The Keep ac-1

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Yes."

  Magda noted that Papa was volunteering no information.

  "You're a Jew, aren't you, Professor?"

  A nod.

  "Is it customary for Jews to carry crosses around?"

  "My daughter borrowed it for me—a tool in an experiment."

  Glenn turned to her. "Where did you get it?"

  "From one of the officers at the keep." Where was all this leading?

  "It was his own?"

  "No. He said it came from one of the dead soldiers." She began to grasp the thread of deduction he seemed to be following.

  "Strange," Glenn said, returning his attention to Papa, "that this cross did not save the soldier who first possessed it. One would think that a creature who feared the cross would pass up such a victim and search for another, one carrying no protective—what shall we call it?—charm."

  "Perhaps the cross was stuffed inside his shirt," Papa said. "Or in his pocket. Or even back in his room."

  Glenn smiled. "Perhaps. Perhaps."

  "We didn't think of that, Papa," Magda said, eager to reinforce any idea that might bolster his sagging spirits.

  "Question everything," Glenn said. "Always question everything. I should not have to remind a scholar of that."

  "How do you know I'm a scholar?" Papa snapped, a spark of the old fire in his eyes. "Unless my daughter told you."

  "Iuliu told me. But there's something else you've overlooked, and it's so obvious you're both going to feel foolish when I tell you."

  "Make us feel foolish, then," Magda told him. Please!

  "All right: Why would a vampire so afraid of the cross dwell in a structure whose walls are studded with them? Can you explain that?"

  Magda stared at her father and found him staring back at her.

  "You know," Papa said, smiling sheepishly. "I've been in the keep so often, and I've puzzled over it for so long, I no longer even see the crosses!"

  "That's understandable. I've been through there a few times myself, and after a while they do seem to blend in. But the question remains: Why does a being who finds the cross repulsive surround himself with countless crosses?" He rose and easily swung the chair onto his shoulder. "And now I think I'll go get some breakfast from Lidia and leave you two to figure out an answer. If there is one."

  "But what's your interest in this?" Papa asked. "Why are you here?"

  "Just a traveler," Glenn said. "I like this area and visit regularly."

  "You seem to be more than a little interested in the keep. And quite knowledgeable about it."

  Glenn shrugged. "I'm sure you know far more than I do."

  "I wish I knew how to keep my father from going back over there tonight," Magda said.

  "I must go back, my dear. I must face Molasar again."

  Magda rubbed her hands together. They had gone cold at the thought of Papa's returning to the keep. "I just don't want them to find you with your throat torn open like the others."

  "There are worse things that can happen to a man," Glenn said.

  Struck by the change in his tone, Magda looked up and found all the sunniness and lightness gone from his face. He was staring at Papa. The tableau held for only a few seconds, then he smiled again.

  "Breakfast awaits. I'm sure I'll see you again during our respective stays. But one more thing before I go."

  He stepped around to the rear of the wheelchair and turned it in a 180-degree arc with his free hand.

  "What are you doing?" Papa cried. Magda leaped to her feet.

  "Just offering you a change of scenery, Professor. The keep-is, after all, such a gloomy place. This is much too beautiful a day to dwell on it."

  He pointed to the floor of the pass. "Look south and east instead of north. For all its severity, this is a most beautiful part of the world. See how the grass is greening up, how the wild flowers are starting to bloom in the crags. Forget the keep for a while."

  For a moment he caught and held Magda's eyes with his own, then he was gone, turning the corner, the chair balanced on his shoulder.

  "A strange sort, that one," she heard Papa say, a touch of a laugh in his voice.

  "Yes. He most certainly is." But though she found Glenn strange, Magda felt she owed him a debt of gratitude. For reasons known only to him, he had intruded on their conversation and made it his own, lifting Papa's spirits from their lowest ebb, taking Papa's most painful doubts and casting doubt in turn upon them. He had handled it deftly and with telling effect. But why? What did he care about the inner torment of a crippled old Jew from Bucharest?

