Behind it came not one of my companions, but both!
“Nell,” Godfrey whispered, his hand moving inside his coat jacket for what I well knew was a foot-long steel hatpin. “You have reunited with your Gypsy admirer.”
“He is no admirer,” I whispered vehemently, “and no Gypsy either. This is Sherlock Holmes.”
“The devil you say!”
I refrained from agreeing that Sherlock Holmes was the devil indeed.
“Mr. Norton, I presume, and Mr. Bram Stoker,” the devil himself said blandly. “Miss Huxleigh has had a bit of a fright and needs to be escorted to more civilized spheres upstairs.”
“Nell?” Godfrey asked.
“James Kelly, the Ripper suspect, lies bound in a packing box only yards away.”
“The fiend who had a knife to your throat in Paris?”
Of course Sherlock Holmes had to put himself in a good light. “He had a knife to her throat only minutes ago here, but I happened upon them in the nick of time.”
“Good God, Miss Huxleigh,” said Bram Stoker, for once more distressed by the nearness of ordinary mayhem rather than that shrouded in supernatural trappings.
“I’m quite all right,” I tried to explain, not seeing why we should all be shuffled aside.
“We can’t go farther down,” Godfrey advised. “I was right about there being an exit from the cellar into the mountain, but what serves as an exit also serves as an entrance. A mob of people have been flooding into the great open room below.”
“What sort of people?” Mr. Holmes demanded.
Bram Stoker answered. “People from the area. Peasants, humble folk. I must say that what first drew my attention to the castle when I visited the neighborhood were murmurs among the villagers. Their young people were coming to staff the castle in great numbers. Although they had glimpsed Madame Tatyana in her carriage and knew she was in residence, she and her associates were often gone for long periods, and still the castle swallowed village lads and lassies like the whale consumed Jonah. When the older folk came to inquire, they always found a surly encampment of Gypsies in the main courtyard preventing entrance. Only the testimony of the village priest to the great renovations the castle was undergoing quieted the villagers’ unease.”
Mr. Holmes snorted in an ungentlemanly fashion at the mention of this local priest. Dressed as he was, the reaction was in character at least. “When I have time I will be most interested in discovering how and when Father Lupescu came to lead this isolated little flock.”
“You believe he is a fraud, a false priest?” I asked.
The face he turned to me was serious beneath its Gypsy insouciance. “No, I believe that he is something much worse.” He appeared to think for a moment. (In fact, Mr. Sherlock Holmes made a great show of any act of ratiocination he troubled to undertake. I believe this theatrical mannerism accounted for much of the awe in which his intellect was held.)
“I am here alone,” he went on, “and we hardly number enough to deal with the mob assembling below and what it will all too soon become. I have resources, but they are remote, for now. I suggest we consider this a rescue mission first and a hunting party second. We must steal out of the castle from above.”
“What of the Gypsies?” Bram Stoker asked. “Their numbers have grown into a small army, and it will be as hard to pass through going out of the castle as trying to come into it. And need I mention the number of enormous, fierce hounds that travel with them and treat all non-Romany like fresh bones to worry?”
“Sesostros the Mute will help gain passage,” Mr. Holmes said, bowing with true Gypsy pride. “It would be best if Miss Huxleigh would feign some injury and the men assist her. But we will worry about the method when we have achieved the opportunity.”
Sounds from below welled up for a moment, like the distant roar of a beast.
“They were assembling the wood for an enormous fire,” Mr. Stoker said, looking backwards with a curious look of longing and fear.
“No time to be lost,” Mr. Holmes declared, his very urgency of tone herding us up the stairs ahead of him before any of us could think to object. “Quickly! We must run for our lives until we reach the castle’s inhabited sections, and then we must be as subtle as serpents.”
I had seen enough of the violent doings under the Paris Exposition to sprint up the steps in my uninhibiting trousers, my cupped hand sheltering the candle flame.
When we reached a level passage, Godfrey leaped into the lead, for he had more thoroughly explored these regions than anyone present, even the vaunted Sherlock Holmes, who kept close behind him.
