The Pierced Heart: A Novel (7 page)

When he wakes the next morning there’s a tell-tale stain on the sheets that leaves him red with shame. But there is nothing to say he did not dream it entirely—no marks about his wrists, no tear to his shirt, and when he goes to the door it is locked, and from the inside.

But later, when he strips off his night-shirt to wash, he finds two tiny spots of blood at the neck, which were not there before.

CHAPTER THREE
 

“W
HO IS SHE?
”

Charles is standing at the door of the Baron’s library. It is eight o’clock, and the storm has cleared, leaving a sky blanched to pallid washy blue and the Danube running high and turbid brown. Charles has not yet breakfasted, but his host must have so done already, or else has no more appetite at this hour than he does after dark. The Baron is sitting, his back to the blinded window, with his pen in his hand and a pair of small wire spectacles on the end of his nose. He does not raise his head when Charles enters, nor when he speaks. It is several long slow moments, indeed, before he places the spectacles on the desk and raises his head.

“To whom do you refer?”

“The young woman I overheard talking with you last night.”

The Baron looks at him steadily. “I have no idea what—or whom—you mean. There is no young woman in this castle.”

“I am afraid I do not believe you. I distinctly heard a woman speaking with you—a young woman—”

“I say again,” interrupts the Baron, “there is no young woman here.
Are you sure you did not dream the episode, Herr Maddox? A large dinner, and several glasses of both wine and
slivovitz
such as I am told is your habit, can produce the most vivid and disturbing dreams. Dreams that take on all the appearance of reality, and deceive the senses, even on waking.” He eyes Charles narrowly. “I am sure I do not need to elaborate any further. You have indeed had such an experience, have you not?”

Charles flushes under his intense pale stare. When he replies he has, all unconsciously, brought his hand to his neck.

“This was not a dream, Freiherr. It was observation, not hallucination.”

“Ah.” The Baron smiles dryly. “I had indeed heard that you place great store by—what was the phrase—
logic and observation
? And indeed, I concur, in some measure, with the principles espoused by your celebrated great-uncle. But were he a scientist, as I am, rather than a mere thief taker, he would know that observation can deceive, and logic cannot always be trusted.”

Charles is badly wrong-footed now—unsure whether he’s more offended at the casual disparagement of the man Maddox once was, or the fact that his own professional life has clearly been so comprehensively investigated, and without (and this really does concern him) his being in the slightest aware of it. The detective has become the detected, and in the most unsettling manner.

“Even were that true,” he says, his eyes cold and his cheeks hot, “I have no reason, on this occasion, to distrust the evidence of my own senses. I had seen you, on the parapet only minutes before, taking what appeared to me to be the most gratuitous and unnecessary risk given the ferocity of the storm, and I came out onto the gallery with the sole purpose of raising the alarm
on your behalf
. I can assure you that by that time I was both wide awake and wet through, from watching at the window.”

“If you are so concerned for your health, or for your wardrobe, you would perhaps be better advised to remain within your quarters, unless your presence elsewhere is explicitly requested.”

It is barely courteous—barely less than an outright rebuke—and they stare at each other, aware that one of them must retreat, or the encounter break open into absolute animosity. Charles is never averse to a fight, and he’s perfectly prepared to press hard for answers, but he’s also mindful that all he is likely to achieve is a permanent and uncomfortable rupture that will be almost impossible to explain to his clients in Oxford. He’s trying to think of a retort that doesn’t constitute a complete capitulation when the Baron—rather surprisingly—blinks first.

“I had intended, yesterday, to talk to you of my work, but I was, as you will recall, most unfortunately called away. That is why I was on the roof last night. To climb to such an exposed place in the middle of a storm might appear
to the uneducated
to be mere folly—which no doubt accounts for many of the impertinent rumours promulgated about me hereabouts—but I would have hoped a man with
your
pretensions to intelligence would have realised at once that a phenomenon such as lightning can, perforce, be studied only in a storm. I have written a number of monographs on this subject, which I should be most happy to show you. I have, for example, offered a theory of my own concerning the variant known as ball lightning, which has hitherto never been explained, and which country people believe to be the sign of the devil’s hand. But forked lightning such as we witnessed last night is, I am afraid, only too commonplace and mundane—”

“Then why should you put yourself at such risk to study it?”

Is there now the faintest of flushes across the Baron’s hollow cheeks? He picks up his spectacles once more and takes his pen.

“There were some minor observations I wished to make. I believe breakfast awaits you, Herr Maddox.”

There is no question of the flush now, and Charles elects merely to bow and depart. But now he has food for thought as well as body.

When he returns to his room, he goes immediately to the shelves of books and looks among them for any written by the Baron himself.
There are several, as it turns out; most on his chemical discoveries, but one in German—
Ueber Blitz ohne Donner
—that judging by the diagrams might well be on the subject of lightning. It’s not the first time Charles has wished he had a better facility for languages. But as he flips through pages densely printed with words that seem to go on forever and have nothing like enough vowels, he remembers with a smile something Maddox said to him when he was a boy—Maddox, who devoted so many years to the study of classical tongues but had rather less time for the modern variety. And what was it his uncle had said? “
Life is short, my boy. Far too short for German irregular verbs.
” He’s still smiling as he puts the book back and scans the rest of the bookshelf to find, rather to his surprise, a copy of
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
from four years before. The journal falls open at a piece titled “Letters on the Truths Contained in Popular Superstitions,” and several pages in Charles finds a brief reference to the Baron’s name. He’s just making a brief note in his pocket-book when there’s a sudden loud knocking at the door, and he marks the page with a slip of paper and puts the journal hastily back. It’s Herr Bremmer, come to enquire whether he would like to resume his researches in the library. Uneasily aware that he appears to be neglecting the task for which he has been hired, Charles gathers his notebook quickly and follows the librarian out of the room.

