. It was a feeble idea.”

  “No, it was not.” Godfrey’s sudden energy made me realize how demoralizing inactivity was for us both. Excitement flared in me like a fresh-struck lucifer. We were doing something, and it was my idea!

  “The message should be in Latin,” Godfrey decided, “and addressed to the local priest. An errand to a holy man is always taken more seriously, and he is likely one of the few village residents who can read. Also, Catholicism remains the peasant religion in these parts, as in Bohemia. I will compose a few urgent lines. You will transcribe them onto a page from your notebook and, once downstairs, will attempt to locate the local Lothario and take him aside. Show him the silver piece first. Then make the sign of the cross and say the word ‘father’
in Latin. And German, I think.”

  “Oh dear, Godfrey! That is a lot for me to master on such short notice. I don’t know how to make the sign of the cross, and what is the word for ‘father’ in Latin and German, and what if I do not see that particular Gypsy? Besides, they all look alike…filthy. And I would be required to…flirt, I suppose, with the creature.”

  “The Latin is Pater, the German Vader. And surely you have seen the sign of the cross despite your Anglican background.”

  “Pader, Vater. No! Pater. Vader. Well, yes, I have seen it, but I have always looked away. Religious belief should be a matter of inner conviction, not vulgar public display.”

  “I am afraid, Nell,” Godfrey said a trifle impatiently, “that vulgar public display is exactly what this scheme of yours requires. A sign of the cross is exactly that: top, bottom, and sides. Touch your middle right finger to your center forehead, breastbone, and left and right shoulder.”

  I frantically mimed his directions, feeling like I was striking myself.

  “Do not hit yourself so hard. And murmur the word ‘father’ as you do it, so the man realizes you mean the priest.”

  Now I was truly terrified. How was I to mutter foreign words and make alien gestures at the same time? But as I went through the ridiculous motions, I got another idea.

  “Before I do the cross and the fathers, I could tent my fingers like a church steeple, or for prayer. And then go into the other rigamarole.”

  “Excellent addition.”

  “But would a Gypsy understand these church symbols? They are pagans, are they not?”

  “Whatever they are, they travel through many Roman Catholic countries. Be assured that they have not looked away from the common religious expressions of the street.”

  “It is true, I saw many old women in Prague performing these gestures. I only wish I had watched, as Irene always does. She misses nothing.”

  “She is an actress. Her profession demands attention to small gestures. But you shall do splendidly.”

  I went through my pantomime again, gaining confidence.

  “But remember,” Godfrey said, “your first acting assignment is to attract the attention of the winking gentleman.”

  “Without attracting anyone else’s attention,” I added. “Spywork is most strenuous. I wonder how—?”

  “How?”

  “How anyone ever survives it. What if Tatyana sees me with the Gypsy? She is always watching.”

  “She will be amused that you are behaving so atypically. She loves to force people into acting against their better impulses.”

  “Oh. That is right, Godfrey. There is really nobody here to shock with my behavior, so there is no reason I should not behave shockingly for a higher purpose. I begin to understand why fallen women keep falling.”

  “Exactly. I only hope you have the opportunity to see the same man again. I am afraid the sole person in the castle I would have a prayer of gaining anything from by flirting is Tatyana herself…and the price of that compromise is too stiff to pay.”

  “Agreed, Godfrey! Better me than you!”

  We spent the next twenty minutes preparing our missive. I let the many accouterments on my chatelaine pass through my fingers like old friends, wondering which one I should sacrifice.

  “We will replace whatever you lose later, Nell,” Godfrey said, seeing my hesitation.

  “It was your gift,” I pointed out, “and I am attached to every piece of it.” My fingers paused on the etui, the needlecase that had held cork crumbs for the delectation of Sherlock Holmes. The tiny scissors that had dulled themselves on our heavy bed linens so that we would have a rope to escape upon. The smelling salts that had allowed Irene and me to survive the charnel-house odor of the brothel chamber where we had encountered the first women slaughtered by the Paris Ripper.

  With reluctance I selected the small vial and flicked open the ring that held it alongside its sisters. It was the closest item to solid silver, beautifully chased, and I was sure no Gypsy could resist it. I certainly could not.

  Godfrey had folded the note into four tiny quarters, with the word Pater writ large on the outside.

  This was a slim hope, dependent on a fortuitous string of unlikely events, but hope is always a tendril.

  I thrust the crackling bit of paper and my sterling silver talisman in my borrowed-skirt pocket. Together Godfrey and I went downstairs again, as unlikely a couple as was ever seen on even a Gilbert and Sullivan stage.

  Our previous dinner had indeed been a formal occasion. Tonight the serenading Gypsies roamed from room to room, gathering in corners to indulge in crude liquors.

