Castle Shade

by Laurie R. King

  I walked to the far end of the gallery and discovered a very pleasant sun-soaked terrace, set with two chairs and a small table. It gave a view over the flower gardens and the narrow river valley, and looked a most pleasant spot for morning coffee or sunset drinks.

  Although, in the company of Sherlock Holmes, I did not anticipate too many leisurely interludes of sitting and gazing at the scenery.

  Nor would I do so now. Instead, I walked through the other rooms on this level, and found that our bright, modern suite—running water and a geyser—was the only fully renovated portion. Other rooms were clearly on the schedule, to judge by the neatly stacked builders’ materials and equipment. Not that I saw any indication of the builders themselves. Perhaps work was suspended while the Queen was in residence.

  But the general abandonment left me free to poke about, trying to make sense of the original purposes of these spaces.

  The further one got from our suite of rooms, the fewer signs of renovation. The room beside ours smelled of damp plaster, its walls still dark in places. The next room had new windows, with clear glass and shiny brass hardware, from hinges to latch—but in the room after that, the plaster was crumbling and the worm-eaten, glassless window frames were propped against the corner.

  In worst condition were two long, extremely narrow rooms, face to face along the back of the shield wall. Both had lost their ceilings entirely, to gravity or vibrations from the builder’s hammer. Their floors were ankle-deep in ancient plaster, revealing the naked, hand-hewn roof beams, thicker than a weight-lifter’s thigh. There were tiny windows, but no sign of frames or glass.

  I made my way back to the stairway, and heard voices just below. I hesitated. Not that I wished to hide my presence, exactly. It was simply easier to explore without the offer of help. So I retreated, and came across another set of stairs, these silent and dark, blockaded by what appeared to be props bracing the walls. However, I could see neither crack nor bulge, and the steps seemed whole, so I ducked under the props and down I went.

  This level had a similar maze of oddly shaped rooms, but here, civilisation had taken control. The first room had wide, arched windows overlooking the courtyard, making the space pleasantly bright.

  The next room was large, spanning the entire width of this tower, and clearly often used for gatherings small and large. It was scattered with comfortable chairs and massive iron candelabras, bright woven fabrics thrown across the furniture and bearskins on the floor, and bowls of the inevitable flowers. On the white walls hung folk-carvings and ikons. A piano stood against the long back wall—not a grand piano, but still, I had to speculate on how they had got it up here. Next to it stood a fireplace surrounded by a sort of inglenook shelter, suitable for hours of reading in cold weather—and yes, just beyond it was a small library alcove, its wooden shelves well stocked with books. On the north wall, deep windows allowed light inside, although those on the other end of the room were brighter. Armchairs had been placed beneath them, to encourage a reader.

  I went down another flight of the blockaded stairway, and found rooms that were perceptibly smaller, with thicker walls and more deeply set windows testifying to the growing tonnage of stones overhead. This second storey appeared to be the family living quarters, linked by those open galleries to the Queen’s round-tower apartments. Unlike her rooms, however, these had the distinct air of a London men’s club: a four-poster bed that looked like something Henry VIII might have pontificated from, dark Turkish carpets that cost more than the Queen’s Rolls-Royce, and furniture so massive it would keep the entire castle heated for a winter, were siege engines to draw up outside the door. The rooms were thoroughly, even overly, furnished, but despite the overall dark clutter of a Victorian sitting-room, they seemed more staged than lived-in, as if chosen to please a person who had yet to arrive.

  These, I thought, would be the rooms of King Ferdinand, awaiting his royal return during the hunting season. There was a fine layer of dust over the less obvious surfaces, and I wondered if he would, in fact, return. I had been told that he was ill.

  Distracted by the thought, I opened a door and encountered at last another person, a plump and bustling housemaid who gave out a squeak of surprise and tossed half her arm-full of bedding into the air.

  Her Roumanian was unintelligible to me, but I did not need a translation to know that she was expressing surprise, disapproval—and then, catching herself, apology, at having troubled one of the Queen’s guests.

  I smiled, reassured her that no apology was necessary, helped her retrieve the freshly ironed sheets, and sent her on her way—the transaction having required not a single word of the other’s native tongue.

  Down, again. On this first floor above the courtyard, one could feel the growing thickness of the walls and the increasing mass of the entire castle: doorways and passages set into a considerable depth of stone, with small, heavily recessed windows. The rooms were dimmer, as a result, and perhaps to compensate, more colourfully furnished. The two rooms built against the shield wall were a dining room and a sort of parlour. The latter, with three deep-set windows facing south, had at some point been saddled with a remarkably ugly set of shelves built into one corner. Across from it stood another of the inglenook fireplaces, this one covered in bright tiles that might have been designed to distract from the embarrassment across the room.

  As I turned to leave, I felt a feather’s touch of sensation brushing the nape of my neck. I whirled, all senses alert…but there was nothing. No sound, no movement of air, just an uneasy feeling, as if something were watching me from the dark.

