Castle Rouge

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Of course not! Ghosts can vanish in the shake of a demon’s tail. It was awful, worse than anything from Sheridan le Fanu.”

  “That is what results from reading too many ghost stories at a tender age, Nell,” he said, assisting me to my feet and dusting me off most considerately. “What did this ghost do besides appear?”

  “That was enough. I have never seen such evil eyes, so light you could look right through them, as through water.”

  Godfrey nodded at the arched windows behind me. “Light can play tricks, especially in such a Gothic pile as this. In fact, I reached the doorway as you were screaming. Perhaps your eyes had created an illusion from the light and shadow of the hall and I stepped into it.”

  “Your eyes are quite a light gray, Godfrey, almost silver at times, but I have never had the experience of seeing evil incarnate in them, and that is what those ghastly eyes from the hallway were.”

  I shivered and could not stop. “It is true,” I admitted, “that your ash-stained clothing could have seemed like the stone garb of a statue.”

  “There, you see? Easily explained.” Godfrey examined his clothing and began dusting himself off. “Ashes and then stone dust from all that climbing and wall hugging.”

  “Then you reached your goal?”

  “Indeed, and I returned with booty.”

  “Booty? What of value could reside in this decrepit castle?”

  Godfrey began pulling items from the front of his shirt, while I looked correctly away.

  “Books. The bay of windows is in a vast library with books even older than what sits on the few shelves in my chamber. A fascinating collection dating from several eras, some as old as the Dark Ages, I think, and many in foreign tongues.”

  “Evil tongues, no doubt.”

  “Unlike Irene, I am no linguist, but many were filled with the thick consonants that betoken eastern European languages, and others were in strange letters both like and utterly unlike European languages.”

  “So what did you bring back?”

  “Something to divert you. In English I found a volume of the American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne—”

  “I have never heard of him.”

  “Now you have,” he said, handing me the dusty book. “And…perhaps I should not hand this one over. It is too inciting of the imagination for you now.”

  “What is it? Godfrey, let me at least see? Oh! Poe. You remembered my fondness for his works.”

  “I don’t know.” Godfrey opened the first few pages and frowned at the title page. “‘The Masque of the Red Death.’ Much too morbid for you to read, Nell.” He tsked like a governess withdrawing a treat presumed too rich for a child’s appetite.

  “I have read most of them anyway, Godfrey. Let me have it, or I shall…shall scream again.”

  “We can’t have that. Your scream is piercing enough to injure even ghostly ears. It is a formidable weapon, if you could manage to remain conscious long enough to use it twice.”

  “I am afraid I emulated a fitful child too well. I meant only to scare the ghost away, not to use all my breath doing it. My next screams will be more of the staccato sort, I promise you, Godfrey, so I shall stay awake for hours to scream every villain in the place deaf.”

  He let my eager hands claim the book of Poe, and grinned.

  I realized that he had thoroughly distracted me from the issue of the evil-eyed “ghost.”

  “Is it not strange,” he went on, “that books as relatively recent as these should occupy shelves in a remote Transylvanian castle’s library?”

  “Everything about this place is strange. I would not be surprised to find Psychopathia Sexualis in that library.”

  Godfrey immediately grew alert. “A barrister has more than a passing acquaintance with Latin and that title is not one I would expect a parson’s daughter to be bandying about. What book is that?”

  “An exceedingly nasty one that Henry Irving and Bram Stoker and the theatrical set pass around their men’s club meetings. It is full of the unimaginable deviltry that men may commit, so I am told. Irene had found a copy at the Left Bank book stalls. She thought it shed light on the acts of Jack the Ripper, as if anyone would care to see what the light would reveal in that case.”

  “I shall need to have another look at the contents of the library. Perhaps we could visit it together tomorrow night.”

  “I am not about to swing from my own rope, Godfrey. However odd my borrowed dress, it is still not suitable for exercise.”

