Castle Shade

by Laurie R. King

  The darkness that had been pressing in, the fear I kept tamping down had not bled away, but continued to build. It was a mix of fury and panic and shame and abject terror, and I could feel the whimpers building in the bottom of my throat, until it was either scream aloud or pound on whatever came within reach—so I did both. Trembling with the effort of control, I got into a crouch, rising slightly to let my back find the roof, then dropping again. I drew a pair of deep, deliberate breaths.

  And then I let it all out, in a guttural growl that built from heels to throat as I exploded upward with all my strength.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The train reached Sinaia without mishap, breakdown, or even a cow on the line. The trip passed in an agreeable manner, as the Prince proved to be a man of wide interests and deep curiosity. Their conversation ranged from opera to agriculture. Wine-making was of particular interest, famous on the Știrbey estates since the seventeenth century, and beekeeping kept them going for a good twenty miles.

  More to the point, Prince Barbu proved a wealth of information when it came to the political situation on this end of Europe. As he was providing some unexpected insight into the history of the peasant revolts, Holmes made a mental note to introduce the man to Mycroft, who clearly needed a better source of information among the Balkan states.

  Holmes had hoped to stay in the Prince’s car after Sinaia, since the train would continue on to Brașov, but it appeared that the car itself would come off, to be shunted onto a siding, there to await the Prince’s needs.

  He resigned himself to elbowing the crowds for a corner seat, preferably in a compartment without too many bawling infants, but it turned out that Prince Barbu had other plans for him.

  “You must come with me, my wife would enjoy meeting you.”

  “I regret, Sir, my own wife was expecting me before midday. Perhaps we might come when our business in Bran is over.”

  “Certainly—but I cannot permit you to remain with the train. It will be faster and infinitely more comfortable for my driver to take you. I won’t be needing the motor today.”

  He would not take a refusal—not that Holmes tried hard. Instead, they dodged the crowds on the station, were whisked away in the waiting car—it was a Duesenberg, not a Rolls-Royce—and wound through the villas and gardens of Roumania’s summer capital.

  The stately pace of the motorcar was an irritation. He should have stayed on the train despite the company. But as if the Prince had been reading his mind, he said, “When we get to the villa, I’ll have the Citroën brought round. Taking this motor to Bran is like sailing an ocean liner up the Danube.”

  The delay in fetching the other motor meant that Holmes must come in for a brief refreshment, and that brief refreshment led to a conversation with Nadèje Știrbey, and although he was glad to have met the woman, to put a face on the purported lover’s wife, he ended up having to rudely pull out his watch in front of his host.

  The Știrbeys escorted him out to the waiting Citroën. The driver bundled him away, and drove off nearly as sedately as they had arrived. But when they reached the main road, Holmes leaned forward, holding out a denomination of lei that would keep the driver in beer for some time.

  “Young man, speed is of greater importance to me than comfort. All I ask is that you avoid running over any children.”

  The driver looked from the note to his passenger, and broke into a wide grin.

  “We go fast, yes?”

  “We go fast,” Holmes agreed—and scarcely got the words out before acceleration shoved him back in the seat. At this speed, he would arrive in Bran less than an hour after the midday he had promised Russell.

  He decided that he might as well be comfortable, and in any event, keeping his head below the view would make it easier to imagine that all was well. So he arranged his valise and a travelling rug into one corner, wedged his legs against the back of the seats to keep from being thrown about, and retreated into his thoughts.

  Mycroft was going to be ashamed at the failure of his Roumanian Intelligence: one informant off in Moscow, another away taking a cure for the gout—all in all, the Communist threat looked to be a damp squib. Even the assistance of the Times correspondent had been less enlightening than problematic. Was Prince Barbu the intended target, or was he a man playing a very long game to oust the King and take control? There seemed no evidence for the former. Yet Holmes would have sworn that Prince Barbu was a gentleman of honour, committed to his country.

