The Dead Travel Fast

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The countess seemed intrigued by this, for she left off speaking to Cosmina and focused her attention upon me. “And do you work, Miss Lestrange?”

“I am a writer. I earn my keep by my pen.”

The countess snapped her fingers and I noticed then the jewel she wore, a great pigeon’s blood ruby, shimmering in the candlelight. “Of course. Cosmina has told me of this. But I spoke of self-improvement, Miss Lestrange, not employment. Work must be undertaken by everyone according to his station for the development of proper character, but it is not fitting for the dignity of a gentleman or a gentlewoman to accept pay for his or her efforts.”

“It is if the gentleman or gentlewoman wishes to eat,” I countered too hastily, immediately regretting it. I was not surprised the countess believed work was vulgar; I was only caught unprepared that she should speak of such things so freely, and before so many of us who were bound by circumstance to make our own way in the world. And then I thought of her son, heir to a great estate but determined not to make a success of it, and I felt a rush of anger heat the pit of my stomach. I pushed away the plate of roasted pork, so delectable only a moment before.

But the countess, either from her own good breeding or perhaps an easy temperament, did not take offence. Rather, she smiled at me, a warm, deliberate smile, and for the first time I felt the strength of her charm. “Of course, Miss Lestrange. You speak of necessity, and I meant something quite different. Ah, here is Tereza with dessert. Miss Lestrange, you must like this. It is a rice pudding, flavoured with caraway and other spices. I would know what you think of it.”

I dipped a spoon into the pudding and took a bite. It melted, creamy and luxurious against my tongue, the comfort of a nursery pudding dissolving into something quite exotic and otherworldly. What had been bland and uninspiring in Scotland here was mysterious and almost sensual. It seemed a fitting metaphor for the place itself, I decided with a flick of my gaze towards the count. I dipped my spoon again and gave myself up to the pleasures of the table.

After the meal was concluded, the countess’s energy seemed to flag and Frau Amsel roused herself to overrule the countess’s suggestion of an impromptu concert.

“You did not sleep an hour last night,” Frau Amsel told her in a gently scolding tone. “You must be put right to bed. If you have a good night and keep to your bed tomorrow, perhaps you may stay up tomorrow evening. Florian will prepare something special for your amusement.”

At this she threw a look of significance to her son, who responded promptly. “Of course, madame. It would be my pleasure. But I have nothing prepared tonight and would disappoint you, I am certain.”

“You play like an angel,” the countess rejoined. “But I will play the little lamb tonight and go where I am led. I confess I am just a bit tired.”

She seemed nearer to exhaustion, for her eyes had sunk into shadows during our meal and her cough had worsened. She leaned heavily on Frau Amsel’s arm and waved the count away when he stepped up to assist her.

“No, dearest. I have my Clara to help. And Cosmina,” she added. “I think I should like to hear more of the book you began reading to me last week, Cosmina, if Miss Lestrange can bear the loss of your company.” The countess turned to me. “I am longing to hear the conclusion, and unfortunately my dear Clara does not read French. You will not mind an early evening, Miss Lestrange?”

“Of course not, madame. I am quite content to retire to my room and do a little writing.”

She nodded her thanks and we moved as a party into the great hall. Tereza and her sister appeared with candles for everyone to light their way to bed. I took mine up hastily, realising that the count and I should be left alone as soon as the others departed.

“Good evening, sir,” I said, giving a quick nod for the sake of politeness. I scurried from the hall, but not before I caught his expression, mildly amused it seemed, but I did not stop to wonder why. I hurried to my room and closed the stout oak door behind me.

Tereza, or perhaps Aurelia, had made up the fire, and the room was warm enough, but I was too restless to retire. I sat for a little time in the embrasure of the window, watching the stars rise above the great craggy peaks of the mountains. One in particular shone with a brilliant silver light, illuminating the valley below almost as brightly as the moon might have done. I regretted that I had not thought to wish upon it, but no sooner had I thought it, than I heard a noise outside my door.

It came again, and I realised it was the sound of footsteps approaching. I moved closer to the door and pressed my ear upon it, straining to hear through the thick oaken planks. Another footstep, and this time I knew it was the sound of someone climbing the tower stair. I believed I lodged alone in the tower, for the family wing where I had later visited Cosmina was far to the opposite side of the castle. My fire had been made up, my bed turned down. There was no call for the maids to come. Who then approached, each footstep ringing closer upon the stones, striking with the same rhythm as the beating of the blood in my ears?

Seizing my courage, I grasped the handle of the door firmly and jerked hard, thinking to surprise whoever lurked upon the stairs. Instead I reeled back, startled to see the count.

