On the Night of the Seventh Moon

by Victoria Holt

  Ilse then turned her attention to Aunt Caroline, praised the wine which pleased her, and asked for a recipe for the biscuits.

  So altogether the three of us were pleased with the visit.

  That was a beginning. They had taken lodgings in the town and the aunts and myself were soon invited to dine with them. This was exciting and the aunts enjoyed it although Aunt Caroline did think they had some outlandish ways.

  I enjoyed most the times when I could be alone with them. I talked constantly about my mother and how she had met my father when he was on his walking tour. They were very interested. I told them about the Damenstift and the different nuns; in fact I realized that I talked a great deal about myself—far more than they did about their lives. They did though bring back to me very vividly the enchantment of the forest, and I could sense the change in myself. I was more like the girl I had been before I came back to find my life so sadly changed. Not a word did I say of my adventure in the mist but I was thinking of it, and the night after that first day of their arrival I dreamed of it all so vividly that it was like living it again.

  The days passed all too quickly and not one of them without a meeting with the Gleibergs. I told them how very sad I was that they would soon be leaving; Ilse said she would miss me too. It was Ilse to whom I had grown so close—identifying her with my mother. She began to tell me stories of their childhood together, all the little jaunts and customs which my mother had mentioned, and little incidents concerning Lili, as she called her, of which I had never heard before.

  About a week before they were due to leave she said to me: “How I wish you could come back with us for a visit.”

  The joy in my face seemed to startle her. “Would you really like it so much?” she asked, well pleased.

  “More than anything on earth,” I said vehemently.

  “Perhaps it could be arranged.”

  “The aunts . . .” I began.

  She put her hand on one side and lifted her shoulders, a gesture she used frequently.

  “I could pay my fare,” I said eagerly. “I have some money.”

  “That would not be necessary. You would be our guest, of course.”

  She put her finger to her lips as though something had occurred to her.

  “Ernst . . .” she said. “I am concerned about his health. If I could have a traveling companion . . .”

  It was an idea.

  I broached it to the aunts during luncheon.

  “Cousin Ilse is worried about Ernst,” I told them.

  “I don’t wonder at it. Hearts are funny things,” said Aunt Matilda.

  “It’s traveling. She says it’s a burden for one.”

  “She might have thought of that before she left her home,” said Aunt Caroline, who thought every adversity which befell others was their own fault and only those which came to her due to unavoidable ill fortune.

  “She brought him to see a doctor.”

  “The best of them are here,” said Aunt Matilda proudly. “I remember Mrs. Corsair’s going up to London to see a specialist. I won’t mention what ailed her but . . .” She looked significantly at me.

  “Cousin Ilse would like someone to help her on the journey. She suggested I go.”

  “You!”

  “Well, it would be such a help and in view of Cousin Ernst’s complaint . . .”

  “Hearts are very funny things,” from Aunt Matilda. “Unreliable . . . more so than lungs, though you can’t be sure of lungs either.”

  “Well, I’ve no doubt it would be a help to her but why should you go tramping out to outlandish places?”

  “Perhaps because I’d like to. I’d like to be of use to her. After all, she is my mother’s cousin.”

  “That’s what comes of marrying foreigners,” said Aunt Caroline.

  “Someone who understands hearts would be very useful now,” said Aunt Matilda speculatively. Good heavens, I thought. She’s not suggesting she should go?

  She was. Her love of disease would carry her even to such lengths. Aunt Caroline was horrified and this was fortunate for I was sure that because of this veiled suggestion of her sister’s she viewed my departure with less dismay.

  “How would you get back?” demanded Aunt Caroline trimphantly.

  “By train, by sea.”

  “Alone! A young girl traveling alone!”

  “People do. And it’s not as though it’s my first visit. The Grevilles might be coming out again. I could wait for them and travel back with them perhaps.”

  “It all seems very outlandish to me,” said Aunt Caroline.

  But I was determined to go; and I think that Aunt Caroline realized that I had my mother’s determination—“stubbornness” she called it—and once I had made up my mind I would go. Aunt Matilda was, in a way, on my side because she was certain that when you traveled with a “heart” more than one pair of hands would be needed if things went wrong. So it happened that at the end of the month of June when the Gleibergs left England I was with them.

  THREE

  I was in a state of exultation. Some strange transformation had come to me on that night in the hunting lodge and I would never be quite the same again. I sometimes believed that I had supped with the gods—or one of them at least. He belonged in Asgarth with Odin and Thor; he would be as bold and brave and as wicked and ruthless as any of them. He had taken possession of my mind so that I was like the knight-at-arms who had met the belle dame sans merci. “Alone and palely loitering” I would wander the Earth ever more until I found him.

