Castle Rouge (25 page)

If I had…I should be poor and holy and wear whatever cast-offs were available to me.

So…

I will pretend I am in darkest Africa, although I will not pretend that I am wed to Jasper Higgenbottom. I have outgrown such ambitions. If I were to pretend I were wed to anyone nowadays, it would be…well, I would not so pretend. A woman of my age, past thirty, does not pretend. She accepts.

So I accept these clothes, that no doubt Godfrey has humbled himself in ways I cannot comprehend to obtain for me. My eyes blur with sadness. Godfrey’s every thought is for my comfort, and by God’s grace I shall be comforted. No woman could have a doughtier champion, and he himself in worrisome captivity! Taken first, and for no more reason than I. For no more
known
reason than I. I find my jaw setting in a most uncomfortable way.

Is it possible that I am angry?

Anger is a cardinal sin, but I think in this instance that it is justified.

I shake out the garments, more puzzled than before.

There are several cotton petticoats and a skirt of many yards of fabric, but oddly short. There is a shirt, or blouse, of coarse linen, with sleeves full enough for an acolyte on Easter Sunday. And there is a laced buskin of sorts, like a truncated corset.

The boots are the oddest part of the ensemble. They are low-heeled, of red-dyed leather embroidered fancifully all over the leggings. I am enough a maker of fancy-work to admire the skill that has decorated their gaudy surface.

The stockings are striped red and green. Oh, dear. And will at least not be seen.

Of course there are no civilized undergarments. I regret my Belgian laces sacrificed to the fire, but they were ruined beyond redemption.

I resolve to think no more on my unremembered journey here.

In less than an hour, I am finally attired in something more than a nightdress.

The linen and cotton scratch my skin. I had not realized that fine lawn and silk could be so pleasing. The blouse has no decent collar, but a drawstring neckline, like a shift. I pull the strings taut within an inch of their lives, but still cannot cover my throat. And the bodice…

Godfrey knocks at the door, and I must open it.

I step behind the heavy wood to let him enter my quarters. Far behind it.

He bends to gaze at my incredibly wide but short skirts, which plainly reveal every serpentine embroidery on my boots up to almost my…knees. Of course I am covered by the leather.

“Boots that Irene would envy,” he pronounces.

I am strangely relieved.

“Indeed. She is fond of boots?”

“She is fond of all apparel,” he says with a grin, “but boots particularly.”

“Now that is something we have not discussed.”

“Are you going to come out from behind that door?”

“I don’t know, Godfrey, quite honestly. No disrespect to the garb you obtained, but it is rather…odd.”

“It is worn by the Gypsy women who service the castle.”

“Gypsies! No wonder. I cannot come out.”

“Why not?”

“The, um, corset laces. I cannot reach behind to tighten them. I realize that you have performed this service for Irene in the role of husband, but I cannot ask you to perform such an intimate service for myself, who am not even a relation, so I shall have to remain behind the door.”

Godfrey takes a long step back and appears to think. He covers his mouth with his hand, at least, and looks most cogitative.

“You are right, Nell,” he says finally. “I cannot help you.”

Despite myself, my spirits sink. It is my impression that Godfrey can always help anyone with anything, even Irene when she is being her most difficult, which a performing artist can indeed be, especially when she has lost her performing art.

“I can point out,” he adds, “a purely objective observation. The women about the place do their own laces.”

“They must have arms as long as an ape, for I have tried for almost an hour!”

“You may be right about the length of their arms,” he says, his hand over his mouth again, as if he were expecting a cough or perhaps concealing a smile. “But they manage it because the, er, corset actually laces at the front, not at the rear.”

I take a long moment to reconsider. “Oh. Then perhaps I can come out from behind the door, after all. If you would be so kind as to step into the hall for a moment—?”

He speedily obliges.

I wrestle with the annoying corset and finally draw the strings into a droopy bow that wilts at the front of my waist.

The mirror tells me that this is not much better than before. Much as Irene and her friend Sarah Bernhardt rejoice in going corsetless, I cannot help but feel undressed though dressed, a most bizarre state.

However, my sole witness is only Godfrey, and he of all people can understand the lengths to which I am forced to go.

I invite him back in.

“I must say, Nell, that is a rather charming ensemble. I recall an operetta or two that Irene appeared in during her apprenticeship days. Did she not wear some such garb?”

“Yes, but she was portraying a peasant!”

“That might be just the disguise we need to escape this castle.”

“Disguise? Escape? You have a plan?”

Godfrey pinches the bridge of his nose and shuts his fine gray eyes.

“My dear Nell, I have thought of nothing else since I found myself abducted to this remote place. I have concluded that climbing free is not possible. Therefore, we may have to escape by subterfuge. Since the Gypsies are the only souls to routinely visit this godforsaken spot, you have just the outfit to make your way unnoticed out of here.”

“Not you?”

He looks as uncomfortable as I had felt a bit before. “Not I. I had hoped to climb my way out some moonlit night, but—”

“But?”

Godfrey goes to the open shutters and I follow.

We looked down together, down on a great green plunge of forest and valley, the gray walls of the castle like some frozen, dirty waterfall barely visible beneath us.

“I had perceived a route by which I could at least visit chambers on the lower level,” Godfrey says. “See that gutter? And the fenestration running horizontally from it? Then the crack in the stones on an angle, and the window far below? I think I might make my way there.”

I gaze upon the projected route with horror. I see the slight stepping stones he indicates, but can also see that every step along the way is a possible plunge to instant death far below.

“It is too dangerous.”

“So may be staying put.”

“You really meant to take this path?”

“Yes. Before you came.”