This level was also mostly empty except for broken shards of ancient furniture and the ubiquitous storage boxes. I wondered if anyone would find James Kelly. Then Godfrey and Mr. Holmes ran up another set of stairs, and Mr. Stoker cupped my elbow in his huge hand and pushed me after them until I was panting hard enough to endanger my precious candle flame.
The next level was close enough to the occupied portions of the castle that some dim beams of light penetrated its darkness, likely from unshuttered windows on the next level.
“Less haste and more quiet,” Mr. Holmes advised in a whisper.
The two men bracketed me like an honor guard as the Gypsy detective struck out a few paces ahead of us, our advance guard.
If only Quentin had been here! He would have been much more useful. Once we reached the level upon which the library was located, Mr. Holmes slowed his pace to a stroll.
From above came the occasional thump or bang of persons moving about. We were now trapped between two busily occupied parts of the castle, both offering exits of one sort or another.
“It’s a pity we loosened the rope from the library window,” I whispered to Godfrey.
“What rope?” asked Mr. Holmes, who seemed to possess the keen ears of a Shropshire rabbit.
“Nell fashioned an escape rope from the bed linens in our chamber, which we used to climb from our window down to the library chamber, there.”
Sesostros frowned darkly at my braided hair. “I had no idea that Miss Huxleigh’s plaiting talents could be applied to more useful tasks. What do you mean that you loosened it?”
“We made our escape on an angle from the higher window to the lower ones,” Godfrey explained. “Rather than betray our escape route should our absence be discovered, we let the rope dangle straight down. We can only reach it from Nell’s chamber, and then it will only lead us back inside the castle, as it’s too short to reach anywhere near the ground.”
“I see,” said Mr. Holmes, looking as if he wished he didn’t. “I suppose it might do as a desperate measure, but our best choice is to try to walk out unchallenged. If we are spotted or stopped, let me deal with it, or Sesostros the Mute, rather.”
With our duplicitous guide in the lead, we spiraled up a narrow staircase that led us to a place of noise and strong smells, the castle kitchens.
These rooms were fortunately deserted. Godfrey paused to snatch up a crumpled white linen towel, smash a tomato against it, and wrap my forearm with it.
In an instant I became the walking wounded, and it made sense that Godfrey and Bram supported me on either side.
Godfrey also seized a pair of chopping knives for himself and Bram to conceal inside their jacket pockets.
Mr. Holmes observed our acting and armament rituals without comment, but I suspect he found them nothing more than amusing.
He led us into the maze of hallways that connected the castle’s main rooms on this level. Again, we heard noise and tumult from a distance, this time coming from outside the castle. We crossed the flagstones to the great entrance.
I glimpsed a twilight scene lit by torches, somehow dismayed that dusk had fallen. It did not seem possible.
In that half-dark, I saw figures limned against the glow of a bonfire, Gypsies and others. Perhaps a half dozen of their covered wagons were drawn up before the castle, and horses and dogs were silhouetted against both fire and the fading sun
set.
From the costume of some of the women I glimpsed—white aprons and caps—I gathered that at least a portion of those present were villagers, for I never saw a Gypsy woman wearing white of any kind.
A tall figure crossed the open space by the castle entrance…the priest who was a Count who was a fraud!
I did not look forward to our motley party confronting him, no matter what mime the Gypsy mute who led us performed. Mr. Holmes was astute in thinking that people would shun a figure with such an obvious handicap…those who can hear, see, and speak shy from confronting those who cannot, although a touch of leprosy would have done our group more good if we wished to escape unchallenged.
Indeed, with half our number able to pass as Gypsies (although what anyone would make of me in Godfrey’s shortened trousers I have no idea), it was just possible that we might stroll among and through them to freedom.
This vista was so welcome that we all stopped to draw a mutually liberated breath. And in that communal silence, harsh against the sounds of the gathering outside, we heard one sharp, snapping sound, like a stick shattering in a fire.
Alas, all of us were worldly enough (myself unwillingly so) to recognize at once that we had heard a firearm being cocked…behind us.
