‘Hm. Not very exact. Do you have food and drink on board?’
‘There is no dinner service on this line apart from tea, which you will find in the samovars throughout the train, one per carriage. Sustenance may be obtained from the porters at the stations, who may be persuaded to come to the train.’ He clipped the tickets and handed them back, but as Nicholas went to take them, he found the Conductor holding them tight until Nicholas was obliged to look at his eyes. ‘You are now travellers on board the Arkangel,’ he intoned. ‘I must insist that you read the instructions printed on each carriage and pay heed to them.’
The Conductor turned and stepped back into his alcove, his hands dropping to his sides. He seemed quite content in this position, rocking with the bounce and sway of the train.
Nicholas and Isabella made their way back along the carriage. Nicholas stopped before the framed panel of instructions and read:
All Passengers Are Respectfully Reminded:
You Must Be In Possession Of A Valid Ticket
You Must Not Alight At The Stations
You Must Remain Until Your Journey’s End
He stared at the notice board in puzzlement. ‘How odd to find such a thing, and printed in English too, as if for our benefit alone,’ he said. ‘But what does it mean? What are stations for if not to alight onto?’
He went to the window and looked out. All he could see was rushing greenery, dark forests, icy stars and the spit of yellow sparks from the wheels as they flinched against the iron rails.
CHAPTER NINE
THE UNKNOWN
NICHOLAS RETURNED TO the carriage, and Isabella went to smarten her appearance. She returned, having brushed the mud from her hem and pinned up her hair, and once more looked like the embodiment of summer. Her youthful luminosity quelled his fears and gave him fresh hope.
‘The strangest fellow,’ he said, ‘talking in bloody riddles. What can he have meant?’
‘The Conductor is well known in our town.’
‘You know him?’
‘No, but I have heard the terrible stories about him. The foundrymen speak of him in hushed voices.’
‘Stories? I don’t understand.’
‘You know how men will talk. They’re worse than wives.’ Once again she avoided his searching gaze and turned her attention to the window. ‘We had no choice but to board. But we are here now, so we must make the best of the situation.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I have the gravest fears that—’
Just then, Thomas and Miranda passed the compartment, gesticulating and arguing. Thomas was obviously searching them out.
‘Oh, hullo!’ he said, his suburban middle class English a faint absurdity in the Slavic atmosphere of the ornate train. ‘I thought you must be English. I was saying to Miranda. Thanks for your help at the station. We were rather making a mess of things. Too much luggage. The town...’
‘It’s been taken. You’re civilians?’
‘We were on a touring holiday.’
‘But this is a war zone,’ said Nicholas in astonishment.
Thomas looked affronted. ‘I believe it was actually neutral territory when we set out.’
‘We were advised not to come,’ said Miranda, taking Nicholas’ side. ‘Everybody said it was a quite preposterous idea, but Thomas is giving up his diocese in Henley-Upon-Thames and taking up a new position in East Anglia. He was absolutely insistent upon making the trip. Butterflies and wildflowers. He’s interested in cataloguing them.’ She could not have made her lack of interest plainer.
‘I knew it was to be the last chance we’d have to take a trip before settling into our new vicarage,’ Thomas explained.
‘You’re safe so long as you keep heading north,’ said Nicholas.
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ asked Miranda.
‘We’re trying to find out, but the maps in the corridors have all been defaced.’
Miranda straightened her hat and checked the lacing on her gloves. ‘You must think us unforgivably rude. Our peculiar situation is simply no excuse for poor manners. I am Mrs Wellesley, but you must call me Miranda, and this is my husband, the Reverend Thomas Wellesley.’
‘I’m Nicholas Castleford, from London. And this is Isabella.’ If he was bothered by the fact that he had no idea of her last name, he did not show it. Isabella doubted he would be able to pronounce it anyway. They all shook hands with grave formality.
Miranda was already wondering about their relationship, and assumed the worst. A cultured Londoner and a local girl, it was probably best not to ask. That was fine. She was an expert in avoiding subjects. All Englishwomen of quality were. ‘What is your destination?’ she asked.