  The Prince would not be the first likeable scoundrel he’d encountered. But he would be the one Holmes had liked the most.

  He could only hope that Russell had dug up some fact that would send them on the right path through the land of women. Though it would rankle if she’d managed to solve the entire case in his absence.

  Chapter Thirty

  The aftermath of terror is either collapse, or rage. Needless to say, I was in a proper fury by the time I had stormed along the road and up the castle drive, knife in hand and murder in heart.

  Just whom I planned to slice into pieces was unclear, but there would be someone.

  My forceful explosion out of the box that held me had added a contusion on my skull to the other bangs and bruises. I had burst upward with all my strength against the heavy lid of my oversized coffin, expecting nothing but the faintest of results. Except it turned out that the lid had not been screwed, nailed, or buried shut. Instead, it had hinges, and had shot upward with no more resistance than the weight of its boards—then dropped down on my head, nearly knocking me unconscious for a second time.

  When I had shoved it up again and rolled out onto the ground, I found I was in a derelict room with a dirt floor. Right in front of me, placed neatly side by side, stood my boots, the knife and pocket torch resting in the left one, my glasses, rather lopsided, in the other.

  What the hell?

  Something about the tidy arrangement lit the fuse to anger. Was that neatness meant to be an apology? Terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to whack you in the head and dump you in a hole, here’s your shoes?

  I was going to murder him. I was going to find him and kick him for a while with my boots and then murder him dead.

  I snatched up my glasses and shoved them on my ears, pushed the torch into my pocket, stepped into the boots, and yanked the ties snug.

  And before I stood upright, I drew my knife. If the bastards who did this were sitting outside, they were going to bleed.

  There were no bastards sitting outside. There was no one outside, though I heard voices. I stalked out of the deserted farm-building and across its weed-covered yard. The sagging gate I passed through seemed vaguely familiar—and as I stepped out onto the road, I realised why.

  I’d been stashed inside that abandoned building between the castle’s park and the cross-piece of the roads. Straight inside from where I’d been attacked—indeed, I could see the marks from my dragging heels leading in, which someone had attempted to scuff out. Why hadn’t Holmes…? Oh yes, he’d gone to Bucharest. But why wasn’t he back yet? The sun said it was past noon. And come to that, why hadn’t the castle raised a hue and cry last night? Surely someone was meant to notice when a guest of the Queen vanished?

  I glared up at Castle Bran. I’d been admiring its fairy-tale look, those lighted windows against the dark. Now the castle just looked sharp, its many roof-lines and cupolas stabbing into the sky.

  A sound drew my attention, a little further along the road. Two women stood staring at me. Onions rolled from a dropped basket at their feet. I raised a hand, to greet them, but before I could come up with the Roumanian phrase, they turned and fled.

  I looked down at my clothing. It did seem to belong to a creature that had just crawled out of its grave.

  “Oh, great,” I said aloud. I’d just managed to add another element of horror to the village hauntings.

  I limp
ed down the road and up the drive. One ankle ached and my head hurt and my skin crawled with filth and a dozen splinters were working their way into my flesh, and I’d been used and I’d been careless and I didn’t know what I was going to do with the knife in my hand, but there had to be someone I could turn it on.

  The Citroën I’d seen the other evening was back at the top of the drive. Its driver, who’d been leaning on the car and speaking with one of the castle guards, spotted me first. His jaw dropped. The guard turned, and gaped. Then a guard who’d been standing on the stairs came down to see what had drawn their interest.

  I approached the top of the drive under the scandalised gaze of three tidy, clean, and idiotically handsome young men. That was it. I drew breath and began to shout.

  “Who the hell owns that bloody decrepit old house down in the village? I don’t know who thinks it clever to dump a guest into…”

  Through the red filter of my rage, I dimly became aware that the guards’ alarm had begun to divide, between me and something at the top of the stairs. My voice cut off—not that the guard had understood a word of it to begin with—as I stormed to the bottom of the stairway and glared up.

