The Dead Travel Fast

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “I have only the one dress-length, and I have carried it the length of Hungary. Which of you will give me the best price?”

  Frau Amsel thrust her hand into her pocket and withdrew a faded, washed-leather purse. She sorted through the coins and produced a handful.

  “Here, this is what I will give you,” she told him, flicking me a triumphant glance. She seemed certain of victory, and well she ought, I mused, for I had no coin to counter the offer and no desire to brawl with Frau Amsel, although she had clearly decided to dislike me.

  “I think this lady wants it more,” I said softly. The pedlar looked disappointed; doubtless he had anticipated a better price, but there was none on offer, and he accepted with an unctuous smile. He wrapped the fabric into a paper parcel and tied it with a bit of grubby string. Frau Amsel scarcely waited for the knot to be secured before she left without a word. I turned to Cosmina, lifting my brows.

  She had seen the exchange, but merely waved a hand. “She is an odd creature. She was doubtless afraid you would carry off what she fancied. Although it was rather stupid of her, for she is frightful in purple. It would have suited you much better.”

  I shrugged. “No matter. I am in mourning in any event. Let me see the beads you have there. What a pretty shade of blue. They quite match your eyes.”

  She beamed happily and chose a few more things, counting out her coins happily while the pedlar wrapped her purchases in paper bundles, pleating the paper to make tidy little packages in the shape of animals.

  “How clever,” I said, admiring the little monkey he had just fashioned.

  With a few quick movements of his fingers he created another, this one a dog with rather familiar features. He presented it to me with a flourish.

  “I thought you might like a little tribute to your dog,” he said.

  “My dog? I have no dog,” I told him, but even as I said the words, I felt a familiar weight press against my leg. “Tycho!” I rubbed at his silken ears. “You curious thing, did you follow me here?”

  “He must have,” Cosmina said. “He seldom leaves the count. It seems you have made a conquest,” she said. Her tone was light, but her colour had faded and she looked a little breathless.

  “We have walked too far,” I chided her. “You are only just out of bed after that nasty cold. I ought not to have let you come.”

  She gave me a gentle smile. “You could not have prevented me. He comes only four times a year, and it is always a wonderful treat. I will be fine. I am a little tired, that is all. A short rest and I will be good as new.”

  “Perhaps something to drink at the inn,” I urged, and she complied, letting me carry her basket full of parcels and guide her to the familiar iron gate with the horse’s skull.

  The innkeeper’s wife hurried out and motioned for us to sit at a pretty little iron table in the shade of a great elm. We settled there, and she hurried back with a tray of cold plum wine and a plate of small sweet biscuits. We drank and ate slowly, Tycho at our feet, and after half an hour or so, Cosmina seemed restored. She sat with her back to the tree, lifting her face to the dappled shade. She was so pale I could see the blood moving in her veins, and I thought of the countess, lying wan and feeble in her magnificent bed. I thought too of Cosmina’s mother, lost so young, and I wondered what weakness ran in the blood that the women of their family proved so frail.

  As if sensing my scrutiny, Cosmina opened her eyes and smiled. “You needn’t worry so. I am not as fragile as all that.”

  “Of course not,” I said stoutly. “A little rest and you will be right as rain.” I hated the sound of my voice, jovial and hearty, as if I could promise her restored health, when the truth—if I could bear to own it to myself—was that I feared for her. She tired herself on behalf of the villagers and her aunt, and I wondered if she could be persuaded to temper her efforts before they took too sharp a toll upon her.

  She peered into the basket and picked among the parcels until she came to a tiny one in the shape of a mouse.

  “This is for you,” she said almost shyly, pressing the little mouse into my hands.

  “How thoughtful of you!” I tugged at its tail, unfolding the clever paper to reveal the strand of polished blue beads, each scarcely larger than an apple seed.

  “I chose them for you, not for me,” she told me. She motioned me forward and I knelt before her to let her clasp the necklace about my throat. “How pretty they look!”