We turned, I and my three doughty companions, to face Colonel Sebastian Moran holding a most peculiar weapon upon us…a walking stick!
46.
A Midsummer Nightmare
But fare ye well; ’tis partly my own fault; which death or absence soon shall remedy.
—HELENA IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
The brass handle of the long wooden cane caressed Colonel Sebastian Moran’s clean-shaven cheek. Since his stance was that of a man holding a rifle to his shoulder, none of us were inclined to challenge his presumed command of the situation.
“An air rifle, lady and gentlemen and Gypsy traitor,” he announced. “It can shatter stone at three hundred yards and what it can do to bone at thirty feet none of you would like to see, nor live to see again were you its target.”
We said nothing.
“You are wanted in the dining chamber.” He gestured abruptly with the barrel of his…cane.
I really could not contemplate any more bizarre events of the day, so joined my fellows in shuffling gingerly across the vast hall and through the open coffered doors into the room that had become so familiar to us all, Sesostros included.
No food and music occupied the room this night, only our sinister hostess clothed in a voluminous red-black velvet dressing gown, her hair loosened like tongues of amber-orange fire over her shoulders.
She was writing in a small book covered in yellow moiré, but shut it when we entered the room.
“Do you know what day—I should say, night—this is?” she asked.
“We have lost track of time, for some reason,” Godfrey answered.
She looked up at him and smiled almost gently. Almost.
“Always the barrister, Mr. Norton. Precision is your God. I do not know what my God is. Chaos, perhaps? Miss Huxleigh, how you surprise me, for an Englishwoman. Trousers, you minx! And a Gypsy swain in tow. I saw you two speak with hands across the room, a courtship in pantomime. Or was it conspiracy? I cannot decide whether I most wish to see you play the coquette or the two-faced fool. Either role is against your religion, isn’t it, so both would be equally satisfying to me.”
Tatyana next let her odd red-brown gaze, the color of dried blood, fall on Bram Stoker. “Well acted, my not-so-naive friend! I am almost inclined to let you play my Medved, since the original is unavailable for the time being, but I fear you lack his depth of character.”
This was so outrageously insulting that I drew in an indignant breath on Mr. Stoker’s behalf.
“Yes, Miss Huxleigh?” She taunted me with a supercilious lift of the eyebrows. “You are about to be brave and draw attention to yourself when any woman of sense would shrink into invisibility behind the men. Do you aspire to usurp the place of your bolder, brighter, more beautiful friend? Perhaps in Mr. Norton’s affections? Perhaps in another’s?”
Well, I would have run out of gasps had I expressed my full indignation at each of these ludicrous and irrational charges.
Instead I said, “I was about to say that the only time I was inclined to shrink from anything was when your pet Medved assaulted me in my room but since I was able to repulse him—a quite fitting verb, I might add, for such an uncouth person—no shrinking was required.”
“Ah, yes, but were you able to repulse him when you lay drugged in your humble wooden crate? Although you mostly resembled a corpse during that time, I doubt that would have stopped Medved.”
She had publicly laid bare my worst nightmare, and I had no response. Bram Stoker did.
“A most interesting choice of words, Madam. Am I to believe that you credit these local legends of the living dead, of those who seek corpses for sustenance? I fear Miss Huxleigh is far too lively to be a survivor of such a creature, and if she were, I would advise you not to sleep too soundly at night, for she would be far more dangerous than the usual Englishwoman.”
“Ah, a man after my own interests. Are you anyone of note in your world? Forgive me, but I have never heard of you.”
“Alas, no. I am as I appear to be…an enthusiastic traveler and a collector of arcane legends. I shall without a doubt add you to my roster, as a lamia perhaps?”
“I think you are much more interesting than a tiresome barrister. I would prefer to be a succubus, however.”
For some reason, Bram Stoker blushed like the burning bush of the Bible.
Tatyana leaned back and pushed the yellow book away like a full plate she had partaken of too much already.
