A Rather Curious Engagement

by C. A. Belmond

  “This is my boyfriend,” I said hastily to the Count as he was about to be steered away. “Jeremy Laidley. Jeremy, this the Count von Norbert,” I added significantly.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Jeremy said to the Count, who nodded and extended a shaky hand which seemed so frail that Jeremy grasped it carefully.

  “Five o’clock sharp!” the Count reminded me as he was wheeled into the elevator and then disappeared below.

  Jeremy gave me one of those scolding looks. “So,” he said slowly, “after first accosting every old man in sight and getting yourself picked up by a friskier member of the geriatric set—yes, I saw that previous little escapade—you now have indeed managed to find your Count. What kind of caper are you sending us on this time?”

  “You and I,” I said triumphantly, “have just been given a rare invitation. We’re having cocktails with the Count up at his castle in the mountains tomorrow night.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  "I hope you brought a bag of cookies with you,” Jeremy muttered as he drove a rental car up the steep, narrow, winding roads to the Count’s castle. The farther up the cliffs we went, the thicker the lush gardens and forest all around us, which made the roads even darker.

  “I brought a little basket of fruit,” I said. “Why do I need to bring him cookies?” I asked, thinking there was some posh tradition I was unaware of.

  “So that we can leave a trail of crumbs on our way through the forest and find our way home from this Bavarian castle,” Jeremy said wickedly as he steered around a hairpin bend in the darkening road. “Otherwise, you know how these stories end. Two little kiddies go up to the wizard’s castle and he serves you milk and butter biscuits—but then you find out you’re going to be roasted over a spit for dinner. After he chops off your head.”

  “I think you’ve just mixed up sixteen different fairy tales from five countries,” I said, but I had to admit that this part of the country did look a bit Hansel-and-Gretel-ish. Beyond the Alps, after all, were Austria, Switzerland and Germany, not so very far away.

  “That guy looks like a little gnome from a Bavarian fairy tale,” Jeremy continued.

  “Can you believe he and his wife had to escape across the border? ” I asked, awed.

  “Penny,” Jeremy said as we made our ascent up a steep gravel driveway, “from what you told me, this guy won’t even remember what you just said to him yesterday, much less what happened to him years ago. I don’t know what the poor fellow can tell you. Previous owners of houses and cars and boats seldom want to chat about it after the sale.”

  “Look at it this way—at the very least, we’ll have cocktails with an interesting man,” I said. We had reached the top of the driveway now, which opened onto a flat turnaround that formed a perfect circle and was ringed with stone parapets.

  “ ‘At the very least,’ as I pointed out to you, we’ll disappear and never be seen or heard from again,” Jeremy said, as the car crunched over the gravel and he parked it under a very large chestnut tree growing right out of the center of the circle.

  For a moment, we just sat there, gazing at the castle. Up close, it was tall, vertical but very narrow, with a tower on the left, and a small staircase and a moat on the right side. It was set upon a clearing, but beyond the gardens it was surrounded by a dense growth of shrubbery and thickets and very tall evergreens, and this made a backdrop of many varying shades of green—pale yellow-green for leafy trees, deep blue-green for the pine, and an almost black-green for the ivy that crept along one side of the tower and some of the surrounding garden walls. We were up in the hills that I’d seen reflecting on Lake Como when we arrived, which had made me think of the lake as a shimmering emerald.

  As we got out and walked toward the front door, I realized that the back of the castle faced the lake. I could glimpse part of a garden, and a terrace trimmed with elegant balustrades. Because we were so high up, the entire property had a view of a great expanse of sky and mountains. However, many of the castle’s windows were extremely narrow, with iron grillwork over them, which I thought could make you feel like a prisoner from the inside. I fleetingly pictured Rapunzel in that tower, letting down her hair, desperate to get out.

  As we drew even closer, the wind made a low moaning sound when it blew around the corners, whistling through narrow arched passageways. Approaching the square, biscuit-box main part of the castle, I saw that it was a beautiful and yet a rather forbidding place; fortresses, after all, are meant to discourage invaders with unscalable walls, inaccessible windows and nothing in the way of a welcome at the heavy wooden front door, which had iron hinges and was shaped with a curve at the top that made me think of Robin Hood and Ivanhoe clanging in to visit a medieval king. Jeremy rang the bell, which chimed dolefully. A few moments passed. Then I heard heavy, slow, deliberate footsteps.

