Most unladylike, I itched to slap her.
Instead, since the sun was shining, I found my way outside via a side door, which seemed to be the duke and duchess’s private entrance. Only one soldier stood on guard outside. Although he looked a little surprised to see me, he merely stood aside to let me pass. I bade him good morning in German.
The grounds within the castle’s outer walls stretched down to the gates we’d entered by last night and, apparently, roughly the same distance all around. I walked through a pleasant little wood, much less dense than the trees beyond the wall, a large formal garden with a maze where members of the finely dressed nobility strolled in their hats and gloves. The few who noticed me looked askance at my lack of proper attire, but bowed to me with all respect. I was clearly recognized as the duchess’s sister. I supposed I was developing a reputation for eccentricity that Augusta would not like.
Perhaps I wouldn’t like it either. After all, this wasn’t Alnwick Park where I’d grown up. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be the next insane member of the extended ducal family.
Surely Prince Kasimir and his mother must have done something more than walk outdoors without hats to have been put away as insane? I thought about my dream, or my ghostly visitation, whichever it had been. I could still remember all the details of our conversation. He had undoubtedly been a little odd, although in a rather nice way—apart from his desire to kill his gaoler with a file, although in the circumstances, perhaps even that was understandable. A ghost couldn’t kill anyone anyway. I didn’t think. I frowned as I reached the high wall boundary of the garden. I really needed someone who knew about ghosts. I couldn’t rely on fiction for this.
Thoughtfully, I gazed up at the castle. The wall I’d arrived at was not the edge of the castle grounds, but a division running from the castle itself down into the trees below, probably as far as the outer boundary wall. Beyond this dividing wall, the castle presented a blank, almost windowless face, apart from the odd gap that was more like an arrow slit. Some of those weren’t even glazed. Other larger windows had been covered by shutters or just boarded up. Further along, one of the fairy-tale towers rose up, beautiful and imposing and much more stark than it had seemed at greater distance.
I transferred my gaze to my side of the castle and walked back the way I’d come until I found my own window. The tower I’d noticed beyond the wall was surely where I’d seen the prisoner Kasimir, who was possibly a ghost. Or a figment of my dreams.
“Lady Guinevere,” a mild male voice said beside me.
I snapped my gaze back down to my own level and saw a well-dressed man holding his hat and bowing respectfully. A young man with an easy, pleasant smile.
“Guin,” I said automatically.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Guinevere is too long a name for a short person. I prefer Guin.”
The man laughed. “Why, you are charming and not short at all! Merely petite and elfin. Forgive my approach when we haven’t yet been introduced, but you seemed too alone.”
“I like it that way,” I said frankly, before the rudeness of such a remark struck me and I blushed. “That is, I have no objection to solitude, but I am pleased to meet you, Herr…?”
“Gerritzen. Bernhard von Gerritzen, at your service.”
He bowed again, and I curtseyed, neither of us very seriously. “So you seem interested in the castle,” he observed.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Well, the east and southern wings are! The rest is a bit of a draughty hotchpotch flung up over the centuries.”
“I like the old bits too—at least what I’ve seen so far. I presume you are part of the duke’s court?”
“Hoping to be more so. I wish to serve the duke—and my country—in some meaningful way.” He paused and plucked a yellow rose from a rather beautiful bush and presented it to me with a smile.
Unused to gallantry, I thanked him somewhat feebly and tried not to touch the thorns as I took it from him.
“Good day, Lady Guinevere,” said a lady’s voice on my other side in heavily accented English. I turned to her with a feeling of relief and found a stunningly beautiful young woman smiling at me. Her wide, print-trimmed gown and matching bonnet were both exquisite and fashionable.
“Lady Guin,” Herr von Gerritzen corrected her gently.
Although the lady’s gaze barely flickered in his direction, I caught a definite hint of irritation in her still-fixed smile.
“Forgive me,” she said. “My English is poor.”
“So is my German,” I said to her in that language. “Maybe we should try that since I’m in your country.”
“Isn’t she delightful?” said Herr von Gerritzen.
“Adorable,” said the lady, offering me her hand. “Angelika von Jurgensdorf. How do you find Silberwald, Lady Guin?”
By the time Augusta and the duke rode back into the castle, Bernhard von Gerritzen and Angelika von Jurgensdorf had drawn quite a sizeable group around us. I was rather thrown to find my normally ignored witticisms laughed at, and my opinions sought as if they actually mattered. I was, I guessed, the curiosity of the hour for the duke’s bored courtiers. We were about to go inside by the main entrance when the duke and duchess rode into the courtyard with their small entourage, which included three soldiers, two civilian gentlemen, and two ladies, including Hilde.
Two of the soldiers kept well back. The third, who appeared to be their officer, waited until the duke and duchess had dismounted, then bowed to their indifferent backs and rode after his men. Catching my insatiably curious gaze, he blinked, lifted his brows and grinned, reminding me of my brother’s old school friends.
When I glanced back at my sister, the duke was murmuring something in her ear. She looked around until her gaze found me.
“Guin,” she said peremptorily and turned to walk inside with her husband.