  On the ugly wooden shelf stood an ikon, a Virgin with her wide-eyed, enigmatic gaze. I gave my namesake a respectful nod, then left the room to descend to the ground floor.

  These rooms felt like the castle cellars. Walls that were two feet thick on the level of our rooms had grown to ten feet or more, reducing the rooms to half the size of those at the top. The south-facing windows were little more than arched tunnels with glass at the ends. The north wall had no openings at all. The eastern side revealed the single tiny window I had noticed piercing the shield wall, but it seemed that the architect had been happy enough to delay the work down here, ceding it to the builders for their stacks of tiles, plaster, folded tarpaulins, and the like.

  I left the dark confines and stepped out into the courtyard. This time of year, the sun reflected warmth and brightness off the high façades, although in the wintertime, it would be dank and uninviting. As with the rest of the castle, steps connected its various levels, paved in wide stones. Behind the well, a massive ivy vine rose up the wall of the kitchen block, with trunks thicker around than my arm and leaves framing an arched entrance. Through it, stone steps ascended, bowed with centuries of wear. I heard a door close. A young housemaid scurried out of the Queen’s rooms and along the gallery, then moments later popped out from the ivy-covered archway. She stopped to fetch a bucket of water from the well, and, bent over against the weight, vanished through a doorway.

  I had the odd sensation of being inside a living creature made of stone and brick, its veins filled with scurrying workers, its lungs breathing in life and beauty, exhaling decision and calm.

  Castle Bran was the creation of one woman. Queen Marie had received it as a gift, an unloved, abandoned building, and was bringing it to life. The rest of the country might be ruled by her husband and the men of the government, but in this small corner, she was the absolute Queen, as her grandmother Victoria had been of an empire. Marie seemed to fill every corner, touch every room—even those that were derelict and deserted. Castle Bran was coming to manifest the mind and heart of Queen Marie, from the exuberant dahlias to the dusty corners of her husband’s rooms. Underneath the bright rugs and ornate ikons—and certainly while standing in the close, oppressive darkness of the ground-floor cellar—one could sense Bran’s long, cold, brutal history, those generations of soldiers a
nd border guards, bored and angry and occasionally afraid, but such was the force of the Queen’s personality, Castle Bran now turned its face resolutely to the sun, and would not hear any suggestion of death or war or discomfort.

  I watched as another maid, an older one, walked with more deliberate steps towards the Queen’s rooms, and disappeared inside them.

  Enough meandering: there was work to be done, citizens to be questioned. I turned away—then tripped and nearly went sprawling over a calf-high ball of white fluff.

  The creature yelped, I cursed, and jammed my arm hard against a stone pillar. I didn’t quite go down, but waved my hand around to cool the scrape on my palm, looking down to see if I had flattened the animated fluff.

  In the corner of my eye, I saw Gabriela, moving forward to retrieve the creature.

  “Sorry,” I said, “I didn’t see it—ah, pardon.”

  Not Gabriela, rounding up the Queen’s wayward pet, but a young woman very like her.

  A face as solemn as it had been in the studio portrait, blue eyes nearly as dark as its paint, in a round face that was not quite beautiful. She was shorter than I by a couple of inches, but equally tan with the sun, and wore a costume very like the Queen’s at dinner—embroidered blouse with full sleeves, pale underskirt under a dark overskirt, her short hair sticking out from under a silken bandanna with a bright floral pattern. But though she was dressed like a native and looked like the castle maid, down to the little gold crucifix at her neck, I had not a moment’s doubt as to her identity.

  The daughter, Ileana.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sherlock Holmes scowled out at the Roumanian countryside passing slowly by. He had not been impressed with the country’s train system last month, and today’s journey was doing nothing to change his mind. In Brașov, he had managed to claim a corner of what purported to be a first-class compartment, but if things grew worse when they reached Sinaia—as they had on his earlier such trip—he would have to consider some means of taking revenge on his brother.

  The engine had managed to clear the Predeal pass without actually breaking down, and would soon pull into the tumult of Sinaia, summer capital and resort town for the wealthy and unemployable. After that would follow four hours of loud voices, unwashed bodies, and endless maize fields all the way to Bucharest. He did not imagine he was going to sleep.

  Not that he was going to sleep even before reaching Sinaia. There were matters on his mind, matters that called for decision. Sherlock Holmes did not at all care for the sensation of being undecided.

  Four and a half years of being married to Mary Judith Russell, and he was still finding the adjustment difficult.

  For his entire adult life, until the night he signed his full name upon a church register, Sherlock Holmes had been accountable to no one. All decisions were his alone, all secrets his to be kept or shared. Any loyalties owed—to monarch, client, or even brother—were entirely secondary to his unflinching pursuit of the case at hand. When he judged it necessary, he had bullied, ignored, and lied, even to his friend Watson, without hesitation.

  But not to a wife. A wife meant a contract of a different sort, one that stood before him and demanded an honest reply.

