Castle Rouge

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  The thought of her imprisoning more people made me regard Bram with an anxious eye. What would she do about him? Surely she had no suspicions that we were known to each other. Still, he had happened upon her private preserve. I hoped he would leave with the Gypsy violinists tonight.

  “Ah, Miss Stanhope,” he said as I approached. “I had hoped to bid you good night before I leave.”

  “It was a pleasure to have met you,” I said with more fervor than I allowed to show.

  “Oh, but Mr. Abraham,” Tatyana interrupted us. “I cannot allow you to walk back down to the village alone in the dark. Not after all the tales of wolves and vampires you have told.”

  “Tales, dear lady. I do not believe such legends.”

  “Still, you have too effectively chilled my blood tonight. I will provide you with a bedchamber. The upper regions of the castle are not in the best repair, but they should suffice for a man who so loves walking through the out-of-doors. Nonsense! I will not take no for an answer. My servant will conduct you and Mr. Norton and Miss, ah, Stanhope to your rooms.”

  She nodded at the brute, who seized a candelabra off the dinner table. I doubt he spoke much English, but he seemed to understand the gist of it. I would our escort was my gentle and mute Gypsy youth, but it was better that he packed up violin and bow and left the castle with my missive.

  “I have no kit with me,” Bram objected to his sudden residence here.

  “Mr. Norton is fully accoutered,” Tatyana said with a slow, mocking glance at Godfrey. “He will lend you anything you need in the morning. It hardly would be a razor, would it? After all those stories, you would not want to shed a drop of blood in this castle. Who knows what creatures it would call…the undead? The wolves? Miss Stanhope with a bandage at the ready? Miss Stanhope strikes me as a person who will always have something useful at the ready.”

  Another odious, knowing smile, this time in my direction.

  Did she know?

  No, I would not lose faith in my evening’s effort. News of our imprisonment would soon reach the village and from there, one could only imagine who else. I knew that Irene and our friends would not be idle in our absence. Was not Bram Stoker’s presence here more than mere coincidence? Somehow on our way upstairs we must find out. At least the Oaf spoke little English.

  Medved preceded us, the candelabra casting his shadow back on us, so I had to be mindful of the steps I couldn’t see. Godfrey and Bram each took my elbow once the stairs had turned us out of sight from below.

  “The note?” Godfrey asked, his brow furrowed.

  I nodded. “A most winning young Gypsy. I’m sure he’ll follow through.”

  Bram frowned at us as Godfrey explained in words as short as he could manage.

  Our guide plodded up the stairs ahead of us, apparently oblivious to everything but his task, like some great ox.

  Bram’s frown became deeper. “The note was directed to the village priest?”

  “Yes. He would read Godfrey’s Latin and has the authority to organize a rescue party.”

  Bram stopped for a moment. “But…that other man at the table, in unrelieved black. I met him the first time I came to the village. He is the village priest.”

  43.

  Before the Dawn

  The next night he tested me again, becoming excited and obligating me to acknowledge his excitement. I had to conclude that I must be very dirty, impure and given over to passion since he clearly felt it necessary to subject me to perpetual testing.

  —MADAME X

  No blow is harsher than that which removes all hope.

  The supposed Count was the village priest?

  Was everything in this accursed castle and its neighboring village a mockery and mummery?

  Godfrey and I exchanged a horrified glance. My feet forgot to keep moving. I almost would have tumbled backward in numb shock had not my escorts had me firmly by the beribboned elbows.

  And my charming Gypsy lad? He must have known that the village priest was in the room even as he scraped away at his miserable violin and bowed and winked and pressed his palm to his heart and took my sterling silver smelling salts and Godfrey’s laboriously composed note.

  My first flirtation for a clandestine purpose had been an utter disaster. Mute, indeed! If I ever encountered that treacherous fiddler again, I would break his violin over his lying head until he screamed to heaven for mercy.