He is more than two hours in the library, desperate all the while to return to his room and finish the article. Even at noon he is thwarted when, for the first time, he is accompanied by a silent black-suited servant to the dining-parlour, and thence back to the library once more. When night falls at last, Herr Bremmer accompanies him, as unnecessarily as before, to the door of his room, informs him dinner has been laid there for him, then bows low. Charles closes the door and stands behind it, listening, but it is only when he thrusts the bolt noisily across that he hears the librarian’s leather slippers creak softly away. Then he goes quickly to the shelf and pulls out the journal,
turning to the page he marked. There’s not much, only a few paragraphs. But it’s enough. Enough to make him wonder whether there is an answer hidden here that explains everything he has found so unnerving about this place. An answer that might even account for the presence of the girl, and what it is the Baron really wants with her. He shoves the journal carelessly back on the shelf, not caring that it’s now protruding at least an inch from the rest, then carefully slides the bolt back and opens the door. Then he makes his way silently to the door beneath the tower, unaware, in his haste and his eagerness, that in the far shadows of the gallery, the librarian is watching.

It is no more than a minute before he hears it. Faint at first, and strangely muffled, but unmistakeable all the same. The sound of a woman’s voice. Breaking, gasping. Wailing and rising now in—what? Pain? Fear? He tries the handle of the door, but is not at all surprised to find it locked. He tries the door again, aggressively this time, calling out and demanding to be let in. But there is no answer. The woman’s voice stops—suddenly cut off, as if smothered by a clamping hand. And then nothing.

Charles kicks against the door in frustration, but achieves nothing save more scuffs on an already shabby boot. He’s defeated, and he knows it. He waits a few moments more, then turns and walks back to his room, where he flings open the window and takes a deep breath of night air. The moon has risen full and whey-faced over the Danube, which runs sluggish and oily in the flooding light, but there must be some trick, some strange reflection off the water that makes the sky above glow brighter than the evening star. He’s still trying to puzzle this out when he hears sounds above his head—the sounds of footsteps. He flings the shutter open as wide as it will go and ventures out again onto the ledge. The parapet is only ten feet or so above his head,
but the ground is more than thirty feet below. Thankfully he has always had a head for heights, even if not for languages. He reaches out and seizes a dry gnarled branch of the ancient creeper in one hand, and then another, more confidently, as he feels the bough sigh but stay. The wind is beginning to rise, and the leaves silvering the creeper flutter and whisper as he ascends, slowly, hand over clutching hand, his boots scraping blindly against the slabs for a foothold, and he is soon sweating under his coat, despite the cold. But five minutes later he has reached the crumbling stone balustrade and is grasping the edge and starting to haul himself up and over and seeing, in a staggered disbelief, exactly what it is the Baron has concealed here. And now all is clear—not just the references in the journal, not just the girl, but the Baron’s own words, even the specimens downstairs. It is all connected, all is part of the same great and overwhelming secret. And then there is such a sudden blinding glare of light that he closes his eyes a moment, and his fingers slip—slip first and are then crushed by some vicious grinding weight and he is losing his grip and when he opens his eyes again it’s to a hail of dust and dead leaves that blinds him until he feels something touch his hair and skin, something dry and leathery but
alive
, and he realises that there is an enormous bat trapped in the branches above his head. He tries to cling on, tries to shield his face against the wall, but as the bat flails closer and closer he cannot stop himself pulling away, and as the shift of his weight wrenches a section of creeper from the wall he is plunging down, falling, clawing, feeling death rush up to meet him on the remorseless stone-paved ground.

But it is not, it seems, his time. Scarce ten feet from the foot of the wall he comes to a gasping slithering stop in the thick tangle of the creeper trunk. His hands are scored and bleeding, but he is not dead yet. He clings there a moment, breathing so hard he can scarcely get oxygen into his lungs, before starting to clamber slowly, shaking, to the ground. The rain is coming down hard now, which
is no doubt why Charles does not hear—does not even suspect until he has both feet on solid earth and turns in an illusion of relief to see—

An enormous black-pelted hound. More wolf than dog, its neck ringed with a spiked iron collar, and hackles rigid all along its spine. It starts towards him, teeth bared, growling now, and Charles edges backwards, glancing about desperately for something he can use to fend the creature off—some stick or spade or a brick he could throw—but the dog merely presses closer, the whites of its eyes flaring. There is a frozen second of stillness and then the dog is upon him, leaping at his face, dragging him to the ground. Pure instinct takes over and he kicks and thrashes, but the beast’s too strong for him and he feels its hot mouth close about his leg, and knife teeth puncture cloth and skin and bite into bone—

It lasts—what?—a minute? Maybe not even that. And then the vise about his leg is loosed and Charles is lying there, face-down in the dirt, retching, the rain running down his face and neck. He turns over slowly to see a mass of bloody mangled flesh running from his foot to his knee. He stares at it a moment, then doubles up in a rictus of pain, spewing acid vomit across the dark wet ground. But what he does not see, cannot see, is the man standing high above him on the roof, fingering something in the pocket of the long coat that billows about him in the wind. A man who watches quietly for the next half hour, seemingly unperturbed by the downpour, as Charles tries again and again to get up, but can put no weight on his bleeding leg. Watches, indeed, until Charles gives up altogether and crawls with pitiful slowness into the lee of the castle wall, and hunches up against the slashing rain. Whereupon the man above him turns and steps down out of our sight. But not before we glimpse what he has been holding in his hand all this time. It is of ivory, perhaps four inches long, and carved minutely and beautifully with the figure of Actaeon, in the very act of being torn
to pieces by his own hounds. And its purpose? It is a hunting whistle. For the summoning of dogs.