Castle of the Wolf

by Sandra Schwab

  “No!” In a burst of anger, Cissy slapped her hands against the window. “I will not go back to that house where Dorinda is now mistress! I will not be the poor relative who just watches life flow by! I will not be Auntie Cis and nursemaid to my brother’s children forevermore!” Tiny rivulets of water trickled through her fingers as the ice melted away under the warmth of her palm.

  Cissy took a deep breath. “This is going to be my new life and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.” She rubbed her wet fingers against her nightdress, turned her back to the clouds and the snow, and started to get ready for the new day.

  But when she went downstairs, she was dismayed to find out her coachman had left and was on his way back to Baden-Baden. Frau Henschel assured her it was for the best, that he wouldn’t have found the way to the castle anyway, that one of the inn’s stable hands would bring her instead. So, after a hasty breakfast and repeated attempts by the innkeeper’s wife to make her stay in the valley, Cissy climbed up onto the seat of a small cart. Her battered travel trunk was strapped to the back and her carpet bag was stowed at her feet. Frau Henschel gave her flannel-wrapped hot bricks, a thick woolen blanket, mittens and a woolly cap for warmth, and cast her a last worried look before a surly-looking boy climbed the seat and took up the reins. Clicking his tongue, he slapped them on the horse’s back, and with a crunch, the cart jolted into motion.

  The boy, a youth of maybe sixteen with a continually dripping nose, seemed disinclined to acknowledge Cissy’s existence and stared straight ahead, handling the reins expertly. Cissy decided to ignore him, too, and looked around with interest.

  Despite the grayness of morning, the little town looked neat and smart, the half-timbered houses glowing white and black, and a bit of gold glinting over the bakeries and inns. A little chapel of gray stone hid between the houses, far less grand than imposing St. Margaretha’s, but still adding to the charm of Kirchwalden. Cissy saw men shoveling snow and clearing the streets, while old women in black stood by and watched. Rosy-cheeked children, straps with books and small slates thrown over their shoulders, ran squealing around and pelted each other with snowballs.

  Cissy snuggled deeper into her blanket and let the heat of the hot bricks flow through her body. Soon she would arrive at her castle and everything would be all right. Cozy warmth filled her from without and within, for the ghosts of the early morning had fled, even though the clouds still loomed threateningly nearby.

  They seemed even more ominous when the cart left Kirchwalden behind and approached one of the hills, covered not only in clouds and fog, but also with fir trees so dark they looked almost black. The grandmother, however, lived in the forest, half an hour from the village. As Little Red Riding Hood now entered the woods, she met the wolf. But Little Red Riding Hood didn’t know what a bad animal he was, and was not afraid of him…

  Cissy frowned. She was not afraid of wolves either, and she would not be frightened by any heathenish young count who appeared determined to scare the poor villagers witless.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Indeed, the Castle of Wolfenbach now belonged to her, and having lived under one roof with her horrid sister-in-law, she was determined to keep hold of this property of hers. “But because Little Red Riding Hood was such a clever girl,” she murmured, “and saw the evil glint in old wolfie’s eyes, she grabbed a thick stick and hit him over the head. Quite, quite hard. And howling loudly with pain, he ran away and was never seen again.” Cissy grinned, feeling giddy and just a tiny bit silly with excitement.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught the dark scowl her young coachman bestowed upon her. He muttered something she didn’t understand and spat into the snow.

  After he had steered the cart halfway around the hill, they finally entered the woods, and the horse drew the vehicle up and up and into the fog. To the left and right the trees stood side by side like steadfast soldiers, their lines only now and then broken by craggy rocks. Even though the trees had held off most of the snow, it was still difficult going for the horse and the small cart. More than once, Cissy felt how the wheels slid and the cart skidded in a bend of the coarse road. Grabbing the edge of the seat, she could feel the throbbing of her heart in her ears, its heavy beats against her ribs like a frantic bird trying to break out of its cage.

  But finally the trees fell away, and in front of them rose, in all its old, gray glory, a tumbledown castle from the fog.

  The cart rumbled to a halt.