  Now the stone stairs to the castle’s upper reaches seemed insupportably high and long. Every riser brought us closer to confinement again, with no hope of release.

  Tatyana’s servant stopped beside a door and nodded at Bram Stoker.

  Our friend never for a moment abandoned his pretense of innocent stranger. He bowed and kissed my hand in farewell, and shook Godfrey’s.

  “Most pleasant to meet fellow travelers in these mysterious regions. Most pleasant,” he said, turning to face the black hole that was his chamber.

  Without a by-your-leave, he hoisted a lit candle from Medved’s many-branched holder and vanished inside.

  Medved lifted the exterior latch and let it bang into position, locking Bram in. He made no secret of the act.

  He moved along the dark corridor, stopping at the next door, which Godfrey recognized for his cell. Godfrey took my hand and squeezed it. “Be of good cheer, Nell. It is always darkest….”

  He forbore to finish the truism, but paused to strike a lucifer and light his last bit of cigar before vanishing into his assigned darkness, where I knew a few candles awaited lighting.

  Medved threw the latch shut and immediately went shuffling down the stones to my chamber door. At least I had the comfort of knowing an interior door linked Godfrey’s room and mine. He had mentioned nothing of another inner door. Bram Stoker was locked in alone, with no chance of exchanging information with either of us.

  While I was fretting over the disposition of our only ally in this place, I had neglected to note that my guide had paused to lean against the cold stone wall and pull something from the pocket of his full pantaloons.

  It was a crude pottery bottle from which the lower orders who staffed the castle drank. I watched in disgust while he took a long swallow of its contents, then wiped his mouth on a shirt sleeve that obviously had played napkin for some time.

  His eyes slit in sleepy content before he pushed himself off the wall and moved to my door.

  I rushed through it into the welcome privacy of my own dark chamber, turning to shut the door behind me. It did not budge.

  Neither had my guide, who stood like a wind-shaken tree on the threshold, swaying until the flames of his upheld candelabra swept wildly left and right.

  “Good night,” I said, pushing on the door with all my might.

  He pushed back without visible effort. The door banged back against the wall as I retreated before him.

  “You must leave,” I said. “Tatyana—”

  Invoking his mistress’s name had no effect. He set the candelabra down on the nearest horizontal surface, the dressing table in the corner, and went lurching into the center of the room, swigging on the bottle as he came, my recurring nightmare.

  During my entire stay in Castle Tatyana, I had feared my fate: an unwilling sacrifice in a bloody ritual similar to the one Irene, Pink, the Rothschild agents, Buffalo Bill Cody, Red Tomahawk and I had interrupted in Paris. I had not feared for my virtue, for it struck me that a virginal sacrifice might rank higher than otherwise among these demented devil worshipers. But either Medved was not a member of the cult, or my assumption was wrong. From the drunken, clearly lecherous look upon his face it appeared that I might very well face a fate worse than death before facing the death that was supposed to be a better end. Although, having witnessed the bloody tortures the cult inflicted on its own, I was no longer so sure that there was any fate worse than death at its crazed hands.

  Medved’s relentless advance was herding me toward the huge bed. Now I felt the racing anguish of another fear. Beneath that t
apestry bedcover lay a lumpy coil of braided linens, our escape rope. Not only did I risk rape, but in the course of it the revelation of our literal last thread of hope that we might escape this place by our own efforts.

  This realization made me end my retreat. “Stop!”

  He did, but his smirk told me that he only paused because he took my standing my ground for capitulation. What kind of women was he used to? Gypsies, no doubt, who are wed at an unconscionably early age and who are also offered to non-Gypsy men for a price. The ill-begotten Gypsy servant threw his head back to drink again, liquid running through the bristles of his infant beard, down his grimy throat, and into his shirt collar.

  A moment later his hand seized the back of my head and the hateful pottery jug butted my teeth. He used my tightly bound braids to jerk my head back and pour the horrible burning liquid down my throat. I could not believe the man I had repulsed before would assault me again!

