Castle Shade

by Laurie R. King

  When we went past this encampment, we took care to nod at the men and smile at the children. Holmes touched his hat to the women, and we did not stop to take a photograph, point at the bright caravans, or have our fortunes told.

  A little further along, we bought lunch from a farmhouse, and conversed with a beekeeper in something that might have been German. I purchased two pairs of alarmingly red socks from a hugely pregnant young woman who was knitting in her front garden, and we spent the better part of an hour watching maize being fed through an ancient watermill by her husband. We were passed by eleven carts drawn by horses and two by bullocks, one motor-cycle, and two motorcars (one small and ancient, the other vast and glossy). We saw walnut trees, head-high maize, a flock of sheep, seventeen goats, more haystacks than I could count, and a priest.

  Holmes and this last figure waved at each other across a field, but the other man was deep in talk with a family at their door and we did not approach.

  Shortly after the priest, we were overtaken and pulled bodily up onto an empty flatbed horse-cart by its cheerful, completely toothless driver, who told us all about his horses, pointed at a nearby house and revealed its attendant scandal, laughed at three boys in a field and gave us their history, then dropped us off in Bran with a cautionary finger and a long lecture about the hazards of life in the big village. We thanked him, and waved our benefactor away down the road.

  “Did you understand a word he said?” I asked Holmes.

  “Not one.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Back at the castle, we found the hallways alive with bustling maids, their arms filled with dust-cloths and bedsheets. Enormous displays of fresh-cut flowers had sprung up in every corner, making the air heady with scent.

  The Queen was on her way.

  To my amusement, nervous anticipation infected me as well, driving me to the wardrobe and looking glass, that I might prove presentable to Her Majesty. Even Holmes changed his shoes.

  After the long day’s tramp, I craved a tea-tray as substantial as that of the previous afternoon, but it was not forthcoming. The bustle outside our doors grew to a pitch—then abruptly all fell silent.

  The throb of a powerful engine came through our windows, followed by another. After a moment came the distant bang bang of car doors closing. The stone walls of the castle seemed to gather their focus on the iron-studded doorway that was the only breach of its defences. Enough time went by to account for welcome greetings in the forecourt, a quick survey of the garden from the heights, and a dignified climb up the outer stairway. Then a murmur of voices rose from below.

  The Queen had only come some thirty miles, which even at a dignified pace on dirt roads would not have taken more than three hours. She would not need to wash away the dust of travel, although I hoped that she would be as desirous for her tea as we were. A quarter hour went by, twenty minutes. I finally grumbled at Holmes, sitting with his heels propped on the window-seat, reading a German text on the history of tobacco.

  “Do you suppose if I went down to the kitchen, I might beg a bald mug of tea?”

  He turned a page. “I imagine Florescu had to deliver the most urgent pieces of news. Which would include the state of the garden and any new ‘unsettling episodes.’ ”

  I drank another glass of water from the jug on the sideboard, ate some stale nuts from a twist of paper in the corner of my travel valise, and tried to interest myself in the words of my own book.

  Forty minutes after the door-slams of the motorcar, we heard a tap at our door.

  “Thank God,” I muttered, tossing the book onto the table and standing up. “Come!”

  But it was neither a summoning, nor a laden tray. Instead, a rather distracted-looking Florescu appeared in the doorway.

  “My apologies, Her Majesty has asked me to explain that urgent business prevents her from asking you to join her for tea, but instead she will welcome you for dinner. I will come for you at 7:40, if that is well with you?”

  “I—”

  “Your tea should be here within minutes, and again, I apologise for the delay.”

  There was nothing to do but thank him. He nodded and made to withdraw, then recalled another item of business. “You will be dining in Her Majesty’s apartments, and she asked that you be told that dress is informal. However, if you wish to adopt traditional clothing while you are here, you will each find her small gift in your chest of drawers.”

  He bowed more deeply, and backed out of the room.