“I don’t know what to do with you, my guests.” Her eyes fell at last on the rakish figure I knew to be Sherlock Holmes, although he was behaving now like a rather bright bird, glancing from face to face, apparently attempting to understand without benefit of hearing.
“Gypsies,” she said considering, “are so predictably loyal when paid enough. That you were not disturbs me.”
Sherlock Holmes squinted at her speaking lips, then shrugged and smiled and glanced at me.
“What did you bribe him with?” Tatyana asked me without taking her eyes from the supposed Sesostros.
“Kindness?” I suggested. “A person who does not speak is much overlooked.”
“Kindness! Just the sort of pablum I would expect from your lips. You really are too good to be true. It will be a pleasure to introduce you to the rites below.”
“I have seen them already,” I answered.
“But not as a participant.”
I was quite surprised when I felt every man in the room, excepting Colonel Moran, tense like a cocked air rifle.
Although being a victim of the cult’s bloody rites had long been my greatest fear since being captured, when the actual threat was made, I was surprised to find myself more angry than frightened.
Unlike our hostess, I knew that Sherlock Holmes carried a pistol and that Godfrey and Bram sported knives and one heretofore proven-effective hatpin. I myself kept custody of Kelly’s knife. It is true that we were a piteous number compared to the hordes assembling inside and outside of the castle, but I could not help remembering another ritual scene where Buffalo Bill and his valiant companion Red Tomahawk literally leaped into the fray while the pistol-armed Rothschild agents held back in horror. Irene’s was the only pistol to speak on that occasion, I recalled, so it struck me that a few valiant souls were far more defense than an army of the easily discouraged. For what was discouragement but a lack of courage?
If Tatyana could not discourage us, she could not defeat us.
I wonder if that ever had occurred to her.
It had certainly never occurred to her that we might be armed with more than audacity.
“Call the escorts to take our guests to the ceremonies below,” she ordered Colonel Moran.
He hesitated. “I don�
�t care to see Europeans—”
“Like myself, you have no true homeland, Colonel, no continent to call your own. We are our own island nation now and rule it. Call the celebrants of the season.”
He left the room, and we four held our ground in silence. Tatyana’s complacency, or perhaps her contempt, kept her from even suspecting that any of us might have managed to arm ourselves, much less all four.
“The study of mankind is man,” Tatyana said, eyeing us. “‘What fools these mortals be.’”
With a chill I recognized Puck’s final lines from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, whose cast included a fairy queen named Titania! This Titania had fallen in love with a lowly tailor who magically had been given the head of a donkey. It was all a trick that her lord Oberon—was that Colonel Moran?—had used to teach his contrary queen a lesson. Was Godfrey to play the ignominious part of the tailor Bottom, then? And Puck, the mischievous sprite, was that possibly…Sherlock Holmes? And who was I? Confused Helena, perhaps. And Irene? Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. And was Pink…Hermia, the object of both Demetrius’s and Lysander’s love? Were they Quentin and Bram Stoker, then? Or, more loathsomely, James Kelly and Medved?
“My God,” Bram Stoker murmured beside me, openly despairing for the first time that night. “Curse me for a theatrical dunce who has lost track of time! It is indeed Midsummer’s Night. Today is June twenty-first. The summer solstice. An ancient pagan feast day.”
Only I heard his self-accusing muttering, but it was dire enough to divert me from my mad recasting of Shakespeare’s play. Even I knew that ancient pagan feasts were a likely time for devilish rituals.
“And you,” said Tatyana after a silence, gazing at Sherlock Holmes in his Gypsy guise. “Are you merely mute, or more clever than I think? Or simply stupid?”
I give credit to Mr. Holmes for nodding and grinning amiably through her roll call of questions, all the while making gestures that could be Gypsy signs or a mute’s attempt at sketching out an answer.
“It’s a pity that you could not stay where you were put,” she said to the rest of us, her hand lifting from beside her heavy velvet gown to reveal the elaborately chased revolver she held, far larger and more ornate than Irene’s trusty model of many years. “Too many unwanted guests are descending on the castle, and we shall have to leave sooner than expected. So shall you all, although not by the route you expected.”
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