by Rhys Bowen
I was grateful that Lady Middlesex suggested we retire to our sleeping berths early. As I came out of the bathroom at the end of the car I had the oddest sensation that I was being watched. I spun around, but the corridor was empty. It’s that awful Deer-Harte woman, I thought. She is making me jumpy now. And I have to confess that I found myself wondering if there was any truth in what Lady Middlesex had said about a Frenchman wanting a chance to meet me away from the chaperons. That was an interesting thought. Belinda had always maintained that Frenchmen made the best lovers. Not that I intended to invite him in, but a harmless flirtation might be fun.
I lingered in my doorway but no Frenchman materialized, so I went to bed. Deer-Harte had been right, however. There was no way of locking the compartment. Then it occurred to me that maybe a Frenchman would be more interested in my jewel case than in me. Perhaps Queenie had confided to Chantal that I was carrying my tiara. Perhaps she had announced this loudly enough that everyone around them heard. This was a disturbing possibility. I put my jewel case at the back of my bunk, behind my head, and propped my pillow against it. Although the bed was comfortable enough, I couldn’t sleep. As I lay there, being gently tossed by the rhythm of the train, I thought about Darcy and wondered where he was and why had hadn’t contacted me since his encounter with Fig. Surely he wouldn’t have been intimidated by her. Then I must have drifted off to sleep because I was standing in the fog with Darcy and he went to kiss me and then I found that he was biting my neck. “Didn’t you know I was really a vampire?” he asked me.
I woke with a start as the train went over a set of points with great jolting and shrieking, and I lay there, thinking about vampires. Of course I didn’t really believe in them, any more than I believed in the fairies and ghosts that the peasants in Scotland were convinced were real. Poor old Miss Deer-Harte was convinced they existed. Apart from reading Dracula long ago, which I’d found horribly creepy, I really knew very little about them. It might be rather exciting to meet one, although I wasn’t sure I wanted my neck bitten and I certainly didn’t want to become undead. I chuckled to myself, remembering that conversation with Belinda. Of course now I really wished that I had taken the risk and brought her along as my maid. We’d have had such a lark, and now I was stuck with a maid who was a walking disaster area and nobody to laugh with.
I was just drifting off again when I thought I heard someone at my door. We had been assured that the border agents would not disturb us during the night when we crossed from France into Switzerland and then into Austria. It could, of course, be Lady Middlesex, checking on me.
“Hello,” I said. “Who’s there?”
The door started to slide slowly open, and I was conscious of a tall, dark shape outside. Then I heard a stringent voice echoing down the corridor. “You there, what are you doing?”
Then a deep voice muttered, “Sorry. I must have mistaken my compartment.”
Lady Middlesex’s head appeared around my half-open door. “Some blighter was trying to enter your sleeping berth. The nerve of it. I shall have a word with the conductor and tell him that he should keep better watch on who comes into this car. Maybe I should keep you company, just in case he tries it again.”
“Oh, no, I’m sure I’ll be all right,” I said, deciding that a night with Lady Middlesex would be worse than any international jewel thief or assassin.
“I won’t sleep,” she said with determination. “I shall sit up all night and keep watch.”
In this knowledge I finally drifted off to sleep. In spite of Miss Deer-Harte’s predictions that we’d be murdered in our beds, I awoke to a perfect Christmas card scene that was familiar to me from my days at finishing school. Adorable little chalets perched on snow-covered hillsides, their roofs hidden under a thick blanket of snow. As I watched, the sun peeked between mountains, making the snow sparkle like diamonds. I opened my window and stood on my bed, breathing in crisp cold mountain air. Then the train plunged into a tunnel and I hastily shut the window again.
We breakfasted somewhere just after Innsbruck and came back to find our beds stowed and normal seats in our compartments. Luckily the scenery was so breathtaking as we climbed through spectacular mountain passes that conversation was not necessary until we moved into the flat country before Vienna. Here there were only patches of snow and the countryside was bare and gray. We had luncheon between Vienna and Budapest and when we came back to our compartments after a long and heavy meal, we found Chantal and Queenie already packing up our things, ready to disembark.