  I had taken a change of clothing from the wardrobe, on our return from the day’s outing, but I had not looked into the chest beside it. Nor was I destined to look through it now, since I had only taken one step in that direction when another rap came from the hall.

  This was our tea, brought in not by the ever-cheery Gabriela, but a sour-faced, grey-haired woman. However, the tray she set down was piled suitably high with the apologies of the kitchen, both savoury and sweet, and it was several minutes before I recalled the Queen’s “small gift.” I went to investigate the contents of the drawers, coming back with a truly magnificent garment.

  “If this is ‘traditional clothing,’ ” I remarked, “then it looks as though we’re to be guests of honour at a Romany wedding.”

  The resemblance to garments seen on the local citizens was clear: a blouse of fine pale linen with full, bloused sleeves, loose and long to gather inside skirt and sash—both of which were also in the drawer. Thick embroidery covered the upper body, down the sleeves, and along the front—so thick, in fact, it might have been intended as armour. Needle-work was not one of my skills, but I’d seen Mrs Hudson do enough of it to know that, while the native dress might represent a dozen or so evenings of work before the fire, this garment represented solid days—weeks, even—of highly skilled handiwork.

  And that was just the blouse: the overskirt beside it represented months.

  I draped the tunic over the back of the chair, arranged to display its block of red and blue threads, picked out in fine geometric patterns—and I smiled as I recognised the protective eye and a stylised grape-vine. Then curiosity got the better of me, and I went to investigate the contents of Holmes’ wardrobe.

  I came back with a loose-sleeved tunic that was a masculine version of my own, made of white linen with a sumptuous band of embroidery around the hem, cuffs, shoulders, and neck. With it was a waistcoat so solidly embroidered it might have been tapestry. Holmes looked at the garments. One eyebrow rose, just a little.

  “So, that’s a no, then?” I asked cheerfully. “The man who does not hesitate to disguise himself as a drunken street-corner lout, elderly cleric, or opium addict puts his foot down at Roumanian peasant?”

  He turned his lifted eyebrow towards the tea-pot and set about refilling his cup. I returned the pieces of womanly art to their former resting place.

  A little after 7:30, I heard a motorcar engine start up, and glanced out of the window in time to see a sporty little Citroën buzz down the drive into the dusk.

  When the knock came, Holmes was dressed in a plain, dark suit, while I compromised by tying the embroidered sash around the waist of a more traditional frock—demonstrating my appreciation, without fully committing myself to fancy-dress.

  Florescu led us down a level and around the courtyard to the round, pointed tower on the other side. He knocked at the door, opened it, waited until a pair of black dogs had shot through and disappeared in the direction of the cooking smells, then stepped inside, drew himself up, and formally declared our names.

  And thus we were welcomed into the presence of Marie, Queen of Roumania.

  Chapter Twelve

  I have met a wide number of aristocratic and royal personages over the years, both before and after this. Some are charming, a few have been delightful, while a handful caused my hackles to rise—but all have been expert wielders of the professional warmth cha
racteristic of a race surrounded by those they consider, to some degree or another, inferior.

  I have never met one who wielded her warmth more graciously than the Queen of Roumania.

  She rose when we came in, crossing the room to greet us, and although I did feel that her outstretched hand was meant to be pressed to our bowed foreheads rather than shaken, any royal faux pas I may have committed, then or in the days to follow, went firmly unacknowledged by Her Majesty.

  Holmes she greeted as an old acquaintance, although his salutation was a formal, heels-together bow over her hand. Her own first words gave lie to the impression of familiarity.

  “My dear Mr Holmes, I feel that we have known each other for years, although I admit, I cannot recall ever having been formally introduced. I first met you, as it were, when I was fifteen and some cousins were discussing a story they had secretly read concerning a royal scandal. Debate was fierce over whether the ‘King of Bohemia’ was really meant to be our distant cousin, the Emperor. A few months later, I discovered there were more such stories, and that the servants read them religiously. I would borrow each new copy of The Strand when it came out. So exciting—and now here you are! Although I trust that Dr Watson will not be writing this little adventure for his reading public.”

