The Dead Travel Fast (18 page)

He continued to eat, chewing serenely while I fumed.

“That is absurd,” I said finally. “You might have sent it to Anna or held it yourself. You could have made arrangements with any of the Imperial banks and I could have collected the funds in Hermannstadt,” I pointed out.

“That horrible little hole I travelled through last week? Don’t be absurd,” Charles rejoined. He sampled the
mămăligă
. “You are right. It wants a bit of honey.” He spooned on a modest amount and tried it again. “Better. Besides, I told you, Anna was worried. I thought it far better to come and see you for myself, and allay her worries. I would have already come and gone had it not been for the disasters along the way.”

“How long have you been away?” I asked.

He made a gesture of impatience. “Forever and twice as long. I was actually in Vienna attending to business when Anna wrote to me. It ought to have been an easy matter to travel here, but my pocket was picked,” he said. “I lost my money and my papers. I could not purchase a ticket on proper railways then, not in the Austrian Empire, so I had to travel illegally. I fell in with a rather dashing crowd of Gypsies who let me ride with them as far as Zagreb.”

I felt a little faint. “But if you lost all your money, how was it you still had mine?” I asked, brandishing the notecase.

“I carried your money in my bag for security. My own funds were upon my person, and before you ask, no, I was not going to spend a pound of your money,” he said firmly.

“Of course you wouldn’t.” Charles would have sooner starved than touched a penny of what did not belong to him.

“Once in Zagreb, I met up with a shepherd at the market who promised to take me as far as Belgrade. From there I met up with a band of travelling musicians who were bound for Klausenberg.”

“Klausenberg is a day’s journey too far,” I told him, rather unhelpfully.

“Yes, I realise that now, but at the time, I simply wanted to get out of Belgrade. I could not rest unless I was always pushing onward. In Klausenberg, I met a farmer who said he would take me a few miles down the Hermannstadt road. And that is how it went. Every day, pushing onward, meeting someone kind enough to get me a little further on my way.”

“Charles, I am so sorry,” I murmured. “I never imagined that what I did would lead to this horrible journey for you.”

He stared at me, his eyes showing some hint of the old spaniel softness. “Horrible? It was the adventure of my life.”

“Adventure?”

“I rode with brigands in Serbia. I slept under the stars. I drove a herd of sheep to market. I have met the most extraordinary folk. I have never felt so alive in my entire life. Not that I wish to repeat the experience,” he finished with a warning look. “It has all been quite too wholesome and rough, and I am ready to be back amongst the civilised. I expect it will make for some rather good conversation at my club,” he added with a nod of satisfaction.

I sat in silent stupefaction. “I suppose it will at that. Well, you have given me my money and I will be happy to make you the loan of it for your return journey. The Dragulescus will loan you a horse and a man to guide you back to Hermannstadt. That is the nearest train station. You can replace your passport there as well, I imagine.”

I rose, but he put down his spoon. “Not so quickly, if you please. I may have completed my errand, but I cannot leave you without making certain you are quite all right. As I said, you look different to me. Tell me about the death in the castle and about this count fellow.”

I told him, haltingly at first, then more quickly as I warmed to my theme. I was so relieved to have a confidant that I told him more than I had intended, with the solitary and notable exception of my feelings for the count.

Charles’s expression grew increasingly thunderous as the conversation wore on, particularly when I made mention of the
strigoi
and the savage lupine habits of the Popa men. When I finally reached the agreement we had all made to keep Aurelia’s death secret, he could contain himself no longer.

He dashed his spoon to the table and burst out with, “Is that all? A vampire killer stalking the castle? Are you quite certain there aren’t any banshees in the stables? A werewolf in the library? Oh, I forgot, the werewolves are outside in the forest. How stupid of me!”

I rose and spoke with as much dignity as I could muster. “If you are not going to be serious, there is no point in having this discussion.”

“I
am
serious, Theodora. What has happened to you? You know this is nonsense. You are a student of folklore. You know that every people has its superstitions, and you know them for what they are—tales to frighten children. You know there is a logical and rational explanation for everything that happens. That is what separates us from these poor superstitious folk who live their lives in fear of the bogeyman. You’ve a fine mind, my dear. Use it,” he instructed tartly.

