by Sarah Rayne
But the shadows were quiescent, and the only sound was her own heart, beating furiously.
This was how it had felt before. When she had stolen through the house, Elizabeth’s presence all about her, the feel of Pietro’s body against hers still imprinted on her senses. She had come this way then, through the shadowy stone hall, with purple-tinted night slanting in and dust motes dancing in and out of the pouring swathes of darkness. For a moment, the two worlds blurred, and Catherine paused, one hand going to her throat. Had something stirred in the shadows behind her? Something that scuttled in her wake, and kept just out of sight? She stopped, scanning the moonlit gallery. Something following her? Something watching?
But the sound, whatever it had been, faded, and she moved onwards. A mouse scurrying to its home behind the wainscoting. Perhaps even a bat scraping papery wings against a window, or the ivy tapping at the walls.
She reached up for the lever that operated the gates and drew back the huge iron bolts, slowly, cautiously, and slipped outside.
Behind her, the shadows thickened, and a stunted, misshapen figure padded after her.
The cars were housed in the old stable block, and, as Catherine slipped inside, she saw with thankfulness that the keys hung where they had always hung, just inside the door. She would leave the large BMW that Michael Devlin had hired for them, and take the small Renault that Bianca usually drove, because it would be lighter and easier to drive on the winding mountain roads. The keys felt reassuringly familiar in her hand.
The car fired at once – trust Bianca to keep everything in silken, oiled condition! – and Catherine drove out gingerly, using as little acceleration as possible and switching the engine off while she went back to close the doors. Probably no one would actually try to prevent her from leaving, but she preferred no one to know she had gone until it was too late. She scooped up a coiled rope that someone had left in a corner of the garage and which might be helpful if she had to climb over the walls that enclosed CrnPrag. She dropped it onto the passenger seat where it would be easily accessible and took off the Renault’s handbrake, letting it roll silently down the drive, keeping her eyes fixed on the driving mirror. At any minute squares of light might show in the windows of the great dark mansion behind her, and she would see hurrying figures going from room to room, calling to one another that Catherine was escaping, she was going to Pietro. What had Pietro said, all those years ago?
‘If you can leave Varanno, then you should do so . . .’
Her hands were gripping the steering wheel painfully and her heart was pounding against her rib-cage. Let me escape. Let them not wake and hear me. Let me reach Pietro and get him out.
She began to play games in her mind. If I can reach the curve in the drive, it will be all right. And then, as the curve was reached: if I can get beyond the stretch where the trees meet overhead and make a dark tunnel, I shan’t be heard.
The Renault rolled silently into the tunnel. Catherine had wound down the window, and the sweet night air flooded in. She could hear little patterings and scurryings from the undergrowth; small, nocturnal creatures going about their strange lives.
And then the gates were before her, and she was through them. She was outside Varanno, and firing the engine and slamming her foot hard down on the accelerator. She would have to drive all night, and it would be dawn before she reached CrnPrag and she would be half dead with exhaustion.
None of this mattered. She was going to Pietro. Somehow she must get him out of CrnPrag. Beyond that she could not, for the moment, think.
As she swung the car on to the high road, she did not hear the little breath of satisfaction from the curled-up shape in the dark void of the Renault’s interior.
At first, Hilary thought hazily that it was the Waking Bell that had disturbed her, and she reached sleepily for the Day’s Office before sitting up.
But the thing that met her questing hand was not the small plain deal table that normally stood by her bed, but the smooth surface of the rosewood cabinet where she had last night put her missal and where Catherine had left a small night-clock and a bedside lamp.
Varanno. She was in Varanno.
And something had woken her.
The luminous face of the little clock showed an uncompromising two o’clock. Two a.m. The smallest of the small hours. The time when everything should surely be asleep.
Hilary slid her legs cautiously over the side of the bed and padded across to the window. The thick drapes shut out any moonlight there might be, but she reached up and drew them open a chink.