  “Fee, fi, fo, fum,” Jeremy muttered.

  “Shut up,” I hissed back. The door was opened by a man almost as old as the Count, and when we told him who we were he said, “Yes, you are expected,” and he led us into a reception foyer right off the brief entrance hallway. The foyer was surprisingly cheerful and bright, with walls painted a pale rose, and its molding in a deeper magenta, patterned in the French trompe l’oeil fashion, with heavy gilt-framed mirrors on either side.

  “The Count wishes you to wait in the smoking room,” the butler said, and he led us through a doorway off the hallway. Jeremy perked up immediately when he saw this room, which was outfitted expressly for men: satisfyingly deep armchairs in leather, flanked by tables set for a game of chess on one, a deck of Victorian cards on the other, and, against the wall, a gun-rack with antique guns enclosed in a locked glass-and-wood case.

  In one corner, on a large English desk, was a sterling silver “sleeve” that held a box of cigarettes upright. On the wall across from the desk was a bookcase whose lowest shelf was an open drop-leaf affair containing a row of colorful pipes arranged on a pipe-rack. Straight before us was a fireplace, and its cast-iron log-holder had two carved iron cherubs on either side, holding out their angelic hands as if they were warming them by a fire. Upon a big table in the center of the room were giant curved candle-holders, made of silver and—walrus tusks.

  “Wow,” I said, wandering around the room, peering more closely. “These walls are made of white oak. They did that because this kind of wood not only absorbs smoke well, but it’s known to ‘give back’ the smell of oak, so it actually perfumes the room.”

  “This is how I want my study to look back at the townhouse,” Jeremy proclaimed with a straight face.

  “You don’t smoke,” I objected, slightly alarmed.

  “I will now,” he said.

  He pointed to a chinoiserie that had a row of very tall, slender red-and-gold identically-bound volumes on it. “I read, don’t I?”

  “Not those,” I said, “because if I’m not mistaken, they are not books. They’re secret boxes, that are used to hide documents in.”

  “I’d open them and look,” Jeremy said, “but if they have surveillance cameras in here, we might get thrown into the moat for spying. Think he’s got sharks in the moats?” he teased.

  “Is James Bond your only cultural frame of reference?” I inquired.

  “I’ll bet the Count’s got a pair of pit bulls prowling around here,” Jeremy insisted.

  The butler reappeared at the door, and led us back out into the foyer, to the far end this time. He touched one of the wall panels which, in the true spirit of trompe l’oeil, was actually a hidden door that opened into a narrow, dark staircase which corkscrewed around and around to an upper floor. A brief hallway led to quite a beautiful study, dominated by an incredibly large window with a breathtaking view of the sky above and, far below, Lake Como. Light came from a large chandelier overhead made of wood, smoked quartz and rock crystal. The walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that had braces holding all kinds of ancient volumes.

  “Are these books real?” Jeremy whispered
as we walked through it.

  “Yes,” I murmured.

  Jeremy paused to look at several framed pictures grouped on one wall.

  “What kind of paintings are these?” Jeremy asked, as the butler departed.

  I stopped to get a closer look. They were portraits and landscapes, very workmanlike in their painterly style, except for one extraordinary technique. “Why, these are reverse-glass paintings,” I said. “They’re actually painted backwards, right on the glass, before they are flipped around, mounted and framed.”

  In fact, this room held all kinds of treasures, obviously furnished by a playful personality who had enough funds to have spent years and years becoming a significant collector. I pointed to a wall of illuminated shelves built just like the “curio cabinets” on the boat.

  “Now I know we’ve come to the right place,” I said, gazing at the collection of rare and whimsical grown-up “toys”: elaborate medieval clocks, Victorian mechanical games, and vintage model trains with dining cars outfitted with miniature passengers and furniture and lamps.

  “Jeremy, look!” I said, pointing to a round table in a corner by the big window. Mounted on a mahogany block was a model ship that absolutely resembled the yacht. “It’s Liesl’s Dream!” I said. “I mean, Penelope’s Dream now.”