  I choked and coughed, feeling my very lungs corrode from such a bolt of acid. An icy dampness ran over my chin onto my chest while my eyes watered until even my tormenter became a blurred image much more merciful to behold than his real self.

  I could tell the monster was smiling! He began prating at me in some thick-tongued language I couldn’t name. I could tell that his voice was as soft and persuasive as that language could allow and that terrified me all the more. It implied that he thought I should, or would, cooperate in his disgusting notions, that I liked the fiery spirits spilling down my throat and blouse front, that I liked his presence in my room. Or soon would come to.

  His voice had grown singsong, and his right forefinger waggled back and forth before me like an admonishing pendulum, moving with the rise and fall of his voice.

  The spirits must have been stronger stuff than I had ever imbibed before because I was growing dizzy and seemed to see two fingers waving before my eyes.

  And…his eyes blurred as did his form, so that for a moment he did not look like himself but like James Kelly rushing for me in the panorama building just before the inhaled drug took my senses. Would I ever forget those mad, glassy, pale blue eyes? Not with them before me again! Perhaps my weakened perceptions had laid over this creature called Medved a deluded image of James Kelly. His eyes never blinked. I was reminded of the bottomless eyes in the little green snake I kept at home, but those were as dark and bright as a jet button. These eyes were windows, pale stained glass windows into a very stained soul. I understood that this man expected to have his way with me; he expected that I would bend to his will in this, but if I did not, it would not matter to him.

  I felt something hard at my back, like a wall. It took my befogged mind a moment to realize I had been backed up against the massive bedpost.

  No, the hidden rope!

  He pushed the container to my face again, and I received another drowning in spirits. My spitting and coughing only earned a laugh as if he watched a kitten whose face he had pushed into a milk dish. What a brute!

  I used my Gypsy sleeve to scrub my face clean of the unclean liquid, but he captured my wrist. Something tugged more than fear at my midsection…. He crooned now in that rough language of his as one would soothe a wild animal, pushing my arm behind me…behind the thick trunk of the bedpost.

  Though I could no more take my eyes off his loathsome lulling gaze than a robin could break the hypnotic swaying gaze of a cobra, I understood the tugging at my middle. He was undoing the laces of my corselet, one-handed, a man used to undoing women’s dress, whether drunk or sober. He would soon have a rope of his own to tie my hands behind the bedpost, and then he would not need even his eerie serpent’s eyes to control me.

  I remembered what Irene had said of the women of Whitechapel, earning their bed and beer money in ugly moments against a wall, standing up. They agreed to that tawdry exchange and were usually drunk enough to hardly know it.

  I was suddenly no different than they…drenched in spirits, compelled to do some stranger’s will.

  Another observation from Irene surfaced: that she had mesmerized Bertie into thinking he’d had his way with her so she would never have to repel his advances again. If only I had her gift to mesmerize this man who seemed able to mesmerize me!

  And I remembered what fought cobras, Quentin’s tough little mongoose, a creature of thick fur and wiry, muscular swiftness.

  Medved roared as my trio of memories helped me break his poisonous gaze and I screamed, as my Gypsy boot kicked out and up, unhampered by heavy, long draped skirts, powered by all the panic that was in me.

  I heard the connecting door bang open against the wall.

  “Nell!” Godfrey cried, reaching inside his coat jacket for the hidden hatpin as he ran toward me.

  But even a makeshift weapon was irrelevant. Medved was writhing on the floor in a coiled ball like the filthy snake he was, groaning.

  “What happened?” Godfrey demanded in horror.

  “He forced himself in with me. He forced himself upon me. His eyes were so evil I couldn’t look away. He forced his filthy liquor down my throat. He, he undid my laces and soon would have bound me.”

  “No,” Godfrey interrupted my breathless report, still gazing at the man on the floor, “I can see what happened to you. What did you do to him?”

  “I finally broke his satanic spell and screamed.”

  “And that plunged him writhing to the floor? I admit it was an alarming scream, but—”

  “And I lashed out with my foot. I kicked him.”