  With something that sounded like a curse, her driver jumped onto the ground, marched around their vehicle and proceeded to loosen the straps around her travel trunk. With a dull thud it hit the ground.

  “And what exactly do you think you’re doing?” Cissy asked.

  Throwing her another dark scowl, the driver wiped the back of his hand across his dripping nose. Then he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “Out!” he snarled.

  “I beg your—”

  He snarled some more, but Cissy couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Somehow he used too many words ending in le. Yet even though she couldn’t understand what he was saying, she certainly caught the meaning of it, especially since he repeatedly pointed his thumb over his shoulder. Twenty horses would not make him drive into that cursed castle. He had been forced to bring her this far, and apparently he considered this sufficiently heroic.

  Reluctantly, she climbed down from the seat. Her old half boots sank into the snow well over the ankle. “Now, look here—”

  He strode around the cart and, shoving her roughly out of the way with his shoulder, grabbed her carpetbag and dumped it onto the snow-covered ground. With a last smoldering look, he swung himself up onto the box seat and urged the horse away as if all seven hounds of hell were after him.

  Cissy looked over her shoulder at the castle. The tower lay in ruins, and the dark holes of the windows blinked at the her like the empty eyesockets of a grinning skull. Cackling, a raven came flying from the forest, circled overhead and flew inside.

  Well, perhaps her reluctant driver knew something she didn’t.

  “Drat!”

  She looked down to where the hems of her pelisse and dress dragged through the snow, and dampness rapidly seeped through the thin leather of her old boots.

  “Dratdratdrat!” She gave the snow a vicious kick. “Drat!”

  Beyond a wooden bridge before her gaped the gate to the castle, dark and mysterious. Certainly too dark to venture in alone. Cissy chewed on her lower lip. She waggled her now icy-cold toes, looked this way and that.

  “Drat!”

  George would be rather happy to know that she well realized life was not a fairy tale at all. For if it were a fairy tale, this would be a good moment for some sort of otherworldly helper to appear. Or some knight in shining armor.

  O what can ail thee, knight at arms,

  Alone and palely loitering?

  Cissy frowned. Maybe she should drop the idea of a knight in shining armor. Knights were so easily led astray by a beautiful face.

  I met a lady in the meads,

  Full beautiful—a faery’s child;

  Her hair was long, her foot was light,

  And her eyes were wild.

  And as easy as that they would be in trouble up to their necks.

  No. Definitely no knights.

  Sighing, Cissy reached for the grip of her carpetbag. She hoped she would soon find somebody who would be willing to carry her travel trunk inside. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and marched toward the castle. Her castle.

  Her steps echoed hollowly on the wooden bridge, which had been cleared of snow. She stepped through the open gate and passed the gatehouse into the outer ward of the castle. The gatehouse appeared to be abandoned, and the castle walls to be missing several stones. Yet the long half-timbered building huddling against the walls of the inner castle looked well cared for, with black wood and patches the color of clotted cream.

  Cissy passed by the remain
s of a first bastion before the path ascended to the upper and main part of the castle. Above her, on the outer wall, she spotted the now roofless ramparts. As she walked along the ward, she couldn’t help thinking that this had been the place where in times past the inhabitants of the castle had pelted would-be intruders with arrows and stones before they poured hot oil or pitch onto them. Shivering a little, Cissy peered up the walls on her left, which belonged to the buildings of the inner keep, but all she saw were rows and rows of light gray stone, only broken by arrow slits and a few tiny windows high up.

  She passed a second bastion and finally stepped through a small gate onto the courtyard of the upper castle. Her mood immediately lightened. Rows and rows of the light gray stone met her eyes; whitewashed walls and half-timbered third and fourth stories; half-timbered oriels with slate roofs; and windows, both large and small, all with dark red shutters. Even though the color peeled off, they gave the courtyard a cheerful appearance. Her mouth open in wonder, Cissy turned around and around. Yes, the tower was partly ruined and the other buildings all looked battered and must have seen better days, but still…

  A castle!

  Her castle!