  How foolish one could be! Yet on the other hand if I could retrace my steps in some ways, if I could prove to myself that what I had met on that night was not a god but a man who was not very scrupulous and might have submitted me to that which I am sure people like my aunts would think death preferable, I believed I might throw off this spell which now bound me. I would return to Oxford and learn to be a good housewife. I might be a spinster who looked after the aunts for the rest of their lives, or I might marry and have a family and bring them up to be respectable citizens. My daughters should never be sent to a Damenstift in the pine forests for fear one day they should be lost in the mist and captured by a wicked baron, for who could be sure that the good angel in the guise of a Hildegarde would always be there?

  We traveled through the familiar country and as I smelt the pines my spirits rose. At length we came to the little station of Lokenburg. A trap took us and our luggage to their house.

  How excited I was to be in Lokenburg. There were a few new houses which had been recently built on the outskirts in the Altstadt. It seemed to have come right out of a fairy tale with its arcaded streets and looked of the Middle Ages.

  “It’s beautiful!” I cried, gazing at the high roofs and gabled houses, with little domes capping the turrets and the window boxes on the window ledges overflowing with flowers. There was the market place with a pond in the center and in which a fountain played; from the shops hung iron signs creaking in the wind with the quaint pictures on them indicating the various trades.

  “You must visit our Pfarrkirche,” Ilse told me, pointing out the church. “The Processional Cross is locked away but it will be brought out to show you, I daresay.”

  “It’s so exciting to be back,” I told her.

  “We’re just in time for the Night of the Seventh Moon,” she said.

  I could hear his voice then distinctly.

  “The Seventh Moon,” I cried, “when Loke, the God of Mischief, is abroad and routed by the All Father Odin.”

  Ilse laughed delightedly. “Your mother made you aware of our legends, I see,” she said. “This, though, is rather a local one.”

  We had passed through the center of the town and had reached its outskirts. The house was a mile or so from the Altstadt. We turned in at a drive where the fir trees which lined it were thick and rather stubby and pulled up before a porch.

  The house was about the same size as the hunting lodge and not unlike it; there was the
hall on the walls of which hung spears and guns, and a wooden staircase led to a landing on which were the bedrooms. I was taken to mine, and hot water was brought; I washed and went down to a meal of sausages, sauerkraut, and rye bread which Ilse and I took alone. Ernst was resting. The journey had been so exhausting for him, Ilse explained. I was probably a little tired, too, more so than I realized.

  I had never felt less so.

  Ilse smiled indulgently. She was delighted by my pleasure. I wondered what she would think if she knew its true source and that my excitement was due to the fact that I was hoping to meet Siegfried again.

  That afternoon we went in the trap for a trip into the forest and I was enchanted by the mist of blue gentians and pink orchids. I wanted to gather them but Ilse said they would soon die if I did. So I left them.

  I slept little that night. I was so excited. I couldn’t get out of my mind the belief that I was going to see him again. He would come hunting and we would meet in the forest. We must. It couldn’t possibly happen that we never met again and I could not stay here forever, so it had to happen soon.

  I looked eagerly about me during the ride but we saw hardly anyone—only an old woman collecting sticks for firewood and a cowherd with his cows whose bells about their necks tinkled melodiously as they walked.

  The next day I went into the market which was being decorated with flags because this was the night of the full moon—the seventh of the year; the night of festivities when the God Loke was supposed to be abroad.

  “You’ll see the girls in their red skirts and white embroidered blouses and yellow tasseled aprons,” Ilse told me. “Some of the men will be masked; they may be dressed as gods in doublet and hose and light capes; they’ll be masked and wear horns on their heads. You’ve probably seen the pictures of the gods in your mother’s books. They’ll dance and play tricks. The idea being that none will know which represents Loke and which the All Father. You must see it. We’ll go into the market square as soon as the moon rises.”

  I had not seen Ernst all day. He was very self-effacing and so quiet that one could almost believe he was not there. “He has changed a great deal since his illness,” explained Ilse. “He suffers a great deal more than he admits.”

  So Ernst stayed in his room and Ilse and I were together most of the time. We talked a great deal—I more than she. I suppose Aunt Caroline was right when she said I talked too much; Ilse was the perfect listener, and I did not notice that she was not so much exchanging chatter as being an audience for me.

  And so came the evening of that second day—the prelude to the Night of the Seventh Moon. We had eaten what she called the English high tea as it was too early for dinner and she did not wish us to be out too late when the excitement was supposed to warm up and the fun might get too fierce.

  After this high tea she came to my room, her face grave.

  “I can’t allow Ernst to go out,” she said. “He’s not well enough.”

  “So there’ll be just the two of us.”

  “I . . . I hardly think we ought to.”

  “Not . . . go!”

  “Well, on occasions like these . . . two women on their own . . .”

  “Oh, but we must go.”

  She hesitated. “Well, we must not stay late. We’ll slip out to the market square and we’ll see the start of it. What a pity we haven’t a house on the square. Then you could watch from a window. Ernst will be very anxious. He won’t rest till we’re back.”

  “Isn’t there some man who could escort us? If we need one.”

  She shook her head. “This is not really our home. We have just taken this house for a holiday. We have been here before but we don’t really have friends in the neighborhood. You understand . . .”