  The iron-studded door was open. Florescu, two steps down from the top, stood frozen in shock.

  Shock at my state—or at my escape? Did the servants know—had they been in on it? Or just Florescu?

  And then Holmes appeared—only to freeze into an identical position, his face travelling from worry to relief to unbridled horror.

  I looked down at myself: black with filth, trousers out at both knees, boots scraped, spectacles awry. There was a knife in my left hand and blood on my right, and I couldn’t begin to guess what my face looked like—no need to, with that expression on his.

  With a sudden rush, my bubble of fury collapsed. I closed my eyes for a moment to think. No: the butler’s shock was clean, unmarred by apprehension or guilt. I sighed, then bent to slide the vicious little knife away into my boot-top. When I straightened, I held Holmes’ gaze for a moment, then lowered my head and trudged up the stairs.

  At the top, I found a small crowd, torn between pressing forward and keeping far back. I arranged my features—if indeed they could be seen at all—into an apology.

  “Mr Florescu, I’m sorry, I shall need to trail dust through your clean hallways to my bath. I seem to have…had something of a turn, and woke to find myself in a rather grubby situation. Pardon me.”

  He and the guards stood well clear as I walked past them into the castle, but Holmes caught me up before I had reached the staircase.

  “Russell!” he began.

  “I was attacked, Holmes,” I hissed over my shoulder. “A blanket over my head followed by chloroform. I woke up hours later in an old root cellar. But I’m fine.”

  I was not fine: my eyes burned, my head pounded, and my stomach roiled, in addition to a body aching from scalp to toes, both generally and in specific places where I had been bruised, scraped, bashed, pricked, or otherwise abused. Most of that external damage I would not be able to identify until I had scrubbed away the filth. But I was fine in that I was walking, speaking with apparent coherence, and beginning to feel thoughts lining themselves up inside my tender skull. “I’ll be better when I’ve bathed. And had some tea.”

  I was careful not to look into the mirror as I went past it.

  I thanked the gods of Transylvania and the deep resources of its Queen as I turned the tap in the modern bath-tub. Within seconds of lowering myself in, I was sitting in what appeared to be mud. I pulled the plug and poured water along the sides to sluice away the tidal line, and let the second bath run deep and hot. By which time there was tea as well, and I felt like weeping with gratitude, at the slow return of a normal world.

  I scrubbed, gingerly, and submerged to rinse the soap from my hair. For the third tub-full, I poured in some fragrant bubbling soap, and when it was filled, I lay back in the foam with the flowered porcelain tea-cup on my sternum, and listened to the minuscule pop of bubbles around my ears.

  A rap sounded at the door. Holmes came in. He had changed from city suit to country tweeds, though his collar was unfastened and his shirt-sleeves rolled up. He laid his cigarette case on the dressing table and pulled up a stool, sitting down with my misshapen spectacles, addressing their bends with his strong fingers.

  “Do you know,” he said in a mild voice, “that may have been the most accelerated two minutes in my long and tumultuous life. I arrive, I walk up the stairs, I am told that the servants have only just discovered that my wife’s bed has not been slept in. An absence that was overlooked at the time because the Queen was angry—with the Princess, and with them. It would seem that the Queen has never been angry with them before, so you can imagine the effect that had in the servants’ quarters.” He paused to stare off into space for a moment. “I will say, I regret that I was not privileged to witness the Queen of Roumania in full majestic wroth.” I chuckled, in spite of the discomfort of doing so, and he looked pleased before he returned to his task. “I then am informed that not until late into the morning did the Princess grow impatient, wishing to be attended by the English visitor by whom she had been so charmed, and send a servant to take morning tea to the slug-a-bed’s rooms. That is when the terrible fact dawned upon all that said visitor was missing, that she did not in fact set off to Bucharest with her husband (as some thought) or take to her bed early (as the others assumed). Florescu immediately sent out his minions to beat the bounds of the castle, and is on the verge of telephoning for the police when first, up motors the woman’s husband, followed by the young woman herself, looking as if she has fought off a land-slide single-handed.”

