The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories

by Jo Graham

  On the morrow she was cool as ice, but in the next days as our business brought us together, as it often did, I would catch her watching me warily and curiously, as though I were some strange beast she had not seen before.

  Five days after two of my men killed a farmer and his wife who would not tell them where their money was hidden. Naturally the first I heard of it was from Izabela. She came upon me in the great hall before two dozen of my men as I was hearing the reports of the sentries I had placed.

  "Captain Von Marianburg!" she demanded, striding into the hall in a movement of dusty black velvet, her bailiff at her elbow. "There is a matter which requires your attention most urgently."

  I turned a little impatiently. She had two of my men with her, a sergeant, and half a dozen peasants. Izabela's eyes were snapping. She gestured to the two men under the sergeant's guard. "These men killed one of my farmers and his wife. Here are the witnesses."

  The men scowled as her peasants began the story in their own tongue, not a word of German between them, but I had been long in Bohemia. When they finished I asked the sergeant, "Is what they say true?"

  The sergeant shuffled his feet. "As far as I know. This one admitted to knifing the old man."

  I nodded. "Take them out into the courtyard," I said to McDonald. "And hang them."

  He took them out while Izabela watched with unholy joy.

  "Come, madam," I said quietly. "You can watch what is wrought in your name."

  "With a great will," she said.

  One of them begged for mercy and the other did not. I stood and watched while the ropes were put around their necks, while they dangled kicking as they strangled, and smiled all the while not because I wished to but because I must seem the kind of man who took pleasure in such things.

  When they were dead and cut down I went back inside. A courier had come with a dispatch from Wallenstein in Plzen. It was direct and to the point, commending me in the name of the Emperor for the capture of Falkenau and instructing me to use the castle and its lands for winter quarters. It wasn't until I reached the last page that my blood ran cold.

  "In reward for your good service, and to strengthen your base of operations in the area, you are instructed without delay to marry the Lady Izabela of Falkenau."

  Izabela took the news with surprising calm. She sat sewing in her rooms, the children's nurse nearby with her charges lest it be thought I planned to consummate it forthwith. Izabela laid the fragile embroidered rose aside as I read Wallenstein's letter, and I did not look at her face, only at the white rose picked out in silk on damask.

  I finished the letter and put it away. "Believe me, madam," I said. "This was not my idea."

  "I believe you, Captain," she said, her lips thinning. "You have already made your disdain for my person abundantly clear."

  "As clear as your marked distaste of mine," I replied. Even in the old black dress she was uncommonly beautiful.

  "Well?" said Izabela. "Are you going to ask for my hand or just demand it?"

  She would love it, I thought, for me to go down on one knee when I could hardly do so with any grace, a man decades her elder on his knees to his betters. I would make a pretty fool of myself. "Just demand it, madam," I replied, not sounding as harsh as I wished.

  Izabela folded her hands. "I see. Then I have only one request."

  "What is that?" I asked.

  "That the service be performed by a Protestant minister." Her eyes met mine, perfectly level and grave. "It is enough that I am forced to marry a man who has despoiled my lands and people without being forced into a state of concubinage by the officiation of a priest I do not recognize and the authority of a Pope I do not acknowledge!"

  I stared at her speechless. "It is all one to me," I managed. "I care not if we are married by priest, minister, or a devil of the South Seas. If it would ease your conscience or make you an obedient wife to me, then you may have your Lutheran minister."

  Izabela did not look away from me. "I thank you for that, Captain. However, the devil himself could not make me an obedient wife to you."

  "Then you may find, madam, that I can be the very devil himself."

  "I am sure you can be, Captain," she replied. "I am quite certain you are capable of beating into submission a helpless woman with no one to turn to and two babies to shelter."

  "Your frailty seems to come and go when it is convenient to you," I remarked. "You did not seem so fragile the other night."

  Izabela looked at me for a long moment and then dropped her eyes in a submissive gesture I did not believe for an instant. "As my lord wishes," she said.