  “Of course,” I said. “Well, we’ll go early and not upset Ernst.”

  So that was how we came to be standing in the square with the revelers all about us. It was about eight o’clock in the evening. Overhead hung the great moon—the seventh moon of the year and there seemed to be something mystical about it. It was a strange scene; Naphtha flares burned from iron jets lighting the faces of the people. There were crowds in the square; people were signing and calling to each other. I caught sight of a man masked, with the horned headdress which Ilse had described and I recognized it at once from pictures my mother had shown me. Then I saw another and another.

  Ilse squeezed my hand. “What do you think of it?”

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  “Keep close. The crowd’s thickening and they may become overexcited.”

  “It’s early yet,” I told her.

  I saw a girl seized by one of the horn-headed men and go dancing off with him.

  “The excitement grows. You’ll see.”

  “What happens if the sky is overcast and there’s no moon.”

  “Some say that Loke is sulking and won’t come out, others that he’s playing one of his mischievous tricks and then one has to be especially careful.”

  A group of fiddlers arrived, started to play and the dancing began.

  I don’t know quite how it happened; it was the way these things do happen in crowds, I supposed. One minute I was standing there by Ilse’s side watching the laughing and dancing swirl of people and then next there was chaos.

  It began with a sudden splash. Someone had been thrown into the pond; there was a rush toward it and in the mêlée Ilse was no longer beside me.

  I was firmly gripped by the hand and I felt an arm about my waist. A voice which made my heart hammer said in my ear: “Lenchen!” I turned and looked up into that face; I saw the masked eyes and the laughing mouth. I could never be mistaken.

  “Siegfried,” I whispered.

  “Himself,” he answered. “Come . . . out of the crowd.”

  He kept his grip on me and we were soon on the edge of it. He took my chin in his hands. “Still the same Lenchen.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Celebrating the Night of the Seventh Moon,” he said. “But this is an even more important occasion. The return of Lenchen.”

  He was drawing me farther and farther away from the crowd and we were in a small street in which there were only a few revelers.

  I said: “Where are you taking me?”

  “Let’s go back to the lodge,” he said. “There’ll be supper waiting there. You shall wrap yourself in a blue velvet robe and loosen your hair.”

  “I must find Ilse.”

  “Who?”

  “My cousin who brought me here. She will be worried.”

  “You are so precious that there must always be those to worry about you. First it is nuns and now this . . . Ilse.”

  “I must find her at once.”

  “Do you think you will, in that crowd?”

  “Of course.” I tried to withdraw my hand, but he would not release me.

  “We will go back and if it is possible to find her, we will.”

  “Come then. She was anxious. She thought we might not be able to come because her husband wasn’t well enough. She must have visualized something like this.”

  “Well, she did lose you and I found you. Surely I should have some reward for that?”

  “Reward?” I repeated. He laughed and put an arm about me.

  I said primly: “How shall I introduce you to Ilse?”

  “When the time comes I’ll introduce myself.”

  “There seems to me a great mystery about you. First you appear as Siegfried and now as Odin, or is it Loke?”

  “That is what you have to find out. It’s part of the game.”

  He had some sort of magic which put a spell on me; he was already making me stop worrying about Ilse. But I remembered how anxious she had been about our coming; and now she would be very worried indeed.

  We had reached the square, the dancing seemed to have become more frenzied, and there was no sign of Ilse. Someone trod on my heel and my shoe came off. I stopped and stooped. He was just behind me. I told him what ha
d happened.

  “I’ll get it.”

  He stooped but it wasn’t there, and the crowd was so great that we were jostled along.

  “Now,” he said, “you have lost both a cousin and a shoe.” His eyes gleamed suddenly. “What next will you lose?”

  I said quickly: “I must go back to the house.”

  “Allow me to escort you.”

  “You . . . you have come for the excitement of all this. I don’t want to take you away from it.”

  “That would be quite impossible. The excitement of this night is where you are.”

  I was really frightened. I must get away. Common sense urged me to.

  “I must get back.”

  “If that is what you really want then you must. Come with me.”

  I limped along beside him.

  “How far is the house?” he asked.

  “It’s about a mile from the center of the town.”

  “I daresay the road is bad. None of the roads is good in these parts. Something should be done about it. I have a horse in the inn yard there. You shall ride with me as you did on another occasion.”

  I assured myself that it would be very difficult walking minus a shoe so I went with him to the inn yard and there was the horse; he placed me on it and as he had done on that other occasion we started off.

  He didn’t speak as we went along; he held me firmly against him and my excitement was almost unendurable. I felt I was living in a dream but I suddenly suspected that we were not going toward the house.

  I pulled away from him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll know soon.”

  “You said you were going to take me back to Ilse.”

  “I said no such thing.”

  “You said if that was what I wanted.”

  “Exactly, but it’s not what you want. You don’t want me to take you back and say ‘Here is your cousin, just as you left her apart from the loss of one shoe of course.’ ”