Thin light slid through and lay in silver bars across the floor, and Hilary stood looking down into the silent gardens below and the long low stable block just beyond.
A small shadow detached itself from the main house and stole across the gardens, and Hilary, leaning as far forward as she could, her breath making little circles of mist on the cold glass, saw the shadow hesitate and look round. Hilary rubbed the glass clear impatiently and, as she did so, the dark shape reached the stable block, and folded back the large hinged doors.
Who was going so stealthily in to the stable block at two a.m.? Why would anyone do such a thing? Was Catherine’s brother perhaps suddenly worse and were they summoned to his bedside? Or was he being driven to some hospital? But if some kind of crisis had occurred, there would have been sounds from inside the house: people scurrying about, telephones ringing, voices raised in concern and organisation.
Hilary frowned, recalling that curious reticence to discuss Pietro Bathory’s illness. It might be due to simple embarrassment, of course. He might be an alcoholic or even a drug user. He might have Aids. Any one of those would account for reluctance to discuss his condition with a stranger.
But none of them accounted for somebody stealing through the house and doing it furtively – yes, there was no other word for it! – and creeping into the stable block to the cars.
Hilary was torn between a wish not to pry into what might be a genuine private tragedy, and a very human desire to want to know what was going on.
She inched the window open cautiously, wincing as the hinges shrieked in protest, and leaned as far forward over the sill as she dared. From within the stable block came the sound of a car’s engine being fired.
In the same moment, a second figure loped across the gardens, and stood concealed in the deep shadow cast by the garage. A figure small enough to be taken for a child, but thick and hunched over.
Ficzko.
The hatchback shape of a small car nosed its way out of the stables, and the driver switched off the engine, and emerged from the car to go back to close the doors. Hilary recognised her this time. Catherine. Catherine Bathory, whom her family called Cat; the strange, out-of-this-century creature with the haunted eyes and the remarkable Magyar beauty, taking a car and driving away from Varanno. Doing so stealthily.
Catherine was occupied with the doors, sliding bolts across, and her back was to the parked car. Hilary saw Ficzko scuttle out from the shadows and run to the car with a low, crouching run. The back of the car would not have been large enough for a full-grown man to conceal himself very easily, but Ficzko crouched low as if the back seats had been folded down. There was the flurry of something dark – a rug? – being pulled over him. Catherine turned back and slipped behind the driving wheel.
The small car began to slide silently forward. Hilary understood that wherever Catherine was going, she did not want anyone to know. She had simply released the handbrake and was letting the car roll forward without switching on the engine.
But Hilary knew, as well, that Catherine had no idea that Ficzko was hiding in the back of the car.
There were two things that could be done, and either or both had to be done very quickly indeed. She could rouse the household; she could find her way to the central wing where presumably the family slept, and she could knock on doors and wake people and pour out the extraordinary story. It would be complicated and she might not be believed, but it wa
s the sensible, the logical thing to do. But it would all take far too long.
What would be neither sensible nor logical would be to go after Catherine.
Hilary did not stop to think that she could never catch Catherine up. She did not think back to the last time she had driven a car, eight years ago, or how that drive had ended. She did not think, either, that the cars in the stable block would be unfamiliar, awkward, left-hand drive, or that the keys would probably not be there.
She was across the room and dragging a tumble of clothes from the huge wardrobe. ‘Things left by my cousins,’ Catherine had said.
Hanging in the back of the wardrobe were plain dark trousers and several thick sweaters and scarves. Hilary tore a pair of navy corduroy trousers off a hanger and dragged them on, and followed them with one of the sweaters, pulling it over her thin cotton night shirt. The cousin, whoever she was, had been roughly Hilary’s build, and the things fitted reasonably well. Shoes? Yes, her own were there. Leather and soft-soled. She could be as silent as she liked. She thrust her bare feet into the shoes, and grabbed the navy raincoat.