  She had her Protestant minister, the same one from the village church who had married her to Lord Jindrich five years before. My Second, McDonald, stood up with me in the old chapel of Falkenau. Izabela wore black. So did I, unrelieved by any ornament except a wealth of lace at throat and cuffs. The minister was nervous, unwilling, and at one point stopped altogether.

  "Go on," Izabela said softly.

  The minister cleared his throat. "Do you, Izabela Maria Oriana, take this man, Georg von Marianburg of the Imperial Army, as your lawful husband, to have and to hold, to cherish and obey, from this day forward, until death do you part?"

  Her voice was clear and strong. "I do."

  I do not remember my responses, only the look of surprised on her face when I put on her finger my heavy ring of rubies and pearls. To my mind the ceremony was too plain, with no incense, no vestments, no choir, but I could not fault the beauty of the bride. The black dress was no doubt meant as an insult, but I had foreseen that, and my black velvet matched hers. Instead of clashing we looked as though we belonged together, for all that she was young and lovely as a candle flame. I was the shadow to that flame, austere and solid as the stones of Falkenau around us.

  Her lips, when I bent to kiss them, were still and cool as a statue's.

  I took her upstairs myself after what passed for a wedding supper, instead of leaving her to the care of her women as is proper. I was afraid there would be more knives, or perhaps a flying leap out the window. More likely knives. I could not imagine Izabela taking the coward's way out.

  My men yelled the usual rowdy jokes at us, nothing unusual in a crowd of mercenaries, but Izabela's jaw was clenched tight. I laughed and assured them that I meant to plow my field well, and did not let go the grip I had gotten on her arm. I felt it tremble a little as we mounted the stairs and I thought there was the fear at last, the fear of my hands and what will come after. Her hair was like a living flame as she walked ahead of me. I was more cheerful and more pleased by good wine than was my usual nature, and it seemed to me there was nothing more perfect than the fine, thin bones at the back of her neck and the white unbruised skin. I closed the door behind us.

  I stood some little time thus, with my back to her as I removed my sash and lace neckcloth and sable gloves. I would make a wedding gift of her modesty.

  I turned about at last. She stood beside the great bed clad in nothing but her glorious hair, and that she had left pinned up that it might veil nothing. Even her hands she held away from her sides. "See, my lord?" she inquired sarcastically. "What a bargain you have made?" She rotated slowly for my perusal, more beautiful than I had hoped and twice as venomous, holding her hands above her head as though held by invisible fetters. "Is Your Magnificence pleased with your purchase?"

  "Madam, so help me," I managed, but the words stuck in my throat. I crossed the room to her. "I will have no more of this!"

  "Perhaps I should get right to the point," she hissed, flinging herself backwards on the bed with her legs akimbo, her privates exposed in a manner that would humiliate a town harlot, her hands still held by invisible cords.

  I seized her wrists and prized them apart. Her eyes were still snapping hatred, one perfect breast against my knee. "Madam," I said, "A less temperate man would stick a knife in you and be well rid."

  "Oh, stick a knife in me!" she spat, but her eyes said something els
e. "Monster!" she hissed, her wrists gathered in my hand, pressed beneath my eight. "You don't dare!" she whispered. "Or are you gelded too?" And in that moment I perceived the war within her. She would make it rape so that she yielded nothing. Anything less would be surrender.

  "Izabela," I said, and laid my hand along the side of her face.

  She closed her eyes and was perfectly still. I do not think she moved until she heard me open and close the door of the press away across the room.

  "What are you doing?" I heard her ask behind me.

  I took off each boot carefully without looking at her. "I am going to bed. Put on your night robe, madam, and spare us any further vulgar scenes." My voice was not as hard as I had meant it, only tired. It would not have gone amiss for once in my life for something to live up to its promise.

  I heard her scramble for her night robe among the bedcovers. "I will be going then," she said.