This was why I hadn’t wanted to come with her. Being the youngest, I’d never had much consequence among my siblings, but it grated to be treated like a servant. I had to bite my lip to prevent the sarcastic response that would have been her lot at home.
The duke parted from his wife by the staircase, kissing her hand, and his gentlemen bowed and followed him. Augusta sailed on up the stairs with only Hilde and me for company.
“We’re lunching privately,” Augusta said grandly. “Later, we’ll meet some of the noble women in the garden and there will be a grand reception and public dinner tonight, with fireworks in the garden to celebrate our marriage. Tomorrow evening is a musical recital, and the night after, the grand masquerade ball. As my sister, Guin, you’ll have to learn how to behave.”
“More lessons in etiquette?” I said with dejection as we entered her private apartments. “Are manners here really so radically different?”
“Not so much manners as personalities,” said the baroness, who was waiting for us. She glanced at Augusta. “I presume His Highness wishes me to advise?”
Augusta inclined her head. “If you please. I imagine it’s as well if I know the undesirables too.” She shed her jacket into the arms of Button and draped herself on the sofa.
“Undesirables is a little harsh,” the baroness said pleasantly, sitting on the chair opposite. “No one truly undesirable is admitted to the duke’s court. On the other hand, there are those on the outer fringes who would like very much to be on the inner circle. Court and government appointments are both lucrative and prestigious. Herr von Gerritzen is a highly ambitious young man of very little wealth, who is not above using you, Lady Guin, to get to the duke. While the Baroness von Jurgensdorf is very keen to join the ranks of the duchess’s ladies.”
I frowned slightly. “You mean, they were cultivating me because they imagined I had some influence with Gus—my sister?”
“Exactly,” Augusta said impatiently. “Don’t be so naive in the future.�
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I narrowed my eyes, an old and involuntary gesture of defiance. “Am I forbidden from speaking to these people? Perhaps you’d better make me a list that I can check before I deign to return any greetings.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous, Guin,” Augusta snapped. “You’re giving me a headache. Just drop into conversation that you have no influence. You’ll soon find they drift away.”
I don’t think she even grasped how humiliating her words were to me, or how crushing the very idea was to my spirits. I refused to show her, merely ate my lunch with gusto, tasting very little of it which was, undoubtedly, a waste, before returning to my own room for some peace.
Restlessly, I walked to the window and gazed out. I could see the dividing wall I’d walked up to earlier, but nothing beyond it that was very close to the castle. There was an inconvenient corner to the building, which meant I couldn’t even see the tower.
On impulse, I opened the window and hung out of it as far as I dared until I could see the edge of the tower rising towards the sky. Looking downward, I could also see some of the land beyond the wall—mostly trees and overgrown bushes, quite at odds with the rest of the carefully laid-out grounds.
I slid back in the window, debating whether to see if I could approach the hidden ground from the other side, or retrace last night steps to see if I’d been dreaming or if I really had seen a ghost. Or even a prisoner.
Deciding the latter was more important, I seized my shawl and hurried to the door. Once there, I paused and turned back to the wardrobe. On the inside shelf lay my little bag of medicines and bandages. I rummaged until I found the little jar of ointment made by Bessie, our old nanny at Alnwick Park. I supposed I should find out what was in it, because Bessie wouldn’t be there forever to make it for us, but it was so familiar to me, patching my own and everyone else’s hurts for as long as I could remember that I was too used to taking it for granted.
I put the jar in the pocket of my dress—just in case, I told myself—and left the room.
The passages leading away from the main part of the castle weren’t quite such odd shapes as I remembered from last night. There really had been a kind of dream quality to that journey…and yet the way was familiar, as if I really had come this way before. I turned left into another passage, just as I remembered, and kept walking until it ended in stairs blocked with fallen rubble.
I frowned. That wasn’t right. I didn’t remember that at all. I went back to the main corridor and kept going. The light breeze whipped in through very occasional unglazed or broken windows which seemed to admit no sun. No wonder it was cold here, and so gloomy even in daylight, that I could hardly make out my surroundings.
For the first time, I worried about how safe it actually was here. If the stairs I’d found had fallen in, what other masonry might land on me at any moment? It made all my tiny hairs stand on end, but resolutely, I kept going.
I nearly missed the next left-hand turning, and when I did finally notice it when I almost passed it, I thought seriously about giving up my search. It seemed scarily dark down there…
However, I’d come this far. I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked on. I wished I’d brought a candle…
Surely I hadn’t walked so far last night? None of this seemed familiar…but at last I saw light and increased my pace, hurrying towards my salvation. When I realized it was a window, and the dead end to the passage, my shoulders slumped in defeat. Almost certainly, I’d dreamed last night’s adventure. There was no deserted hall, no spiral stair to a prison tower, and no strange and handsome prisoner. Not even a minor ghost, let alone the shade of the insane Prince Kasimir.
The window was filthy with decades of dust. On impulse, I unwrapped my handkerchief from around the ointment jar and wet it with my tongue. Then I rubbed a patch of glass just in front of my eye until I could make out a thickly overgrown garden. To my left, surely, was the high wall I’d walked up to this morning, and to the right, in the distance, another, newer wall with an even taller hedge behind it, completely enclosing this part of the castle grounds. So far as I could tell. There might, I supposed, have been a door in either of the high walls, though it certainly wasn’t obvious from here.