  "He does raise some good points, though," Papa went on. "Some excellent points. How could they not have occurred to me?"

  "Nor to me?"

  "Of course," his tone was softly defensive, "he's not fresh from a personal encounter with a creature considered until now a mere figment of a gruesome imagination. It's easy for him to be more objective. By the way, how did you meet him?"

  "Last night, when I was out by the edge of the gorge keeping watch on your window—"

  "You shouldn't fret over me so! You forget that I helped raise you, not the other way around."

  Magda ignored the interruption. "—he rode up on horseback, looking like he intended to charge right into the keep. But when he saw the lights and the Germans, he stopped."

  Papa seemed to consider this briefly, then switched topics. "Speaking of Germans, I'd better be getting back before they come looking for me. I'd prefer to reenter the keep on my own rather than at gunpoint."

  "Isn't there a way we could—"

  "Escape? Of course! You'll just wheel me down the ledge road, all the way to Campina! Or perhaps you could help me onto the back of a horse—that would certainly shorten the trip!" His tone grew more acid as he spoke. "Or best of all, why don't we go and ask that SS major for a loan of one of his lorries—just for an afternoon drive, we'll tell him! I'm sure he'll agree."

  "There's no need to speak to me that way," she said, stung by his sarcasm.

  "And there's no need for you to torture yourself with any hope of escape for the two of us! Those Germans aren't fools. They know I can't escape, and they don't think you'll leave without me. Although I want you to. At least one of us would be safe then."

  "Even if you could get away, you'd return to the keep! Isn't that right, Papa?" Magda said. She was beginning to understand his attitude. "You want to go back there."

  He would not meet her eyes. "We are trapped here, and I feel I must use the opportunity of a lifetime. I would be a traitor to my whole life's work if I let it slip away!"

  "Even if a plane landed in the pass right now and the pilot offered to fly us to freedom, you wouldn't go, would you!"

  "I must see him again, Magda! I must ask him about all those crosses on the walls! How he came to be what he is! And most of all, I must find out why he fears the cross. If I don't, I—I'll go mad!"

  Neither spoke for the next few moments. Long moments. But Magda sensed more than silence between them. A widening gap. She felt Papa drawing away, drawing into himself, shutting her out. That had never happened before. They had always been able to discuss things. Now he seemed to want no discussion. He wanted only to get back to Molasar.

  "Take me back," was all he said as the silence went on and on, becoming unbearable.

  "Stay a little longer. You've been in the keep too much. I think it's affecting you."

  "I'm perfectly fine, Magda. And I'll decide when I've been in the keep too long. Now, are you going to wheel me back or do I have to sit here and wait until the Nazis come and get me?"

  Biting her lip in anger and dismay, Magda moved behind the chair and turned it toward the keep.

  TWENTY

  He seated himself a few feet back from the window where he could hear the rest of the conversation below yet remain out of sight should Magda chance to look up again. He had been careless earlier. In his eagerness to hear, he had leaned on the sill. Magda's unexpected upward glance had caught him. At that poin
t he had decided that a frontal assault was in order and had gone downstairs to join them.

  Now all talk seemed to have died. As he heard the creaky wheels of the professor's chair start to turn, he leaned forward and watched the pair move off, Magda pushing from behind, appearing calm despite the turmoil he knew to be raging within her. He poked his head out the window for one last look as she rounded the corner and passed from view.

  On impulse, he dashed to his door and stepped out into the empty hall; three long strides took him diagonally across to Magda's room. Her door opened at his touch and he went directly to the window. She was on the path to the causeway, pushing her father ahead of her.

  He enjoyed watching her.

