by Paul Park
Radu Luckacz paused here to draw breath.
"What about the girl?" the baroness asked.
The policeman made an impatient and dismissive gesture with his hat, which he was holding by its crown. "I sent you the clothes that were discovered in the castle at Mamaia. Surely you'll agree that nothing like these fabrics has been seen before. She had an accomplice, a Gypsy in Macin. This man Codreanu has sworn to find her, which must not be allowed. He has no sense of the process of the law. Let me show you the photographs the Germans gave me. You will agree they are appalling."
Holding his hat crushed under his elbow, he pulled two photographic prints out of the envelope and held them out.
Both involved crowds and were full of blurred images. Both were shot in darkness by the light of a bonfire, so that many details were lost. But in both of them the vampire's face was clear.
"You see he has organized a private company of soldiers he calls the Legion of Aphrodite. He claims to be protecting the rights of all Roumanians, and to protect them from foreign influence. In this he is inspired by the policies of your late husband, which he has taken to criminal extremes. The baron never would have allowed this. You see he is speaking under the gallows. Two Gypsies and a Turk."
The white tyger turned the prints into the light so she could study the vampire's handsome, pale, insolent face. Oh, God—"This is the man? Zelea Codreanu—you are sure?"
Impatient, Radu Luckacz waggled his hat. "He is comissioner for the Dobruja district under your authority."
"My God, I had not seen his face."
When Luckacz raised his eyebrows, she protested. "The potato-eaters suggested the appointments there because the border is close by. They gave me a list of names."
"I tell you he's too much even for them. I was taken to a place outside the town of Babadag, where I was shown ten men in an unmarked grave—"
The baroness stood up. Leaving the tourmaline hidden in the pillows, she walked to the window overlooking the lake. "But this is terrible!"
"Ma'am, your compassion is well known."
Clasping her hands together, the baroness turned back into the room. "Oh, my friend, but this is terrible! You must tell me everything."
It was not compassion that had touched her. Though it was difficult to imagine the death of innocents, still, what could be expected from that man? Commissioner for the Dobruja—this was not her fault. She would not have permitted this if she had known. She would not have allowed such a challenge to herself.
In the photograph she'd recognized him. The vampire was a creature of darkness that must be imprisoned or destroyed, a sickness in the body of Great Roumania. Radu Luckacz was talking and she interrupted, proposing to dismiss the man immediately. She would write the letter as they spoke.
"Ma'am, I can tell you he would not obey. He would laugh at you just as he laughed at me. He told me he would be president in Bucharest one day. Democratically elected—that was the phrase he used. I cannot tell you his impudence—he said he would marry you. I must tell you he is like a president in that place, and with a private army."
Then would it be possible to send troops or soldiers? She made the suggestion to Luckacz but did not listen to his reply, which had to do with talking to the German ambassador—she would not talk to the German ambassador! She had no need to beg from the potato-eaters. All that would take time—a president in Bucharest! If the vampire were to be defeated, it would not be through normal means or channels.
The potato-eaters were the last people to understand this crisis. What did they know about vampires? What did Luckacz know? This was not a matter for talking or deciding, but for action. In these matters of public policy there was a straight way and a hidden way. Radu Luckacz was the master of the straight way. But he knew nothing of her skills and strategies.
Listening to the policeman, she ran her finger across the photograph of the vampire's face, his pouting lips. Her own husband had told her the story, had shown her an engraving from a hundred years before. Then the vampire had been some kind of count or grand duke, and after that a silversmith in Brasov—how was it possible? Commissioner for the Dobruja district—how had she been taken unaware? She must return immediately to town or else to Brasov, better yet. Luckacz must not go with her.
These thoughts preoccupied her as she listened. Radu Luckacz was talking about the girl again, about whom he knew nothing. Miranda Popescu had disappeared into the marshland, and he was unable to predict where she had gone.
