Carpathian Devils

by Alex Oliver

  "They were very kind," Frank insisted, beginning to understand why they had been so adamant that he should speak well of them. Evidently everyone expected the worst of them on principle. "But they didn't have much to give."

  Her pretty frown became a wide eyed look of pleasure. "They live on the land, you know. They eat hedgehogs cooked in clay, and berries, and they don't have to worry about anything. We take care of that, so that they can dance and sing all day long. I think it must be a lovely life."

  Frank's impression had been one of fear and reticence, but he saw no reason to trouble her sheltered naivety by saying so.

  "I still think," she went on, the frown returning, "that they shouldn't have made you walk. They should have put you on a horse and brought you here themselves. You were so hurt, you could have fallen down somewhere and died, all alone, and then none of us would ever have known you. What were they thinking?"

  A perfect chance for him to ask some of the questions that had been plaguing him. "They were terrified of something," he said gently, only just realizing once he had started that he was about to accuse the girl's father, to her face, of being some kind of uncanny wight, of roaming about the countryside threatening to tear out travelers' throats.

  But she had already let slip that her mind was uneasy, and her unbudging presence at his side was beginning to look less like innocent curiosity and more like protection. "They thought that the smell of my blood would draw something - someone - who would then, if I was still with them, turn on them all. Can you tell me what they meant?"

  "It is a peasant superstition," she said, easily enough, except that she had lowered her candid eyes to look at where her fingers twisted in her lap. "I suppose that as they are allowed to live without cares, like children, they will believe in all sorts of monsters and fairy tales, as children do."

  A servant entered, carrying a tray of two soups and a decanter of wine, which she set with brusque, silent swiftness on a stand by the bed. She dropped Frank a tiny courtesy, and Alaya a much deeper one, and departed, never having raised her eyes from the floor.

  "Shall I help you?" Alaya half rose, as if it was the polite thing to do to offer, but it was not much to her taste. Her nose wrinkled charmingly.

  "No, I'm fine." Strange to be coddled so now, when he had walked and swum and been knocked down while he was hurt worse. He manhandled the tray onto his lap and frowned at the bowls, not knowing where to start.

  Alaya laughed and pointed. "That one is chicken. That one is beer with cinnamon and cream. It is very good. My mother used to give me that when I was hurt."

  He began with the chicken. This too was very good, full of vegetables and fruit, the stock thickened with sour cream, rich and filling. "I cannot think that the Roma's fear was entirely imaginary," he said, in a soft enough voice that the servants outside should not hear. "Something uncanny pursued me in the woods. I only just escaped from it."

  Her eyes widened, and her pale cheek blanched still further until it was as white as her sleeves. "No! What did it look like?"

  The door opened again, and bending through came a silhouette that made Frank push himself backwards with his feet, dislodging the tray. It fell to the floor, bowls breaking, liquid spattering over the fine old pale blue rug, as he crammed himself into the corner, behind his pillows, for sanctuary. His ears rang and his eyes blurred and his heart hissed in his breast like a live coal.

  Alaya squeaked in alarm, stood and pressed herself against the wall, though whether she was shocked at the visitor, or simply reflecting Frank's fright, he hadn't the wits to tell.

  Then Vacarescu emerged from the shadow of the door way into the lantern light, and gave them both a look of fierce displeasure. He doffed his tall hat, peeled leather riding gloves from his hands, and sat, uninvited, very much unwanted, at the very end of Frank's bed, where the impression of Frank's feet still warmed the blankets.

  "What are you doing here, my lady?" He turned his malign gaze on Alaya, and if there was any familial affection there, it was well hidden. "There are rules about my guests. I would not have you forget them."

  "We were only talking." She seemed a great deal more immune to the cold, wolfish look than Frank, and her assurance allowed him to ease back down into the pillows, unclasping his hands from around his knees. With effort he schooled his breathing from the sharp high pitched panting into something deeper, calmer, though he could not disguise the tremble in it as he could with his fingers.

