By that time he was awake enough to stiffly dismount and stand unsupported on the courtyard’s cobbles while grooms and servants milled around the returned soldiers. Văcărescu spoke to several of them, leaning down to give instructions. One quick, cold glance at Frank and he rode off—a busy man with many other things to do. And that too was not at all characteristic of the creature that had so lately been focussed on seeing Frank dead.
“You poor young man.”
Frank startled as his arm was taken by a grey-haired woman, who wore an impressive set of keys on the chatelaine at her belt. She had a smile as warming as mulled wine, and her ruddy cheeks were creased with humour, but even she had that dull, flat taint in the back of her eyes that Frank had noticed among the men. As if a room in her mind was bolted shut and bricked over.
“Come with me. I will have the doctor brought. We have a room being made up for you, and after you have been tended, and have eaten, you may sleep as long as you like.”
The horses had been led away to their stables and the men disappeared to their duties. Frank was left with the housekeeper and a burly maid whose eyebrows met above her nose, and whose top lip bore a line of hair almost as luxuriant. This Amazon pushed a small glass of palincă into his hand, which he supped down in one swallow. At once, alcohol numbed his pains, warmed his innards, and made his head swim. He staggered, and she draped his good arm around her shoulders and supported him into the house.
A second glass made him so merry he paid no attention to the dark looks of the doctor when he arrived. Why should he care if the man was angry with him? The doctor’s hands were brusque, but thorough, and the shot of opium tincture Frank drank along with the spirits washed the remainder of his pains straight out of him.
Cleaned and bandaged, reclothed in a nightgown a dozen times finer than the coarse stuff of his borrowed shirt, he lay on his back in a proper bed and could not be troubled by anything, not even the doctor and the housekeeper arguing outside the door.
“What is the point?” the doctor was saying, his voice tight with frustration. “Why heal him if they’re just going to . . . I protest. I protest most strongly if my arts are being used simply to assure he gives them better sport.”
The housekeeper’s sigh was as soft as Frank’s feather pillow. “They are not beasts. Those of us who work here, we are never touched. Why should he not be the same?”
“You think they will spare him? A lone, friendless traveller who might, if let go, take tales of the family all the way back to England? Pah! You deceive yourself.”
“How else am I to live?” she said, so sharply that Frank stirred, recognising anguish.
It seemed the doctor heard it too. His voice gentled and slowed, the tone of it turning to a delicate apology, even a reassurance. “At least they are not Austrians. Or Turks. Whatever they are, they’re ours.”
“Yes.” The housekeeper echoed his uncomfortable warmth, as though they shared a vice that each of them was ashamed of, that they were reassured to see in each other. “Not Turks, not Austrians, not Hungarians, but ours. Ours, forever.”
Frank closed his eyes, relieved that the argument was over.
When he woke again it was to the smell of deep cellars where pungent rose perfume had been spilled. Gold light beat against his face, though the rest of his room lay in darkness.
He startled up, his head throbbing, to find a young woman with a candle in her hand, bending over him in a curve of white and silver like a sickle moon. She eased away when he moved, and gave him an open, delighted smile from lips as pink as rosebuds.
“Oh, hello,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. Shall I light the lamp?”
“Please.”
She had a calm aura and a very pretty smile. When she touched her candle to the wick of the oil lantern that stood by Frank’s bedside, the strengthening light made her seem doll-like, the delicacy of her hands and face overborn by the extraordinary volume and richness of her clothes.
From her tall headdress of pale-blue silk, white lace fell onto her shoulders like spun frost. Over her alabaster forehead lay swags of silver chains that tinkled as she moved. Ropes and ropes of pearls wound like a collar around her throat and hung at varying lengths to cover her chest like a breastplate. She wore a dove-grey silk waistcoat over a chemise whiter than moonlight, and a half globe of silk skirts with an apron over it of lace so fine it might have been made by spiders—if spiders had the craft to work diamonds and stars and flowers into their webs.