Nothing stirred as she went softly through the dark house and across the stone hall. There was a drift of woodsmoke from the deep old fireplace and, as she reached up to unlatch the door and eased it open, the night air rushed in, cool and clean. So far so good. But she must be quick, she must somehow catch Catherine up.
She felt suddenly vulnerable to be out of the house with her head uncovered. And then the night wind lifted her hair, and there was a sudden marvellous upsurge of freedom. The wind in your hair; yes, of course, I had forgotten how it feels. She had forgotten, as well, how it felt to stride out with no hampering skirts clinging to her legs. The trousers felt unexpectedly good. Suddenly she was equal to anything. But she must hurry, she must not lose a minute.
No one challenged her as she ran towards the stable block, her heart racing. As she went into the old stables, the sharp pungency of petrol and oil and chromium hit her.
It was only then that eight years of banked-down horror and guilt reared up and she realised what she was doing. She wasted precious seconds fighting the memories that were pushing up the lid she had clamped down on them so tightly.
But the trouble with fastening a lid on memories was that they could not fade. You ought always to take memories out from time to time and shake them in the fresh air, because, if you did not, they sprang up at you when you least expected it, and they were as vivid and as painful as the day you had locked them away.
They sprang up now, as vivid and painful as the day she had run away. To hide inside the convent.
There were six cars in the stable-garage, and one of them was the BMW hire car. Hilary’s eyes fell on it and, in the same instant, her mind rejected it.
I can’t. I vowed never to drive again. Her mind sought frenziedly for a way out. A foreign car: left-hand drive. Unfamiliar gear changes. She could never cope with that as well as driving on the right, finding her way through strange roads with signs in a foreign language. There was the justification.
But somewhere on the road was Catherine, and hiding in the back of Catherine’s car was Ficzko.
Hilary could not stand back and let Catherine go down that long dark road with Ficzko hiding in the back. She looked at the BMW.
The keys were all hanging from hooks on a square board, neatly labelled. Hilary drew in a deep breath and her fingers closed about the disc of metal. As she pulled open the door the first thing she saw was the gearstick. The car had automatic transmission. No clutch. If you tucked one foot under the seat, automatics were the easiest cars in the world to drive.
She would have to do it. There was no way out.
The powerful engine fired as soon as she turned the ignition, purring with a low, feline sound. Hilary slid the gearstick cautiously. How was it marked. D for drive? What was the German for drive? For heaven’s sake, there were only three to choose from. Wasn’t one drive and one neutral or park or something like that? And one for reversing. One could hardly go far wrong.
The car responded before she was ready, jerking forward, and Hilary sought and found the brake. It felt odd, but not unduly so not to have a clutch. She eased through the doors and, as Catherine had done, switched off the engine once outside. The BMW thrust forward like a silent panther and Hilary resettled herself in her seat. Ahead were the gates – had Catherine left them open? – yes! Hilary sent up a prayer of thanks that Catherine had not stopped to close the gates.
The road stretched out on both sides like a dark ribbon. Which way? Left or right? She hesitated. And then, away over to the left, she saw the twin pinpoints of light, double beams raking the darkness. Headlights! That had to be Catherine. It was stretching coincidence way beyond credibility to think that another car would be on this lonely road at two a.m. Thank you again, God. She turned the ignition key and the car snarled into life.
As she went down the mountain road, the memories went with her, painful, vivid. The day seven years ago when the lorry had pulled out of the side road straight into her path. The squeal of brakes and the bursting of tyres as Hilary had swerved frantically to avoid it.
And the huge screaming of tearing metal as the lorry slammed into the side of her Mini . . .
She took a firmer grip on the BMW’s steering wheel, remembered about keeping on the right-hand side of the road, and accelerated after Catherine.
Chapter Nine
Catherine was not aware of being followed. She was certainly not aware of the coiled figure of Ficzko in the back of the car.