  Godfrey’s face cleared. “Ah. Do you know where?”

  “Wherever my foot would go high enough and hard enough. I don’t know, Godfrey! What does it matter?”

  “You are right, Nell.” Godfrey gazed upon the recumbent form with a grimace of knowing satisfaction. “All that matters is that you were able to repel the wretch. I’ll get him out of here.”

  At that he bent to pull the fellow up by the scruff of his shirt and one arm. He pushed him stumbling to the door and out into the hall.

  Godfrey leaned against the wood, one ear pressed to it. “Perhaps he is muddled enough to leave without locking us in.”

  A mighty thump from beyond the door ended that hope.

  I began shivering. “I was so afraid.”

  “I know, Nell.” He came to me and stood befuddled, as if sensing that male comfort needed to keep its distance at this moment.

  “And I was also afraid he would discover our hidden rope.”

  “That, too, was a grave risk.”

  “The worst thing was that the creature acted as if I would agree to his advances. He seemed to regard them as a treat or a boon. Isn’t he aware what a revolting creature he is? I’m sure not even a Whitechapel unfortunate would agree to his attentions.”

  “He is truly a barbarian, Nell, more animal than man. That’s why Tatyana keeps him in her retinue. She believes that every man is no better than he is, and every woman no better than she.”

  “Is that why she holds us prisoner, to make us desperate enough to betray our better natures?”

  He nodded. “That is the whole idea, beneath whatever political games she is playing. The political games are a pretext, I think, for her need to show up the civilized world and its people as utter hypocrites.”

  “What would make such a savage woman?”

  “Savage circumstances, Nell. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “No. First I must wash my face free of this foul liquor.”

  While I moved toward the basin and ewer, Godfrey bent to retrieve the fallen bottle.

  “Odd stuff,” he said after a moment. “It is clear as water yet has a faint but unusual odor.”

  “So Red Tomahawk said about the empty bottles we found on the Exposition site. He called it ‘firewater,’ I believe.”

  “Indeed, rightly so!” Godfrey said after a moment, sputtering.

  I turned from patting my face and shoulders dry. “Godfrey! You didn’t drink from that foul bottle?”

  “I
am not sure whether I drank from it or swallowed fire like a circus performer. This is an extremely potent and raw liquor, Nell.”

  “I know! I am still reeling on my feet from the small amount that Medved creature was able to pour into me. Please put that awful bottle down, or, better yet, throw it out the window! I wish no reminder of my recent ordeal.”

  But Godfrey did not heed me, instead standing in the middle of the room, staring at the homely object in his hand. “It must be home-made, brewed secretly in a primitive area where commercially distilled liquors wouldn’t reach, or would be too princely to pay for.”

  “What else would you expect from a creature like Medved? I can’t imagine why even Tatyana puts up with him. Please destroy that devil’s brew, Godfrey. Hasn’t it caused us enough grief tonight?”

  He weighed it in his hand, as if considering throwing it away, then shook his head firmly. “We can’t destroy it, Nell. Don’t you realize that this is the one thing, the one object that connects you and I and where we are now to where you were? To the Paris murders that seem the continuation of the London murders of last autumn?”

  I stared at it with mounting horror, not at the bottle itself and he who had abused me with it, but at my own incomprehensibility.

  How had I allowed my natural repulsion for spiritous liquors to blind me to the similarity between this pottery container here and the remnants of similar bottles in the subterranean secret places of Paris?

  I rushed to Godfrey, seized the bottle, and carried it to the candelabra. I supposed, belatedly, that Medved had been forced to stumble back downstairs in the utter dark. Perhaps he might have broken his neck, but sots always seem to fall without consequence.

  I pushed my farsighted eyes to the very rim. With a shiver of horror I found a bit of pale wax clinging to the edge, wax that was the very twin to the tiny crumbs Sherlock Holmes had been collecting in the cellars and catacombs of Paris.