He raised his brows. “Are you quite all right, Miss Lestrange? You look as if you had seen a ghost. Or rather, you look as if you were a ghost. You have gone quite pale.”

I was conscious of my hand, flown to my throat, and I dropped it. “I am perfectly well, only startled. I thought I was quite alone in the tower, and I remembered the tales I have heard of bandits in these mountains.”

He did not smile at this absurdity. “And monsters in the castle? There are no bandits here, Miss Lestrange—at least not the sort who would dare to enter my castle uninvited. And you are not alone in the tower. My chamber is directly above yours.”

This piece of intelligence was both comforting and unsettling. Comforting because it was a relief to know that another human being rested within the sound of my voice should I have need of him; unsettling because it was the count. I knew not what to make of him, and as the only other inhabitant of this part of the castle, I fell even more within his power than I had realised.

Suddenly, he put out his hand. “Come with me, Miss Lestrange. I wish to show you something.”

I hesitated and he reached further. “There is no call for reluctance. I was not entirely honest. I do not wish to show you something. I wish to see something, and I would rather not be alone. Your presence would be of service to me, and I think you are too gracious to refuse your host,” he added with the slightest touch of imperiousness.

He waited, his hand outstretched. I thought of the revelations Cosmina had made about his character, his evil habits. I thought of them, and still I went, putting my hand willingly into his. His fingers clasped over mine and I felt a sense of completion, as if something I had not realised was lost had been restored to me. It was disturbing, for I knew my own intentions would be nothing to him or to me should he choose to ignore them. There was a powerlessness, a lassitude that came over me at his touch, and I knew it was madness to follow him.

But follow him I did, up the spiralling stairs to the upper floor. We entered his bedchamber and I gasped aloud, for this room was handsomer than any I could have imagined. The furnishings were lighter than those elsewhere in the castle—more graceful, though still decidedly masculine. The great bed was hung with dark blue velvet spangled with starry knots of silver thread fashioned to mirror the ceiling, although nothing could compare to the scene overhead. Arching above was the whole of the night sky rendered in countless shades of blue and black and violet, shading subtly from evening through midnight and into the first light of dawn. Each of the stars was carefully picked out in silver and gold, shimmering to magnificent effect in the dim light.

“It is extraordinary,” I breathed.

The count smiled. “This was my grandfather’s room. He had the ceiling painted to commemorate my birth.”

I must have looked quizzical, for he raised his arm and pointed. “This is the sky as it looked on the night of my birth. Each constellation, each star, precisely where it was when I first drew breath in this room.”

I spun slowly in a circle, taking in the heavens arching above me. “How? A painter surely would not know the location of the stars.”

“But my grandfather did. He made sketches and instructed the painters. Every detail was done to his exacting orders.”

I would have marvelled at the ceiling for hours but he moved to a little door set within the panelled wall and beckoned. “Come.”

I followed and we climbed another twisting stair, emerging into a workroom of sorts, fitted with a desk and bookshelves and a chest with great flat drawers for charts or maps. But the drawers were open, the contents spilling across the floor and the books had been dashed from the shelves, some of the spines broken. A variety of telescopes stood ranged in a corner, forlorn and forgotten, only the glitter of broken lenses betraying their wounded condition. The whole of the room was thickly veiled with dust and cobwebs, and the scrabbling in the walls spoke of mice.

The neglect was pitiable, for this room was far more decayed than any I had yet been shown, and the odour of mildew and mould was heavy in the air. The curtains hung rotting from their poles, the velvet shredded to ribbons.

The count muttered something under his breath, an imprecation from the sound of it. There was no light save the candle he carried, but even by that feeble flame it was possible to see both the decay of the room and his anguish.

“Was this your grandfather’s room?” I asked softly. My voice seemed odd and unnatural in that place, an intrusion against an atmosphere thick with ghosts.

“Yes. He was one of the foremost amateur astronomers in Europe in his day. From this tower he studied the stars and wrote scientific papers. He corresponded with some of the greatest minds. He even discovered a comet. And this is all that remains of his work,” he finished, his features twisted by anger.

His bitterness was not to be wondered at. I remembered the care with which I had treated my own grandfather’s things after his death. It had been my last service to him, and it would have been a desecration to the man himself to treat his books and papers with disrespect.

“I suppose the maids did not secure the room and the elements and perhaps wild creatures have wreaked havoc.”