PERHAPS ANOTHER KIND OF investigator—less of an atheist, less of a free thinker—would have guessed the significance of the Insula Calia shrine near where the Brancoveanu family had kept a boathouse and a shooting blind. This was fewer than twenty kilometers south of Braila, where the police were asking questions.
And no doubt the baroness would have guessed, if she'd been able to think clearly now about the girl. If she had been able to remember her fears of half an hour previous, before she'd known about Zelea Codreanu—(No, it was intolerable! But she would defeat this monster! She would not rest. . . .)—if she'd been able to remember, she might have found a way of telling Luckacz what she knew, that Aegypta Schenck von Schenck had hunted ducks and snipe at Insula Calia in the marsh.
Mother Egypt had been laid to rest in Mogosoaia five years before. Her grave there was a place of pilgrimage. It was guarded and tended by the monkey-people she had done so much to protect, and who lived in a preserve nearby. At all times there were crowds of pilgrims at the raised mound near the Venus pool, dinning her dead ears with supplications. By contrast Insula Calia was a rude site, known only to a few. Aegypta Schenck had camped there every fall until the year of her disgrace. Duck-hunting had been her favorite sport.
On the first anniversary of her death, a fisherman had seen a fire burning in the reeds. Now among the small and vanishing community of Gypsies, the island was a place of healing. The ghost of Mother Egypt sometimes visited the place. Nor was she shy with her opinions.
This was where Dinu Fishbelly had come to pray for the return of the white tyger. The island was on a salt dome in the marsh, the Balta Brailei between the old and new stream of the Danube. It was a long, snakelike piece of ground. But on the north end of the island was a plug of rock salt and a mine that had been dug out many hundreds of years before. Stone steps led into a cavern where the oracle was kept.
A more astute investigator than Radu Luckacz—or one like the baroness, or, for that matter, like Domnul Codreanu, with access to the hidden world— might have predicted how the Gypsy girl would lead Miranda there to the oracle of Mother Egypt in the salt cave. A fisherman brought them in the afternoon, poling his flat-bottomed boat through the shifting beds of reeds.
That day Miranda was moody and upset. She sat without talking at the front of the boat. When they landed on the low, grass-covered island, she left Ludu Rat-tooth to do everything. She stood looking west over the broad stretch of the river.
Since the events at the Russian consulate, the Gypsy girl had become her faithful servant. Care and flattery that at other times would have made her feel uncomfortable, now Miranda welcomed in her current mood of doubt and self-doubt. While the girl gathered food and supplies out of the boat, she climbed into the trees above the ruins of some stone foundations. She sat down on a chunk of quarried stone.
Her hair was cut, and she was dressed in a peasant shirt, expensive riding pants and boots, bought with some of her Moldovan rubles. She sat sweating in the stubborn heat, her mind fixed upon nothing but the gold horizon. They had hours to wait. The ghost rarely came before dark.
There were shifting masses of dry reeds, gold and black as far as they could see. This year was different from most years because of the drought. Nevertheless, this north part of the island was still covered with a mass of vegetation. It was as if all plants and animals had managed to escape to the high ground here after a terrifying flood. In the space of a single acre grew a jungle, with vines and bushes reaching up to drag the tr
eetops down. As she sat, Miranda listened to the buzz and flicker of insects and birds. The treetops were full of ospreys' nests. Trumpet-shaped flowers hung down from the vines, and the leaves were so green they were almost blue.
"He's gone," said Ludu, carrying up the baskets and the rugs. She was talking about the boatman. "He'll come tomorrow morning. He asked for your blessing so he could tell his children."
Miranda groaned. Everywhere she'd gone the past few days, men and women wanted to touch her, grasp her hand, finger her bracelet, stare into her eyes. They'd asked her to pray for rain—what for? Because she'd killed a man.
"Please, miss, we are uncovered here. Will you come on?" The girl had fallen back into the respectful tones of their first meeting, before her father's death. "Miss, come," she said, putting her head down and carrying all the baggage up the slope. There was a path hacked through the undergrowth, a tunnel through the leaves. Miranda followed her more slowly. Her legs were stiff.