  “I believe that Watson is at home in London,” he assured her, although that did not quite answer her question.

  “And Mrs Holmes—or rather, being a modern woman, Miss Russell. So very pleased to meet you. I understand you have had an exciting time in Monaco? Such a charming place, a piquant blend of flower gardens and wickedness.”

  Her accent was cut-glass English with a trace of German, her laugh a throaty ripple that made me smile in response. She held out her fingers to me, and although I stifled the impulse to bow or even curtsey, I discovered that my knees had betrayed me just a touch, and given her a brief dip of honour.

  “Your Majesty, thank you for making us welcome.”

  She swept us into her rooms and settled us on rug-strewn divans near what in the wintertime would have been a cosy fire, but was now a setting for a fiery display of dahlias, equally welcoming. She leant forward to ask Holmes something about London, leaving me to study the woman and her singular surroundings.

  Fancy-dress or no, Marie’s clothing paid no mind to the skimpy fashion of the twentieth century. Instead, it flowed: loose linen blouse, calf-length skirt, and sash-belt, all thick with the same embroidery that I had found in my chest of drawers. Her head was wrapped in a sort of turban with a long descending tail, an elaborate version of the women’s head-scarves I had seen. The pearl drops in her ears were as large as the end joint of my thumb, and around her neck was a long rope of pearls, each one brilliant white and the size of a cooking cherry.

  And her face—I had known she was handsome, this much-photographed woman, but I had expected that her pictures would deceive, or at least exaggerate. If anything, they had not done her justice. She was tall and graceful and extraordinarily beautiful, even her skin young for a woman of fifty years. Her gaze was both direct and compelling, her eyes a pale, almost translucent blue, as if the open windows to an open soul. Her features were perfect, her spine erect, and yet, far from a languid beauty, there was strength in her, and her fingers were not those of a coddled showpiece.

  She’d been an ardent horse-woman, I remembered. Her hands suggested she still was.

  Her voice broke into my thoughts. “And you, Miss Russell, I am told you are a noted academic. At Oxford, no less.”

  Told by whom, I wondered? “If I ever managed to spend more than a few weeks at a time there, my studies might have progressed more rapidly,” I told her. “As it is, Ma’am, my books gather more dust than they do margin notes.”

  “I often wonder what I might have been, had Mother believed in the education of women. I have lamentably little book-learning, and what I do read these days is mostly fiction.”

  “Your Majesty does not appear to have suffered under a lack of Greek and Latin tutoring.”

  “Yes, nothing classical, I am afraid, only English and Roumanian. And French, naturally. German. A little Russian. Some of which are easier to read than to speak, although for simple relaxation at the end of the day, I tend to reach first for a story in English. Do you know Aldous Huxley?”

  “Not personally,” I replied, “although I’ve read some of his writing.”

  “I was not sure what to make of Crome Yellow—how much was satire and how much simple biography. The Bloomsbury set as a whole is most intriguing—I regret my time in England is invariably much taken up with matters of state, since I should enjoy inviting the entire lot of them to tea and listening to them carry on. Though perhaps not while my daughter is present.”

  I laughed. “I met F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, down in the Riviera.”

  “Oh, I did enjoy his early Jazz stories, although I’m not sure Gatsby was a success. I was also pleased, while in London this summer, to discover a number of new detective-story writers. A woman named Christie seems most promising—do you know her? No? She’s quite clever. Although my daughter Ileana is devoted to Bulldog Drummond, more a man of action than a detective. Ah, heavens, where are my manners—what will you take by way of aperitif?”

  Florescu, who had been hovering behind us as we talked, took a step forward, but seemed disappointed when we both opted for wine.

  “I understand you have some excellent wines here,” I told him, then wondered where I had picked up that bit of information.