“Irene would be furious.”

Godfrey smiles. “She is good at being furious but she is not here.”

“I am!”

“I know. And thus I have renounced the route.”

I look down again, for a long time. I do not like to think that my presence would hamper Godfrey’s efforts to escape. If there is a choice between which of us must return safe and sound to Irene…it is he. I know that the steel bonds of friendship must bow to the unknown (on my part) steel-and-satin bonds of love.

So. Would I serve Irene best by allowing my female weakness to keep Godfrey from risking himself to obtain freedom…or by allowing him the freedom to risk himself on his own account, and hers?

It is a more puzzling choice than the proper way to don a Gypsy corset.

I realize I cannot decide on the spot.

I am saved by a knock on the connecting door. Instead of Godfrey, I find a sullen Gypsy delivering dinner.

It is a manservant, and he winks at me when he leaves.

Or is it my short skirts and embroidered boots?

Or my inside-out corset?

I would never have had to contemplate such mysteries had I gone to Africa as the missionary bride of Jasper Higgenbottom.

Godfrey and I shared our first dinner in the castle.

He pulled—I pushed, but not very much—the round table from the center of the room to the window, then dragged two of the heavy wooden chairs over.

They are carved, high-backed affairs, fit for bishops to sit in. The furnishings of the place smell of mildew and wood rot and dust.

A battered brass tray held our food, a strange mix of peasant fare and more extravagant bounty.

Yet more thick soup and bread, cheese, beets, some sort of meat stew. And a bottle of red wine that Godfrey assured me was a very fine vintage.

Since no water was served, I had no choice but to drink some wine in the tall metal chalices studded with bizarre stones.

Given the princely chair and the drinking material, I felt rather like a Papist prelate.

Beyond the window, the sky underwent the subtle changes of day becoming dusk becoming twilight. As the setting sun tinted the view rose-red, birds called and wheeled past in the distance like dark embers whirling up a chimney.

Had our circumstances not been so dreadful, it would have been a rather pleasant repast. There was even some kind of heavily fruited cake for dessert.

“You look like the heroine of an operetta, Nell,” Godfrey commented in the mellow tone of one who has eaten and drunk well. “Irene would be most taken with your ensemble. I believe she would order a matching one.”

“Indeed, she relishes dressing me up like a doll in the kind of clothing that is least natural to me. Well, she need only be kidnapped by Gypsies, apparently, and this ludicrous outfit would be hers.”

“I doubt the Gypsies are our kidnappers. They are mere attendants.”

“It is not every abductor who has a castle for a—what is that word that Pink used once, so American—a hideout.”

“You must tell me more of this ‘Pink’ person that Irene took under her wing in Paris.”

“I do not think that I must, Godfrey, but I will. Her real name is Elizabeth, a solid, old-fashioned name that might give one a confidence about its possessor that is entirely misplaced. She is utterly American and most forward for a girl in her twenties who should know better and besides that she is, well, no better than she should be.”

He frowned to consider my words while turning the chased silver goblet in the dying light to watch the sunset tinge the pale stones bloody.

“Can you not be a trifle more blunt, Nell?”

“We encountered her in a
maison de rendezvous
! She may have found the bodies of two slain harlots, but she was no different from them, save that she was still alive.”

“A significant difference, you will allow. So Irene was interested in her as a witness to the discovery of a crime.”

“I do hope so! What other reason would she have for insisting the girl move into our Paris hotel rooms? She even took her to the Paris Morgue, without me.”

“Obviously, as a witness,” Godfrey hastened to point out. “Irene will do many unusual things when pursuing an enquiry. You must tell me the whole story of these Paris murders, and what they have to do with Jack the Ripper.”

“Oh, I will. I have, in fact, the small notebook from my chatelaine with me to serve as reference, though I have had to write very small and succinctly.”

“That must have been extremely difficult.”

“Writing small?”

“No, succinctly.” His gray eyes twinkled as he sipped the wine.

“Well, first I wish to know how
you
were kidnapped. Did a man with mad eyes come rushing at you?”

“Luckily, no. I simply followed instructions. The Rothschild interests had been contemplating a loan to a Transylvanian nobleman wishing to use this castle as collateral. I was to travel here to assess the property and ensure that man’s agents were able and honest.”

“And once you arrived here?”

“It was made plain that I was not to leave. In fact, I believe the entire transaction to have been a ruse. I have met no Transylvanian nobleman, only Gypsies and guards. And the cats and rats, of course, which I do not believe add value to the property. In fact, a decaying castle in this remote forest has no value whatsoever. The count, unless he is totally fictitious, which is distinctly likely, will have to look elsewhere than the House of Rothschild for underwriting.”

“Obviously this Transylvanian business was a complete ruse to get you here. But I cannot imagine why, or why I am here also. Perhaps your secret mission for the Rothschilds in Prague would better explain matters.”

“Perhaps it would, but I am sworn to silence.”

“Since I am the walking dead, perhaps you can confide in me.”

“Nell! Do not refer to yourself that way.”

“Godfrey, I have spent nearly a week in what amounts to a coffin. I feel quite resurrected. What can be so secret that you cannot break silence in such dire circumstances?”

“Baron de Rothschild himself demanded secrecy.”

“Yes, I know, and Irene was not too pleased about that.”

“She was annoyed to be kept in the dark but in a perverse way she was also proud that I was the one man on earth the Baron trusted with this mission.”

“Now she must be merely frantic. I shudder to think how our mutual disappearances may affect her. She is a performing artist, after all, and her emotions are always finer tuned than those of less imaginative persons, such as myself. She may not yet know of your predicament.”