Castle Rouge (51 page)

“Oh, Mr. Abraham, your American Indians have not the imagination of Vlad Dracul. He impaled his victims vertically, you see, and would then thrust the stakes upright into the ground, so an entire forest of suffering souls died over the course of hours and even days. Once he impaled thirty thousand Hungarian boyars who had countered his wishes, arranged in circles around the city. When the Turks rode up to that sight, to see what he had done to his enemies among his own people, they retreated as if from a demon.”

This recital earned a silence, while all present tried to imagine how these impalings were achieved, or, in my case, tried
not
to imagine it.

“It wasn’t only enemies he treated to slow death on a stake,” the Count continued. “He was most intolerant of village maidens who were no longer maidens, and adulterous wives and widows who did not remain chaste. These he would divest of their female parts by the knife, then impale on red-hot stakes.”

Godfrey and I exchanged a glance. His expressed deep concern for what my ears were hearing, mine sought to remind him that this fifteenth-century fiend was not so different from whoever was committing murder and mutilation in the great cities of Europe. Could even the motive be the same?

“Count,” Godfrey said abruptly. “You are right that such subjects are not fit table talk with women present. I am not sure they are fit with men present.”

“Hear, hear,” said Mr. Stoker. “Such subjects are best read of in books, rather than told among mixed company.”

Tatyana stirred on her chair like an awakening lizard. “The English are so…what is the word? Tender? Easily appalled, perhaps.”

None of us bothered to defend our nicety from the likes of her.

Tatyana’s “bear” lumbered around with more wine, spilling much on the once-pristine cloth Tatyana had apparently brought with her.

As I bent to sop up the stains after he had passed, I managed to lower my voice like Irene’s best onstage aside and address Mr. Stoker. “Occupy our hostess. I have an assignment she should not notice.”

Bram immediately took his overflowing goblet and stumbled a bit as he pushed back his chair.
Oh, what oafs and liars we English be!

He paced to the table’s other end and proceeded to chat privately with the Count about even more of the neighborhood legends, none of them very nice from what I heard of them.

While I wondered what Godfrey could find to say to Tatyana, I noticed that the musicians from the hall had migrated one by one into the library. They had settled by the fireplace and proceeded to saw away at their instruments with such exuberance that they did us the service of making talk impossible except in very close quarters.

This was an opportunity to put my plan into play.

I stood up at the table, clasping my goblet against my chest. I strolled toward the feverishly playing Gypsies, surrounded by their bottles of wine.

I counted eight of various ages and sizes, ranging from slight to stout, from beardless youth to old men with their hair and mustaches streaked with swaths of coarse white hair as if Jack Frost had been at work while they slept.

Their skins were as brown as chestnuts and as shiny, for their vigorous motions so near the fire burnished their features with perspiration. Their garb was as bright as they were dark, with red, orange, and purple sashes prominent. The odor of leather, sweat, and strong spirits reminded me a bit of a stable, only there the alcohol is used—usually—to tend to muscle strains on the animals.

Ordinarily I would reel away from such powerful scents in the street, but here I nodded my head to what tune I could detect in the music and quaffed my wine.

I was the only attentive audience they had, and soon their black-berry glances passed over me. Instead of looking instantly away at such rude surveillance, I smiled and nodded even more vacuously to the music.

Now that I confronted a group of Gypsy men, I realized with dismay that I would never be able to identify the fellow who had brought our meal one day and winked at me. I simply had not seen him long enough to mark any individual traits.

My hand stole to my skirt pocket where the precious note and my vial of smelling salts kept company. Apparently they would stay right there.

I sighed, and forgot to pretend to sip my wine, but actually did so, backing away from the musicians.

As I did so, one winked at me!

I stopped where I stood, wondering what to do next.

A wink would be quite inappropriate, so I…smiled at the winker.

He grinned back and dug his chin harder into the rest on his violin, as if urged to greater efforts by my presence.

