by Saber Vale
“Uh, hello, my friend told me someone here knew a few things about the history of the castle…?” I managed in German.
“I speak English,” the man said, “and yes, I think it was me who talked to your friend about the baron. My grandparents were friends of his.”
“Oh, amazing!” I sighed, “what’s your name?”
“Gustav,” he said, “and you?”
“I’m Astrid Griffen,” I said, “and I’d love to hear what you remember, what your grandparents told you…”
“I told her most of it, he was a kind man,” he said, “that it was terrible what happened up there in Griffenberg, that they couldn’t believed he’d hurt that girl, it was an accident…”
“What about the other woman? Her name was Caroline…”
“His wife?”
“Not his wife, the woman who came after…”
“Honestly, they were close to him only after his wife, or maybe she was just a partner, left and returned to America, so they never said anything about her…”
“His wife never left and returned to America,” I said, “she wasn’t American, she was Austrian… or German, I’m not sure, but she died… the partner probably was Caroline…”
“I never heard of a wife who died, but they could have misremembered, I could have misremembered, they really never spoke of her, I only remember that he was lonely after she left, whoever she was, he started coming in to town again, had to do his own shopping when he couldn’t afford servants…”
“Oh,” I said, “he never had any companions after that?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but who knows,” he said, “I’m sorry, I may have some things mixed up, I am only remembering things that someone told me of things that happened long ago…”
“Sure, I understand…” I said, exasperated, “do you have any books, anything that might…”
“I have some histories that briefly mention Griffenberg, but nothing so recent…” he said, “nothing about the last baron.”
The last baron.
The words rang in my ears.
“Well he wasn’t technically the last baron, he had a son,” I said, “my grandfather.”
“Oh, I didn’t think he had children,” Gustav said with a shrug, “but you would know more than me, I guess.”
I bought a book on the earliest inhabitants of the castle, and went back to Griffenberg feeling let down and confused.
When I got to the West Wing, I found Cormac sketching out a map of the castle, a cup of coffee in his hand.
“I have to know where that last key goes,” he said, almost as if to himself.
Darleen was on her laptop, manipulating a CAD blueprint of the boathouse, experimenting, it seemed, with where she might put a new pool.
“Cormac, what do I have to do to get you to sell me the castle?”
“You can’t afford it,” he said, sipping his coffee, not looking up, “did you hear back from all the preservation and historical people? Nobody can afford it except for a developer.”
“I can’t stand the thought of this becoming a… a Disneyland for the uber wealthy…”
“As opposed to a fortress for the uber-wealthy like it’s been for its entire history? I don’t see what the big difference is.”
“The difference is that in one situation, my family history is preserved and in the other it’s destroyed.”
“No, it’s preserved in both cases, you’re just not in control of it anymore.”
I paused, shocked by his accusation of self-interest.
“I can’t give it up, Cormac,” I said, steeling myself, willing to let him be right, “this is the most important thing in my life.”
Darleen looked at me meaningfully, then looked at Cormac, as if waiting to see what he’d say next.
“Darleen, can you give us a minute?” Cormac said, and Darleen eager snapped her laptop shut and practically ran out of the room to keep from getting between us.
“Astrid… I didn’t think it would come to this, but this castle is basically mine,” he said.
“No,” I hissed, “you own…”
“I own forty nine percent, yes, but before I arrived, my company also paid the back taxes on the property and put a lien against the title, so that you can’t sell it without paying me, my company back. It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“What?” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.
“My company owns the castle’s debt, so I can effectively take your half of the ownership via lawsuit if you don’t pay your half of the debt back. It was part of the agreement I made with my board of directors before I convinced them to let me come here, to protect our investment.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that on the first fucking day?” I shouted at him, furious, “I could have started… I don’t know, figuring something out!”
“Like what? Selling off everything that makes this place what it is? You can’t figure out how to save it even without the lien…”
Tears poured down my face. I didn’t even try to stop them.
“How long have I got until…”
“Until I sue you for my half? I didn’t think it would ever come to that, it doesn’t have to. I thought originally I’d buy you out, pay back what the castle owes, and you’d still probably make a lot of money after we have everything assessed.
“So I walk away with nothing…”
“Sure, if you think a great deal of money is nothing,” Cormac said laughing, “now who’s the spoiled rich kid?”
“How much time?”
“You can stay as long as you want…” he sighed, “you can live here for all I…”
“That’s not what I’m asking…”
“Honestly?” Cormac said with a sigh, “it’s already done, Astrid… I’ve arranged a meeting with a lawyer for Monday who will either finalize the sale of your half, or you can become a partner and invest your stake. If, on Monday, you don’t come around, I’ll proceed with a forced sale that will happen by Friday.”
“Monday?” I cried, “the castle won’t be mine anymore on Monday?”
“I said you could keep your shares and…”
“And be a part of the destruction?”
“Astrid… I really like you,” Cormac said, a pained look on his face, “I care about you, and I really wish…”
“Stop,” I shouted at him, “if you really cared…”
“Don’t you see that you’re making a bad choice?” he said, his voice rising about a friendly tone for the first time ever, “you say you don’t want to be like your mother, but you’re willing to spend your life poor and alone just to keep up this charade…”
“It’s not a charade!” I shouted.