  I took another swallow of the tea, and tried to find a position that was both comfortable and above the water line. When that proved impossible, I settled for above the water line, and started to talk. “After you left for the train, I went exploring the castle, and came across Princess Ileana. She’d got tired of Castle Peleș and wrangled the driver into bringing her here, but the Queen was out riding so Princess Ileana and I went up in one of the towers and had a long conversation about ghosts. She had heard them, some others had seen them—including Vera Dumitru, not once but twice.

  “After our discussion of…what is the study of ghosts? Fantasmology? Anyway, we saw her mother returning, and I found an excuse to get well out of earshot. I went to talk with Miss Dumitru, who was every bit as sensible as both the doctor and the priest said. She told me all about the young soldier who died…ah.” I had noticed his closed face and the rigid clench of his jaw. “Perhaps I can give you that conversation later.

  “At any rate, we finished well before dark, but I had no wish to sit at table between a feuding mother and daughter, so I took a walk up the river road. It was dark by the time I returned, but I could see the road, and I had my torch.”

  I frowned down at my toes, protruding from the foam. “There was something on the road—a necklace, like the Queen’s pearls. I thought perhaps the string had broken while she was riding…but it wasn’t broken.” That had been my last clear thought: How could she lose this if the thread is whole? “I was bending to pick it up when something went over me, and then the chloroform.” I thought for a moment, trying to reconstruct what had happened. “It was a blanket, or cape, or something. But wide, and I think it must have had some means of gathering the edges together because as I was fighting to throw it off, I tried to take a step and went down, as if my knees were tied together. Once I was on the ground, he clocked me on the head, though not hard enough to knock me out. Then he dragged me off—behind a wall, where no one could see. There he sat or kneeled on me and must have simply poured chloroform over my head until I stopped struggling. And woke up in a pitch-black root cellar.”

  I shuddered, and reached for the tea. Silence poured off Holmes. His knuckles had gone white, working on my spectacles, but he abruptly la
id them down and walked out of the room, coming back with a bottle of brandy—Holmes’ standard remedy for any physical or emotional ailment. He poured me a dose, waited until I had dashed it back, then set the bottle on the floor and resumed his work on the spectacles. I sat for a moment, relishing the warm internal burn, then returned to the story.

  “It was difficult not to panic, waking up like that. There were no doors or latches on the inside, no food or drink. And the roof was too low to stand. However, as soon as I shoved up at the lid, I found that it wasn’t locked, and I wasn’t actually buried. It turned out to be a sort of storage bin for vegetables, with earth packed around it and a heavy wooden top, to keep things from freezing. It was in that derelict house down in the village, the one with the falling-down gate. Anyway, I found my torch, spectacles, and boots arranged on the floor outside. If I’d just tried standing up first thing, I’d have saved myself a lot of scrapes and grubbiness.” I raised one of my knees out of the water, making a face at the ingrained dirt and a trickle of fresh blood. “You might want to ring down for a first-aid kit.”

  He handed me the now-straight glasses. I set them on my nose, wincing a touch as they settled onto the bruises, then noticed him rolling up his sleeves a little more. He moved my empty tea-cup to the stool, and gestured me to rise. “Let us check the damage,” he said.

  “Oh heavens, Holmes, it’s just scrapes and dirt.”

  “Russell, you were unconscious for some sixteen hours. One dose of chloroform would not do that.”

  Inadvertently, I jerked both arms out of the water to check the inner veins—and nothing. But he was right, the effects of chloroform tended to be brief, unless continuously applied, and although I had definitely breathed in that cloying odour, and it was no doubt the cause of both nausea and stinging eyes, it would not account for that many hours of unconsciousness. And yes, I’d been tired, but I’d not just been sleeping, there in that coffin.