  “That’s the point, Nell. Don’t you realize that I climbed my way down, but found my way back up by normal means, and I did not encounter any ghosts?”

  “Did you encounter anyone more solid?”

  “Now that is odd. There were signs that someone had been using the library recently. The dust was disturbed. But the tales of my explorations must wait. First we need to make like sailor-men and pull the rope back up before someone on the ground sees it in daylight.”

  “Of course! How could I have forgotten about that?”

  “I suspect you were worrying about my whereabouts and the ghost outside your bedchamber door, which may have been me. Besides, you would never be strong enough to manage such a task by yourself.”

  While he talked, Godfrey made for the window and leaned far out to look for witnesses. Satisfied that none were visible, he nodded at me and seized hold of the braided linen. A mighty tug brought a loop of the stuff inside the window.

  I picked it up from the floor and joined Godfrey in tugging. He had been right. This was hard, menial work. I pulled on his command of “heave” and released the rope on the “ho.” Like navvies we struggled, and after ten or fifteen minutes of frantic labor, the last length of the stuff finally lay heaped on the floor.

  “No rest for the wicked,” Godfrey said jovially. “We must arrange this pile under your coverlet.”

  The conjoined coils were heavy enough that the two of us made several trips to transfer the bulk from the floor near the window to lumpy rest under what remained of my bedclothes.

  I couldn’t help wondering why we bothered to move the rope. “If you can find your way unmolested inside the castle, what do we need with the rope?”

  “First, to hide the fact that it ever existed from our captors; second, we may indeed need it again, especially if locked in our quarters. Third, I did not say that I was able to explore the castle unmolested.”

  “You seem none the worse for wear!”

  Godfrey’s expression grew wry and secretive at the same time. “There is wear…and there is wear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Godfrey sat in one of the overbearing high-backed chairs that populated the castle. “Since I had the opportunity, I explored the lower regions of the castle.”

  “And?”

  “It is built upon and into the mountain. I moved down into storerooms that reminded me of the system of tunnels beneath the Rothschild country estate at Ferrières. Do you remember that, Nell?”

  “How could I forget that underground trophy room with all the mounted heads of beasts upon the walls and the odor of cigar smoke penetrating everything? Although the tiny train to bring food hot from the distant kitchen to the main dining room was rather innovative.”

  “No miniature trains here, would that we could escape on one! Only storerooms mostly empty of everything but dust and dead spiders. Yet each time I discovered a stone stairway, I was able to go lower into the foundations of the castle, which quite literally are the foundations of the mountain.

  “As I went down, guided by a bit of candle I had found, I began to feel the rush of cool, damp air.”

  “Air?”

  “I was far below the level where windows were possible.”

  “Then…there might be a tunnel of sorts, a way out of the castle.”

  Godfrey didn’t answer me directly. Instead his eyes narrowed as he probed his memory.

  “That’s what I thought, hoped. I was surely on the last habitable
level before solid stone was all that remained. The area was vast, although relatively low-ceilinged. It reminded me of what might lay beneath the burial vaults of a cathedral. Low Gothic arches stretched out in all directions, but the ground was that strange combination of stone and packed earth that makes one think one is standing on the very bones of earth. It was oddly reminiscent of some forgotten chapel. A few wooden shipping or storage boxes were lying about as if tossed up on some dry seabed. I had the strangest sense of being below, not sea level, but below the level of ordinary life.”

  “How eerie it sounds! And still you felt the rush of air?”

  “Not a rush. Perhaps more of a…an unseen current, like the cold, dry breath of the mountain. The place seemed utterly deserted, my footfalls the only sound. Then, from behind one of the massive pillars that supported the arches, I glimpsed a movement.”

  “Oh!”

  “I don’t mean to frighten you, Nell. Obviously, I returned unhurt.”

  “It is so like the best of ghost stories. Is that what you saw, a ghost?”

  “Would that I had. A ghost could not betray my expedition.”

  “Who was it then?”

  “A Gypsy girl.”

