Nachtstürm Castle (16 page)
“Catherine!” Henry had cried as he saw his bride thrown into the gig.
“Lucia!” Will cried simultaneously.
They both rushed up the hill to the hermitage, but while Henry hurried past it, Will fell behind, full stopping at the church door. The carriage pulled out of sight and Henry, realising that all was lost had he not the use of a horse, sprinted back to the church, calling, “Good God, man! A horse, a horse!”
But he never finished the well–known quote. For no sooner had he entered the chapel than he saw Catherine’s doppelganger in William’s passionate embrace. Even more astonishing, however, was the sight of Fra Andreas hurrying towards him.
“Your wife,” the good friar managed, pointing uphill. “Quickly!”
“A horse!” Henry thundered again.
“At the castle! Go, man!”
Henry gulped and nodded, but begged a moment’s leave. Running to the star–crossed duo, and without bothering to separate their embrace, he cleared his throat and began. “Dearly beloved...”
“Nein!” cried William.
“Non!” Lucia enjoined.
Henry could not even smile. Bowing, he said, “Baron, all apologies, but I cannot afford more of my time at present chasing after either one of you when family matters press. But I do not intend to quit this place until you and your cousin are safely married – and I do neither intend to wait long before rescuing my own wife. To whit: do you Lucia...”
“Nein!” William roared. “I shall not be wed in a foreign church, nor wed without witnesses!”
“Bitte, Reverend Tilney,” Fra Andrea interjected, resting one arm on our hero’s sleeve. “Let me tend to young Brandenburg. I fear you have hit upon a subject of much distress to my young nephew and I beg you would forgive his thoughtless and uncharitable words.”
Will glowered as his uncle, the friar, looked disapprovingly at the young heir.
But Henry could only say, “Brother?
I thought you were dead.”
The Friar did not bother to reply directly, but placed his warm hand upon the youthful Reverend and said, “Go.”
Henry nodded. “So long as you will see them married by the time I return. I’ve had quite enough of their mischief.”
“Gladly,” Fra Andreas agreed. “If there is any way to provide two witnesses. I would not have the sins of my own youth repeated.”
They shook hands and no sooner shook than Henry set forth to Nachtstürm where he found Colin lazing in the kitchen. Our hero quickly acquainted his man with the particulars of the situation as he saddled his horse.
Having gained the promise from Colin that he’d meander on by the hermitage with Betty; Henry mounted and rode after Catherine.
He set off at first along the path, but although he handled the horse with good dexterity, he knew he could never hope to gain upon the carriage unless his horse somehow sprouted wings. As that seemed unlikely, Henry set his sights onto a possible clearing through the trees, down to another level of the winding road. Several frustrated moments were spent searching, but when such an opening presented itself, his mount proved intractable. Henry had no spurs but his own anxiety, yet he finally managed to convince the steed that less pain would be inflicted from his handsome boots upon the charger’s sleek flanks if they only went down.
And
down
indeed they went! For once the stallion, having exerted every ounce of equine courage within himself to even set hoof in the forest, leapt into the trees, they landed on a soft bit of earth that rolled away and swept along both horse and rider! The stallion whinnied, eyes rolling wildly as his powerful hooves futilely sawed the avalanching ground. It was all Henry could do to remain seated, whisper soothingly in the stallion’s ear, and pray they landed on the road. His prayers did not go unanswered. They smacked to a halt at last, skidding on the worn dirt road right to the very ledge.
The horse reared, but Henry held on, using the momentum of the action to kick his borrowed mount again down the road, which was quickly narrowing to a path. But Henry could see recent carriage marks yet – the chase was still on. Another, shorter, flatter break through the trees and he was gaining, he knew it, must believe it. The carriage must force perforce go slower than a single horse.
He might reach them after all.
One more foray, but this one led to the wrong road, for no tell–tale tracks were visible. Precious time lost, as he wound his way back to the track and galloped along a mere trail, grown treacherous with the first few ominous drops from the grey, massy clouds.
The sky lighted with a silent strike, clawing the bellies of the clouds and causing the horse to rear. Henry regained mastery quickly and once more set off, his pace slowed to a walk. The delays were infuriating – all the more so for Henry’s acknowledgement of his own culpability in at least one instance. But here was no time for indulgent self–recrimination, for there on the path directly below, the sought–for carriage rambled at an alarming pace.
Nothing could halt Henry’s passage down the steep slope now; no, nor could the elements conspire to detain our hero. Through briars and bracken and steadily increasing rain, he thundered on his mount, landing at last on the road, not a few yards distant from his beloved. Another strike of lightning – now accompanied by the deep–bellied rumble, and the horse reared, incidentally setting Henry very picturesquely against the inconstant moon. Alas, Catherine was deeply engaged in her argument with Old Edric and thus missed entirely the melodramatic display. But we may assume that, possessing so strong an imagination, Catherine had often pictured Henry thus; and, as realities are often just short of what we dream, so despite Catherine’s immediate loss, there is no denying that her excellent mind had the wind blowing east rather than west – which is to say, in her fancy, Henry’s many–caped greatcoat swirled in a graceful drape away from his body, whereas in reality, the wind blew against him, slapping the greatcoat about our hero like an untidy cocoon.