  I turned, running a finger over the beads.

  “That is just how you used to worry the rosary of your mother’s, do you remember?” she asked suddenly.

  “Oh! I had quite forgot. Fancy your remembering that,” I murmured, feeling the unpleasant tug of memory.

  “I remember how upset you were to have lost it that day. We were on a picnic, I remember. With Fraulein Möller. She took us to the little waterfall in the woods. We were meant to be sketching birds, I think. But we ate a picnic in the meadow and told stories and ate too much of the marzipan she had brought for a treat. I made daisy chains and you gathered the flowers for me. And the afternoon was so warm, we dozed off in the sunlight, with the bees and the butterflies dancing about us. And when we woke to leave, you found you had lost your rosary. You were so unhappy, I remember the day was quite spoilt.”

  “I did make a terrible fuss,” I admitted ruefully. “I remember we were very late back to the school because you and Fraulein Möller helped me to search and we were all lectured quite sternly by the headmistress on punctuality.”

  “I did not mind,” Cosmina said loyally. “I only minded because we could not find it, and I knew it hurt you to lose it.”

  “It was the only thing I had of Mama’s,” I recalled.

  “And it was blue, I remember that,” Cosmina said with a fond look at the necklace she had bought me.

  “Yes, it was. The colour of the Madonna’s robe.” I touched the necklace again. “How like you to remember it, and to give me this. Thank you, Cosmina.”

  She bent swiftly to press her cheek to mine. “I am so happy you are here,” she said in an odd, choked voice. “I want you to be happy here as well.”

  “I am,” I told her truthfully.

  Just then a voice hailed us and we looked to the gate to find we were not alone. Florian stood there, muddy to his waist, but looking rather happier than I had seen him.

  “Florian, whatever have you been doing? Playing in the piggery?” Cosmina asked, her tone touched with coolness. Perhaps she resented the intrusion upon our private moment, but there was no call to be rude to poor Florian. He flushed deeply.

  “No, Miss Cosmina. I have been seeing to the digging of the new well.”

  I looked up sharply. “The new well?”

  He nodded. “Yes, miss. The count, he gives orders for a new well. There is digging for many days now, and today the water comes.”

  I realised then that a commotion had been rising outside the peaceful garden. I rose and went to the gate. On the street, folk were scurrying to and fro, bearing pitchers and pails, and over and again I heard the word apă.

  “Water,” Florian explained with a smile. “They are still wary, but happier.” I canted my head at him, but he did not elaborate. He looked at Cosmina and an anxious frown settled between his brows. “Are you ready to be going to the castle? I will leave now to take you.”

  “Escorted by you, muddy as a dog? I hardly think so,” Cosmina said with a sharp laugh.

  He flushed again, a deep, angry red and turned on his heel to leave us.

  I resumed my seat beneath the elm. “It is not like you to be unkind,” I said mildly.

  Cosmina’s pretty features wore a pained expression. “It is a greater unkindness to encourage him. In Vienna he might well have been someone. Here he is no one. Like me.”

  A thread of bitterness stitched her words together, and I sipped at my wine, choosing my phrases carefully. “If you truly believe that both of you have so little worth, why not encourage him? He is a nic
e enough young man.”

  “I told you I do not wish to marry,” she said almost angrily. The tips of her nostrils had gone quite white and she was breathing very fast. “You ought to understand. You have no one, you want no one, and you are content it should be so.”

  I thought of Charles and the future he had offered me, and I thought of the count and all his maddening ways, and I had never felt the want of a confidante so keenly. I longed to unburden myself to Cosmina, to tell her that I had been offered—and very nearly accepted—marriage to a man I did not love, and that I spent my days thinking about a man I could not have, a man who had scorned her as a woman ought never to be scorned.

  She was watching me closely, and for an instant, the words trembled upon my lips. But I had kept my own counsel too long to confide so easily. I merely smiled and rose, brushing the leaves from my gown.