‘Eventually London,’ said Nicholas. ‘It may take some time to get there.’
Miranda studied Isabella with mischief in her eyes. ‘But surely you are not English.’
‘No,’ Isabella admitted. ‘I had to leave my home.’
‘And you’re afraid of what you might find.’
‘London has long been a dream, but only that.’
Miranda tilted her head, studying the girl. Quite a beauty. ‘My dear, life is nothing more than a journey towards our dreams. We give chase to them, then when we pin them down they die—like butterflies.’ She gave Thomas a sour glance.
‘I think it is time for me to make my own destiny.’ Isabella felt lost among these curious English people who clearly preferred to say one thing and think another.
‘But of course you must. We are emancipated women, are we not? But I fear for your country, my dear. Carpathia is no longer in a state of neutrality, and those soldiers arriving at the station were in Bulgarian uniforms, were they not? They are fighting with the Turks and Germans. We heard such stories about them in England, about tossing newborn babies on bayonets. The most frightful barbarians, all. Tell me, where is your family?’
‘My mother died last year.’
‘How sad. What was wrong with her?’
‘She was suffering from hereditary disappointment.’
‘And your father?’
‘I left my father behind.’
‘You poor dear.’ Miranda took her cold hand and patted it between white gloves. ‘Well, I do hope we shall be friends.’
Thomas was peering at the train’s fittings with interest. ‘This is a Krupps-Henschell Turbine locomotive from 1887,’ he said. ‘But decorated in a manner that’s quite unique. There’s something about the style I can’t quite put my finger on. I can’t imagine what it’s doing on this line. Marvellous engines, built locally, made to last. Lined brass pistons, they never dry out or overheat.’
Miranda gave her husband a look of exasperation. Less husband than ornament. ‘Arrange a table in the supper car, Thomas. I shall go and find the Conductor.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Miranda, there won’t be a supper car,’ Thomas replied, but his determined wife had already gathered her skirts and tacked off along the corridor. Miranda had always been formidable. Once, on an outing in Richmond, she had slapped a horse in the face for whinnying at her. He reminded himself of that whenever he thought of answering back.
‘There’s tea in the samovar,’ Nicholas called after her. ‘You’ll find the Conductor at the centre of the next carriage.’
MIRANDA FOUND HIM in his customary position in the alcove, exactly where Nicholas had indicated.
‘I say there, excuse me.’ Miranda went to tap the Conductor on his braided epaulette, but something in his bearing stopped her. She lowered her hand and stayed where she was, reining in her tone. ‘Could you tell me, if we remain on the train to its end, where do we finally arrive?’
For a long moment there came no answer. ‘The Arkangel will take you to the border,’ the Conductor finally intoned without turning to speak to her directly.
‘Yes but which one, Bulgaria or Moldova?’
‘The journey’s end depends on you alone.’
‘Well, that’s not an awful lot of hel
p, is it? We need tickets. We have none of your paper currency, but my family can be billed. We are well known in England.’
The Conductor turned to study her now. ‘I think there may be another way for you to pay.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Miranda.
BACK IN NICHOLAS and Isabella’s compartment there was excitement. Isabella rose and pressed her hands to the glass. ‘We’re slowing down.’
‘According to the map this must be Snerinska,’ said Nicholas. ‘If it’s like the other towns, it will consist of eight churches, a dozen houses and a pig farm.’
The Arkangel was steaming into a low, grey-walled station with a rain-stained tin roof. Oil lamps swung in the misty night air, casting swaying pools of yellow light along the platform where passengers waited to board. The travellers had the dogged urgency of refugees; many had their belongings bundled in curtains and tablecloths. Nobody spoke to one another. The crowd was motionless and downcast, waiting for the train to reach a stop.
Nicholas and Isabella opened the window and braved the rush of cold night air, trying to see where they were. The train heaved to with a belch of steam. They were beneath mountains now, and the air was cooler, damper, sharpened with the scent of pine resin.
