Nachtstürm Castle (8 page)

Their breakfast although full was brief, due to Edric’s undesired attention, and all too soon they found themselves trailing behind him again to tour the castle. Old Edric’s pace was far more lingering than Helga’s brusque parade the night before had been, and his descriptions of each area more lurid for their comprehensibility.

“You will notice the tapestries, bitte,” he said, waving stiffly to the wall. Henry, who had not been noticing the tapestries but glancing through the archways to the open hall below decked like an armoury, turned his attention to the rather drab piece of work that Edric apparently thought more fascinating than that beautifully tempered halberd beneath. Catherine, however, had very little interest in armaments – unless they were soaked in blood which no amount of scrubbing would remove, or were covered with cobwebs in some unfortunate skeleton’s hand – and so was just as glad to learn that the tapestry on the left was made by “die Gräfin Ute Anglemark” as a gift to her betrothed – the seventh Baron of Brandenburg.

“You will notice the golden threads that form the lady’s ring?” Edric asked, glancing at Catherine. She bent forward and admitted that she did see. “They are not gold – they are the lady’s hair!”

Catherine exclaimed, and pulled Henry to her side to witness the revelation. Henry muttered in surprised appreciation and then pulled back to better view the picture.

“Rather morbid, isn’t it?” he asked, after a minute of consideration.

“The Saracen carrying off his bride is a common and long–honoured theme, Herr Tilney,” Old Edric said, swooping towards Henry in disapproval.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” Henry rejoined. “And this particular...execution of that noble theme is well–done, indeed. But I’ve always wondered if the lady mightn’t object.”

“I would not have, dearheart,” Catherine said, turning with a smile.

“Ah, but you had prepared yourself for such an eventuality. I’m afraid my manners were quite disappointing.”

“I would not have you other than you are – but, I believe, a little gallantry would not have been amiss.”

“Was my dancing not sufficient?”

“Your conversation was unique, I grant you.”

“Yet it won you, Catherine.”

“Only because you tampered with my journal!”

Edric’s cough recalled them to the tour at hand, and they turned with pleasant dignity to their sepulchral guide. “You are not entirely mistaken in your opinion, Herr Tilney,” he said. “In this case, die Gräfin wove her future.”

“She was carried off by a Sheikh!” Henry exclaimed, snatching up his beloved in mock horror.

“Nein – she
died
,” Edric intoned.

“Died from what?” Catherine asked in a small voice.

“No one knows – but an hour before she wed the Baron, she was found dead in her chambers, the needle stuck into her finger and laced with her golden hair.” Catherine shuddered and Henry’s groaned.
 
Old Edric, however, continued on almost cheerily. “Ja, the Barons – it is dangerous to wed them.”

In time they toured the better part of the main castle – viewing many more tapestries (although none of them quite as gruesome as the first), purveying the armoury, and inspecting the library. Catherine was quite appalled to discover that the volumes contained very few novels among them and expressed her shock to Old Edric with the greatest outraged vehemence. He bowed and replied that since the Barons had never long kept their wives, Frau Tilney would forgive the masculine tenor of the collection?

“Perhaps the Baronesses starved from fictional deprivation?” Henry suggested, only to be immediately silenced by Catherine who had wonders enough without recalling Montoni’s sad wife.

Their stay in the library was of a suitable duration and their departure was marked by both Henry and Catherine who determined to return to that room on many a rainy day – if only they could find it again.
 
At length, as Edric elucidated on the particularly fine treasures – in this case a marble sarcophagus with bas relief satyrs and nymphs – that the fifth Baron had acquired, Catherine interrupted him to ask, “Are there any portraits of the Barons, sir?
 
Or their wives, perhaps?”

“Portraits!” Edric exclaimed. He cast about his hands agitatedly, and then said, “There are a few – but the likenesses are very ill!”

Catherine assured him that she was no great critic of art, and so – with great reluctance and even longer speeches about this urn discovered in Mesopotamia by the fifth Baron (who seemed to have been something of an explorer), or that window commissioned by the fourth Baron who had built this wing and had something of an interest with the Orient – they finally came to the gallery which boasted not only portraits but also statues of the long gone Barons of Brandenburg. And yes, there was the first Baron at the end of the hall, cast in bronze and wearing full armour, with a great double–handed broadsword between his massive hands.
 
There the fifth Baron whose restlessness and wanderlust the artist had cleverly captured.
 
There the ill–fated seventh Baron, portrayed twice – once as a cheery youth, and again as a haunted adult. Several more ancestors they passed, Old Edric surprisingly reticent in his speech as they examined each in turn. It was Henry that noted with some surprise the tiled floor, interspersed with slabs of sanguine marble and inscribed in Latin. He paused to read the first and then hurried on to the next, before rejoining Catherine who had been studying the curious signet of the Brandenburgs – Fortune’s wheel broken in two.

“I do believe,” he said, pulling his bride hurriedly to the nearest marble slab and eyeing Edric who remained at a distance, gazing adoringly upward at the brass statue of the first Baron, “I do believe that these slabs – do you see them darling? – that they are tombstones!”

“What a horrid imagination you have, Henry!” Catherine exclaimed.

He bowed. “With such a diligent tutor as yourself.... But regard, my love, the inscription.”

Catherine could not deny that the Latin phrases were very like what one might find on a tombstone, but hastened to add, “Yet, I hardly think they could be buried here, when we are on the second story!”