  “It grows late and I think you are more tired than you will own.”

  If she was disappointed that I made her no confidences, she did not show it. She rose, too, and I took up her basket and whistled for Tycho and we began our long ascent up the mountain.

  13

  The count did not appear to dinner that evening, and as Cosmina was quite tired from our excursion to the village, the meal was a simple and short affair. We each of us retired early to our own pursuits. I meant to write for the rest of the evening, but I could not settle to it, and the scribbles I made were messy and slashed with my pen where I crossed out passages that displeased me. I had meant to write a passionate scene between two lovers, a scene of declaration and devotion, and the words failed me—failed me because I did not know what words folk used at such a time, I thought in disgust. I had no experience of such things, and even an imagination as broad as mine could falter. I longed to know what they would say and feel, what sweet sighs would pass between them, what caresses they would exchange. Of course I could not write the whole of such things, but if I could not imagine the entirety of the act, how could I comprehend its effects? And from there my thoughts drifted from my characters to the events of the day.

  The count was the source of my distraction, for as Cosmina and I had passed through the village upon our return, I had looked more closely, reckoning the changes I found. A party of men was draining the river meadow for good pasturage, and a father and son were perched upon ladders, giving the school a fresh coat of paint and prying off the boards that had held the shutters fast. There remained an air of sleepiness about the place, but between the pedlar and the new improvements, something indefinable had changed. I noted there were yet branches of basil hung at the windows and here and there charms against evil had been newly painted. The people themselves seemed happy, but warily so, as Florian had said. They still feared the strigoi then, but they were pleased that the new count had finally bestirred himself to take an interest in their well-being. The question was why? Why had Count Andrei at last begun to improve the lot of his people?

  The question plagued me. Alternately I hoped I might have been the cause of it and ridiculed myself for my foolish fancies. The count had spoken plainly enough of his feelings towards women. They were playthings, pretty toys to while away his hours of boredom and to be discarded once he tired of them. When he married it would be to some dull creature whose blood ran blue and who could give him sturdy sons with an excellent pedigree. If I interested him—and I conceded it seemed so—it was simply because he had few other diversions at the castle. Had we encountered one another in Paris, he would not have spared me a second glance, I told myself firmly.

  But we are not in Paris, I thought by way of reply. I believed in free will, but I could be persuaded to fatalism. Perhaps we were here together at this time because it was supposed to be thus. I could never be more to him than a fleeting indulgence, but I realised with a sudden cold shock that I was not certain I wanted more from him.

  Before I could think too long upon it, I rose and mounted the narrow stair to his room. I groaned to see the door ajar, for if it had been closed, I think I would have lacked the courage to knock upon it. But it stood open just far enough for Tycho to catch my scent and come to the door.

  I peered past him to find the room empty, but the door that led to the workroom stair was also ajar, beckoning. I patted Tycho absently and passed through the room, gathering my skirts to mount the twisting stair to his workroom. He was standing at the longest of the tables, his sleeves rolled to bare his forearms, his neckcloth and collar discarded. He was bent to a task, and as I moved closer I could see he held a feather in one hand and a tiny piece of clockwork machinery in another. A lock of jet hair fell over his brow, but he did not seem to notice, so intent was he upon his work. I stood for a long moment before he spoke, and when he did I started, for he had not turned his head and I had not realised he was aware of me.

  “It is an orrery,” he said, nodding towards the intricate pieces scattered the length of the table. There were long, slender rods and several spheres and half spheres in various sizes, some painted in beautiful colours, others more muted, and the tiniest daubed with silver paint. At the end of the table rested a slab of inlaid wood and a collection of legs, and scattered over the table were an assortment of clockwork gears and complicated mechanisms. “A model of the solar system. When it is put back together, a simple crank will set the whole of it into motion, the entirety of the universe captured in a tabletop.”

  I moved forward and watched as he dipped the end of the feather into a bowl of oil and, with a precise and delicate touch, applied it to the gear.