  Higher and higher her gaze climbed—until it met the baleful stone eyes of a leering gargoyle.

  Cissy started.

  Even at this distance, she could see the muscular feline body attached to the ugly head, the long claws that gripped the stone. Her gaze flickered away, only to be caught by the next gargoyle. They lurked up under the roof, hiding behind crooks in the wall. “How curious,” she murmured. “I’ve never heard of a castle with so many of them.”

  She shook her head and turned to see whether she could find a door. The building on her right lay in ruins; the winter sun shining through the empty windows lent it a skeleton-like appearance. A skeleton of a house, the bones made of mortar and stone.

  To Cissy’s left, wooden stairs led up to a gallery, which ran around half of the courtyard, ending at the remains of the tower with a spiral staircase. The stairs led down to the courtyard and up to a door high in the tower wall. Another gargoyle guarded the entrance to this last bastion of the castle.

  Cissy shaded her eyes with her hand against the winter sun. It was hard to tell from this distance, but she could have sworn the gargoyle was silently laughing at her, mocking her. She fought the urge to stick her tongue out at it. Instead, she looked away with emphasized nonchalance and focused her attention on the two buildings at the end of the courtyard. Two doors, both closed, of course, and a yawning black archway to her left.

  She chose the archway and found it led to another, smaller courtyard: more buildings, more doors, a wooden gallery above her, but this time no stairs. Sighing, Cissy looked around. Her breath formed small white clouds in the cold air. “Guten Tag!” she said loudly.

  She waited. Listened.

  “Hello-ho?”

  Still no answer. The whole place seemed to be abandoned. A ghost castle.

  Cissy shivered.

  High above her, she detected more gargoyles hiding under the roof. They all had long, wolfish snouts. Yes, like wolves. The wolves of Wolfenbach.

  “Drat.”

  Cissy turned and walked back to the first courtyard. “Guten Tag!” she hollered. “Is anybody at home?”

  Eventually she heard a door opening, and then an old woman, small and round, with a tight bun of gray hair on the top of her head peered over the balustrade of the gallery. Her eyes widened and she gave every appearance of having come face to face with a ghost. With a shriek, she turned and hurried back inside.

  “Um.” Whatever should she do now? “Drat.” Shivering in the cold, Cissy rubbed her hands over her arms. Perhaps Evie had been right after all and these people were barbarians.

  She sniffed. Whatever they were, she would not freeze to death on the doorstop of her own castle.

  Squaring her shoulders, she marched up the stairs, which creaked in the cold, and walked toward the still open door. She saw how the threshold of stone had been hollowed out by innumerable feet—a chain of people stretching back far into the past. She put her foot onto the stone, made herself part of the chain, and stepped through the door.

  She came into a wide, high hall. A ribbed vaulting stretched above her, with painted flowers blooming around the center rosettes and in points running toward the walls. Threadbare tapestries and dark portraits of people in clothes from bygone ages adorned the pale gray. On one side stood an empty chimneypiece, on the other a colorful, tiled stove next to a table and a few chairs. Yet despite the furniture, the room appeared empty and chilly. And the four doors on all sides did nothing to improve Cissy’s mood.

  Her steps sounded unnaturally loud in the silence, and she half-expected to find another gargoyle lurking even in here. Yet there was no trace of another being—be it of stone or human flesh and blood—in sight.

  Cissy crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her foot tapped an annoyed staccato on the floor. “What is the matter with these people?” she muttered before she cleared her throat several times to holler, “Guten Ta-hag!”

  This finally produced the desired result: one of the doors was thrown open.

  “Miss Celia Fussell!” An older man approached her, in his wake a motherly looking woman. He hurried toward Cissy and, taking her hand, shook it as if he wanted to dislocate her arm. “My dear Miss Fussell,” he said, his small horn-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose. “My dear Miss Fussell. My dear, dear child.” He halted the shaking, and with the forefinger of his free hand righted his spectacles. “You are Miss Celia Fussell, are you not?”

  Cissy blinked, eyeing him carefully. “Indeed I am, sir.”