  Serving the needs of brother and Britain had become increasingly incompatible with his partnership with Russell. He had already forced her uncomfortably close to a lie regarding Mrs Hudson’s situation—forced her to prevaricate to him—and he could not avoid an open confrontation forever. Oh, husbands and wives deceived each other all the time—a detective learned that early in his career—but a lie here would fester and spread, deadly as a case of blood poisoning.

  Almost as deadly as an agreement to leave matters undiscussed.

  Four and a half years ago, Russell had come to him with a charade that a casual and convenient partnership might be an option. He had known the proposal was coming, had even anticipated its timing to the approach of her twenty-first birthday. So he had been prepared, and had taken care to meet her hopeful fairy-tale ending with a cold, brutal message: pretence was not a thing that could survive between them. It had to be the truth in all its manifestations, or nothing.

  That was one of the few times he’d been aware of their difference in age: one life new enough to retain some wishful fantasies, the other having survived half a century of hard experience.

  He had made it clear, on that cold London night, that the decision was entirely hers. He occasionally wondered what would have become of him—of them both—if she had not found a path to their particularly colourful wedding, some weeks later.

  Amusing, and ironic, that a man known to the world as a cold thinking machine could be more clear-sighted than a woman when it came to emotional truths. But just because emotion interfered with rational decision did not mean a person could dismiss its effects. He was quite clear that the problem of Mycroft’s demands would have to be dealt with, very soon.

  In the meantime, his brother had a point: Roumania was both vulnerable and essential, and required all the help Britain could offer. If Queen Marie’s reputation was being attacked, whether by a personal rival or some political enemy out to split the country, he might be in a position to do something about it.

  He only wished that he did not feel the same danger to his partnership with Russell. He’d spent years learning to bite his tongue when she put herself at risk, and even more years learning to accept the value of her occasionally opposing views. He enjoyed…well, he enjoyed a great deal about Russell, including the occasional rivalry, but only because of their deeper singularity of purpose.

  So, no: he was not at all pleased to have another sharp wedge poised over their relationship—a wedge by name of Mycroft Holmes.

  His mind circled around and around the matter. He may have slept, for a time, before he noticed that the train was approaching Bucharest. He folded away his unread newspaper, tucked the cigarette case back into his pocket. He would meet with Mycroft’s collection of Communist agitators, spies, and possible traitors, then escape as soon as he could, back into the clean mountain air.

  He wondered how Russell was getting on with the Queen. Two strong-willed women being polite over the dinner table. Rather unfortunate the daughter could not be there, too—it would be interesting to see how the next generation of Victoria’s heirs was turning out.

  Chapter Twenty

  “No, I’m the one who should apologise,” Princess Ileana protested. She bent to gather up an armful of fluffy white dog, her deep blue eyes studying me over the creature’s pointed ears. “Frost is so small, people are forever tripping over him. You are Mrs Holmes, I believe? Florescu told me you were here. He said that Mother had a meeting then went for a ride, but she should be back soon. Welcome to Bran.” Her voice was low for a girl her age, her accent a combination of crystalline English royalty heavily woven with threads of German and Roumanian.

  “Thank you, Your Royal Highness. And it’s no problem, I should have been watching where I was walking. I simply…didn’t expect to see you here.”

  It sounded accusing—but then, it was. The Queen was not going to be pleased at seeing her baby in Bran.

  “I had to come. I have responsibilities here—and in any event, Father hasn’t been well, so he’s staying at Peleș rather than our actual house, and Peleș is so big and formal, and everyone is tip-toeing around the halls so they don’t wake him, and though I’m a good nurse, all he really needs is rest. So I had the car bring me here.”

  My face must have shown surprise, although it was more at the idea of a sixteen-year-old claiming “responsibilities” than the rest of her sentence. But she took it as a reaction to palace servants going against the wishes of their Queen, because her face suddenly shed its solemnity. “I told them that if they didn’t bring me over, I’d saddle one of the horses and ride here. I think they believed me.” She put down the dog, which promptly took off after a s
parrow.

  It might be fifteen miles as the bat flew to Sinaia, but it had to be thirty miles by road—a long ride on the back of a horse. But for a sixteen-year-old girl with a sturdy mount? Not impossible. And there were probably back ways over the hills.

  None of that mattered: she was here, and I seemed to be not only Holmes’ spy, but the designated adult in the room. So I gave in—vowing to fade briskly into the background when the Queen returned.

  “I can see why you wouldn’t want to keep away from Bran. I’ve just been exploring the castle—what a fascinating place.”

  Her posture shifted, betraying relief—she was not quite as self-assured as she would have me think. “Isn’t it, though? I wish we’d had Bran when I was little—I’d have led my governess a merry hunt through all the nooks and crannies.”

  “Some of which do appear to be falling down, just a bit.”

  “I know—my first summer here, Mother wouldn’t let me explore without a footman. I still live in hope that I’ll spot the hidden passages.”

  “Are there any?”

  “There’s sure to be at least one, don’t you think? This was a fortress—and what commander would hole up in a castle with no back door?”

  It was a valid thought. And who would know castle architecture better than a granddaughter of kings?

  “I shall keep my eye out for hidden doorways,” I assured her.