Castle Shade

by Laurie R. King

I nodded. “Sinaia.”

  He kicked the cycle into life again, and turned onto the Sinaia road.

  * * *

  —

  As Brașov fell behind us, for the first time in hours, I spared a thought for Andrei Costea, well-bathed, but possibly growing hungry in our castle rooms. Should I tell Holmes what I’d learned? No, better not to toss out any more distractions.

  The road climbed, though its surface was good. Better yet, here it was more forest than farmland. Fewer chickens and cats, fewer hen-houses to tempt predators, and wildlife more wary of engine noises than their more civilised brothers.

  The drawback was, we saw no more bloody evidence of a motorcar’s passage.

  Grimly, Holmes took us faster, then faster yet. I tucked my head down, hoping to keep my spectacles from blowing off in the wind and became all too aware that the cushion had vanished from underneath me.

  Two or three miles after leaving Brașov, I felt him react to something. I straightened, trying to see over his shoulder. “What?”

  “Head-lamps,” he said. “On the switch-backs ahead of us.”

  Switch-backs were good. The road surface was excellent. A motor-cyclist willing to take risks could gain on a car on the back and forth, especially at night when any oncoming traffic would warn with its lights. I let go of the blanket, allowing the wind to rip it into the night, and used the hand to pat at the pocket of Holmes’ coat, to make sure I could find the revolver if I needed to. I then wrapped my arms around him and plastered myself to his back, going with his every lean and shift.

  Our speed grew, terrifying and exhilarating. We clung to the road, leaning deeply left, and right, and left again, the surface closer to our knees with every turn.

  The road hit its peak at Predeal, and started downwards, and I caught a glimpse of lights ahead—but…

  Before I could speak, I felt Holmes’ body go slack with disappointment, heard the slight reduction of speed as his hand ceased its full push on the throttle.

  We went past the War-era Renault as if it were standing still, and flew on.

  The road grew straighter, and any slight upper hand we might have had now lost ground to the powerful engine of the shooting-brake. We joined a larger highway. Houses began to appear, and smaller lanes. A village, then another—and the occasional motor coming towards us, or ahead going south. We passed one of these, just before the town of Busteni, then another.

  All of a sudden, Holmes reared back, setting the brakes hard and fighting to keep us upright. I had felt the shift of his muscles and reacted in an instant, but even so, his abrupt motion bashed my teeth and caught me off guard. We almost went down—if I’d been in his place, we would have—but he kept our wheels straight, and I felt the turn begin as soon as our flirtation with disaster was over. “Sorry,” he said, and circled to take us back to the turn-off he had spotted just moments too late.

  We were now passing through a series of expensive, locked gates with groomed trees and the occasional glimpse of formal gardens. This must be Sinaia, the summer capital, where Bucharest moved when the weather grew hot.

  It was a maze of small roads and drives, but Holmes seemed to know where he was going—or rather, to judge by the tension in his back, he had a picture of it by day, and was working to reconstruct the route by night.

  Past some buildings, down a hill, across a stream—then lights appeared before us.

  It could only be a royal castle, with sweeping entrance and guard house before a bulk that would contain hundreds of rooms—but in front of it stood the shooting-brake, driver’s door open and head-lamps burning. As the cycle came to a skidding halt beside it, two men in livery were just crossing the internal courtyard, visible through a pair of archways. I clambered off the metal seat, as stiff as if I’d been on a horse all day. Still, I was in better shape than Holmes, who was struggling to uncurl his hands from the grips.

  “Holmes, one of us has to move fast. Can you distract the guards?”

  “Take the pistol,” he said, then raised his voice to call in his plummiest of tones, “I say there, my good man, I wonder if you could help me? Terribly sorry, it’s ridiculously late, but I’m looking for a gent who—”

  The two men emerged from the right-hand archway. I pocketed the weapon and took off to the left as fast as my limbs would carry me. Which fortunately was faster than two hefty men with boots, overcoats, and ceremonial pikestaffs.