  "You will not." I turned to face her. "You will not leave this chamber until morning, not if you spend it tied spreadeagled between the bedposts in the manner you have so well demonstrated." If she left now my men could only come to one conclusion, and it was one that would not serve me well.

  She held her robe before her now so that only her shoulders and wild eyes gleamed in the light. "You wouldn't dare!"

  "Try me, madam," I said quietly.

  She shrugged and pulled her robe over her head.

  "You have your choice," I said. "You may pass the night between the posts or at my side as a wife should." I sat down on the side of the bed, undressing as calmly as if I were alone.

  Her hair was escaping from its pins, and red-gold frizzles made a bronze halo around her head. "You shall not win my gratitude, Captain. Nor my love."

  I meant to say that I had no use for either, but what I said as I snuffed the candle and plunged the room into darkness was, "Izabela, there is nothing I have ever loved that is within your reach." I lay down and turned on my side with my back to my wife.

  She sat perfectly still in the dark for a long time. I do not know when she lay down, as I went to sleep.

  In the morning she was curled against my back like a kitten in the chill of the room and did not even stir when I got up and left, going downstairs to review the morning dispatches and breakfast with my men. I was glad that she was a widow. If blood on the sheets were required, I was certain there would have been a quantity of it, but hers or mine I could not tell.

  But I had many things to think about besides my wife. October turned into November, and the first icy weather blew in, silvering the roofs of Falkenau with icicles that glittered like glass in the morning. With them came a summons to Plzen, where Wallenstein had gone into winter quarters, there to report in person.

  It was not so very far, but the weather made the journey unenviable. I cautioned McDonald to take care where the Lady Izabela was concerned, and cautioned her that his temper was much more uncertain than mine, though I did not think she believed me. McDonald would hesitate to beat my wife, if for no other reason than the grave insult to his superior. So it was with vast trepidation about what I should find when I returned that I decamped for Plzen.

  I was not surprised that the first person I saw when I arrived was Count Trcka, striding across the courtyard to me before the groom had even taken my horse. "Marianburg!"

  "Count," I said, bowing very properly as one should.

  "None of that," he said, and put his arm about my shoulders. "You're a landed gentleman now. Congratulations on your marriage!"

  "Thank you," I said. It had not quite occurred to me that I was now Graf Falkenau. The castle and title were Izabela's inheritance, and unless they should pass to the sons of her first marriage….

  "I hear she's a pretty thing." Trcka winked at me. He was a large man of my own age with carefully trimmed dark hair and beard and a mobile face that somehow rendered him Gallic in appearance, though he was Bohemian through and through. In his scarlet pantaloons and broad sleeves he was not a sight one could miss.

  "She is that," I said, and steered the conversation onto other courses before the subject of the marriage's consummation arose. "What does the Generalissimo want with me? To remonstrate about how long this took?"

  Trcka waved it away. "Nonsense. He was busy all fall himself. So were we all. No, rather you are here at my wish."

  I frowned. I'd fought beside Trcka many times in the last decade, and might even call him friend, but the orders had come under Wallenstein's seal. Still, Wallenstein was his brother in law, as they'd married landed sisters together, Wallenstein the elder and Trcka the younger. "What do you need me for?" I asked.

  "We'll talk of it later." Adam Trcka clapped me on the shoulder and released me. "My man will show you to comfortable quarters. Dine with me and we'll discuss it all."

  "Of course," I said a little stiffly.

  He shook his head, smiling. "Same old Marianburg. Suspicious and without humor. Cannot you believe in good fortune?"

  "As much as any man," I said.

  "A sober fellow," he said. "We'll talk later." And he left me with that.

  I was not reassured. After all, not everything he had suggested in the past had turned out well, case in point one particular evening before the Battle of Lutzen.

  I would never have considered doing it at all if it weren’t for a large quantity of excellent Polish vodka. I do not believe in spirits, let alone believe that men may congress with them aided by candles and chalk. Trcka believed differently, as did McDonald.