“I heard we had a visitor.” She sank down with a whisper of cloth on the chair by the writing desk with which he had been provided. “I wanted to come and see you. Make sure that he had not . . . That is, I wanted to make sure you were well provided for and recovering. It isn’t often we have foreign visitors who are not intent on conquering and enslaving us.”
She must have been sixteen or seventeen. Perhaps Văcărescu’s daughter, if he had married early, or a younger sister. Her smooth face was full of the delight of meeting something new, boundless curiosity mingled with pity for his sorry state. He smiled, and thought better of the whole household that it could raise such an innocent and give her so open and artless a smile.
“I’m afraid I am not very good company at present,” he croaked. The opium had dried his throat, and though the headache was easing, he could gladly have slept again all night through.
She rose and rustled through the door, returning in a moment with a pitcher of water and a tumbler of cut glass. Filling it, she then helped Frank up and arranged the pillows behind his shoulders so that he could sit and drink. “Who served you so ill?”
“Even there I am afraid I’m a disappointment. I don’t remember, truly. Bandits, I thought at first, but I find I have a nagging doubt that it could be as simple as that. I . . .” Now he’d said it, the doubt coalesced into something he could almost call a solid certainty. “I don’t know why, but . . .” He rubbed his temples as if he could massage the thought out of hiding. It didn’t work. “Disaster pursued me. I cannot remember fully who I am, but I am sure I may be dangerous to you. Where I can go to outrun this curse, I know not, just as I know not fully what it is, but—”
She laughed, a silvery chuckle that went well with her many pale jewels. “You should not think too hard while you’re wounded. Wait, and when you’re well again, everything will come back to you. As for curses, we have no fear of them. If you are running from ill fortune, with doom dogging your heels, you’ve come to the right place. Here you can put that burden down. For thousands of years, our family has been here. We have owned this land and protected its people forever. The world has thrown armies at us—they come and we fight. They go, and we are still here. There is nothing following you that we need fear.”
Frank was amused now too. She looked so earnest and so solemn, this maiden of a high-born house, who must only just have come out into society. He could see her in the nursery, refighting the battles of her ancestors until their victories became her own. He knew the type. Without specific memories to go on, he still recognised the slim, straight-backed pride of the women of noble houses, who might never be called on to do more than pass that steel to their children, but who carried it in their bones nevertheless. It was strangely poignant in this overdressed, blue-eyed girl. “That’s good to hear,” he said. “But it’s good that you be warned too. You should tell your father, in case he needs to . . .”
But Radu Văcărescu had real armies to fight, bandits to put down, villagers to hunt. He scarcely needed to take on Frank’s inchoate dreads on top. Abruptly, Frank was once more ashamed.
The boyaryshyna was smiling at him still, apparently more delighted than ever. “I don’t think I introduced myself,” she said. “That was rude. I apologise. I am Alaya. And you are . . .?”
“Frank.”
“Would you like something to eat, Frank? You must be starved.”
He was. Though he’d eaten before he slept, he felt hollow as though he had endu
red days of famine. When he looked down at himself he saw he was tall and spindly-slim as a mountain ash. “Please.”
Again, she went to the door, but no farther. Either servants waited just outside, or she was reluctant to leave him alone. He remembered the cold, misty thing that had followed him down the riverbank and was glad of her company.
“He said the Roma found you,” Alaya commented. “Did they not feed you at all?”
“They were very kind,” Frank insisted, beginning to understand why they had been so adamant that he should speak well of them. Evidently everyone expected the worst of them on principle. “But they didn’t have much to give.”
Her pretty frown became a wide-eyed expression of pleasure. “They live on the land, you know. They eat hedgehogs cooked in clay, and berries, and they don’t have to worry about anything. We take care of all the difficult things, so that they can dance and sing all day long. I think it must be a lovely life.”
Frank’s impression had been that their life was full of fear and poverty, but he saw no reason to trouble her sheltered naivety by saying so.