“No – perhaps not here. I rather imagine there is some dreadful sepulchre accessible only to you, darling, in the dead of night – but yet these slabs might give us some indication of all these awful Barons and their dead Baronesses.
 
Which we have yet to see, with the possible exception of
your
portrait in the hidden chamber.”

Catherine shuddered. “Oh, do not let us think of
that!
 
But are they all here?”

Henry shook his head and drew his beloved down the long hall to where Edric stood. The old man appeared greatly relieved to quit the place, but as they left, one portrait that had hung half in shadow – nearly hidden behind the bust of the fifteenth Baron who had continued his ancestor’s love of the foreign by indulging in an amazing range of cuisines and thus whose bust was astonishingly square rather than rectangular – caught Catherine’s attention and she cried in wonder, “Look, Henry!
 
Young Will!”

Henry turned to view the portrait – and confessed himself astounded by the artist’s skill, but more than slightly bewildered by the subject’s attire. “For William does not strike me as one who would ever consent to wearing white satin and lace.”

Old Edric, by this time, had rejoined them, and now glanced angrily at the picture. His normally cool composure slipped, and a great tremor seized his stooping form as he said, “That is not Herr Wilhelm.”

Catherine and Henry exchanged glances, the latter gently pressing Edric for clarification. “He is...” Edric seemed to struggle with himself, and then breathed a sigh, his sooty peacefulness descending upon him again. “That is the last Baron, my master.”

“But he looks almost exactly like…” Catherine began before Henry stopped her, thanking Edric and suggesting that he lead them to their rooms until dinner. This the old man did, leading them – perhaps by necessity, perhaps by design – once more past the gruesome tapestry of the Abduction, which wafted in their wake with the mournful cry of its long dead creator.

Old Edric proved to be correct about the season – for the rain did not abate until a week after our heroes’ arrival, and even then, it became a drizzling fog that clung mysteriously about the grounds. Henry spent the majority of the week exploring the gallery and combing the library for histories, aided imperfectly by Colin who was apt to find excuses for visiting his English lass down in the kitchen. Old Edric himself seemed satisfied with lurking about the corridors, hiding behind half–open doors, and staring moodily into the rain–drizzle gardens. The weather had not improved Helga’s demeanour either, and consequently the servants were often seen skittering from place to place, followed by her booming German expletives. Neither young Will nor the mysterious lady with him shewed themselves, and thus Catherine found herself at leisure to examine the castle in greater detail.

At first, she kept mainly to the passages with which she had become relatively familiar: the corridor outside their room, the great halls and twisting stairways, the library and picture gallery. A few times she glanced down into the abandoned paths or attempted to find the doorless room she had once inadvertently discovered – but this proved fruitless, since the wall in their room absolutely refused to budge.
 
Moreover, Henry had taken it into his head that since the only apparent means of opening the hidden doorway as from the inside, that he’d better guard his wife against nocturnal intruders, and so had placed the a sturdy table, chair and stool just at its entrance.
 
It was not long, therefore, before her interest in the gardens overwhelmed her and Catherine took to walking the porticoes along the dripping formal courts, breathing in the damp air and remembering rolling down slopes of grass in years gone by.

Thus was she occupied one morning after breakfast when the fervent sounds of whispering reached her ears, and very soon after the source of this passionate murmur came into view, revealing none other than young Will (who seemed to have a penchant for overcast skies) and his paramour.

Catherine, at first disposed to slip away and allow the lovers’ their privacy – and herself peace of mind, for viewing one’s doppelganger is never a pleasant affair, as any diligent reader well knows – was at last overtaken by her curiosity when the girl tore herself from the gentleman’s arms, with a rather tearful, “Basta!”

Young Will dodged after his love, pleading with her and taking her wrists, kissing the girl’s palms, but to no avail. She wept all the more, repeating a phrase again and again, fumbling to take his face in her hands and make him look at her. But now Will struggled, starting backwards, his eyes grown dark and furious. The girl saw the change, cringed, called his name and reached for him, but he had turned and shielded his eyes, stumbling against a cold fountain whose water had long run dry. His voice broke on a sob, stifled only when he bit his fist. Then their voices rose and fell from their distance, like water careening over a stony brook, tearing through rocks and over precipices, crashing against the shore of themselves, drowning wound together down the waterfall abyss.

At long last their speaking stopped and they faced each other – she on the cold bench, he by the cold fountain – and their look was one of inexpressible love and anguish that seldom touches this world, and can only be remembered in long–hazy legends. Their parting was quick and painful, a brush on the brow, a touch on the wrist and they had gone.

Catherine could hardly contain her excitement after such an escapade, for she had long longed to see Mrs Radcliffe’s work immortalised upon the stage but had little expected to discover her desires so suddenly and
well
executed in a foreign garden. However high her elation was, though, her delight remained solitary all that week and the next, for Henry was certain he had discovered something of interest in the library, and this excuse to remain greedily silent somehow satisfied our heroine.

Every day after breakfast, and often in the afternoon, Catherine returned to pace the porticoes in the hopes that she might catch a glimpse of the young lovers. Her reason was not wholly centred in her insatiable love of romance – although this certainly did play a large part – but also in the ever growing fascination with her other self, who so seemingly looked like her, and yet bore within her bosom a passion that even rivalled our heroine’s!