  He did not relax his posture, because that would mean sliding his feet further towards the other man. He would as soon slide them into a fire.

  "It is not fitting for you to be alone in the bedroom of a young man."

  "But he's injured. And the servants are just outside." They must be father and daughter, surely, for the look she gave Vacarescu now was all childish sweetness and cunning, like a toddler cajoling for a sweetmeat. "He's come all the way from England. It isn't fair. You're forever shutting your visitors up in little rooms, and they disappear and we never get to meet them. This time you didn't seem very interested—"

  "We have lost another village. I had to—"

  "So I just thought I would come and keep him company for you. We've been getting to know each other. It's been nice, hasn't it, Frank?"

  Vacarescu's chest heaved as though something inside it wanted violently to break out. "First names already?" he growled, in a tone that drew the points of a dozen pins down Frank's spine.

  Alaya still looked unflappable, even pert, as if it amused her to see how far she could push, how hard her father would struggle before he gave up and struck her. They were not terribly alike in looks, but the urge to bait the wolves of Hell had obviously been handed down.

  "I have no last name that I can remember," Frank broke in, desperate to ease the tension in the room before it snapped. Alaya might have confidence in her father's restraint, he did not. "The first was all I could give."

  "You should leave now, madame." Vacarescu shifted his weight on the bed and pulled on the heel of one tall boot with the toe of the other.

  "We should both go and let him sleep." Apology in Alaya's tone. She gathered her skirts as if to rise.

  "I will stay to be sure he does not take ill in the night." Having toed his boots off, Vacarescu settled himself firmly at the foot of the bed, crossed his long legs and made himself comfortable against the wall.

  Frank gave Alaya a begging look, reluctant to be left alone with the man. She returned a brave little smile, as if to say she knew his thoughts, and settled back to her seat. "Then I'll help."

  Frank expected her father to order her out, but he simply sighed, crossed his arms over his chest and settled.

  Alaya turned the lantern down to brown dimness, and for a while it was awkward as hell. Every little rustle was like an alarm. But at some point Frank's body took over from his mind and told him it would sleep no matter the situation.

  He woke once in the night to the sound of movement, and found Vacarescu slumped sideways in a heap at the end of the bed. Alaya was tucking a coverlet around him, like a girl playing mother. She raised a finger to her lips when she saw him watching, but did not abandon him. He fell asleep again to the sound of Vacarescu's faint snore as she smiled at him from the chair.

  When Frank woke again with the morning light bright on his pillow, he was alone, the coverlet folded up on the chair where Alaya had sat. He was brought breakfast and books by attentive servants who all tried hard not to look at him, and he passed an extremely welcome day of drinking medicinal tea and drowsing and allowing his body the leisure it needed to heal.

  Sometime after noon he looked from his window and saw rooftops and wooded hills going down into scrubby looking farmland. A caravan of some sort moved slowly across the frame from right to left. Small figures with bent heads trudged beside tumbrels piled with what looked like lumber. Half the fields he could see contained rye that had turned an unhealthy grayish shade, and of the other half great patches stood ripe, but u
nharvested.

  At the bottom of the road down from the castle to the lowlands a little hamlet of four houses and a well was tucked into an outcropping of rock, but though he looked at it on several occasions as the gloomy procession passed, he never saw smoke or movement.

  It occurred to him there might be something more behind Vacarescu's anger than mere choleric bad temper. But what? What was sweeping across an apparently populous and fertile land and causing the people to leave their homes, abandon the work of their hands and run?

  At the end of the day, his eyes were drifting closed over a volume of Homeric poets when Vacarescu accompanied his evening meal, and sat and watched him eat with a kind of resentful fascination that made Frank very glad when Alaya joined them.

  She brought an embroidery frame with her, and talked quite unselfconsciously about the history of her family, digging out of Frank everything he remembered about his travels, which was not much. Imperturbable, it wasn't that she endured Vacarescu's unsubtle sighs, his cut off gestures of frustration and looks of baffled fury. More that she had somehow trained herself not to see them at all.