He gave a mirthless laugh, scorning my simple explanation. “This is not the work of a forest animal, my dear Miss Lestrange. This was deliberate.” His voice fell then; what he said next was barely audible, rendered in a harsh whisper and—I was quite certain—not directed to me. “You cannot be rid of him, even as I cannot be rid of you.”

The remark was a cryptic one, but if I did not understand what had happened in this place, at least I knew why he had urged me to accompany him. He had feared this and not wanted to learn the worst of it alone. He had needed me, and I understood that he needed me still. It is a powerful and intoxicating thing to a woman when a man has need of her, and in that moment I put aside much of what Cosmina had revealed. His habits might have been unsavoury, but he was not so vicious as she had painted him if he still cared so deeply for a beloved grandfather’s memory.

“It can be put right,” I said calmly. “The books may be mended and the papers sorted. I suppose those are star charts there upon the floor. They want only to be pressed with an iron, barely heated, and they will come right. The curtains are quite beyond repair, but I daresay you can find others. As for the telescopes—” I went to them, peering closely through the gloom and picking carefully amongst the rubble “—this one seems to have escaped the damage.”

I retrieved the smallest of the instruments and placed it into his hands. The lenses were unbroken, the body of the telescope damaged only by a single long scratch. He turned it over in his hands, his expression inscrutable.

“This was his gift to me when I was twelve years old. I never took it when I travelled because there was no better place to see the stars than here, he always said,” the count told me, his voice low. He seemed calmer then, his anger banked but not diminished.

He glanced to the window, and the starlight I had seen from my room must have beckoned him, for he went to an iron ladder I had not noticed and pulled hard upon it. Satisfied that it was firmly fixed to the wall, he pocketed the telescope and began to climb towards a door in the ceiling above.

“When I have opened the trap, I will come back and help you up,” he promised. I heard a great metallic clang, and before I could refuse he had swarmed back down, agile as a monkey, and taken my hand.

“Put your hand here and your foot upon this,” he instructed. I did as he bade me—slowly for I was hampered by my heavy skirts—and soon emerged onto an open platform bound by a stone battlement that stood just higher than my waist. It was a precarious place to stand, for the tower’s conical roof rose high and pointed from the centre and our perch was the narrow footing at the base of it. But it felt as if we had climbed to the top of the world, and I looked about in wonderment. As far as the eye could see, the dark shadows of the Carpathians rippled in peaks and valleys, shrouded in forest and faintly lit with starlight. Above us the vault of the cold black sky stretched to eternity, the stars scattered over it in thousands of pinpricks of light.

“I have never seen its like,” I told him as he climbed up to join me.

He took a deep breath of the cold night air and expelled it slowly. His eyes were shining, his manner more animated and vital and yet more relaxed than I had yet seen him.

“You are happy here,” I observed.

“As I am never happy elsewhere,” he agreed. “It is my own private retreat. There is a trapdoor in each tower,” he explained, nodding towards the towers punctuating battlements. “Originally they were put into place so that the watchmen could have the vantage of the highest point in the valley to keep watch against invaders. They are connected by a single walk along the battlements, and the whole of it had fallen into disuse until my grandfather. It was he who discovered the entire walk could be put to use as an observatory.” He took another deep draught of the crisp air. “Exhilarating, is it not?”

He turned to smile at me, and I felt the force of his pleasure as a creeping warmth in my blood. I had never known anyone like him. He was so strange a mixture of imperiousness and informality that I could not understand him. But even if I had had the grasp of his character, still I could not have explained my own feelings towards him. He had only to stand near me and I was aware of him, keenly aware, sharp to any emotion, any shift in his mood. As for myself, his approbation, the fascinated looks he fixed upon me, the warmth of his interest, all of these effected reactions I was quite powerless to overcome in his presence. My blood ran hot or cold, I shivered and felt myself unable to move. I was restless within my own skin, tossing like a creature in heat, and it ought to have embarrassed me. Instead I was intrigued by these feelings and by the man who created them.

I should not have reflected upon such things in such a place with such a man. I ought to have stayed in my room with the door bolted against him. Instead I had followed him up to the ends of the earth and would have cast myself over the edge if he had asked it of me. I shivered in the chill of the east wind and he gave a short curse.

“I ought not to have brought you here. It is far too cold,” he said, removing his coat and wrapping it about my shoulders. The warmth of it enveloped me, and the scent of it—of him—clung to the fabric, and later, I would discover, to my skin. It was a rich and sensual smell, like that of overripe fruit just before bursting.

He should have dropped his hands when he finished arranging the coat, but he did not. He stood, his body blocking the wind from mine, his hands twisted in the lapels of his own coat, drawing me closer to him.