  “Yes, yes.” He patted her hand. “You look exactly like your dear papa.” His face changed, his features shifting until he reminded her of a sad puppy. “We were so sorry to hear of your loss.”

  “Thank you, I—”

  His face lit up again and he continued the patting. “But we are very happy to have you here, aren’t we, Anna?” He half-turned to look at the woman behind him.

  Cissy could not help noticing that his cheerfulness seemed almost too bubbly, too exaggerated. It was rather worrying, but she aimed at keeping a smile on her face. “Thank you for this kind welcome, sir. So you would be…”

  He beamed at her and patted her hand some more. “Graf Ferdinand von Wolfenbach.”

  “Graf von Wolfenbach.” She wondered whether she should curtsy, but this did not seem to fit the hand patting and shaking. “So you would be master here?”

  With surprise, she saw flustered color blossom on his cheeks. “I…er…well…” He turned and threw the woman behind him an imploring look. “I…”

  In the distance Cissy heard strange, uneven tapping. Tap-dam, tap-dam.

  Graf von Wolfenbach’s color deepened, and his hand patting became slightly frantic. He looked back at her, gulped and plastered a forced smile on his face. “I am not…um…exactly the master of the Castle of Wolfenbach.”

  The tapping sounds stopped. “No,” a new voice said from behind Cissy. “I am the master of the Castle of Wolfenbach.”

  Cissy’s hand slipped from the Graf s grasp. Slowly she turned in the direction of that new voice, dark and compelling.

  The man was tall and as lean as a greyhound. Wavy dark hair fell into his strong-boned face, almost into his burning eyes. A sneer twisted his mouth as he stood in the middle of the vast hall, arms crossed in front of his chest. Cissy’s gaze wandered over his body, over his shabby, dusty clothes, over the twist of his hip that rested the weight on his sound right leg and relieved the wooden left.

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I am the master of the Castle of Wolfenbach.”

  Chapter 4

  Cissy blinked.

  If he was aiming at impersonating the villain from a gothic novel, he was succeeding rather nicely. Of course, the overall effect could still be heightened by, say, a knife dripping blood or a polished skull. No, that’s Hamlet. To be
or not to be.

  From her thawing toes a sharp pain shot up her body. She surely had envisioned her arrival at her castle differently.

  Cissy frowned.

  Her castle.

  To be or not to be, indeed.

  She looked the man straight in the eyes and slowly lifted her brows. “Actually,” she said sweetly, “that’s not quite true. I am the master of the Castle of Wolfenbach now. Or rather,”—she gave him a beaming smile and hoped it would annoy him just as much as her throbbing toes were annoying her—“its mistress.”

  The rebuttal came in a feral bark. “The hell you are!”

  “Fenris!” Graf von Wolfenbach admonished.

  Fenris? What a peculiar name! But she had to admit the name fit the man who was glowering at her, his face blacker than a thundercloud. Fenris, the demon wolf of Norse mythology, of whom the prophecy said he would one day swallow the sun and bring about the end of the world.

  “Have you invited her here, Father?” The demon wolf rounded on the Graf. How such a charming man could have fathered such an ill-mannered son was quite beyond her.

  A man might be the Archangel Michael personified, and his son might grow into a good for-nothing!

  Cissy suppressed a shiver as she remembered her brother’s words. At the time she had thought his worries about rakehells or worse exaggerated and unfounded, but now she was no longer so sure. However, she suspected that even in the Black Forest, rakehells would dress more stylishly than Fenris von Wolfenbach did.

  “If you have,” he growled, “you can just get rid of her again.”

  So, no rakehell then, just terribly ill-mannered. A perfect churl.

  She sighed. “I believe our family solicitor announced my impending arrival to Graf von Wolfenbach. He also informed him that according to my late father’s will…” A wave of grief swamped her, and she had to swallow hard before she could continue. “He informed him that I’m now holding the deeds to the castle.”

  Fenris von Wolfenbach stared at her as if she had suddenly grown a second head. If possible, his expression darkened even more. “What kind of rubbish is this?” he snapped. “This castle has been in the possession of our family for several hundred years.”