“You do not understand! You did not see that body, that awful body. I tell you it was not a human responsible for what happened to that girl. It was something less than a man. And how else can you account for the death? You must at least allow for the possibility of some supernatural agency.”

“I could offer half a dozen possibilities,” he replied, his tone calm and reasonable. “And none of them supernatural. For instance, one of these wandering Popa fellows. They have the whole countryside convinced they are wolves, but I say it is a tremendous fraud. What married man would not like to leave his family and carouse with his brothers? Perhaps their antics got out of hand and they killed the girl. Perhaps a wandering pedlar or Gypsy did the deed. Perhaps it was an accident or suicide. Perhaps her sister, this Tereza, was jealous over a trifle and decided to dispose of her.”

I shuddered. “How cold you are.”

He pulled an indignant face. “I am pragmatic, Theodora. And so you should be. You are an Edinburgher. You were raised with the tales of Burke and Hare, stealing bodies from graveyards and murdering unsuspecting folk to sell their bodies to the cadaver schools. You know that man is capable of any horror towards his fellow man, and that may be doubly true of women. The most fiendish creatures I have ever known have worn skirts and the Devil’s own smile.”

“What about the corpse of Count Bogdan?” I demanded. “How can you account for the state of it, plump and rosy and brimming with blood? It was unnatural.”

“Was it?” he asked. “Theodora, I have never seen a corpse some weeks dead, but my youngest brother has. During his medical studies, he told such tales as would frighten the heart of the stoutest man at the brightest noon. His stories from the dissecting room are larded with folk who gasp and moan and roll their eyes when they are touched—some even weeks after their deaths. It is all quite normal to a rational mind.”

I considered what he said. It seemed so reasonable couched in those terms. But he had not yet felt the pull of the black forests of the Carpathians, and he had not yet listened to the howling of the wolves under a silver moon.

“But what if it is just possible? This is not like other places, Charles. Things happen here that do not happen elsewhere. I cannot explain it except to say that what I have seen defies science.”

He fell silent a moment, stroking his chin as he thought. His hands were pale and soft, nothing like the hands of the count, with the wide smooth palms and the long, deft fingers.

“But even if your premise proves true, and there is no supernatural force abroad in this place, it would make no difference to my situation. I have promised Cosmina that I will remain, and I mean to honour my promise.”

He pushed his coffee away. It must have grown stone cold in any case. A skin wrinkled the top of it.

“I cannot leave you here until I have satisfied myself that you are in no danger.”

“I cannot leave,” I told him firmly.

“Theodora, I never thought you stubborn, but this—”

“It is not stubbornness,” I corrected. I hesitated. “It is the book.”

Charles’s attention was pricked. He sat forward in his chair, the last of his breakfast forgot as his eyes sharpened. “Go on.”

“I have begun it. And it is by far the best I have ever written. It will be the work that establishes me, solidly. It will be the foundation of everything I want to achieve. But I cannot write it without this place.”

He stared at me in disbelief, shaking his head slowly. “It is as if you are bewitched,” he said heavily.

I shrugged. “Perhaps I am. You always did say the best writers are half-mad,” I reminded him.

He gave me a gentle smile, but still his objections remained.

“Theodora, you are so caught up in the madness of this place that you cannot even see the absurdity of it all. A girl has died, and you are willing to believe it was some monster who did the deed. Your imagination is quite overwrought.”

“I cannot explain it, Charles. I only know that this place has fired my imagination like no other. I must stay to finish what I have begun.”

“It is a most unique situation,” he admitted finally, glancing about the room. “I can well understand why it moves you so.”

I said nothing. I had learned from long experience that it was best to sow the seeds of an argument and let Charles bring them to fruition himself. Charles often found himself at odds with his own nature. His chivalry warred with his more mercenary tendencies, and at this moment, the prospective husband challenged the man of business. Protect the woman he hoped to marry, or encourage her to remain in peril and write a book he could use to make his mark? I prayed the merchant would prevail.

To my astonishment, he nodded. “Very well. I understand why you cannot leave. It does certainly present you with an opportunity for a novel you must not lose.”