‘Wait,’ said Isabella, drawing back quickly. ‘I know this place. I’ve seen it before.’
‘But you haven’t been on a train.’
‘I have seen it in pictures,’ she insisted, sitting back down with an air of defeat. ‘Perhaps my mother...’
Nicholas and Thomas looked out of the window, checking the station name against the map.
‘The signs are in monkey language,’ said Thomas, snorting. ‘If they can speak English, why can’t they write their names in English?’
The huddle of travellers pushed forward to board the train. They were quite a crowd; some unfriendly-looking peasants in mud-spattered smocks, an old gypsy woman carrying a squealing pig, a blind priest led by a choirboy like a character from a Bruegel painting, some boisterous English soldiers, a skull-faced old man in a bathchair, an elderly man in tropical kit dragging a leather holdall and a butterfly net, a sombre hatchet-faced gentleman in funeral clothes.
At the rear was a man with a silk top hat and grey mutton-chop whiskers, fussing behind a porter who was trying to manoeuvre a tall box into place. On the side of the box a yellow painted flag read: ‘Professor Io’s Marvellous Nightingale.’ Further along the platform were poor farmers with faces like shrivelled apples.
The Conductor had deserted his alcove to appear on the step of the caboose, and was turning some of them away, as if he sought only a certain type of passenger.
Isabella opened the carriage door and swung it wide. Her dainty foot hovered over the step.
‘Snerinska,’ called the Conductor. ‘All aboard.’
The sole of Isabella’s high-buttoned boot remained above the platform.
The pig squealed at her, frightening her back inside. The gypsy woman grabbed the door just before she could shut it and hissed at her in a gutteral dialect. Then she beetled along the platform to board in the third class carriage. Shocked, Isabella fell back in her seat. Nicholas had not noticed her hesitance about disembarking.
‘What did that filthy old hag say to you?’ Thomas demanded to know.
‘I think... it was part of an old poem, something we learned in the nursery. What do you call it—an old wife’s tale. We must not alight.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘The story.’
‘What story?’
Isabella was resolute. ‘Nothing. It is nothing. I do not believe in such things.’
‘I say, look here.’ Thomas shoved down the window and leaned out, pointing. The steam evaporated, revealing an astonishing sight. A tall, slender lady of upright bearing, dressed entirely in crimson chenille, her coat floor-length and laced with spiderweb silk, her face heavily veiled above red ruffs and frills. Everything about her was a shade of scarlet, even the three pieces of luggage born by a black boy servant.
To Thomas, the lady’s appearance in the mist was more than merely startling. As he watched her reach the carriage step he felt an unwholesome heat spread through his body. He was captivated. He tried to stop the boy bearing her valises, but the servant’s angry glance warned him away. Instead he reached out to a toothless old woman who trailed adoringly in her wake.
‘Can you tell me,’ he asked, ‘who is that?’
The shawled crone turned one good eye to him. ‘That’s the Red Countess, of course. Maria Theadora Grudczinska, originally of Austria, from the Hungarian line.’
‘I have never heard—’
‘There are tales about her that would burn your ears.’ She bustled on, anxious not to be left behind.
As the Red Countess tilted her head and whispered something to the Conductor he touched her arm, helping her onto the step. He did the same to an storm-faced army Brigadier, the man dressed like a funeral director and the elderly fellow with the holdall. Many of the others were turned away.
The train seemed to sigh with impatience. There was an argument about tickets. One of the peasants attempted to fasten himself to the carriage window, but Thomas quickly drew it up and slammed the lock shut.
And this is a Christian minister, thought Nicholas, how fast he is to close the foreigners out. He had travelled the world and learned much of others’ lives, and the only lesson he had learned from Christianity was how many slights were remembered and how little was ever forgiven.
Nicholas glanced down at the sweat-softened map in his hand and felt sure it could not be relied upon. Behind the station at Snerinska he had seen angular green hills cropped with brown mountain rock. The track arced around, heading into the night-shrouded landscape, and there was no way of knowing what they would find there.