The path came out on the lip of a small dell on the high point of the island. The view was eastward over the rivers of grass, the golden reeds. Above them rose some high, puffy clouds. Near where they stood some old cedar timbers had been pounded into the ground, now supporting a crown of wild grape vines. Underneath there was a place to sit and sleep, a square of sandy ground amid outcroppings of rock.
The shrine itself was at the bottom of the dell. Nothing grew where the salt came to the surface. Halfway down, a hole was cut into the slope. This entrance was surrounded by a dozen wooden crosses set at different angles; some leaned perilously, and some had fallen to the bottom of the dell where there was a garbage dump of crutches and broken glass.
Ludu laid out their blanket rolls. "We want to go down for a look before it gets too dark," she said. "So you'll see the place. We'll put the lantern there," she said, unwrapping an oil lamp with a glass chimney.
She laid out some of the food the villagers had given them and covered it in cheesecloth. A faint, astringent smell rose from the dell, growing stronger as they climbed among the rocks down toward the entrance to the mine.
The girl carried the lamp and lit it in the shelter of one of the crosses, though there was no wind. Miranda put her hand out to touch the wooden surface, still covered with bark. In Roumania this was also a symbol of King Jesus. What was the story Ludu had told her? The king had used this punishment on others. Maybe the devil himself had hung on such a cross.
They entered. They had to stoop. Their footsteps crunched over a bed of pebbles and the lamplight shone on the dirty walls. Almost immediately they came into a cavern, an uneven cube hacked out of the rock. The Gypsy put the lamp down on the gleaming floor.
"This is the place," she said. "Oh, can't you feel that it is ancient? People say Miranda Brancoveanu came here once when she was young, before she freed us from the Turks."
Was the white tyger always there before her? "I might have known," Miranda muttered in English.
"Miss?"
The walls were mottled black and white. Everywhere they showed the mark of hammers and adzes. "There is the throne," Ludu continued, indicating a rough stone seat that protruded in one block out of the floor and the far wall. "That's where I'll be when you will chain me up."
This was a nasty surprise, although now Miranda saw the lengths of chain protruding from the rock, attached to leather cuffs. "Why?" she said.
The girl shrugged. "Please, miss, the spirit will come. This is the way she likes to come. Don't you know?"
Miranda was no longer shy about confessing ignorance. She shook her head.
"Well, when those first groups came here after Mother Egypt died, there was always one who went into a trance. Sometimes she would hurt herself or else some others, which is why . . . But these are old chains from the ancient days."
None of this was reassuring to Miranda. Why was everything so complicated?
"I sat here when my father chained me up. Oh, my wrists were sore!"
None of this was reassuring. Because of some stray words on a letter she'd neglected to even read, Insula Calia had been Miranda's sole objective for many days. Now she was here, she felt a trepidation. On the one hand she imagined telling her aunt about de Witte and Anna Djourek, receiving her congratulations. One the other she imagined having to confess the death of the policeman, and it was almost worse to think her aunt would have no interest, wouldn't care. Instead she'd load Miranda down with some new task or burden, and Miranda wouldn't be able to tell her that she wasn't the right person to accomplish whatever it was—the policeman in Braila had shown her that if nothing else before he died.
Or there was a third alternative. Nothing could happen at all. Then what would she do?
Outside in the open air, when they climbed up to their camp, Ludu seemed happy, cheerful, excited, unconcerned. She opened a bottle of wine that the villagers had packed in ice. They sat in the long shadows over the grass sea, punctured at intervals by forested islands. They drank wine from earthenware cups, and ate big strawberries and Turkish peaches. Later there was black bread, mustard, onions, and potted ham. The air was cooler as the evening came.