Relief surged in me, sharp and painful as a lance.

“Then you will leave me here?”

He shook his head. “I cannot in good conscience. Neither as your publisher nor as your friend, and I still cherish hope someday to be more.”

I opened my mouth, but he waved a hand. “Do not reply. I know well enough what you will say. But you must know the offer stands, and it always shall. I accept that for now you have rejected me, and we will not speak of it for the present. You will continue to write and you will remain at the castle.”

“And you?” I ventured.

He smiled, and for the first time, it reminded me of a crocodile’s smile.

“I will remain with you.”

15

If I was annoyed at having a chaperone, I did my best to conceal it. Charles was entirely capable of creating enough of a distraction that I should be forced to leave the castle, and it seemed a tremendous victory that I had been able to persuade him I should stay. He told me with a bland smile that he meant to spend the morning exploring the castle, and I left him with a feeling of sharp unease. I tried to settle to my work, but every time I lifted my pen, I thought of him falling into conversation with the count and my stomach gave a little churn as if I had just boarded a ship and not yet found my sea legs.

After a pleasant midday meal, Cosmina proposed a visit to the village. She wished to call upon Dr. Frankopan and suggested that Charles might like to see more of the valley. He accepted with alacrity, and it occurred to me that I had seldom seen Cosmina look quite so uncertain of herself. She had always been quieter than most of the girls of my acquaintance, but she had worn a mantle of self-possession. Now, as she looked at Charles, once or twice I detected a hesitancy. I wondered if she were perhaps forming a
tendresse
for him in spite of her protestations against men and marriage.

We ventured down to the village, and all the while Cosmina kept up a patter of entertaining narrative about the castle and its legends. Charles was intrigued; I had known him too long to mistake that intently arrested air. He was doubtless fitting Cosmina’s chatter into the conversation he and I had shared over breakfast, and it was with only the slightest touch of annoyance that I noted he helped her over the roughest going while leaving me to pick my own way down the Devil’s Staircase.

In the village, Cosmina pointed out to him the fresh improvements, and Charles surveyed it all with great interest.

“It seems as if the new count is making rather excellent progress,” he commented blandly. “Is he not here to oversee matters himself?”

I said nothing but bent swiftly to fuss with a bootlace. The less I said upon the subject of the count, the better. Charles pricked like a pointer every time his name was raised, and it seemed inevitable he would discover my feelings for the man himself. I only hoped such a revelation could be postponed until long after we had both quitted the place.

“Count Andrei does not often go abroad during the day,” Cosmina told him. “He prefers to keep more nocturnal hours.”

I rose to find Charles had turned to me, his brows lifted significantly. “Really? What a singular fellow.”

“Not at all,” I returned, rather too sharply. “He is by way of being an amateur astronomer. He could hardly practise the astronomical arts during the day, now could he?”

Cosmina cut in to point out the graveyard just then and Charles turned away, but his expression was speculative, and I chastened myself. I should have to be far more careful if I expected to keep my feelings for the count concealed.

We walked on to Dr. Frankopan’s little cottage in the woods, and I was pleased to find the old gentleman at home. We were greeted with great warmth, and when he discovered we had a visitor with us, his usual fuss became an outright furore.

“How do you do?” Charles asked politely.

“How wonderful, how wonderful! A Scotsman, I do not think I have ever met such a creature before,” he exclaimed, much to Charles’s chagrin. Like many educated Scots of English descent, Charles had taken pains to banish both Scottish colloquialisms and accent from his speech, although they did creep in from time to time.

I smiled behind my hand, and Charles glowered a little at me as we were hurried to comfortable chairs beside the fire while refreshments were sent for. Madame Popa served us with a sullen humour, and I was not sorry to see her leave. If Charles connected her with the tale I had told him of the man who had taken to the mountains as a wolf, he betrayed no sign of it.

Dr. Frankopan gestured towards the tea things with alacrity. “Ah! Today the good Frau Graben has sent me a wonderful apple tart made from the apples grown in the castle garden. Have you seen the garden yet, Mr. Beecroft? An astonishing thing to find a place of cultivation so high upon the mountain.”

“I have not. I have only just arrived last night,” Charles explained.