  They shouted, but I made it across the courtyard and halfway up the grand internal stairway before the younger of the two had reached the doors. I was in a hall of some kind—this level would be entirely public and formal, thus far from the family’s bedrooms—but as I glanced up, I was startled to see the sky above open galleries. Lights burned inside—not many, but enough to show me the stairs. As I launched up them, I began to shout.

  “Guards! Protect your Queen! Stop the doctor—Ileana, it’s Mary Russell—Mrs Holmes—Ileana!”

  The two guards were shouting and clattering behind me, Holmes’ voice joined the fray, and I was getting short of breath as I pelted along sumptuous corridors and grand stairways, shouting and cursing the solid sleep of the royal family. Where were the footmen—and how far had the doctor got?

  Another set of stairs—and the living quarters at last, corridors with thick carpets and lined with busts and vases and paintings. One of the guards behind me was faster than I’d expected, I could feel him gaining on me and I thought of the gun, but who was I kidding, I wasn’t going to send bullets flying here—and then from ahead of me came a man’s shout. Halfway around a corner, I skidded on my heels and nearly went down, then ducked away from a large footman—who collided with the guard behind me in a pandemonium of curses, letting me dodge through the corner ahead of my pursuer.

  Then everything happened at once.

  On my first step inside the dim-lit corridor, I spotted a man with a doctor’s bag standing hand raised from knocking at a closed door. At my second step, a door across from him came open. My fourth step, Ileana came out from it, sleep-tousled, arms full of fluffy white dog. I opened my mouth to shout—and at my fifth step, the door in front of the doctor drew back, revealing the Queen herself.

  “He took Gabriela!” I shouted, but that was my eighth step, and the doctor’s hand was shifting to straight-arm the Queen back into the room.

  I pounded down the endless length of hallway, knowing I would never make it, unable even to pause and draw the gun—but then a white blur flew down the carpet, snarling and furious, to dive after the disappearing leg. The many-throated chorus of shouts was joined by screams, male and female, and the doctor reappeared, stumbling backwards, swatting at the white shape attached to the back of his thigh. Five more steps before I could tackle him—but I was ten feet away when a priceless oriental vase crashed down on his skull. He swayed, and collapsed.

  The Queen and Ileana, wearing identical shocked expressions, looked from him to me. I slowed—only to go down under several hundred pounds of angry palace guard.

  Chapter Fifty

  They did give me a thick travelling rug before parking me in the formal great hall, under the eye of no fewer than four uniformed men. Minutes after I’d been placed there, a rush of traffic swept through, escorting a man with a doctor’s bag. A few minutes after that, a sleepy maid appeared to light the fireplace beside me, which might not have been necessary, given that it was August, except for the odd fact that the room had no roof.

  Thirty minutes went by. My bruises developed, my stiffness grew. Voices went back and forth from somewhere overhead, occasionally that of Holmes. The new doctor came back down—the King, in his sickbed, had apparently not even heard the disruption.

  I could only hope that my brief message had reached Holmes; before the guards dragged me away, I’d managed to shout a few brief words over my shoulder—in Arabic, a language no one in the place would understand: �
��Don’t let her learn what the doctor wanted!”

  Then I was hauled down here, while he was ushered into a private room for a conversation with Her Majesty.

  Typical of men.

  I got laboriously to my feet. The guards bristled as they watched me make a circuit of the settee, my attempt to keep the bruises from turning to stone. I hobbled like an octogenarian around the sumptuous, befringed silk, then winced as I attempted to raise my gaze upward at the odd ceiling. Was it not curious, to have such an ornate hall standing open to the elements? But this time I noticed a partial roof, an ornate glass affair that covered approximately a third of the space—and realised simultaneously that this must be some kind of retractable ceiling that had either jammed or been left open, and that the sky overhead was no longer black.

