I hugged myself, laughing soundlessly, and slid my knife away, shivering a little as the sweat cooled on my skin.
The night settled back into a study of greys. I heard all sorts of things—owls, bats, a child waking and being soothed, a reassuringly distant chorus of dogs-or-perhaps-wolves, but the only motion I perceived, in the hours that followed, was an owl, two mice, and the near-imperceptible shift of shadows from the moon.
I sat on the log all that night, eyes open and ears ready, waiting for witches, cats, or Transylvanian vampires, and thinking of the superstitions of darkness. Nothing moved until the stars were fading, and Holmes came up the road.
* * *
—
I tried to feel pleased that no trouble had disturbed the sleepers of Bran during the night, but mostly I felt tired and cold.
“How do we get back in?” I asked Holmes. “I’ll need to limber up a bit if we plan on scaling the walls.”
“The watch changes at 6:00 each morning. When I was here before, I took care to establish myself as a man who enjoys an early morning perambulation. The morning guards will assume that you and I walked out openly during the night watch.”
“I hope you also established yourself as a man who enjoys an afternoon nap?”
“I would often take to my room and ask that my study not be disturbed.”
“Excellent plan,” I said.
In the meantime, a cold bath and strong coffee would have to suffice. I went to run the former while Holmes set about the latter. When I came out, still shivering but wide awake, I found him shaving before the mirror. “I suggested that we would omit the tea phase of the morning and go straight to coffee and eggs,” he told me in pauses around the moving blade. “The fires were already going, so the girl should be here soon.”
Indeed, he had just begun to wipe away the shaving cream when the knock came. I opened the door and greeted Gabriela as she walked past me. She returned my greeting with a mere nod, and set about unloading the tray, head down, moving in a brisk and business-like fashion. Perhaps the Queen’s presence put everyone on their best behaviour, I thought, rather regretting the change from the ebullient serving girl to this silent one.
“Thank you, Gabriela, it’s good of you to bring this so early, we have to be—”
She had been moving a plate from tray to table when it caught the edge of the milk jug and fell from her grasp, falling to the table with a clatter. No harm was done, but the girl jumped back with a startled cry.
No, not business-like: deeply troubled. “Gabriela, what’s wrong?”
“No, no—nothing, I sorry for the noise, sunt proasta, my hands they—”
I touched her arm to stop her. “Gabriela, don’t worry about the plates, what has happened? Is someone bothering you? Shall I ring for Mr Florescu?”
“No!” She pulled away, twisting her hands together, then burst out, “My friend Vera, she is meeting strigoi!”
And with that she spun and darted from the room.
I followed as far as the empty hallway, but did not pursue her into the labyrinth. A serving girl as proud as she would be humiliated at knowing she had troubled one of the castle’s guests, and in any event, that particular trouble did not seem to require our immediate intervention.
I closed the door and went to take the cup of coffee Holmes held out.
We ate a rapid and subdued breakfast, and went in search of information from a higher power.
Chapter Fourteen
The butler’s pantry of Castle Bran was instantly recognisable as such, despite being in a Transylvanian fortress with an occupant wearing sumptuous peasant garb instead of the customary high-collared formal suit. It even had the right smell: silver polish, old paperwork, and a trace of ironing from a nearby room.
Also typical, the man whose realm this was—the tyrant whose word hired or fired the help, whose mere footstep on the stairs sent maids to scurrying—disapproved of this invasion by guests from “upstairs.” Or perhaps his discomfort was entirely to do with the questions Holmes confronted him with, and his determination to convince us that all was well and there were no problems in the village. Certainly nothing involving vampires.
Holmes lifted one eyebrow in rebuke. “Mr Florescu, you are aware that I was hired by your employer—by the Queen of your country—to make some enquiries into Bran’s troubles. I trust that I do not have to inform her that I have failed to make any progress due to a lack of cooperation from within her own house.”
The butler turned pale, and I became aware that he was older than I’d thought—his fine wrinkles suggested he was in his fifties, although his straight back and the very few silver strands in his dark hair had made him look younger. The man’s pride and dignity turned his traditional clothing into a uniform, and looking more closely, I found that his shirt had been starched, his loose trousers held a knife’s edge down their front—and I had to look away when I saw that his moustache bore the tracks of a comb.
“Sir, I have fully cooperated with you. If any of the other staff have not, please tell me their names.”
“No, the other servants have been most helpful, it is you I need to address. Mr Florescu, your niece seemed quite upset just now. Gabriela is your niece, I think? She said a friend of hers had met a strigoi. A fact that I should have been informed of immediately.”
“It…She is not…I don’t…” He stopped, and drew himself up, a royal butler to his bones. “I apologise, Madam, Sir, for the girl’s troubling of you. It is true, there appears to be some difficulty in the village. A friend of hers has fallen ill, that is all.”
“Ill, how?”
“She has an active imagination.”
“In that she thought she spoke with a dead person?”
“Pah! Girls.”
Holmes and I looked at him, wordless indication that we were not going away. The man’s jaw twitched, but he gestured us to the two hard chairs more commonly used for long and uncomfortable conversations with underlings.