  His lugubrious face was transformed by pride. “Roumanian wines have been famous for thousands of years.”

  “Although most of the vines died from phylloxera forty years ago, to be replaced by French stock,” Holmes commented, which was a touch ungracious of him.

  “And I’m sure they’ve already taken on the distinctive qualities of their terroir,” I hastened to add, earning a grateful glance from the Transylvanian butler as he turned away from the waiting drinks cabinet and went in search of our wine.

  When he returned, I noted that while the liquid in our glasses had a faintly amber tint, the one he set before his Queen looked more like mineral water. We toasted—“Roumania!”—and took a sip of the crisp summer wine, waiting for the Queen to choose our topics of conversation.

  Those began with the events of her recent trip to England and Germany, mostly along the lines of the health of the British royal family and how fast children grew. Our dinner arrived, brought by a footman and a kitchen maid I had not seen before, younger than Gabriela and less sure of herself. She laid out the dinner service as if consulting an inner check-list, and when she succeeded in getting it all right and the Queen thanked her, she blushed with pleasure and automatically seized the royal hand to press against her brow.

  After which she blushed in consternation, and began to apologise. The Queen laughed, Florescu shooed her out, and she bobbed her way out the door like a cork in a pond.

  She, too, had been wearing a small gold cross around her neck.

  Over food, talk moved on to the arts and theatre. Over dessert it was outdoor sports—and when riding and shooting failed to spark our passions (I considered offering her my thoughts on the sport of pig-sticking, but decided I did not know her well enough to judge her response) she tried sailing. That, at least, I could reply to, having done my share of actual labour during a three-week voyage from Venice to Antibes the previous month.

  “Ah,” she exclaimed, “Ileana adores sailing. And it explains the fashionable brownness of your face and the paleness of your hair.”

  Also the calluses on my hands and the straw-like texture of that sun-burnt hair, but she was too polite to mention that. She questioned me on the nature of the yacht, and asked about the people we had met in recent weeks, identifying several mutual friends (though none of the various royal families whose names she ventured had come our way, and she qu
ickly set those to one side).

  At last, plates were cleared, coffee brought, along with a platter laden with figs, grapes, peaches, and tiny chocolates, lest a corner of appetite remain—and then Florescu and the various footmen and maids swept out, leaving us alone.

  The Queen’s demeanour shifted, just a fraction, when the door had shut behind them. Many of those whose servants see to their every need, be it producing a meal or buttoning up a gown, grow to treat them as part of the furniture, and make less of an attempt to curb their speech than if the servants were of no more concern than the family dogs. But this woman, who had probably never been out of a servant’s earshot since the day of her birth, was very aware of the meaning of actual privacy.

  The quick smile she gave us was genuine, an admission of the need for honesty. “Florescu is a treasure,” she said, “but one is aware that he has definite opinions when it comes to Bran.”

  “He is from here originally, I believe?” Holmes asked.

  “Indeed, his family have cared for Castle Bran for generations. When the city fathers of Brașov presented me with the keys, Mr Florescu was the man who held them—literally, that is, although without the full authority of a castellan. It had been a long time since anyone actually lived here, but Florescu knew everything my people needed to know: where the pans were kept, which sections of roof needed repair, which chimneys could be trusted to draw. He knows the castle better than anyone else—he told me once that the only time in his life he went more than a month without coming inside was during the War.”

  “You were fortunate he’s young enough to carry out what must be a demanding schedule, here. Particularly when there have been builders in.”

  “I honestly do not know how we should have managed without him. He arranges guides during the hunting season and tours of Brașov for my foreign guests, he tracks down unusual foods and helps me locate sources of flower bulbs for the gardens. He can do an emergency repair on the castle’s bits of ancient plumbing, produce a roast chicken when the cook has been taken ill, and stop the bleeding in a cut hand until a doctor can be found. He’s even hired most of those who work here, half of whom are related to him, I think. A true gem, is our Florescu.”