  Her needle flashed in the lamp light, and peacocks with great trailing tails took shape under her fingers so swiftly it seemed she painted them.

  Less exhausted now, Frank found it harder to sleep with the weight of the man on the bed, with the kindly scrutiny of the girl like another weight on his cheek. He spent the night drowsing, falling asleep only to jerk awake, increasingly raw to the silent battle of wills between his two companions. By the time dawn came and both of them departed he felt a bone chewed between two dogs. He almost wished one of them would let go, just so this would be over with.

  But every night for the next week this same scenario played out, until Frank wanted to scream at them both to tell him what they were playing at. He never quite found the courage, and they didn't say.

  By the end of a week of this, the constant tension of his nights meant Frank found it easier to stay awake while it was dark, and to sleep in blessed solitude once his demon and his angel had departed. Last night they had spent on cards, Frank up and dressed, moving his left arm cautiously, but without too much pain, his ribs settled down to a dull ache and strength returned to his legs.

  "I should not think of troubling you much longer," he ventured, taking a six for vingt-et-un and trying to think of a plausible excuse to leave. They did not need to know he had nowhere else to go. "I should return to Bucharest, where surely there will be someone who knows me and can reunite me with my family."

  Next to the almost palpable threat of ...something... that had been growing in the room ever since he arrived, the thought of wandering alone in the world – never staying anywhere long enough for his misfortune to fall on those he encountered – did not have the desolation it once had. Between this household's secrets and endless flight, he thought endless flight the better option.

  "I can give you a boat," Vacarescu spoke quietly, his eyes on his cards, "and one, perhaps two men to go with you."

  “But there are many miles of river without habitation nearby at all," Alaya objected, "and look what happened to Frank the last time he was alone in a boat with a few men. There are untold dangers out there to which he would be exposed once he left our protection."

  "No one would dare touch a man marked as our family's guest." Vacarescu glowered, edging his chair a little closer to Frank's. His knee, in the long trousers the men of this nation preferred to breeches, came to rest lightly against Frank's.

  Frank edged away.

  "In happier times," Alaya made a pretty moue of disaffection, "that would be so. In happier times our people did not pack up all their possessions and run off to Transylvania. If they have so little idea of what obedience means as to do that, do you think they will obey us in this? They will attack him just to spite us.”

  Vacarescu breathed deeply and pressed his fingertips into his temples as if to soothe a headache. He did indeed look wearied; his eyes were blued beneath by the shadows of too little sleep. “It is the Turks and their punitive taxes that they flee, not us. I thought it would improve when the Austrians left, but the Turks are worse. They say they mean to rule us for our own good, but truly I think their aim is to starve us out so they can move their own people in when we're gone.”

  Alaya bounced in her seat suddenly, causing the candle flames to flicker. She clapped her hands in glee. “I have an idea. We could go to Bucharest. We could all go! I've always wanted to. Oh, think of it! We could open up the town house and have balls and carriage rides and evening supper parties by the lake and—”

  “No.”

  “You would be close to the Voivode. You could talk to him, tell him how we suffer, ask him to make the people pay less.”

  Something in the shape of Vacarescu's shoulders reminded Frank of bear-baiting, the wounded animal pushed into the wall of the pit as the dogs gave tongue. “I said no. I've said no a thousand times. Learn to be content.”

  Alaya scowled, and fingered one of the silver chains that hung down by her ear. It was the first truly ugly expression Frank had seen on her face, and it threw into sharp contrast the artificial, mannequin-like quality to her innocence.

  "It would be the only way we could be sure Frank had got there safely."

  Even to Frank, whose wits were returning slowly in a patchwork of dreams, there was something heavy in her words. Surely not a threat? But when he looked at Vacarescu he saw, again, a powerful thing overmatched, a man fighting despair as well as terror. Could it be it wasn't himself the man feared at all, but his daughter? No. That made no sense – it was not a woman Frank had eluded on the path. Not a woman he had looked up at and seen Vacarescu's distinctive eyes and height.