I smiled more. He was a bearded youth, I saw, with a thick shock of jet-black hair and elbows and knees that stuck out at awkward angles. Oh…my charges had been younger, but it was easy to see something redeemable in this raw youth, and a kind of touching puppylike friendliness in his winks.

At that moment he half-rose from the crate he was seated upon and began a soaring, aching solo that all the other violins softened and gave way to.

He was playing it for me!

Well. Apparently flirting is much easier to accomplish than I had realized. Of course I half looked like a Gypsy girl, and my short skirts and braided hair probably made me look far younger than I was.

My heart soared, partly in tribute to his soulful playing, mostly because I thought I could at least handle this clumsy young swain, whereas trying to flirt with one of the older, hardened men would have been…frightening.

He finished with a flourish of his bow and a shy bow of his head.

The others resumed their previous play, but my target stepped forward toward me.

I managed to clap my hands despite the wine goblet in one.

He bowed again, and smiled, his head at a bashful angle.

“Wonderful!” I said, smiling, expecting him to read my emotions rather than understand my word.

He waggled his head modestly from side to side and sat the bow and violin down on his former seat.

I put a hand to my ear. “It’s so hard to hear. Can we—?” I nodded to an inglenook beside the fireplace.

Smiling, nodding like an idiot, as I was, we edged our way to the bench.

There I set my goblet down on a broad wooden arm and took a deep breath. I made sure my back was to the room and produced the silver trinket from my pocket and thrust it toward him.

His eyes gleamed as they fell upon silver, but he frowned in confusion.

I gestured:
for you
. I had never realized how much of the stage art I had acquired from my association with Irene.

He shook his head, but his eyes never left the bright gleam in my hand. Among Gypsies, acquiring things of value from other people meant wealth and worth. He pointed to his violin with a question.
For his playing?

I nodded. “Can you speak any English?”

He shook his head, then frowned even more deeply. His fingers lifted to his lips and twisted. And then he shrugged hopelessly.

I already felt we were entered into a conspiracy, but stared at him, unable to guess his meaning.

“
Français?
” I tried. We had seen Gypsies in France, after all. Perhaps that same group had traveled here.

He shrugged and shook his gleaming black hair so like a rook’s and again made the twisted gesture at his lips.

And then I understood. He locked them with a key.

“You are mute?” I pressed my fingers over my mouth.

He nodded, then lifted the silver piece and placed a hand over his heart.
Thank you
.

I smiled, but lifted a hand to bid him wait. Then I produced my small-folded paper and showed him the word printed on its surface. I went through my churchly pantomime: steepled fingers, sign of the cross (only I touched right and left shoulder in succession, which I knew was backwards the moment I did it), mouthed the words “
Pater
” and “
Vader
” and “Father” for good measure. Then I added my walking fingers at a downward angle to indicate the village below the castle.

During this entire performance my violinist nodded and grinned. When he took the paper, I put a forefinger to my lips and hissed “
Shhhhh
.”

I was reassured to see him immediately look over my shoulder and tuck the missive into the scarlet sash at his waist. Clever boy! The silver item went into the same secret storage place.

He gave me one last bow, and a wink, then moved to rejoin his band.

I turned to pick up my goblet from the settle arm.

No one seemed to be looking my way at all.

Strolling slowly around the bookshelves that edged the room, I made my wine-sipping way back to the central table. If I had seen myself upon a stage, I would not have recognized a particle of my behavior or my appearance.

And yet, I thought I deserved an inaudible round of applause. I had accomplished my aim without demeaning myself with some drunken Gypsy. In the morning I was sure my Gypsy serenader would make his way to the local church to present the priest with the paper, feeling well paid by the silver trinket in his sash.

If someone official from the village came to the castle to inquire after Godfrey and I, surely not even Tatyana could afford to ignore it. She could not imprison an entire village! And who could contain Gypsies, even with free-flowing chests of silver?