“Girls of their age, you know,” he began. “They enjoy stories. They read books, go to cinema in Brașov, they gather and try to out-do each other’s tales of love and fear. One of them will hear a thing, the next will build the details, the third says she may have met the person in question, then the first must go back to find a bigger tale. It is a, how do you say? Spiral? Yes?”
“And this strigoi that Gabriela’s friend saw is the bigger tale?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Tell us about the ‘things’ and ‘details’ that have gone before.”
“The events that made the Queen ask me here in the first place,” Holmes pointedly added.
The butler looked away, the closest he could get to actually putting distance between himself and us—or perhaps between himself and what he was saying. “You know of the book by your Mr Stoker, I believe. A silly story, by a man who knows nothing of the country but for what strangers say about it, who brings in folk-tales and superstitions and says they are the same as a long-ago ruler, a man of huge violence and evil deeds. Well, there are other tales among my people, about a noblewoman whose great beauty concealed a great corruption of soul. A woman who maintained her beauty and youth by bathing in…” His words ran dry, and he looked at his hands as if hoping a newspaper clipping might appear there that he could simply hand us.
Holmes finished his sentence. “Bathing in the blood of young virgins, yes. You speak of the Countess Erzabet Báthory.”
Florescu looked up in surprise, and in relief at not having to say those words. “Exactly, Sir. Terrible stories, told by silly girls and ignorant peasants to put fear into one another. I did not think the Countess was known to the world outside.”
“Some of us have wide-ranging habits when it comes to research. Why are the village girls spreading stories about Countess Báthory? I understand that the incident
in the spring might have brought the Countess to mind—the kitchen maid’s cut hand—but what does that have to do with a girl and a strigoi?”
“Nothing! Exactly—you see?”
“No, in fact I do not see. I asked about the strigoi; you brought up the Countess. How are they related?”
The butler looked taken aback. Clearly, he hadn’t considered the problem. “They are not. You are right. Or should not be. But Sir, Madam—you know, strange things are happening in Bran, in recent times,” the butler admitted. “It is why you are here. No doubt there are explanations, but still, the ignorant talk. A cow dies in a family having troubles with a neighbour—that enemy must have done it. A man goes into the forest and does not come out, evil is thought, not accident. Strange marks appear on walls, girls walking home hear noises in the night, dogs bark at nothing—Sir, Madam, you are educated people. I do not need to tell you that the simple person’s imagination picks up the unknown and builds a mountain of it. And the talk feeds itself.”
“What kind of talk?” Holmes pressed.
The butler was practically squirming in his chair. “Wicked talk. Irresponsible talk.”
“Saying what?”
“Evil things! Things she would never permit to enter her mind! I have served her since the day she first came to Bran, five years ago. If anything…like that was entering this castle, I would know.”
I could feel Holmes settle, a reflection of my own thought: At last, we arrive at the core of the matter. “You are saying that gossip has started up around Queen Marie? Rumours of evil and corrupt doings, of her…taking advantage of the young women of the vicinity?”
“Her Majesty is beautiful in her own person! She rides out for the joy of riding this countryside that she loves, she stops to talk to the people in their cottages because she cares for them, not because she…” Again, his tongue froze rather than finish the sentence.
“Because she is looking the place over with an eye to victims?”
Florescu looked ashamed, perhaps for having permitted the words to have been pronounced within this place.
“Tell us about these ‘strange marks’ on the walls,” Holmes said.
“I have only seen some. Most are scrubbed away quickly. By the fathers, you know? They fear they may be words their daughters should not see, and their sons should not learn.”
“So these are obscenities?”
“Some. When they started, in the spring, nobody knew—until a person who knew that word noticed and told the others. Now, when they appear, some may be bad, others not, but it is better to be safe and wash them away. They come at night, they are in simple chalk so a bucket of water deals with them, but they are disturbing. Some threaten girls—all girls, no names. ‘Girls here are not safe.’ Which is very much not true. Others are not, er…” His eyes flicked sideways at me, and he changed what he had been going to say. “They are not normal? Not the kind of words boys teach each other. They talk of pain, and power over the weak, using words many villagers have never heard. Words that are in no dictionary.”
“And these words and threats are aimed at the Queen?”
“No. The other way. It is as if…as if she is the one saying them.”
“What, you mean they’re signed with her name? Or, I suppose, title?”
“That is not necessary. Not when they are written in her own tongue.”
“Ah. They’re in English, then, these ‘strange marks.’ ”
“Some of the marks are words, yes, and English. Others just marks.”
“Obscene drawings?”
“Some, I heard. The two I saw were symbols, of some kind. I took those down myself, as the villagers would not.”
He was clearly hiding something, and when Holmes spoke, his voice was crisp with irritation. “Mr Florescu, I would appreciate your help in this matter. I cannot work without cold, hard facts. I see that this causes you discomfort, but we are adults, and we both wish to present Her Majesty with a solution to her problem. Do we not?”