  The lot in the courtyard had lit a fire on the stones. Their music played counterpoint to the interior tunes, creating a sort of drunken cacophony that perfectly reflected their state.

  The great library was still the dining chamber, but all pretense to elegance had been sacrificed to haste. Although the plate and china were fine, the foods upon them were exuberant heaps of peasant and Gypsy fare mixed with the more elegant dish.

  Even Tatyana was not attired in the European mode but rather like a woman from an earlier, ruder era. Her strawberry blond mane was worn loose until gathered in two plaits at her shoulders that then trailed down to her hips. She wore the jacket of a riding habit over some long billowing brocade skirt, and such a gleaming number of amber necklaces of all colors from palest yellow to gold and orange and red as dark as blackened blood that it made a sort of chest-piece like the bones Red Tomahawk wore.

  Red Tomahawk! Would that the Wild West warrior were here to help us. He would be a match for Madame Tatyana and her filthy minions!

  Speaking of filthy minions, I saw the glittering eyes of her body servant gazing at me from the grimy frame of his face and hair, which was even less appetizing now that he had the beginnings of a beard.

  Had I not known better, his pale, hungry, wolfish eyes were the spitting image of those of James Kelly. I shuddered at his glance, remembering Kelly rushing for me even as the chloroform put me into a bottomless swoon. I felt the flutter of his pawing hands at my bodice, saw his eyes…his eyes like pitiless moons.

  I shook myself free of the memory as I looked away from Tatyana’s tame brute. My winking Gypsy man would look like fair Romeo in contrast. I braced myself to study every Gypsy face until I found his.

  Godfrey, meanwhile, had been commandeered by Tatyana. In this she unknowingly played into our plans. I took a wine goblet from the table and made my sipping round of the room, pausing to nod and tap (head and foot) at the energetic violinists.

  As I really examined them for the first time, I found them no less crude and grimy than Tatyana’s servant, but far less sinister. Their aspects were dark: raven-dark hair and mustaches, skin more swarthy than filthy now that I looked closely upon it, but their persons were caparisoned in brightness, like my boots of many colors.

  And their dark Gypsy eyes glinted with hidden laughter and tears, not wolfish and pale and ravenous, but deep and secret and satisfied. They were lost in their music. And although that music had a raucous abandoned flavor, a deep and sensitive melancholy underlay it. Although I am abysmally untalented in the music field, my association with Irene has made me understand the art and passion of it. And once I listened, I found both art and passion in the Gypsies’ playing. Their eyes held the same lost, intent expression of Irene’s when essaying a Schubert étude on the piano.

  They paid me no attention. This was a boon under the circumstance, a kind of freedom I had not felt since waking in this accursed castle. I sensed that could we cross the many barriers as high and wide as mountains between us, they would understand my fundamental need for freedom, now that I understood it for the first time. And, for the first time I dared hope that my wild scheme to appeal to one of their number could bear some fruit.

  The ringing of a dinner bell called me away from my session in music appreciation.

  It was not a bell, but Tatyana’s oafish servant banging a
dinner fork upon a chased gilt goblet.

  It brought the dinner party together, though. Godfrey, who had never left her side. Myself. The Count in his same oddly old-fashioned dark garb, rather like a Spanish aristocrat of the time of Queen Elizabeth. I did not anywhere see Colonel Moran, and was vastly relieved. Tatyana would monopolize Godfrey tonight, as she had before, making an unholy trinity of her end of the table between herself, the Count, and Godfrey. And I would be left to myself at the other end, free to surreptitiously study the Gypsy servitors and musicians, hunting my would-be admirer.

  “Tonight,” Tatyana announced after nodding to her “Medved” to cease his banging, “we have the opportunity of a surprise guest.”

  Godfrey and I eyed each other, noting the special twist she had put on the word “opportunity,” taunting us with the hope that a stranger on the premises might give us some chance to grasp at freedom.

  “Ah, here he comes, after performing a few ablutions in his chamber.”

  She glanced to the hall, from which came the sharp advance of boots. A man, then. Not Irene! Unless she was masquerading as a man. No, not even Irene, not here and now, would be so bold…

  “I believe,” Tatyana said almost coyly, a mood that did not sit well upon her long, wiry form, “that our English friends will be most pleased to meet a countryman.”

  Definitely a man. My heart stopped.

  Quentin in some wild disguise?!

  42.

  A Mystery Man Indeed

  I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in; the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest.

  —THE COUNT, BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

  He came striding into the massive chamber, as confident as any British empire-builder. A pity he was neither actually British nor an empire-builder.

  I nearly stood at my place, but forced myself to push all my emotions—amazement, disbelief, fear—deep behind the lattice of my Gypsy corselet and my thumping heart.