  She had interested him from their first meeting on the gorge rim when she had faced him with such outward calm, yet all the while clutching a heavy stone in her hand. And later, when she had stood up to him in the foyer of the inn, refusing to give up her room, and he was seeing her then for the first time in the light with her eyes flashing, he had known that some of his defenses were softening. Deep-brown doe eyes, high-colored cheeks ... he liked the way she looked, and she was lovely when she smiled. She had done that only once in his presence, crinkling her eyes at the corners and revealing white, even teeth. And her hair ... the little wisps he had seen of it were a glossy brown ... she would be striking with her hair down instead of hidden away.

  But the attraction was more than physical. She was made of good stuff, that Magda. He watched her take her father to the gate and give him over to the guard there. The gate closed and she was left alone on the far end of the causeway. As she turned and walked back, he retreated to the middle of her room so he wouldn't be visible at the window. He watched her from there.

  Look at her! How she walks away from the keep! She knows every pair of eyes on that wall is upon her, that at this very moment she is being stripped and ravished in half a dozen minds. Yet she walks with her shoulders back, her gait neither hurried nor dalliant. Perfectly composed, as if she's just made a routine delivery and is on her way to the next. And all the while she's cringing inside!

  He shook his head in silent admiration. He had long ago learned to immerse himself in a sheath of impenetrable calm. It was a mechanism that kept him insulated, kept him one step removed from too intimate contact, reducing his chances for impulsive behavior. It allowed him a clear, serene, dispassionate view of everything and everyone around him, even when all was in chaos.

  Magda, he realized, was one of those rare people with the power to penetrate his sheath, to cause turbulence in his calm. He felt attracted to her, and she had his respect—something he rarely awarded to anyone.

  But he could not afford to get involved now. He must maintain his distance. Yet ... he had been without a woman for so long, and she was awakening feelings he had thought gone forever. It was good to feel them again. She had slipped past his guard, and he sensed he was slipping past hers. It would be nice to—

  No! You can't get involved. You can't afford to care. Not now. Of all times, not now! Only a fool—

  And yet...

  He sighed. Better to lock up his feelings again before things got out of hand. Otherwise, the result could be disastrous. For both of them.

  She was almost to the inn. He left the room, carefully closing the door behind him, and returned to his own. He dropped onto the bed and lay with his hands behind his head, waiting for her tread on the stair. But it did not come.

  To Magda's surprise, she found that the closer she got to the inn, the less she thought about Papa and the more she thought about Glenn. Guilt tugged at her. She had left her crippled father alone, surrounded by Nazis, to face one of the undead tonight, and her thoughts turned to a stranger. Strolling around to the rear of the inn, she experienced a light feeling in her chest and a quickening of her pulse at the thought of him.

  Lack of food, she told herself. Should have had something to eat this morning.

  There was no one there. The ladderback chair Glenn had brought for her sat empty and alone in the sunlight. She glanced up to his window. No one there, either.

  Magda picked up the chair and carried it around to the front, telling herself it wasn't disappointment she felt, only hunger.

  She remembered Glenn saying he intended to have breakfast. Perhaps he was still inside. She quickened her pace. Yes, she was hungry.

  She stepped in and saw Iuliu sitting in the dining alcove to her right. He had sliced a large wedge from a wheel of cheese and was sipping some goat's milk. He seemed to eat at least six times a day.

  He was alone.

  "Domnisoara Cuza!" he called. "Would you like some cheese?"

  Magda nodded and sat down. She now wasn't as hungry as she had thought, but she did need some food to keep going. Besides, there were a few questions she wanted to ask Iuliu.

  "Your new guest," she said casually, taking a slice of white cheese off the flat of the knife blade, "he must have taken breakfast to his room."

  Iuliu's brow furrowed. "Breakfast? He didn't have any breakfast here. But many travelers bring their own food with them."

  Magda frowned. Why had he said he was going to see Lidia about breakfast? An excuse to get away?

  "Tell me, Iuliu—you seemed to have calmed down since last night. What upset you so about this Glenn when he arrived?"

  "It was nothing."

  "Iuliu, you were trembling! I'd like to know why—especially since my room is across the hall from his. I deserve to know if you think he's dangerous."