She was concentrating on driving, on keeping to the narrow curving road that led back to Debreczen – the road they had taken with Michael Devlin, and that would pass the turning to CrnPrag. Her heart was leaping forward to Pietro, and deep within her something she had thought long-since quenched was stirring.
Quenched, but never dead, my dear, forbidden love.
The Renault was creakier than she remembered. The rear suspension sounded a bit worn, or perhaps a tyre was slightly low. It made the car feel as if it was full of unseen passengers. So long as she reached CrnPrag she did not care. She glanced at the petrol gauge. Three-quarters full.
She stopped to stretch her legs in the valley that was a gorge of one of the Vag’s smaller tributaries. To her left she caught the glint of the river itself, silver and remote in the moonlight. There were vineyards hereabouts producing a red wine, a little like Bordeaux. She turned her head to the east, to the sharp scents of the pine-trees.
Somewhere in the distance, was the low growl purr of a car. Another night traveller.
There had been many night travellers since that first one. There had been many nights when Catherine had slipped out of the house and crouched on the edges of the lonely road that lay beneath Varanno, the large torch gripped in her hands, ready to signal, ready with her story about a puncture, a car run out of petrol, a car run off the road. She was plausible and because she was small and wholly unthreatening it was easy to fool her victims. She developed an instinct for cars driven by lone women.
Elizabeth would never have had to crouch on the edge of a roadside like this, sometimes for hours. Elizabeth had had the pick of the pretty dazzled servant girls who came so willingly and so unsuspectingly into service in the castle. ‘See what a nice room you shall have, what light duties you will be given, what a warm cloak and hood to wear . . .’ And the ancient, almost ritualistic invitation of all greedy-intentioned villainesses in a dozen different fairy tales: ‘Come inside, my dear . . .’
Catherine, living four hundred years later, had had to obey different standards. She certainly could not beckon, as Elizabeth had beckoned, and see her prey come running. There were laws that had to be upheld; people were also more suspicious than they had been in Elizabeth’s day. Catherine, her mind lurching from appalled self-disgust to the roaring hunger of her ancestress’s grisly passions, grew cunning and clever.
The driver of the small car that first night had been
garrulous and rather coarse. As Catherine had climbed into the passenger seat there had been the faint smell of flesh that was not bathed quite as often as it should be; of clothes that were not laundered as frequently as they needed to be. Cooking smells and faintly stale sweat.
But peasant blood is by far the richest, my dear . . . Elizabeth had been with her to see that she did what had to be done. Catherine had sat quietly in the small car, watching her opportunity, waiting until the car passed into the thick patch of blackness cast by the pine-trees that fringed the highway. Her hand, thrust deep into her pocket, was curled about the handle of the knife.
It had been absurdly easy to produce the knife and force the woman to draw in to the roadside. She had offered money, thinking Catherine a vulgar thief; Catherine had laughed, and leapt on to the ridiculous, puling woman, pushing her back in the seat.
The knife had slid into the woman’s throat before she understood what was happening. It was smooth and easy, like cutting butter. It was like jagged lightning cleaving your mind so that you saw beyond, you saw what lay beyond the barriers.
Pouring blood . . . Rivers of it, cascading over your skin . . . The silken kiss . . . The sensuous, velvet feel . . .
Immortal beauty . . . And peasant blood was ever the best. . .
Elizabeth had urged her on, and the inside of the small car had filled up with the thick stench of fear and blood and sexual excitement. For a brief space of time, Catherine had the impression that it was not a present-day machine with an engine that enclosed them, but a jolting travelling coach with padded velvet seats and velvet curtains that shut out the prying world . . .
Sobbing, Catherine had twisted the knife into the soft white flesh of the woman’s throat, feeling the blood begin to spurt, wetting her skin, soaking into the nightgown she still wore beneath the hastily donned coat. She let it trickle over her hands, between her fingers, so that it ran down her wrists and arms. Beautiful.