“You’re not royalty, Astrid, your suitcase is broken, your hoodie is threadbare, you need new shoes, you don’t have a place to live…”
“I’m broke, I’m not destitute, when my next book…”
“Astrid, you haven’t written the entire time you’ve been here, I know you’re a great writer and a talented academic, and if you had plenty of money just think…”
“Shut up!” I shouted, covering my ears with my hands like a child, “I can’t stand this! You don’t understand anything about me!”
“I think I understand you better than anyone, Astrid, I grew up with a dad who put status above everything else too, except instead of a noble title, it was money that he used to…”
“That’s not what I’m doing, the castle is… is… my identity…”
“The castle is not your identity, you’re a fascinating person and it has nothing to do with who you’re related to…”
My head was swimming and I didn’t know what to do. I felt so angry and hopeless, like I couldn’t tell up from down, or left from right, and the only thing that I really wanted, the only thing that I thought for sure would make me feel better was the one thing I couldn’t have.
I needed Cormac to touch me, needed him to soothe the frustration and pain, needed him to r
eassure me, even though he was the cause of my misery. He was the antidote to the very pain he caused me.
“Cormac,” I whispered, begging him to release me, whatever that meant, “please…”
Then as though he could read my mind, Cormac looked me right in the eyes and spoke.
“Let’s go to the dungeon.”
I followed Cormac hurriedly below the castle, where, as soon as we shut the door behind us, he pulled me close to him and began to undress me, his mouth pressed to mine.
“I’m crazy about you, Astrid,” he whispered, “I think about fucking you every minute, every day…”
“I…” I murmured, not knowing what to say.
Of course I felt the same way, but we’d never talked about it, had never admitted it. I was certain that things would fizzle out quickly, our conflicts would overshadow our intense connection.
After I was completely undressed, Cormac slipped on the black leather gloves, then found a pair of leather cuffs in the drawer and turned me around to bind my hands behind my back before dropping me to my knees, unbuckling his belt in front of my face, pulling out his enormous, fleshy cock and stroking it inches from my face, his leather-gloved hands sliding smoothly along his shaft as though teasing me.
“Open your mouth,” he commanded, and I did, staring up at him as though pleading for his cock.
I opened my lips and let him fuck my mouth, his hand tangled in my hair, as I gazed up at his perfect face, his lips slightly parted, his eyes intense with need. I gagged, tears in my eyes, as he used me, staring down into my face, attuned to everything I was feeling as though he was feeling it himself.
He pulled out, lifted me up onto the table in the center of the room, then turned me over, my ass in the air and my knees spread.
He spanked me hard with his open palm, the black leather stinging my skin as he struck me. I cried out, and turned to look at him with a combination of need and panic, as he undressed with furious speed, his aggression greater than usual, more intense.
He reached forward and grabbed my chin in his hands, forcing me to look forward, and held me on the neck and chin as he climbed onto the table with me, kneeling behind me on one knee, and skewered me with his member, sinking himself inside of me with a vicious thrust.
I cried out, my voice strangled slightly by his hand on my throat, tightening as he fucked me, my whole body tensing up with pleasure and pain.
“Please don’t stop,” I begged, my voice tight and breaking.
“I’m not going to,” he groaned, fucking me harder still, even reaching around with his hand and pleasuring my clit with swirling, even strokes until my legs trembled and my knees buckled.
“Oh my god,” I groaned, my body collapsing against the table, my head swimming dreamily, lights flashing behind my closed eyelids.
Cormac groaned and came hard, pumping himself inside of me as I caught my breath, writhing against the table, my body limp and unbalanced.
After he pulled out, he took off my restraints and I turned to look at him as he pulled his pants back on. He stood there in his jeans and gloves, buttoning his fly, his muscles flexing in his chest as he moved his arms, and I felt crushed with attraction. I couldn’t hate him no matter what he did.
I also couldn’t live with myself if I let him take the castle. I had no idea what to do.
We went back upstairs and Cormac went back to his little drawing of the castle. It seemed like anytime our fight about the castle got too intense, we turned to sex or our little mystery, and let it distract us.
“Where do you think the key goes?” I asked, feeling languid and tired of fighting anyway.
“I have no idea, is there anywhere we haven’t explored?”
It was late afternoon. I didn’t want to go back down into the catacombs, into the dark.
“Not that I can think of,” I said, “but we could go look more in the East Wing. That’s where I think the answers to our questions are. There are still boxes and books, things we haven’t gone through.”
“Ok,” said Cormac, “let’s go.”
“Can I come too?” Darleen’s eager voice emerged from the other room, listening in.
“Yeah, of course,” I called, feeling sorry that I’d nearly forgotten her.
We set off, together, on another hunt for answers.
We went, first through Caroline’s things, her drawers and her armoire again, leaving nothing unopened, but didn’t find anything new. Cormac, then, lifted the bed, and I looked underneath it with a quick glance.