  There was a very large wingchair beside this table, set right before the big window so that you could plunk yourself down and gaze out at the view. Only, I couldn’t plunk myself in it just now. Because at the moment, it was occupied. By the Count, who sat there in a gold and russet smoking robe, his feet thrust into Oriental slippers, his eyes shut, his head tilted slightly, resting on his left hand, his elbow propped on the wing of the chair. A soft blue and black plaid cashmere blanket was tucked across his lap. I gestured quickly to Jeremy, who came to my side, did a double-take, and then stood gazing in fascination.

  “Count von Norbert?” I said quietly. Nothing. Jeremy raised his eyebrows incredulously. Finally I bravely reached out, and gently touched the old man’s shoulder. He didn’t jump or recoil. He just opened his sleepy, watery blue eyes. He gazed at me without expression, at first; then his eyes focused, took in my face, and he smiled.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hello, little girl,” the Count said in his elegant German accent. "Who might you be?” He had a rather intelligent charm beneath his fuddled gaze, and I got a hint of his former self, a man who perhaps possessed a fairly high degree of wit and sophistication. This unexpected radiance shone in his face until something like a cloud passed over it.

  “I’m Penny Nichols and this is Jeremy Laidley,” I said. At his utterly blank look, I didn’t know what to say, so all I stammered out was, “We’ve come for cocktails.”

  “Have you?” said the Count forgetfully, sounding intrigued and more awake now. “How delightful.” He reached out to the table at his side, pulled open a small, curved drawer, and took out a box of long matches. These he handed to Jeremy, and gestured toward something on the window-ledge. It was a miniature cannon.

  “Go ahead, young man. You do the honors,” he said. Jeremy took the matches but hesitated. “That’s right, that’s right,” the Count said more loudly and encouragingly.

  Jeremy went over to the cannon, peered at it, then turned to us and said in a strange voice, “I suppose I’d better open the window first.”

  “Naturally!” boomed the Count. Jeremy reached for the iron handle that made the window open outward. The cannon’s little snoot was pointed toward the lake.

  “A moment,” said the Count, fumbling inside his chest pocket for a gold watch on a chain. He popped it open, then held it out as if it were a stop-watch.

  “Ready, and . . . fire away!”

  Jeremy lit the match and then the fuse. Instinctively, he backed off. I heard a slight hiss, then a small but sonorous BOOM! which echoed all through the house, slightly rattling the chandelier. There was a tiny scent of gunpowder in the room.

  Jeremy and I looked at the Count. He smiled with benign magnificence. A moment later, a cuckoo clock in the far corner of the room woke up, thrusting its little wooden bird out of his tiny door and proclaiming the hour. The Count frowned slightly.

  “That clock has always been ever so slightly late,” he sighed.

  I thought I heard footsteps. Yes, somebody was definitely scurrying around the castle somewhere. One hoped it was a butler, and not a great big rat.

  “Cocktail hour!” the Count proclaimed joyfully as the doors were flung open and the butler came in wheeling a cocktail trolley. “Do you prefer gin or whisky or sherry?”

  “Gin,” Jeremy said quickly.

  “Me, too,” I said, before they could stick me with the ladylike sherry.

  “And a whisky for me,” said the Count happily. The butler mixed them quickly and handed each of us a thick, needle-etched crystal glass. The thought occurred to me that this expensive leaded-crystal glassware was now known to make people a little nutty, because of the lead, but I resolutely put this tidbit of knowledge out of my mind.

  “Cheers,” Jeremy said, as the butler left the room and closed the doors.

  “Salutations!” said the Count. He took a big sip and then his face lit up with delight. He gestured out the window. “And how do you like Lake Como?” he asked.

  “It’s heavenly,” I said fervently. Feeling a bit like Little Red Riding Hood, I handed the Count the basket of fruit we’d brought.

  “For me? Ah. So nice to have young people around,” said the Count, taking the basket and placing in on the table near him. “Much better than staring at all these old faces,” he said, gesturing at the portraits on the walls. “My family from Bonn, going back to my great-great-great-grandfather Sigwald in the 1800s, and his son Rolf . . . Or, was it the 1700s . . . ?” His voice trailed off and he shook his head, as if trying to get rid of the cobwebs. “I am afraid my memory is not quite what it used to be,” he said sadly.