‘There seems to be some kind of delay.’ Nicholas looked out at the passengers who had been denied entry to the train. They stood mutely waiting for the Arkangel to leave. He saw two men in black frock-coats pushing a long wooden crate into the guard’s van. ‘They are loading something on board that looks like a coffin.’
Isabella looked around in sudden anxiety. ‘Where has Thomas gone?’ she asked.
CHAPTER TEN
THE COUNTESS
THOMAS FOLLOWED THE Red Countess’s approach and embarkation, transfixed. He could smell her perfume—cloves and almonds—and some kind of herb.
He stood outside the compartment and watched in fascination as she raised her arms, allowing her coat to be removed and folded. The boy servant carefully spread her dress, allowing his mistress to be seated upright against red velvet cushions. Something about his protection of her lower back suggested great age in her, but she did not stoop and was not slow. Her neck was long and slender, quite unlike a woman of age. Thomas was still unable to discover her features.
As her luggage was stowed in the compartment above her, the Red Countess fanned herself with the crimson-laced edge of her shawl, then settled into her seat. She was surrounded by luxurious fabrics—cotton, calico, cambric, cheviot, chiffon, chenille, crepe de chine, cretonne—and the air became pungent with burned spice. The boy had lit joss sticks in the cabin. As the Countess adjusted to her seat, a white oblong packet fell from her lap to the floor.
Thomas had been drawn close to the open door of her compartment. Without thinking, he stooped and picked up the packet, which he realized was an oversized deck of cards. Embarrassed, he set it before her on the table.
The Red Countess turned her veiled head toward him and inclined it slightly in thanks. She raised a slender scarlet-gloved hand and flourished at the opposite seat. Unable to remove his gaze, Thomas did as he was bidden.
She deftly opened the pack without removing her gloves. Fanning out the cards, she turned them over to reveal faces filled with strange woodcut images and cabalistic symbols. Skeletons, peasants, radiant suns, cups and kings, beggars and monks.
‘They’re beautiful,’ Thomas whispered.
‘It helps to while away the hours. Do you play?’ Her voice had the depth of maturity, but the edge of youth. There was something unsettling and decadent about it.
‘No. I am a man of God.’ He felt compelled to explain himself.
‘And cards are the game of the Devil, are they not? They are also the consolation of the lonely.’ The Red Countess languidly removed her scarlet kid-skin glove and dropped it on the table. For a moment her hand appeared as an old woman’s claw, the liver-spotted skin transparently stretched across tendons. But it must have been a trick of the light, because when he looked again, he saw that the hand was as fresh and youthful as that of a sixteen year-old virgin.
Thomas was puzzled. He studied her young hand and trim figure. The perfumed smoke was making his head swim. ‘Surely you cannot be lonely, Countess,’ he said.
‘I have a past. It allows a woman to know too much.’
‘But experience is valuable.’
‘The weight of your mistakes can break your spirit. Turn the card.’ She drifted her hand across the table. He did as he was instructed. He had always enjoyed the company of strong women.
‘You yearn for something,’ she told him. ‘Youth. Love. Pleasure. These things never stay. Only the cards remain.’
Thomas looked down. The card before him was the dark lady herself, the Queen of Spades, swathed in black, her face a cadaverous mask, surrounding by corpses dancing on a thunderstruck hill.
‘It is the card of passion. Feel it. Do not be afraid.’ Now her voice had the craquelure of limitless age.
Thomas reached out his hand, and the Red Countess shifted slightly in a whisper of silk, moving forward to touch his fingers.
‘Once,’ said the Red Countess, ‘all men longed for my embrace, but now...’
Thomas’s hand reached up for hers.
Miranda appeared in the doorway, out of breath, the buttons of her bodice virtually popping. She had searched the carriage, a feeling of panic rising in her chest. For a moment she had been seized by the absurd thought that Thomas had abandoned her and left the train.
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