  “Even there!?”

  “Even there. And more than one.”

  “No! How many?”

  “Gradually, I detected three. They were as shy as wood nymphs, and very young, wearing no jewelry, nothing that would chime as they moved. That is when I realized that they must have entered the castle from…outside.”

  “Outside!”

  “They were trespassing as much as I was. They circled me at their shy distance, drawing nearer but still darting behind pillars. I felt the center of some bizarre Maypole dance. I racked my brains for some way to bribe them, dupe them, follow them out. But they obviously spoke only Romany, and our mutual silence seemed a conspiracy of sorts. I feared that if I broke it, I would break some spell, would somehow give their muteness voice, and they would then betray me as I could betray them.

  “So we watched and moved in that soundless minuet and finally they faded away, and I retreated to the higher regions. I don’t think they will report my presence, for then they would reveal their own, which was as unlawful.”

  I shivered. “They could have been ghosts. Murdered Gypsy girls trying to show you a way out.”

  “This much I know. There must be a way in, and out, from far below. We have made much progress in moving about the castle’s exterior and interior. Now we must decide how we can use what we have learned.”

  “‘We’ nothing, Godfrey! You have done all the dangerous part.”

  He took my mittened hand in his. “We, Nell. It is both of us, or neither of us, that I swear.”

  26.

  Foreign Activity

  Well, well; what a broth of a boy he is!…

  He’s like a breath of good, healthy, breezy sea air.

  —WALT WHITMAN ON BRAM STOKER 1854

  FROM A JOURNAL

  By the next morning I was speaking in Irene’s deep basso of the night before, thanks to almost catching my death of cold and damp on our expedition.

  While I coughed and honked like a San Francisco foghorn, Irene pored over maps of Prague the Rothschild bank had sent to our rooms earlier at her written request. Why a visit to a Gypsy fortune-teller should inspire urgent study of city maps was beyond me. Irene was dressed for a day at home, at least, in soft slippers, a long burgundy faille skirt, and a ruffled pink shirtwaist that would do very well under the surprise dress.

  “You have been here before,” I commented about the maps, “twice. I’d think you would know your way around by now.”

  “Not by foot among all these narrow byways,” she commented absently, her forefinger tracing one, then another, serpentine route on the map.

  “I hope you’re not detecting another complicated pattern, as in Paris, behind all the evildoings in Prague, perhaps in the shape of an Egyptian Ankh. Say, I bet the word ‘Gypsy’ comes from Egyptian.”

  “The ankh is a religious symbol, true, and you’re probably right about the origin of Gypsies, but I don’t have enough information yet about any recent murders in Prague to discover grand patterns. I hope Quentin can remedy that when he comes.”

  “Quentin is coming?” I sat up in my humble trundle-bed. “I must dress then.”

  “You are ill and better off staying snuggled under the quilt.”

  “Not with strange men visiting the rooms.”

  Irene cocked a dubious eye over her shoulder. “You have, as you assert to all who will hear, resided in brothels on two continents. Why the nicety now?”

  “I am not masquerading as a fille de joie now.”

  “Nor would you do well at the profession in your current state,” she added with amusement, still mooning at the map like a lovelorn cartographer.

  I sneezed, violently, in answer, but struggled out of the entangling linens nevertheless.

  “You surely do not think,” Irene added, “that Quentin cares whether you are attired for the street or not? I’m sure that his spy work has required him to visit a brothel or two hundred in the performance of his duty.”

  “How that would shock Nell,” I said while I struggled into my clothes behind the curtain that sequestered our washstand area from the room proper. “I do believe that being shocked is one of the joys of her life. I myself am, of course, long beyond shock.”

  “I wonder,” Irene murmured, but perhaps I misheard her.

  I finally emerged from behind my makeshift dressing room wearing a soft cream-colored shirtwaist and long black skirt, the only other outer garments I had allowed myself on this sudden and dangerous journey.