The moment passed, as did the stallion’s brief rebellion, and within one more lightning bolt, Henry had closed the gap by half. Thunder bellowed. Hooves pounded. Catherine looked back and smiled. Three feet, two feet, one! A sear of light, illuminating Henry mid–leap – the wind still blowing westerly, but now to good effect – and slam
groan
, Henry burst into the carriage and onto the abductor.
It is at this juncture in the narrative that a respite is best taken from the harrowing adventures of our heroes, to examine in brief the nature of the village that lay in the shadow of Nachtstürm Castle, by means of a history. I say brief, only because the activity of our hero will allow for no more than a summation of over three thousand years of battles and empires than a single chapter, although a work of this magnitude and, certainly, in this admirable style, requires no less than an entire volume dedicated to the doings of the first Baron of Brandenburg in 1296 down to the present day; with memorable, wandering, Herodotian asides about the mythological names of the foliage, and another whole volume dedicated to the Werreischan Counts of Ulrich, who held Nachtstürm between the little–lamented second Baron and his eventual heir (re–established to his title in 1515); an accurate Homerian account of the number of carts of ale brought to the Council of 1185, whereat the brewery ancestor to the modern Barons acquitted himself magnificently; and the curious affair of the local tailor’s, Herr Johannes Andreas Schneider’s remarkable defeat of no less than seven rabid beasts during the years of 1315 to 1342, laid traditionally at the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi. Poetry, too, we should incorporate – as the muse Calliope is often wont to cover both, were we to believe Virgil – but with a sole chapter at our disposal and so much to impart, we must content ourselves with this, taken from our own noble Bard, in a play of no less renown:
I weep for joy
To stand upon my kingdom once again.
Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,
Though rebels wound thee with their horses’ hoofs.
As a long–parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,
So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favours with my royal hands.
It were, of course, too much to quote the chorus of quite another of his early tragedies, set in near–by Verona.
The village nestled in those Alps, just visible from Nachtstürm’s brooding towers, possessed from the year 1027 to the present the unremarkable name of Nachtväl, derived from its location. The Romans, who had of course founded the village in 298 B. C., had named it Valerius, after the general who had defeated the current tribe there, which is why the Italians, in the nearby town of Gesette, to this day refer to Nachtväl as Valere. The inhabitants of Nachtväl, having rare cause to leave the environs even to travel to the next town, rarely call it by any name, except a sort of politic “Väl.” Brandenburg, over which the Barons of that title held dubious rule, actually consists of the ring of five mountains within which Nachtväl settled, and upon the highest peak of which Nachtstürm Castle towers.
The Välich are, as you might imagine, the sort of people whom one might find in any tightly knit community: cheerfully xenophobic, recalcitrant to strangers, formal amongst themselves, apt to keep their fiery escapades to the shadows and the late–night pipes and ale, full of the usual array of queer folk – the hereditary beggar, the brood of gossip–mongers headed by the local dame, the eccentric tobacconist, and the mendicant friar some mile away on the same slope as Nachtstürm. Together they constituted the last Austrian village near the borders of Italy and Switzerland, where through the southernmost mountain pass nestled the aforementioned village of Gesette, with whom they reluctantly traded goods; and to the west, a good seven hours’ hike, the Swiss town of Ulrich, against whom the people of Nachtväl held a quaint grudge due to their unfortunate invasion some mere three hundred years ago. Of course, the natural result of such sociologic geology was that the inhabitants of the village all spoke Italian nearly as well as they spoke German, and that anyone speaking with a Swiss accent in the largely superfluous inn was immediately given hard bread and no cheese.
The bonds between Italian city–states and our Austrian stronghold were strengthened in the aforementioned years of 1315 to 1342 by the tailor’s remarkable victory over the savage beasts that terrorised both Nachtväl and Gesette. Schneider himself attributed his success to the mendicant friar of Assisi, already a canonised saint within the people’s minds, and thus the arrival of Friar Giuseppe to the village of Nachtväl in the spring of 1345 was a pleasant if not jubilous one. Within the space of twenty years, however, the venerable Friar impressed himself so favourably upon the villagers that several of their own young men – much to the aggrievement of the young ladies – joined the Franciscan order. And in time, the friars of Nachtväl were entirely comprised of citizens tithed from the same – including, in 1782, the youngest son of the then current Baron of Brandenburg. This gentle soul took up the name Andreas (having been christened
Andrew
at birth) – and was, indeed, the same friar who spoke to Catherine.
And it is his voice we shall allow to recount the remainder of our lamentably brief history.
“My grandfather, Georg Wiltford,” the friar said to our heroine, some hour ago, “had the curse of wanderlust that pervaded so many of my ancestors. But rather than exploring eastward to the Indies, or westward to the Americas, he chose to tour the remainder of the continent, and even to visit your isle. There he fell in love with the only daughter of the Baron of Branning, Miss Matilda Fitzgerald, my grandmother. So enraptured was he with all things English that he not only took her to wife, but also her faith – which is your faith also, Frau Tilney. This conversion proved politic, for his father–in–law ceded the title of Branning to my grandfather, Georg, thus binding the Barons of Brandenburg more firmly to your isle and its ways.
“
My
father, Jacob Wiltford, was born in the ancestral castle of the Brannings, and always regarded Nachtstürm Castle as a second home, with the title of Brandenburg the lesser. In time, he took to wife a cousin from his English heritage, and was content as eldest son to leave the care of his Austrian estate to those servants in his employ – particularly one whom you can guess has been here longer than even I know.