“There’s something there,” I said, laying down as Cormac set it back, to crawl beneath and see what I could find. There was a box attached to the top of the bed frame, tucked against the side, made of metal, an old cookie tin.
“No lock,” I said, setting the box on the bed and pulling off the top.
I could hardly breathe as I opened the box, and inside I found a stack of letters, a roll of paper, and a photograph of a man, in black in white, who looked very familiar, but who I couldn’t recognize. He was wearing a white t-shirt and jeans and leaning against a Chevy truck. The photo looked unmistakably American.
“Old boyfriend?” Cormac asked.
“He looks about Caroline’s age,” I agreed, “maybe someone in her family? They kind of look alike. It’s weird, I feel like I kind of recognize him.”
“It’s not the Baron?”
“Too young,” I said, shaking my head, “the Baron was already middle-aged when he and Caroline were together, this guy looks like he’s in his early twenties, maybe? Maybe younger? And it’s no later than, I don’t know, nineteen thirty five?
“Huh,” Cormac said, “what about the letters?”
“They’re addressed from… North Carolina, weird,” I said, “ok… Caroline, We miss you every day and hope you change your mind and come home soon. Things are getting hard, mother isn’t well and the tobacco crop is struggling under the heat. If things don’t change soon, we’re going to be in trouble… I miss you very much, the farm isn’t the same without you, but I always knew you were too big for our little town. I hope you’ve found what you were looking for…”
“Wow,” Cormac said.
“It’s signed Eddie Lowell…”
“So, maybe her brother?”
“We don’t know the guy in the picture is who wrote the letter,” I reminded them.
“Right,” Cormac said, “but I think it’s a safe assumption, for now.”
“So she was a farmer’s daughter… she grew up poor…” I breathed.
I don’t know why the revelation felt so meaningful.
“Ok, here’s another one,” I said, “from the same guy… Caroline, things are not well here in Wheeler, mom misses you like crazy and I don’t know how much longer she’s going to last…”
I opened two more letters and they were the same, sad, desperate letters about a depressing situation back home on the Lowell homestead.
“What do you make of it?”
“I don’t know what there is to take from it,” I said, “we knew she was American, it just looks like she ran away, got caught up in the fantasy of being with the baron.”
“It seems like she didn’t reply, all the letters are the same, like she’s not answering him…”
“No, here’s one… Caroline… yadda yadda, ma is sick… I’m glad to hear you’re a fine lady with a noble title…”
Cormac and I passed a look.
“… the money you sent was helpful, but the situation overseas is becoming dangerous, and mama is worried about you. Could you and your husband return to the farm? Is he the type of man who might like to work in a tobacco field?”
“Oh my god,” Cormac said, almost laughing, “they were married?”
“No, she probably just told her family they were married,” I said, “so they wouldn’t think less of her… what was she supposed to say? Don’t worry about me, just in a weird BDSM relationship with a man twice my age living in a castle in Bavaria while you and everyone
back home scrapes by…?”
Darleen shook her head and exhaled.
“I don’t blame her,” she said.
We all had a sad laugh.
“But she died,” I said, “what the fuck happened? I mean, did he kill them both? He just… just didn’t seem like he would have…”
“I mean, we haven’t seen what’s in the missing journal pages,” he said, “who knows what was confiscated, what was searched.”
“If this castle was searched by any competent law enforcement, I’ll eat my hat,” Darleen said, “it seems like it’s hardly been touched for a hundred years, much less torn apart in an investigation.”
Darleen picked up a bundle of papers.
“Those look like they’re from her journal,” I said.
“Do you mind?” she asked, gesturing at me.
“Go ahead,” I said with a nod.
“B and I slept in and then went down to the boathouse for an afternoon happy hour… Sophie met us down there with one of her friends, a girl from the village even more backwards and provincial than she is. B gave them sparkling wine and we ate a cheese plate that the servant girl made, and then, we brought deck chairs down on the beach, and B prompted Sophie to lay on a blanket with her friend, to kiss her, to take off her little peasant top, to suckle her tiny pink nipples one by one while he and I leaned back and watched, my hand on B’s cock, swelling in his trousers, clinking our glasses at the fun of it all…”
“Why is this torn out of the journal?” I asked.
“Shh,” Cormac snapped at me.
“Ok, ok,” said as I smirked at him.
“…the girl seemed nervous and hesitant, but Sophie urged her, stroked her, slipped her skirts and camisole off, and, as the girl closed her eyes and bit her lip, and I could tell B was getting excited deeply by the two little nymphs who played like eager, nervous virgins in front of us on the blanket…”
“Man,” Cormac said, his voice breathy.
He was getting turned on.
“…Sophie undressed and bent over, on her knees, pressing her mouth to her friend’s pink, golden-haired mound, licking her like a pale, blond kitten drinking milk from a saucer. Sophie’s round ass in the air was too much for B to resist, and he dropped to his knees behind her on the blanket, sinking his cock inside of her as she whimpered. Before long he was seizing, coming, filling her with his seed as her nervous little friend quivered and bucked her hips, crying out, ya ya ya, in her provincial German dialect…”