“Oh, you must see it, you must!” Dr. Frankopan advised. “Of course, it is not so tidy as it was in the old days, but there is still beauty there in the ruins. And you will see the little trees that produce the famous black apples.”

“Black apples?” Charles looked a trifle alarmed as he poked a fork cautiously into his slice of the tart.

“Only the skins,” I reassured him. “They are quite extraordinary-looking, small and purplish-black like plums. But the flesh is very white and sweet.”

These were the apples Cosmina and I had picked and I knew from experience that they were delicious, although not prepossessing in appearance.

“Like something out of a faery tale,” Charles said, giving me a significant look.

“Precisely, precisely!” Dr. Frankopan said happily. “The whole place is like something out of a faery tale. You will find much to interest you here, sir, if you are not averse to country pleasures.”

Charles strove for diplomacy. “I confess I am a man of the city, Dr. Frankopan, but I am determined to learn the error of my ways. I do already see it is a most remarkable place.”

“It is, it is,” Dr. Frankopan agreed.

With that we fell into conversation about the village and the valley and a little of life beyond, for Charles had the most recent news from Vienna, and the afternoon was one of the most pleasant I had passed since coming into Transylvania. It struck me as I watched them that Charles and Dr. Frankopan were similar men, holding several virtues in common. They both were kindly and worked hard. They were agreeable and decent and they both conducted themselves in such a manner as to help those they could.

It also struck me that they were both solicitous of Cosmina. When it became apparent that she was sitting in the draught from a poorly fitted window, Charles insisted upon changing his seat for hers, and more than once I caught Dr. Frankopan watching her with a little furrow of worry ploughed between his brows. He was still concerned for her health, I realised, and I wondered if there was something more seriously amiss with her than I had known. But she seemed stronger than she had the previous week, and every day her colour rose and she was able to walk further and with more purpose. Even now, roses bloomed in her cheeks, and I was glad of it.

Charles seemed to enjoy the afternoon as well, and as we departed, Dr. Frankopan pressed him with an invitation to come again, alone or in company, whenever he chose.

“I am an old bachelor, you will not disturb me,” he assured Charles.

“We are the pair of us old bachelors then,” Charles said rather too heartily.

We made our way back to the castle then in the waning afternoon light, the drooping sun casting long golden shadows over the valley, gilding the scene to a burnished tranquility. Cosmina drifted ahead, picking an armful of leaves to place in bowls, and Charles fell into step at my side.

“Well?” I asked. It was a testament to our long friendship that the single word was sufficient.

He paused, thinking. “I have finally realised what it puts me in mind of. Do you remember those curious children’s books we published last year? The metamorphoses books?”

I nodded. They were some of the most delightful books Charles had produced. Each had been crafted with clever turn-ups so that the turning of a page produced a feature that popped to life, a bird on the wing, a castle tower rising above a forest ridge.

“That is what this place reminds me of. A metamorphoses book. A turn of the page and something new and wonderful springs to life. Most unexpected,” he said, his voice dropping curiously.

And when he spoke, his eyes lingered on the graceful figure of Cosmina in the distance.

I was not jealous of Cosmina, I told myself firmly. It was absurd to place any importance whatsoever upon Charles’s apparent interest in her. There was no attachment; Cosmina’s antipathy would see to that. But it did not escape my notice that she managed to be just at hand to place herself next to Charles at dinner. And later, when the household adjourned to the library for quiet entertainments, Charles hurried to help her with the arrangement of her silhouette table.

“It is not often that I use the table,” she told him as he lit the candle and placed it opposite the screen according to her instructions. “But visitors here are so rare a pleasure, we try to commemorate the occasion with a silhouette, to bring pleasure to us in the lonely hours after they have gone. I thought I would cut one of you and one of Theodora, to remind us all of this night,” she finished, her colour becomingly pink.

Charles preened a little and seated himself on the other side of the screen from Cosmina and her sharp little scissors. She took up a piece of black paper and began to cut, her eyes darting between her work and the still shadow thrown upon the muslin.

Florian watched the interplay with a sullen air and began to work a mournful little melody upon the harpsichord until the countess called to him.