“I still think,” she went on, the frown returning, “that they shouldn’t have made you walk. They should have put you on a horse and brought you here themselves. You were so hurt, you could have fallen down somewhere and died, all alone, and then none of us would ever have known you. What were they thinking?”
A perfect chance for him to ask the questions that had been plaguing him. “They were terrified of something,” he said gently, only realising once he had started that he was about to accuse the girl’s father, to her face, of being some kind of uncanny wight, of roaming about the countryside threatening to tear out travellers’ throats.
But she had already let slip that her mind was uneasy, and her unbudging presence at his side was beginning to feel less like innocent curiosity and more like protection. “They thought that the smell of my blood would draw something—someone—who would turn on them all. Can you tell me what they meant?”
“It is a peasant superstition,” she said, easily enough, except that she had lowered her candid eyes to watch her fingers twist in her lap. “I suppose that as they are allowed to live without cares, like children, they will believe in all sorts of monsters and fairy tales, as children do.”
A servant entered, carrying a tray of two soups and a decanter of wine, which she set with brusque, silent swiftness on a stand by the bed. She dropped Frank a tiny courtesy, and Alaya a much deeper one, and departed, never having raised her eyes from the floor.
“Shall I help you?” Alaya half rose, her nose wrinkling charmingly, as if it was the polite thing to offer, but it was not much to her taste.
“No, I’m fine.” Strange to be coddled so now, when he had walked and swum and been knocked down while he was hurt worse. He manhandled the tray onto his lap and frowned at the bowls, not knowing where to start.
Alaya laughed and pointed. “That one is chicken. That one is beer with cinnamon and cream. It’s very good. My mother used to give me that when I was hurt.”
He began with the chicken. This, too, was very good, full of vegetables and fruit, the stock thickened with sour cream, rich and filling. “I cannot think that the Roma’s fear was entirely imaginary,” he said, in a soft enough voice that the servants outside should not hear. “Something uncanny pursued me in the woods. I only just escaped from it.”
Her eyes widened, and her cheek blanched still further until it was as white as her sleeves. “No! What did it look like?”
The door opened again, and bending through came a silhouette that made Frank push himself backwards with his feet, dislodging the tray. It fell to the floor, bowls breaking, liquid spattering over the pale-blue rug, as he crammed himself into the corner, behind his pillows, for sanctuary. His ears rang and his eyes blurred and his heart hissed in his breast like a live coal.
Alaya squeaked in alarm, stood, and pressed herself against the wall, though whether she was shocked by the visitor, or simply reflecting Frank’s fright, he hadn’t the wits to tell.
Then Văcărescu emerged from the shadow of the doorway into the lantern light, and gave them both a scowl of fierce displeasure. He doffed his tall hat, peeled leather riding gloves from his hands, and sat, uninvited, very much unwanted, at the end of Frank’s bed, where the impression of Frank’s feet still warmed the blankets.
“What are you doing here, my lady?” He turned his malign gaze on Alaya, and if there was any familial affection there, it was well hidden. “There are rules about my guests. I would not have you forget them.”
“We were only talking.” She seemed a great deal more immune to the cold, wolfish glare than Frank, and her assurance allowed him to ease back down into the pillows, unclasping his hands from around his knees. With effort, he schooled his breathing from the sharp high-pitched panting into something deeper, calmer, though he could not disguise the tremble in it as he could with his fingers.
He did not relax his posture, because that would mean sliding his feet further towards the other man. He would as soon slide them into a fire.
“It is not fitting for you to be alone in the bedroom of a young man.”
“But he’s injured. And the servants are outside.” They must be father and daughter, surely, for the smile she gave Văcărescu now was childish sweetness and cunning, like a toddler cajoling for a sweetmeat. “He’s come all the way from England. It isn’t fair. You’re forever shutting your visitors up in little rooms, and they disappear, and we never get to meet them. This time you didn’t seem very interested—”
“We have lost another village. I had to—”
“So I thought I would come and keep him company for you. We’ve been getting to know each other. It’s been nice, hasn’t it, Frank?”