  “Come, Georg,” McDonald said, reeling a little from the drink, “I’ve stood at your back often enough. Stand at mine, so that if demons attempt me it may be your swift knife!”

  “There are no such things as demons,” I said testily.

  “We aren’t summoning demons,” Trcka said. “That’s a dangerous business and I’ll have none of it. We’re summoning angels, that they may tell us the fates of our battles in the coming days. One angel in particular, the Archangel Michael, who watches over war.”

  “Come, Georg,” McDonald said. “If you have nothing to fear, why do you hesitate?”

  “I fear that in your drunk clumsiness you will set your hair afire or your beard or the table,” I said, but came with them to the upper room of the inn we had appropriated. Appropriated – pillaged rather, along with the good vodka and a quantity of Rhenish wine.

  Trcka chalked the circles and walked them round, telling McDonald and me where to stand, setting candles on the tables, on the window sill. Most of what he said was gibberish to me. Perhaps it was Greek, or some more archaic tongue. I wouldn’t know. I am not a learned man. I stood there where Trcka told me while he poured out wine, drew his sword and chanted out a great many words, walking round and round about inside his circle of chalk.

  Perhaps I should have been afraid. Most would be. This was, after all, black magic proscribed by Church and Emperor alike. It was death to begin this, or at least it would be so for those without wealth and rank to protect them. If I feared anything it was this, not imaginary demons from some medieval bestiary, the imaginings of monks with nothing better to amuse themselves.

  McDonald sat down on the floor. “Are you all right, James?” I asked.

  “Sleepy, so sleepy,” he said, leaning back against the wall.

  “You’re dead drunk,” I said.

  “Mmmmm,” he murmured.

  I shrugged. He could sleep there against the wall and no harm would come to him. I spread his cloak over him.

  When I looked up, Trcka had stopped pacing and mumbling. He slumped in a chair, his eyes closed, the chalk dangling from one hand, the sword from the other. I stepped over to him. He was snoring softly.

  I was a bit unsteady on my feet myself. “Vodka,” I said. “Plays tricks on you.” This seemed terribly profound to me. “Sleep it off then. A quiet end to this charade.” Nothing whatsoever had happened.

  I went over and blew out the candle at the window sill. In the sudden burst of light as
the flame was extinguished I saw the reflection of the fourth man. I would have thought it was one of our troopers, except for the shadow of folded wings behind him, cast high on the wall.

  I turned.

  He wore bloodstained velvet and a breastplate of good Spanish steel, light brown hair framing a tired young face, lined with care and weal. A blackened swept hilt rapier was at his side. His voice was very cool. “You should have a care, summoning your betters. It’s not polite.”

  “My Lord,” I said, “I do not believe in you.”

  Something moved in his eyes, some expression of regret. “Do you not?” he said, “Son of my heart? Can you have forgotten yourself so much?”

  “I have forgotten nothing,” I said, and a great anger rose in me, the battle blindness I sometimes feel, pure and hot as fire. “Where were you when my step father beat me bloody again and again? Where were you when his fists blinded my mother and broke her jaw? When I killed him as he stood, when I was fifteen, and still she wept and said that she should turn me over to the Graf’s men for a murderer so that I should hang for killing him? Where were you when I fled from that place with nothing but my shirt and a bloody knife to make my way in this world?” I turned away from him. “I would that you were more than drunken imaginings so that I might put this blade through you.”

  He stepped around the table, the feathers of his wings rippling softly. He stood very close, and there seemed little celestial about him, just a man of my own age, tired and sleepless. “Do you think I would not prevent such things if I could? I would that I could, that infinite power were mine. But if it were, I should use it no more wisely than you.”

  “I do not care for celestial power,” I said. “What I want is money, a good sword and men to follow after me.”

  “So that no one may harm you,” he said.

  “Yes!” I spat it at him. “You have named it. There is no mercy in this fallen world, and I shall show none. Perhaps I am a beaten cur, hard bitten and hard biting. But if you had wished otherwise, you could have shown yourself twenty years ago!”