  Irene glanced at me with a wry smile. “I would suggest a bit of powder on your nose.”

  I rushed to the round mirror over our fireplace. My nose was as scarlet as the fever. My nickname should be not Pink now, but Cerise.

  “It’s in my traveling case,” Irene suggested.

  I’d been dying to rummage in this glorious puzzlement. It was the centerpiece of her carpetbag, with all other items surrounding it like padding. The burled wood was fitted with myriad drawers and compartments, hiding a glimpsed hoard of sterling silver bottle caps, so I hastened to the object in question where it sat.

  I was like a child ransacking my mother’s dressing table, save no child had ever had a mother like Irene, and I wondered if one ever would.

  The cosmetic carrier reminded me of a silverware chest, every niche lined with emerald-green velvet, all holding in tight custody enough intriguing bottles to release a caveful of genies. I found the wide glass jar of powder and used the soft fur of a rabbit foot to stroke it over the blazing nose revealed by a mirror set into the case’s top lid.

  I then ran my fingertips over the satin-smooth fronts of the tiny drawers, not daring to explore further, but memorizing the rare fittings as a blind person might.

  Imagine my shock when a portion of the case’s bottom pushed out as if on a spring, and I saw a drawer of various paper money and gold coins open before me!

  Irene arose at once to stand guard above me, shaking her head. “You have managed to trigger a release that has baffled the border guards of six nations.” She shut the drawer.

  “I thought it was only a vanity case.”

  “That was the idea. Feminine fripperies are the last suspected of serious content. That can apply to people as well as cases.”

  My apologies were interrupted by a knock at our door, which Irene rushed to answer.

  Quentin Stanhope stepped in, but I hardly recognized him. He was dressed as a man about town in dark city suit and homburg, with no exotic mustaches. Other than his weather-darkened skin, he looked like an ordinary Englishman, or Frenchman, or German.

  He immediately removed the hat to quirk a smile at Irene and me in our demure lady-clerk garb, looking as uncomfortable as I felt. Given his newly civilized aspect, I was glad to have dispensed with my tiresome checked coat…a
nd my shining scarlet nose.

  “I may not look it,” he said, “but I’ve had quite a night of it.”

  “I am not used to gentlemen who boast of such a fact to ladies,” I returned.

  Irene stared at me, no doubt because I had made quite a night of it many times during my undercover assignments in houses of ill repute. Still, I felt we were all appearing as our proper selves at last, and much preferred pretending to the sane and safe society in which we gave the (temporary) appearance of being staunch members.

  “We had quite of a night of it, too,” Irene answered, “consulting a Gypsy fortune-teller in the old quarter of the city.”

  “Nothing so arcane for me,” Quentin said with a grimace. “I paid my compliments to one of the moderately regarded Prague brothels, where I am sorry to say another woman has been killed. I have brought back an interesting suspect, though I had a devil of a time extracting him from the police.”

  Irene held her breath for a long moment, then said, “You haven’t caught James Kelly, have you? He’ll require stern handling. Why would any police force let him go? How did you get him away from the authorities? I admit I long to question him under the proper circumstances, which is any time before the police do. This miserable man was last seen in pursuit of Nell, by my very eyes. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know who the fellow is, but he’s waiting below. He could be a Kelly. There’s an Irish look to him. The Rothschild agents helped me convince the police that he was a mere blundering Englishman who had happened to visit the place, like myself, and had no link to the atrocity so recently discovered.”

  “Another woman killed.” Irene began pacing. “This is an epidemic! I do not like deceiving the police, but they could hardly understand the larger implications and the critical issue of…Nell.”

  Quentin, who had been trying to get another word in, in vain, glanced at me and shrugged his surrender. “I’ll have him up,” he said, leaving our chamber.

  “Another murder.” Irene practically ground her teeth with frustration. “Last night! When we were out.” I knew what she was thinking. We might have prevented it. Yet I doubted we would have happened on the right brothel at the right time even if we had been searching them for James Kelly.