Văcărescu’s chest heaved as though something inside it wanted violently to break out. “First names already?” he growled, in a tone that drew the points of a dozen pins down Frank’s spine.
Alaya still seemed unflappable, even pert, as if it amused her to see how far she could push, how hard her father would struggle before he gave up and struck her. They were not terribly alike in looks, but the urge to bait the wolves of Hell had obviously been handed down.
“I have no last name that I can remember,” Frank broke in, desperate to ease the tension before it snapped. Alaya might have confidence in her father’s restraint; he did not. “The first was all I could give.”
“You should leave now, madam.” Văcărescu shifted on the bed and pulled on the heel of one tall boot with the toe of the other.
“We should both go and let him sleep.” Alaya glanced at Frank, an apology in her tone. She gathered her skirts as if to rise.
“I will stay to be sure he does not take ill in the night.” Having toed his boots off, Văcărescu sat firmly at the foot of the bed, crossed his long legs, and made himself comfortable against the wall.
Frank gave Alaya a begging look. She returned a brave little smile, as if to say she knew his thoughts, and relaxed back into her seat. “Then I’ll help.”
Frank expected her father to order her out, but he simply sighed, crossed his arms over his chest, and settled down.
Alaya blew out the lantern, and for a while it was awkward as hell. Every rustle was like an alarm. But at some point Frank’s body took over from his mind and told him it would sleep no matter the situation.
He woke once in the night to the sound of movement, and found Văcărescu slumped sideways in a heap at the end of the bed. Alaya was tucking a coverlet around him, like a girl playing mother. She raised a finger to her lips when she saw him watching, but did not abandon him. He fell asleep again to Văcărescu’s faint snore as she smiled at him from the chair.
When Frank woke again with the morning sun bright on his pillow, he was alone, the coverlet folded up on the chair where Alaya had sat. He was brought breakfast and books by attentive servants, who all tried hard not to meet his eyes, and he passed an extremely welcome day
of drinking medicinal tea and drowsing and allowing his body the leisure it needed to heal.
Sometime after noon he leaned over the deep embrasure of his window to gaze out, seeing rooftops and wooded hills going down into scrubby farmland. A caravan of mismatched vehicles moved slowly across the frame from right to left. Small figures with bent heads trudged beside tumbrels piled with furniture. Half the fields he could see contained rye that had turned an unhealthy greyish shade, and in the other half great patches stood ripe, but unharvested.
At the bottom of the road down from the castle to the lowlands, a little hamlet of four houses and a well was tucked into an outcropping of rock, but though he watched it carefully as the gloomy procession passed, he never saw smoke or movement.
Perhaps there was something more behind Văcărescu’s anger than mere choleric bad temper. But what? What was sweeping across an apparently populous and fertile land and causing the people to leave their homes, abandon the work of their hands, and run?
At the end of the day, his eyes were drifting closed over a volume of Homeric poets when Văcărescu accompanied his evening meal, and sat and watched him eat with a kind of resentful fascination that made Frank very glad when Alaya joined them.
She brought an embroidery frame with her, and talked quite unself-consciously about the history of her family, digging out of Frank everything he remembered about his travels, which was not much. She was imperturbable. It wasn’t that she endured Văcărescu’s unsubtle sighs, cut-off gestures of frustration, and looks of baffled fury. More that she had somehow trained herself not to see them at all.
Her needle flashed in the lamplight, and peacocks with great trailing tails took shape under her fingers so swiftly it seemed like she painted them.
Less exhausted now, Frank found it harder to sleep with the weight of the man on the bed, with the kindly scrutiny of the girl like another weight on his cheek. He spent the night drowsing, falling asleep only to jerk awake, increasingly raw to the silent battle of wills between his two companions. By the time dawn came he felt like a bone chewed between two dogs. He almost wished one of them would let go, just so this would be over with.
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