  “Another piece of your grandfather’s?” I asked him.

  He nodded, intent upon his work. After a moment, he gave a little sigh of satisfaction and put the feather aside. He wiped his hands upon a bit of linen and turned to face me, his arms folded over his chest. The light fell upon his bared neck then, and I saw no scar there, not even the palest mark to blemish the smooth expanse of olive skin.

  “I am sorry to have disturbed you,” I began.

  “It is a welcome intrusion,” he replied with cool gallantry. He was watching me closely, assessing me, I thought, and I felt myself grow hot under his scrutiny. I wished he would return to the orrery, and to cover my confusion, I moved to the other side of the table.

  “Is this Venus? It must be. What else could be so bright—”

  “Do not touch it,” he cautioned. “The paint is not yet dry.”

  I drew back sharply and put my hands behind my back.

  “You are ill at ease tonight,” he observed. “Is something amiss? Some trouble with your room perhaps?”

  He was playing the host now, and I felt my courage wilt miserably within me. I could not possibly say the things to him that I wanted to say. I murmured an excuse and made to leave. He returned to his work, but as I reached the door, he called after me.

  “There is a length of fabric upon the sofa. I believe it belongs to you.”

  I glanced towards the sofa and felt my heart give a peculiar lurch.

  “That is the dress length that Frau Amsel purchased from the pedlar today,” I said in some confusion.

  He had picked up his feather and another clockwork gear. “It is yours,” he repeated.

  “I do not understand you. Has Frau Amsel changed her mind?”

  “Frau Amsel has come to understand that her behaviour towards a guest in my house was intolerably rude,” he said mildly, never taking his eyes from his work.

  I gathered up the length of fabric and went to him.

  “It belongs to Frau Amsel,” I said quietly.

  He put down his work and turned to me, his gaze inscrutable. “Do you find that you do not like it after all?”

  “Of course not. It is lovely,” I began.

  He turned away from me. “Then it is yours.”

  I did not stir from my position. “She paid for it.”

  “She has been recompensed,” he returned.

  “You cannot mean you paid her for it?”

  “Naturally. She wi
ll be bothered enough by her disappointment. There was no need to punish her purse as well.”

  I struggled to understand him. “That you took the fabric from her astonishes me, but that you can speak of it so calmly is incomprehensible. She paid for the cloth. She has a right to it.”

  He dropped the feather and turned to fix me with such a look as I had never yet seen upon his face. “I am master of this castle and lord of this land. No one has a right to anything that I wish for myself.”

  There was no possible response to that, so I did not attempt to make one. Instead, I placed the fabric upon the table and dropped the lowest and gravest curtsey I could manage and turned to leave.

  Once more he recalled me at the door. “You will not keep it then?” he asked evenly.

  I turned back to him, hands fisted. “You wish me to help you upset a poor old woman? How could I possibly keep the cloth when I know what was done to retrieve it?”

  “That poor old woman is vicious as a viper, and you would do well to remember that,” he said calmly. “She took the fabric from sheer malice, she told me as much when I taxed her with it. She does not like you and she knew you wanted it, so she took it. It was childish and unworthy, and she violated every rule of hospitality in treating you thus. In disrespecting you, she disrespected me, and that is unacceptable. I gave her the choice of permitting me to pay for the fabric or resigning her post and leaving the castle at once for her transgressions. She was grateful to take my money and be done with it.”

  I felt the hot rush of anger ebb a little, even as I wished to hold fast to it.

  “It still seems wrong to be so high-handed,” I said, my voice sounding feeble even to my own ears.

  “And did you not identify this as a feudal place?” he asked.

  “I did,” I admitted. He took up the fabric and put it into my hands.

  “Take it.”

  “I cannot possibly. I am still uneasy about the method by which you acquired it,” I told him with some asperity. “And even if that were not true, I could not accept a gift from you. It is not proper.”