  Very carefully, I pointed to the model ship. “What a beautiful boat,” I said. The Count smiled with a bittersweet expression.

  “It is Liesl’s Dream, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Have you met my wife, Liesl?” he said, looking confused. “I have not seen her today. Is she in the garden?”

  Jeremy looked faintly alarmed, and shot me a warning look. “No, we’ve never met,” I said softly.

  The Count must have felt our apprehension, because he got that wary look in his eyes which forgetful people do, as if he sensed from our reactions that something was wrong, yet he didn’t really want clarification—especially about a beloved person from his past who, in his mind, had never quite left him. Hurriedly he added, “My wife loves the sea. I bought the yacht for her. Such adventures we had aboard it! But my children do not like the sea, they get sick! I got sick, too, the very last time,” he said, his blue gaze clearing a bit now as he recalled something which made him visibly upset.

  “That terrible voyage to the island that nearly ruined my health and sealed my fate!” He gestured toward his legs. The stroke he’d suffered, of course.

  “What island?” Jeremy asked.

  The Count, lost in thought, seemed not to have heard him.

  “The mistral came up!” said the Count, with a searching, far-away look, as if he were peering through a telescope of memory, and trying to bring the view into focus. “It fought us all the way! And I was so close, so close! To think that, after all this time, I found the Lion, only to lose it again! Do you believe in fate? An old beggar woman on that dock put a curse on us that night. I could swear Poseidon himself wanted to stop me! And what did he do with the Lion?”

  He turned his bright blue eyes on me beseechingly. “Where is my Lion?” he asked in an endearing, childlike way. “Have you seen it? Where could it be?”

  “What Lion?” I asked softly.

  “You are a curious young lady, aren’t you?” he asked in amusement. “Are you a collector, too?” There it was again, the way his gaze would clear as if the world had come b
ack into focus. When this happened, he seemed more sharp, energized, even more virile.

  “I’m an art historian,” I said.

  “Ah! That explains it. Then you will appreciate my treasures,” he said gleefully, as if glad to show them to someone who might comprehend their true value. Yet he was also like a little boy showing off his toys.

  “Come, you will see,” said the Count, setting down his empty whisky glass. “You steer the ship, young man,” he said to Jeremy, gesturing to the back of his wing chair. Jeremy went over to it, mystified, then realized that there actually were handles at the back, almost like bicycle handles with brakes, so the upholstered chair was actually a very elaborate wheelchair.

  The Count reached into another pocket and pulled out a big iron key, which he handed to me, and he directed us to steer him down a long corridor leading to a tower room. The heavy wooden door creaked complainingly when I shoved it open. It was quite dark inside. After fumbling about, I found an electric light switch, but even so, there was no overhead light. Instead, it activated numerous display lights within glass shelves from floor to ceiling all around the circular tower room, including some freestanding tables of glassed-in display cases, as in a museum. Everywhere you looked, lights were illuminating small metal figures of art.

  Jeremy and I gazed about, dumbstruck, at what appeared to be a great copper zoo. The entire room was filled with a collection of strange medieval-looking cast-metal objects, each standing about a foot high, all different from each other yet somehow similar. It was a metallic bestiary of centaurs, horses, griffiths, dragons and other creatures.

  “Oh!” I cried. “Aren’t they all amazing? What are they?”

  “Aquamanilia,” said the Count, and I repeated it, rolling the syllables off my tongue, Ah-kwa-man-eel-ee-ya.

  “They have been in my family for years,” the Count said proudly.

  Jeremy and I moved from item to item. I kept exclaiming at each figure, saying, “Look! Here’s a knight on a horse, isn’t he excellent! And see this one, Jeremy. A unicorn. And this, a dragon with a snake on its back, riding it like a little jockey! And . . . whoops!” That last one was a bearded, moustachioed figure— labelled “Aristotle”—bent over on all fours with a voluptuous woman astride him. And right next to that was a wife spanking her husband with a ladle . . .