“I ain’t half glad to see you, miss,” Queenie said, apparently forgetting already how to address me. “I’ve been that scared. I didn’t sleep a wink among all them foreign types, and you should see what muck they eat—sausages so full of garlic that you could smell them a mile away. There was no decent food to be had.”
“Well, I expect we’ll have decent food at the castle,” I said, “so cheer up. The journey’s almost over and you’ve done very well.”
“I wouldn’t have come if I’d known,” she muttered. “Give me a nice café in Barking any day.”
“All ready?” Lady Middlesex’s face appeared around my door. “Apparently the train is making a special stop for us. So they don’t want to wait around too long. We must be ready to disembark the moment it comes to a halt.”
I looked out of the window at the gray countryside. It had become mountainous again and flakes of snow were falling. There was no sign of a city.
“Aren’t we going to the capital?” I asked.
“Not at all. The princess is being married at the royal ancestral castle in the mountains. That is why it is most important that I see you safely to your destination. I gather it is quite a long drive from the station.”
As she spoke, the train began to slow. We could hear the squealing of brakes and then it jerked to a halt. A door was opened for us and we were escorted down onto the platform of a small station. Peasants wrapped up against the cold stared at us with interest, while our trunks were unloaded from the baggage car. Then a whistle blew and the express disappeared into the gloom.
“Where the devil is the person they’ve sent to meet us?” Lady Middlesex demanded. “You stay there with the bags and I’ll go and find a porter.”
A local train came in, people got off and on and the platform emptied out. Suddenly I felt the back of my neck prickle with the absolute certainty that I was being watched. I spun around to see a deserted platform with swirling snow. Of course someone is watching us, I told myself. We must be frightfully interesting to peasants who have never gone farther than the next town. But I still couldn’t shake off the uneasiness.
“They can’t know we’re coming,” Miss Deer-Harte said. “They’ve probably mixed up dates. We’ll have to spend the night at a local inn and I can’t even imagine how awful and dangerous that will be. Bedbugs and brigands, you mark my words.”
At that moment Lady Middlesex reappeared with several porters. “The stupid man was waiting with his car, outside the station,” she said. “I asked him how we were supposed to know he was there if he didn’t present himself. Did he expect us to walk around looking for him? But he doesn’t appear to speak English. You’d have thought the princess might have taken the trouble to send an English-speaking person to welcome us. A proper welcoming party would have been nice—with little peasant girls in costume and a choir maybe. That’s how we would have done it in England, isn’t it? Really these foreigners are hopeless.” Suddenly she yelled, “Careful with that box, you idiot!” She leaped up and slapped the porter’s hand. He said something in the local language to the others and they gave a sinister laugh and took off with our bags. Miss Deer-Harte’s suspicions were beginning to rub off on me. I half expected the porters to have run off with our things, leaving us stranded, but we met up with them in a cobbled street outside the station.
Before us was a large square black vehicle with tinted windows. A chauffeur in black uniform stood beside it.
“My
God,” Miss Deer-Harte exclaimed in a horrified voice. “They’ve sent a hearse.”
Chapter 11
Bran Castle
Somewhere in the hills of Romania
Wednesday, November 16
Cold, bleak, mountainous.
“Is this the only motorcar?” Lady Middlesex demanded, waving her arms in the way that English people do when speaking with foreigners who don’t understand them. “Only one automobile? What about the servants? They can’t ride with us. Simply not done. Is there a bus they can take? A train?”