  “My strength is not yet so contemptible that anyone in this banat can afford to challenge it.”

  Alaya shook her head, gently so as to avoid dislodging her headdress, which today was the shape of a crescent moon and embroidered all over with gold. "Maybe you're right. In any case, we must send to the villages to acquire provisions and whatever else they will need for the journey. It will take a fortnight at least before we can equip Frank to depart." She turned her deep blue eyes on him with an adoring look that might have suited a spaniel. "I wish you would stay until you are completely better," she said, "I don't like the thought of you on a long journey while you're still recovering. But if you're sure that's what you want, then give us a few weeks and we will make it happen."

  A few weeks, Frank thought, his heart shriveling at the thought. But perhaps he was being unfair, twisting their polite words into threats where none had been meant. Nothing had happened to him yet. It was possible nothing would.

  Maybe he had been knocked hard on the head and had simply imagined the demon that had bent close and breathed in his face. And the fear, everywhere in this country, choking around this house like a sulfurous fog; it could be due to politics and a poor harvest and the prospect of a long winter without food.

  "Thank you," he said, because what other option was there? "I am eternally obliged to you."

  The next night, everything changed. Voices awoke him so early there was yet a little stain of blue in the western sky. For once, he was alone in his chamber. The sound of an argument grumbled up from one of the other rooms in the castle, making strange echoes along the walls.

  He had so much recovered that he was not even stiff as he slid out of bed and clambered into the clothes they'd given him - long russet trousers, embroidered shirt, a woolen waistcoat lined with silk and an amber-colored coat lined with hare fur.

  He crept quietly down the stone corridor, following the gleam that slid out from around a distant door. It was closed – a massive, ill-fitting thing, so old its grayed wood had shrunk away from the jamb on either side, leaving a gap fully an inch wide where it hung on its enormous hinges. Little chance of those in the room looking through the gap and seeing him here, dark against the background of the dark corridor, but if he put his eye to the gap he
could see almost everything in the lit room beyond.

  And after all his subterfuge, it was only a pleasant sitting room, the ceiling and upper parts of the walls painted in sea green. The oak paneling below had been carved and gilded with lacework that spoke of Ottoman influence - like the geometrical designs of mosques.

  Vacarescu stood on one side of the fire, with his lips drawn back from his teeth, all but trembling with rage. On the other side, holding his gaze with an expression of paternal long-suffering, stood a tall gentleman Frank had not seen before. The family resemblance was remarkable. This man too had the powerful build, the straight-backed arrogance and the pale triangular eyes. But his long hair was white as paper, the light moving over it as it would over silk. His white beard hung down to his belt and flicked when he talked, like the tail of an angry cat. “Child,” he said, gently, but with an undertone of steel. “Your mother and I have decided it is long past time.”

  He turned to a servant blocked from Frank's field of sight. “Bring them closer.”

  The suggestion of a bow, just in the corner of Frank's vision, and then a white veiled figure lurched into view as though someone had shoved her in the back. Frank almost gasped. Mirela! No! Damn it, she was supposed to get away. All that cleverness and sacrifice was not supposed to amount to nothing at all. She was not supposed to be captured and brought here to...

  As she straightened up, he saw that her long golden hair had been dressed and braided with new fresh flowers. Her plain shift had been replaced with finer linen that better showed off her statuesque figure. Her scowling face had been cleaned and painted, two spots of rouge on her cheeks subsumed under a flush of fury.

  Brought here to what, though?

  The old man inclined his head, and two other girls were supported into the globe of tricksy light around the family's fire. One was weeping so hard she could barely stand, her face leaving smears of powder on the housekeeper's plain gown. Frank found it hard to believe that kindly matron would have anything to do with ... whatever this was, and she was indeed masked in iron discretion that could have hidden deeply buried repugnance.