“Florian, my dear boy, play us something more cheerful. We have had enough of sorrowful things,” she commanded with a kindly smile.

He obeyed, spinning out a pretty tune that was so soft and coaxing, his mother began to nod over her needlework, and it was still possible to hear the gentle rustle of the fire and the heavy sleeping breaths of the dog settled upon the hearth rug.

Only the count seemed unaffected by the soothing music, for he took a chair close to mine, ostensibly to look over the castle guest book I had unearthed. I turned the pages slowly, reading over the spidery scrawls of ink, once black but now faded to pale brown upon the foxed pages.

But the count was not a man to be ignored, and as Cosmina and Charles fell into conversation, he spoke, his voice low and soft and pitched for my ears alone.

“It will never do.”

I puzzled over a rampant signature that scrolled over the better part of a page. A baroness of some sort, visiting from Buda-Pesth a quarter of a century ago. The castle had been a hospitable place then, for each page was filled with signatures of the great and good, and the further back I turned, the more exalted the names.

“What will never do?” I murmured. I had found an archduke, and just below, the illegitimate son of a pope.

“You and that fellow,” he said, darting his eyes at Charles almost imperceptibly. “It is absurd.”

“I do not understand you,” I said primly.

“Don’t you? Come to me when he is abed.”

I caught my breath at the brazenness of his command, but still I kept my eyes fixed firmly upon the decaying page before me.

“I shall not.”

“Do not hiss at me, my dear. I mean only to talk with you. It was an invitation to converse, nothing more.”

I dared a glance and was surprised to find his eyes alight, whether from amusement or malice, I could not say. He was an enigma to me, this curious nobleman from Transylvania. I could not say from one moment to the next what he believed, what he held dear, what he would not do. More than an enigma, he was a chameleon lizard, always changing his colours just when I had learnt his disguises.

But even such a man as this could not command me, I decided, summoning my tattered pride.

I opened my mouth to refuse him, but just then he put out a hand, barely touching my arm. “Please?” he asked.

He was humble, as I had seldom seen him, and I wondered if this was a fresh stratagem of his to throw me from my complacency.

“I cannot,” I said firmly. And to show that I meant it, I closed the book and rose to walk away.

Cosmina’s silhouette of Charles was a remarkable thing. It managed to convey the features of the man, but it captured something indefinable as well, some essential part of him that I would have thought unknowable without conversation and expressions. I looked at the flat shadow snipped from the ebony paper, and I saw the friend, the publisher, the erstwhile suitor. And something more. Cosmina had captured something rather dashing about him as well, and I realised this was how she saw him, not as the stiff and stuffy man of business, but as the congenial gentleman who had engaged her attention.

“It is very like,” I said finally, and Charles looked mightily pleased.

He gave way for me to take my turn behind the little screen, and I saw that the count had settled himself behind a chessboard. I had not seen it before; the pieces appeared very old and fashioned of marble, burnished to a sheen with long use. As I watched in some trepidation, the count invited Charles to a game and they began to play. All the while, Florian kept up his gentle melodies while his mother drowsed and the countess read, occasionally putting out a slippered foot to stroke Tycho’s back.

“What a pleasant man your friend Mr. Beecroft is,” Cosmina said softly as she began to cut the silhouette.

“Yes, he is rather.”

“Have you known him long?” I wished I could gauge the strength of her interest, but her expression was hid from me by the muslin screen.

“Years, actually. I must have met him when I was eleven, perhaps twelve. His family firm published my grandfather’s books, and his father and my grandfather were great friends. They were both of them Englishmen settled in Edinburgh, so they felt the kinship of living abroad, I think. When his father called, Charles and I were left to amuse ourselves in the corner while our elders talked.”

“And yet you never mentioned him at school. Curious.” Her tone was speculative, but I could hear the decisive snips of her scissors.

“I cannot think why I should have,” I told her honestly. “He was simply a person I knew. I only saw him once or twice each year until I came home from school and Grandfather fell ill. He called one day with some business or other for Grandfather and the poor old dear was asleep. Charles and I talked instead and he discovered I had written a few little stories. He asked to see them, and took them away to read. A week later he returned with an offer to see them published in a magazine, with an eye to grooming me to write a book.”