None of her questions produced any response at all and in the end she had to concede that the maids would have to sit in the front with the chauffeur. He didn’t seem to like the idea of this and yelled a lot, but it became clear that braver men than he had quailed before the force of Lady M’s determination. Chantal and Queenie tried to squeeze into the other front seat, but there simply wasn’t room. In spite of the spacious interior of the motorcar, there was only one seat and we three women fit rather snugly. In the end Chantal was given the front seat and poor Queenie had to sit on the floor with her back to the driver and the train cases and hatboxes piled beside her. The rest of the baggage was eventually loaded with some difficulty into the boot of the motorcar. It wouldn’t close, of course, and string had to be found to tie it together. We looked anything but regal—more like a traveling circus—as we finally set off from the station.
It was now almost dark but from what I could see we were driving through a small medieval city with narrow cobbled streets, picturesque fountains and tall gabled houses. Lights shone out and the streets were almost deserted. Those few pedestrians we passed were bundled into shapeless forms against the cold. As we left the town behind, snow started to fall in earnest, blanketing the ground around us with a carpet of white. The driver mumbled something in whatever language he spoke, presumably Romanian. For a while we drove in silence. Then the road entered a dark pine forest and started to climb.
“I don’t like the look of this at all,” Miss Deer-Harte said. “What did I tell you about brigands and wolves?”
“Wolves?” Queenie wailed. “Don’t tell me we’re going to be eaten by wolves!”
The driver perked up at a word he understood. He turned to us, revealing a mouth of yellow pointed teeth. “Ja—wolffs,” he said, and gave a sinister laugh.
Up and up we drove, the road twisting back and forth around hairpin bends with glimpses of a sickening drop on one side. Snow was falling so fast now that it was hard to see what was road and what might have been a ditch beside it. The driver sat up very straight, peering ahead through the windshield into murky darkness. There was not a light to be seen, only dark forest and rocky cliffs.
“If I had any idea it was this far, I would have arranged for a night in a hotel before we began the trip.” For the first time Lady Middlesex’s voice sounded tense and strained. “I do hope the man knows what he’s doing. The weather is really awfully bad.”
I was beginning to feel queasy from being in the middle and flung from side to side around those bends. Miss Deer-Harte’s bony elbow dug into my side. Queenie tried to brace herself in a corner but had a handkerchief to her mouth.
“You are to tell us if you wish to vomit,” Lady Middlesex said. “I shall make him stop for you. But you are to contain yourself until you can get out of the vehicle, is that clear?”
Queenie managed a watery smile.
“I’m sure it’s not far now,” Lady Middlesex said cheerfully. She leaned forward. “Driver, is it far now? Est it beau-coup loin?” she repeated in atrocious French.
He didn’t answer. At last we came to the top of the pass. A small inn was beside the road and lights shone out from it. The driver stopped and went around to open the bonnet, presumably to let the motor cool down. Then he disappeared inside the inn, leaving us in the freezing car.
“What’s that?” Miss Deer-Harte whispered, pointing into the darkness on the other side of the road. “Look, among the trees. It’s a wolf.”
“Only a large dog, I’m sure,” Lady Middlesex said.
I said nothing. It looked like a wolf to me. But at that moment the inn door opened and several figures emerged.
“Brigands,” Miss Deer-Harte whispered. “We’ll all have our throats slit.”
“Ordinary peasants,” Lady Middlesex sniffed. “See, they even have children with them.”
If they were peasants they certainly looked like a murderous bunch, the men with big black drooping mustaches, the women large and muscular. They poured out of the inn, a remarkably large number of them, peering into the motorcar with suspicious faces. One woman crossed herself and another held up crossed fingers, as if warding off evil. A third snatched a child who was venturing too close to us and held it protectively wrapped in her arms.
“What on earth is the matter with them?” Lady Middlesex demanded.
One old man dared to come closer than the rest. “Bad,” he hissed, his face right at the window. “Not go. Beware.” And he spat on the snow.
“Extraordinary,” Lady Middlesex said.
The chauffeur returned, driving back the people, of whom there was now quite a crowd. He closed the bonnet, climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine again. Words were shouted at us and we took off to a scene of people gesticulating after us.
“What was that all about, driver?” Lady Middlesex asked, hoping that he miraculously now understood English, but the man stared straight ahead of him as the road dipped precariously downward.