Miranda felt her heart grow lighter as the sun sank behind the trees. Above them spread the burning sunset. If she'd learned anything since Christmas Hill, it was to take each moment separately. The policemen had come into the garden of the Russian consulate in Braila and she had fired her gun at them—what else could she have done? And she'd hit one, and the black horse had taken her away. Later she had crossed the river and arrived back at Macin.
Away from the towns, everywhere she was a hero. That first night Ludu Rat-tooth had taken her into a Gypsy encampment where the word had already spread. They didn't care about de Witte and the German plans, and Miranda hadn't told them. For them it was enough she was Miranda Popescu, and she had killed a man.
That first night the old men and women drank her health around the fire, while she sat in a daze. For some of them and for Ludu Rat-tooth, the war was already won, the Germans driven home, Antonescu and his partisans, Ceausescu and the vampire all defeated. "You'll remember me when you are living in the Winter Keep," she said now, raising her cup. "Please, maybe you will take me with you. You'll remember the Gypsies when you are queen?"
Her words reminded Miranda unpleasantly of things that Gregor Splaa and Blind Rodica had said. In back of that, because she was trying to maintain her mood, they reminded her of a game her American father and mother had played on long trips in the car, driving north during the vacations or out to Colorado the summer she was twelve. Stanley had invented the game, which was called, "If I were king."
"If I were king," he'd say, "no one in the state of Maine would be allowed to make any kind of representation, painted, carved, or otherwise, of a lobster. They wouldn't even be allowed to say the word. They couldn't even say 'lob' if they were talking about throwing a ball. I'd fine them—-just a few dollars a time, but it would take the place of these damn tolls."
Or Rachel, once on the beltway around Indianapolis: "If I were king, I'd get rid of this entire state. I mean, who would miss it? What's the point?"
Or Miranda: "If I were king, I wouldn't allow anyone to advertise a restaurant with pictures of a pig in a chef's hat eating sausages. It's just too disgusting. What kind of psychotic pig eats sausages?"
"Don't blame the pig," said Rachel. "The pig's a victim."
Or Ludu Rat-tooth: "I want you to promise you will let us go to school and own land like other people. We won't be punished for talking our own language. That was my father's dream—you'll promise me?"
Or Miranda again: "If I were king, no one could use the word 'nitely,' on pain of death."
Or Ludu: "And you must promise me you'll let us worship our King Jesus without shame. That you'll close the temples with their false gods no one believes in. And the corrupt officials, and the policemen . . ."
Miranda had fired her gun at a policeman. He'd had a black moustache and a raspberry birthmark on his cheek. He'
d fallen over, crumpled up around a wound in his stomach while she climbed onto her black horse. He'd been wearing a helmet and a blue uniform. Later people had told her he was one of Codreanu's thugs, that he deserved death a dozen times—what did that mean?
In these villages, where the men brought out their weapons to show her and the women kissed her hands, now in a few days it was as if she had a power at her back pushing her forward. And there was a role in the lives of these people that someone could definitely play. All of them had stories to tell, bitter stories of oppression and harassment.
But was this the role for her? She found she wanted an assurance from Aegypta Schenck. Some sort of reassurance about the dead man—legionaries, people called them in the villages, and told stories about their cruelty. She had fired almost without looking. He'd had a black moustache just beginning to turn gray, and he'd worn a helmet with a metal shield above his eyes. He had crumpled up around his wound, and she had turned away, climbed onto her horse. Later details she had learned from others as the rumors grew.
She sat here eating her sandwich. Sometimes she missed Peter so much she found it hard to breathe. Andromeda as well. The sensation of missing them came in waves.
Ludu Rat-tooth had taken out her statues. As the sky grew dark she arranged them underneath the arbor and held small pieces of saturated bread to their lips. Miranda had stood up to watch the sunset, and when she turned back, the girl was smiling and holding out an unlit candle. She pushed her hair from her face, which in the last light seemed beautiful for a moment, animated and bright-eyed. She looked happy, and Miranda felt a corresponding happiness.