So, if I was in the middle of what I’d seen as the castle’s blank face, then the tower was surely somewhere to my right…
Except I’d taken no right turns last night after leaving my bedroom. All the same, I went back the way I’d come with a bit more urgent anticipation, feeling my way along the right-hand wall until I found a wide curve in the stone and a gap. With my eyes now more used to the extreme gloom, I realized there was some grey daylight somewhere down this passage. Although it seemed to double back at an acute angle in the kind of direction I’d just come from, I thought that last night, coming from the opposite direction, this right-hand passage might not have seemed like a turning at all, more of a veer that I hadn’t really noticed in my sleepy exploration.
Excited now, I hurried on as quickly as I dared…until I found myself in the big, empty hall with the row of glazed windows. My heart thudded, because it was so familiar, because last night had been real. Slowly, I turned my body and my gaze towards the spiral stone staircase, and listened.
Was he up there? Did he haunt this part of the house for some particular reason? I needed more information… I crept forward towards the stairs, hearing only the rapid beat of my own heart. As I climbed, my spine tingled. I jerked my head around, grasping the bodice of my gown in instinctive and useless self-protection. For an instant, I thought I saw something, a pale shadow flitting just out of my vision. When I turned completely around, it had vanished.
I shook my head. My overactive imagination was frightening me more than what was actually here—unswept stairs covered in dust under my feet, and cobwebs over my head. On the first landing, I hesitated by the door, which was still closed. I listened very carefully before I tried to push it open. It was still locked, so I climbed higher, to the room with the table. Again, the door stood open, though the room itself was empty.
I shivered as a sudden wave of dread swept over me. I didn’t know if I was afraid of finding the prisoner or not finding him, whatever his form.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped inside—and a wild, moaning cry rent the air. A mixture of howling wind and tortured roar, it sounded like terrible pain, and yet like nothing that could have possibly come from a human. The blood froze in my veins. I felt as if my hair stood on end, driven back from my face by the force of the moan. Worse, something thudded above me, as if it was coming through the ceiling.
I fled.
By the time I bolted into the corridor leading away from the disused hall, I was ashamed of my own cowardice. I even halted, half-inclined to go back and investigate. But in truth, I needed to be armed with more than a small jar of ointment to face whatever beast had made that awful sound.
Besides, I would be wanted soon by Augusta to take tea in the garden with the ladies of the court.
“Feeble excuse,” I muttered to myself as I hurried back in the direction of my room. I grew angrier with myself as I brushed the cobwebs from my hair and washed the smudges from my hands and face. Instead of solving last night’s mystery, by fleeing in such a cowardly manner, I’d merely deepened it.
Chapter Three
The beautiful baroness Angelika von Jurgensdorf was among Augusta’s guests in the garden. I spotted her from my place by my sister’s side, which rather quickly became the place behind my sister as more interesting women than I attracted her attention. Augusta was finding she could communicate adequately in a mixture of English and French and a very few words in German. On the other hand, I thought cynically as I slipped away, she seemed more likely than I to fall for the flattery of ambitious courtiers.
I made my way to where Angelika stood with her cup of tea, looking elegant and serenely happy. Only her eyebrows twitched with humour as I
approached.
“My lady Guin. Excuse my not coming to you, but as you see, it would be fatal to lose my place in the line.”
I blinked, gazing ahead of her at the various groups and huddles between here and Augusta’s table. “What line?”
“Don’t you see it? Those nearest the duchess are introduced and have a short conversation. Those who don’t appal her get to sit beside her while the next nearest move closer ready for their moment. The line is moving, however slowly. I assure you, I used to be away over there by the bench.”
While she spoke, the ladies around her stepped quickly forward as if they didn’t want to be associated with her disrespect.
“You see?” Angelika said languidly. “They are ahead of me. But if anyone else pushes in, you must let me know.”
“I’d help you skip the line,” I said bluntly—after all, I might as well get it over with. “Only my introduction would do you more harm than good. Since I’m the youngest of our family, my sister doesn’t regard my opinions, except with disdain.”
Angelika blinked. “I’m sure you misjudge yourself and the duchess’s regard.”
“Oh no,” I said. I gave her a moment to disengage if she wished—and she had the opportunity since a woman nearer the front of the unofficial queue was trying to attract her attention. When she just continued to watch me quizzically, I said, “How long have you been at court, Baroness?”
“Ten years, on and off. Since I first came as a debutante, seventeen years old and ready to be dazzled by all the court debauchery!”
I blinked. From all I’d seen of the duke’s staid court, debauchery was not high on the agenda. “You must have been disappointed.”
“Oh no.” She leaned closer. “It was much more dissolute in those days when the old duke reigned. More fun too. But frivolous, very frivolous.”
“Did you know the old duke’s son, Prince Kasimir?”
“I met him once or twice. Beautiful boy, so like his mother. Sad, isn’t it?”
The Prisoner of Silverwood Castle Page 3