I was now feeling rather uneasy about the whole thing. Had Lady Middlesex misunderstood and made us disembark from the train at the wrong station? Were we in fact in the wrong car? Surely no royal castle could be at such a godforsaken spot as this. Clearly Miss Deer-Harte was echoing my thoughts.
“Why on earth would they choose to hold a royal wedding at such an isolated place?” she said.
“Tradition, apparently.” Lady Middlesex still attempted to sound confident but I could sense she was also having doubts. “The oldest daughter always has to be married at the ancestral home. It’s been done for centuries. After the ceremony here the wedding party will travel to Bulgaria, where there will be a second ceremony at the cathedral and the bride will be presented to her new countrymen.” She sighed. “Ah, well, if one will travel abroad, one is bound to encounter strange customs. So primitive compared with home.”
We were slowing down. The driver grinned, showing his pointy teeth. “Bran,” he said.
We had no idea what Bran was but we could see that there were lights shining from a rocky outcropping towering over the road. As we peered out of the window we could make out the shape of a massive castle, so old and formidable looking that it appeared to be part of the rock itself. The motorcar stopped outside a pair of massive wooden gates. These slowly rolled mysteriously open and we glided through into a courtyard. The gates shut behind us with loud finality. The motorcar came to a halt and the driver opened the doors for us.
Miss Deer-Harte was first to step out into the snow. She stood, peering up in horror at the towering stone battlements that seemed to stretch into the sky all around us. “My God,” she said. “What have you brought us to, Lady M? This is a veritable house of horrors, I can sense it. I’ve always been able to smell death and I smell it here.” She turned to Lady Middlesex, who had just emerged on the other side of the motorcar. “Oh, please let’s leave straightaway. Can’t we pay this man to drive us back to the train station? I’m sure there will be an inn in the town where we can spend the night. I really don’t want to stay here.”
“Fiddlesticks,” Lady Middlesex said. “I’m sure it will be perfectly comfortable inside and of course we must do our duty to Lady Georgiana and present her properly to her royal hosts. We can’t leave her in the lurch. It’s simply not British. Now buck up, Deer-Harte. You’ll feel better after a good meal.”
I too was staring up at those massive walls. There seemed to be no windows below a second or thi
rd floor and the only chinks of light shone between closed shutters. I have to admit that I also swallowed hard and all the snippets of conversation came rushing back to me—Binky saying the king and queen didn’t want to send their sons because it was too dangerous, and even Belinda making jokes about brigands and vampires. And why had those people at the top of the pass looked at us with fear and loathing and even crossed themselves? I echoed Lady Middlesex’s words to myself. Buck up. This is the twentieth century. The place might look quaint and gothic but inside it will be normal and comfortable.
Queenie clambered out of the car and stood close to me, clutching at my sleeve. “Ain’t this a god-awful-looking place, miss?” she whispered. “Gives you the willies. It makes the Tower of London look like a nice country cottage, don’t it?”
I had to smile at this. “It certainly does, but you know I live in an old castle in Scotland and it’s perfectly nice inside. I’m sure we’ll have a grand time. Look, here comes somebody now.”
A door had opened at the top of a flight of stone steps and a man in black and silver livery with a silver star-shaped decoration hanging at his neck was descending. He was silver haired and rather grand looking with high cheekbones and strange light eyes that glinted like a cat’s.
“Vous êtes Lady Georgiana of Glen Garry and Rannoch?” he asked in French, which threw us all off balance. “Bienvenue. Welcome to Bran Castle.”
I suppose I had forgotten that French tended to be the common language of the aristocracy of Europe.
“This is Lady Georgiana,” Lady Middlesex said in the atrociously English-sounding French of most of my countrymen. She indicated me. “I am her traveling companion, Lady Middlesex, and this is my companion, Miss Deer-Harte.”
“And for companion Miss Deer-Harte has somebody?” he inquired. “A little dog, maybe?”