The thought of her imprisoning more people made me regard Bram with an anxious eye. What would she do about him? Surely she had no suspicions that we were known to each other. Still, he had happened upon her private preserve. I hoped he would leave with the Gypsy violinists tonight.

“Ah, Miss Stanhope,” he said as I approached. “I had hoped to bid you good night before I leave.”

“It was a pleasure to have met you,” I said with more fervor than I allowed to show.

“Oh, but Mr. Abraham,” Tatyana interrupted us. “I cannot allow you to walk back down to the village alone in the dark. Not after all the tales of wolves and vampires you have told.”

“Tales, dear lady. I do not believe such legends.”

“Still, you have too effectively chilled my blood tonight. I will provide you with a bedchamber. The upper regions of the castle are not in the best repair, but they should suffice for a man who so loves walking through the out-of-doors. Nonsense! I will not take no for an answer. My servant will conduct you and Mr. Norton and Miss, ah, Stanhope to your rooms.”

She nodded at the brute, who seized a candelabra off the dinner table. I doubt he spoke much English, but he seemed to understand the gist of it. I would our escort was my gentle and mute Gypsy youth, but it was better that he packed up violin and bow and left the castle with my missive.

“I have no kit with me,” Bram objected to his sudden residence here.

“Mr. Norton is fully accoutered,” Tatyana said with a slow, mocking glance at Godfrey. “He will lend you anything you need in the morning. It hardly would be a razor, would it? After all those stories, you would not want to shed a drop of blood in this castle. Who knows what creatures it would call…the undead? The wolves? Miss Stanhope with a bandage at the ready? Miss Stanhope strikes me as a person who will always have something useful at the ready.”

Another odious, knowing smile, this time in my direction.

Did she know?

No, I would not lose faith in my evening’s effort. News of our imprisonment would soon reach the village and from there, one could only imagine who else. I knew that Irene and our friends would not be idle in our absence. Was not Bram Stoker’s presence here more than mere coincidence? Somehow on our way upstairs we must find out. At least the Oaf spoke little English.

Medved preceded us, the candelabra casting his shadow back on us, so I had to be mindful of the steps I couldn’t see. Godfrey and Bram each took my elbow once the stairs had turned us out of sight from below.

“The note?” Godfrey asked, his brow furrowed.

I nodded. “A most winning young Gypsy. I’m sure he’ll follow through.”

Bram frowned at us as Godfrey explained in words as short as he could manage.

Our guide plodded up the stairs ahead of us, apparently oblivious to everything but his task, like some great ox.

Bram’s frown became deeper. “The note was directed to the village priest?”

“Yes. He would read Godfrey’s Latin and has the authority to organize a rescue party.”

Bram stopped for a moment. “But…that other man at the table, in unrelieved black. I met him the first time I came to the village. He
is
the village priest.”

43.

Before the Dawn

The next night he tested me again, becoming excited and obligating me to acknowledge his excitement. I had to conclude that I must be very dirty, impure and given over to passion since he clearly felt it necessary to subject me to perpetual testing
.

—
MADAME X

No blow is harsher than that which removes all hope.

The supposed Count was the village priest?

Was everything in this accursed castle and its neighboring village a mockery and mummery?

Godfrey and I exchanged a horrified glance. My feet forgot to keep moving. I almost would have tumbled backward in numb shock had not my escorts had me firmly by the beribboned elbows.

And my charming Gypsy lad? He must have known that the village priest was in the room even as he scraped away at his miserable violin and bowed and winked and pressed his palm to his heart and took my sterling silver smelling salts and Godfrey’s laboriously composed note.

My first flirtation for a clandestine purpose had been an utter disaster. Mute, indeed! If I ever encountered that treacherous fiddler again, I would break his violin over his lying head until he screamed to heaven for mercy.

Now the stone stairs to the castle’s upper reaches seemed insupportably high and long. Every riser brought us closer to confinement again, with no hope of release.