  The innkeeper concentrated hard on slicing the cheese. "You will think me a fool."

  "No, I won't."

  "Very well." He put the knife down and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. "When I was a boy my father ran the inn and, like me, paid the workers in the keep. There came a time when some of the gold that had been delivered was missing—stolen, my father said—and he could not pay the keep workers their full amount. The same thing happened after the next delivery; some of the money disappeared. Then one night a stranger came and began beating my father, punching him, hurling him about the room as if he were made of straw, telling him to find the money. 'Find the money! Find the money!' " He puffed out his already ample cheeks. "My father, I am ashamed to say, found the money. He had taken some and hidden it. The stranger was furious. Never have I seen such wrath in a man. He began beating and kicking my father again, leaving him with two broken arms."

  "But what does this have to do—"

  "You must understand," Iuliu said, leaning forward and lowering his voice even further, "that my father was an honest man and that the turn of the century was a terrible time for this region. He only kept a little of the gold as a means of being certain that we would eat during the coming winter. He would have paid it back when times were better. It was the only dishonest thing he had done in an otherwise good and upright—"

  "Iuliu!" Magda said, finally halting the flow of words. "What has this to do with the man upstairs?"

  "They look the same, Domnisoara. I was only ten years old at the time, but I saw the man who beat my father. I will never forget him. He had red hair and looked so very much like this man. But," he laughed softly, "the man who beat my father was perhaps in his early thirties, just like this man, and that was forty years ago. They couldn't be the same. But in the candlelight last night, I—I thought he had come to beat me, too."

  Magda raised her eyebrows questioningly, and he hurried to explain.

  "Not that there's any gold missing now, of course. It's just that the workers have not been allowed to enter the keep to do their work and I've been paying them anyway. Never let it be said that I kept any of the gold for myself. Never!"

  "Of course not, Iuliu." She rose, taking another slice of cheese with her. "I think I'll go upstairs and rest awhile."

  He smiled and nodded. "Supper will be at six."

  Magda climbed the stairs quickly, but found herself slowing as she passed Glenn's door, her eyes drawing her head to the right
and lingering there. She wondered what he was doing in there, or if he was there at all.

  Her room was stuffy, so she left the door open to allow the breeze from the window to pass through. The porcelain water pitcher on her dresser had been filled. She poured some of the cool water into the bowl beside it and splashed her face. She was exhausted but knew sleep was impossible ... too many thoughts swirling in her head to allow her to rest just yet.

  A high pitched chorus of cheeps drew her to the window. Amid the budding branches of the tree that grew next to the north wall of the inn was a bird's nest. She could see four tiny chicks, their heads all eyes and gaping mouth, straining their scrawny necks upward for a piece of whatever the mother bird was feeding them. Magda knew nothing about birds. This one was gray with black markings along its wings. Had she been home in Bucharest she might have looked it up. But with all that had been happening, she found she couldn't care less.

  Tense, restless, she wandered about the tiny room. She checked the flashlight she had brought with her. It still worked. Good. She would need it tonight. On her way back from the keep, she had reached a decision.

  Her eyes fell on the mandolin propped in the corner by the window. She picked it up, seated herself on the bed and began to play. Tentatively at first, adjusting the tuning as she plucked out a simple melody, then with greater ease and fluidity as she relaxed into the instrument, segueing from one folk tune to another. As with many a proficient amateur, she achieved a form of transport with her instrument, fixing her eyes on a point in space, her hands playing by touch, humming inwardly as she jumped from song to song. Tensions eased away, replaced by an inner tranquility. She played on, unaware of time.

  A hint of movement at her open door jarred her back to reality. It was Glenn.

  "You're very good," he said from the doorway.

  She was glad it was he, glad he was smiling at her, and glad he had found pleasure in her playing.

  She smiled shyly. "Not so good. I've gotten careless."

  "Maybe. But the range of your repertoire is wonderful. I know of only one other person who can play so many songs with such accuracy."