The man flushed, his very moustache quivering with indignation at the thought that he might not wish to serve his Queen. He jerked open the top drawer of his desk and slapped a pad of paper down on the blotter, snatched up a pencil and threw a few lines on the page.
The first was a star inside a circle. The second was the overlapping W we had seen marked into the forest trees. “Those are just apotropaic—just marks meant to turn away witches,” I said.
“Yes. Superstition—pah! My village is small, but we are educated. The people here know better.”
His shame was palpable.
Holmes nodded thoughtfully. “So to be clear: the chalk marks that have been appearing are either rude words in English or obscene sketches. The residents take those down. But others are the marks meant to repel witches, and they sometimes leave those up. Is that right?”
“I wash them, when I see,” he declared.
“Yes. Is it possible the villagers themselves are putting those up?”
He looked away. “Some are paint,” he said, admission enough.
We had exhausted the question of the mysterious marks, I thought, and to rescue him from the embarrassment of his people’s gullibility, I returned to the question that had brought us here. “Before we go—Gabriela’s friend, the girl with the ‘active imagination’? What does she say happened to her?”
Before, Florescu had been uncomfortable, reluctant. Now his face shut down entirely. “Nothing happened.”
Holmes’ gaze snapped onto him. “That is not what we have heard, Mr Florescu.”
“Nothing happened to the girl.”
Silence fell. We let it lie there.
After a moment, the moustache twitched. “The girl was walking home last night.”
“From—?”
“Here. She works in the kitchen—a new girl. Vera Dumitru. They finished cleaning later than usual.”
“What time was it?”
“Near to midnight.”
Not long before Holmes and I went out. I did not look at him, but I knew his expression would be as chagrined as my own.
“Was she alone?
“Three girls left together. Two live on the other side of the village, Vera on this. They stopped at the road—probably smoking a cigarette, if I know them—and then the two went left and Vera to the right.”
“The road to Brașov?”
“The small road, past the churchyard. She says she was passing the church and heard a voice call to her. She was surprised, but not afraid, or so she says. This is a quiet village, you understand? Things that happen in cities are not found here. And there are houses all around, to hear if a girl…”
“Is being attacked,” I supplied.
“Exactly! So she looked to see who it was, thinking maybe one of her brother’s friends was teasing at her, and she kept her voice small so as not to wake those sleeping. She said, who was there.” He paused, noticed the pad still sitting on the desk and returned it to the drawer. “Who is there? The voice says, ‘Andrei.’ This is a common name, so she says, which Andrei? And the voice says, ‘The one killed near Fagaraș during the War.’ This was a boy she knew, a boy we buried. His body came here.” Florescu looked up, the moustache lifted in an awkward smile. “She ran. Down the road to her home.”
Holmes, clearly not as disturbed by what that smile had revealed as I was, asked him for the boy’s name, and whether the girl Vera was generally flighty, and I think some other question that went past me, and Holmes may have asked to speak with the girl and Florescu replied that he would ask her father, and then perhaps some other conversation happened but not much, because we were on our feet and out into what seemed to be a beautiful spring morning, and I turned to Holmes and hissed, low, so as not to be overheard.
“Holmes, did you see that?”
“I saw that
the man was hiding something, yes.”
“No—I mean his teeth. When he smiled? The Queen’s butler has fangs!”
Chapter Fifteen
Holmes reared back his head to stare at me—and then he began to laugh, so hard he had to lean against the wall behind him.
It was, I realised belatedly, quite a ridiculous thing to say. Loads of people had bad teeth. The character in that Nosferatu film hadn’t even been given the fangs described in Dracula, but instead had the dental arrangement of a rat. Though, come to think of it, those would be easier on an actor than long, pointed incisors: less risk of stabbing through one’s lower lip.
“Yes, all right, I’m a bit low on sleep. And I’m sorry we didn’t go out earlier last night, when we might have given chase.” He wiped the laughter from his eyes, and my lethargic brain grabbed at a passing thought. “Still, I don’t see how a returned-from-the-dead soldier serves to blacken the reputation of the Queen.”
“Nor do I,” admitted Holmes, to my relief. “And Florescu’s reluctance to speak about it may have been a general wish to keep me from thinking the villagers simple-minded. I suspect this particular event may be a mere jape among the village youth, rather than someone wishing to play up tensions in the village. Father Constantin will know.”
“Is that the priest you waved to across the field yesterday?”
“Priests can be remarkably useful people,” he said by way of answer. “If nothing else, one generally has some liturgical language or other in common with them.”
“Is that where we’re headed?”
“I wish a word with the village doctor first. He should be at the surgery today.”
I’d seen the surgery from the road, a small, neat out-house attached to the kind of village shop that sold everything from rat-traps to collar starch. As we walked up the road, a motorcar approached from the direction of Brașov. As it came closer, I saw that it was the large, new English shooting-brake that had been parked before the shop the afternoon we arrived. And indeed, the driver steered it into the wide gravel pad and shut off the motor. His door swung open, and a handsome, clean-shaven man in his late forties stepped out and trotted around to the passenger side.
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