  I came to a halt before the inadequate fire, whose warmth at least brushed the backs of my legs as it flew upward. I edged slowly about like a roast on a spit, and was considering the possibility of getting to my knees, so I could toast my shoulders as well, when brisk footsteps came up the entrance stairway, followed by the click of heels as the guards snapped to attention. I shuffled myself around to see who it was.

  A tall, slim, dark man in his fifties, trim of moustache and intense of gaze: this could only be the Queen’s advisor, friend, and purported lover, Prince Barbu Știrbey.

  “Esti tu femeia—” he began, then caught himself. “Are you the woman they say was attacking the Queen?”

  “I am the woman who was trying to save the Queen from attack. I believe you met my husband the other day. Mr Holmes?”

  His eyes widened, and darted over my bruised and dishevelled figure before he turned on the nearest guard with a flood of crisply irate Roumanian. I unwrapped the wool from my shoulders and managed to drape it across the settee, then broke into his tirade.

  “Sir, please, I should like to see that Her Majesty and the Princess Ileana are all right. And to speak to my husband.”

  He shot a quick question at the terrified guard, who gave an equally brief reply. Prince Barbu then reached out for my elbow to guide me towards the stairs, a gesture that told me precisely how feeble I looked. I made an effort, and by the time we hit the second flight of stairs, I was moving like a fairly spry fifty-year-old.

  “Sir, do you know if there is any news from Bran—about the girl who was taken?”

  He made a sound of irritation and said, “Yes, of course, I should have told you immediately. There was a telephone message from the exchange in Brașov, that the police went to the hunting lodge and found the girl. She is quite safe. Although, if I understood the message, angry.”

  “That sounds like her.” I found I was grinning, at the thought of a furious Gabi Stoica. “Does Ileana—does the Princess know?”

  “She does. She was worried.”

  “They are friends.”

  My spirits were considerably lighter but that did not speed my pace any. However, our slow progress gave me time to take in the details—and detail there was in abundance. The palace itself—a castle in name only, despite the lorry-loads of decorative weapons and armour—was as new as its royal family. And the mind behind both the building and its decoration was of the “If one is good, seventeen is better” school. Every balustrade carved, every wall covered by gilt-framed paintings, every door the result of weeks of a craftsman’s labour. A Victorian sitting-room run amuck.

  There could be no more different building from Castle Bran than this one.

  Prince Barbu strode ahead of me, going straight to a door and flinging it open with the assurance of a man who lived here. He dropped to one knee in front of Queen Marie and raised her hand to his lips, a gesture that clearly came naturally to them both. He rose and turned to Ileana, who sat swollen-eyed but hugely relieved, her arms around the white dog on her lap. To her he gave a small bow, affectionate and slightly ironic. Her own tip of the head, despite the tension in her posture, held a similar trace of humour. He even patted the dog.

  In less than five seconds, I knew all about the love and respect these three held for one another.

  I moved over to Holmes, who looked askance at my swollen lip but said nothing.

  “Does she know?” I murmured.

  “What the doctor was after? I’ve not told her, and he wasn’t conscious when we left him. I do not know if he is awake yet. You heard that the Brașov police found Gabriela.”

  “I did—but look, we have to—” I started, but Prince Barbu came into earshot then, turning to Holmes and asking if they might speak. I watched them go, praying that Holmes had got my message, that he agreed with it—and that anything could be done to carry it out.

  I gave the Queen and her daughter an encouraging smile. “Your Majesty, I apologise that we could not keep Dr Mikó from disturbing your sleep with such a dreadful interruption. And Princess, congratulations on taking such decisive action. Bulldog Drummond would be proud.”

  The girl’s pinched face relaxed, just a little. “You think so?”

  “Absolutely! The only thing that will keep the Sapper from writing this up is the thought of offending your cousin’s dignity.”

  She considered for a moment the likely reaction of George V, when it came to such royal shenanigans as a young nightgown-clad Princess bashing an intruder on the skull with a priceless antique, and broke into a grin of pure pleasure. “Someone ought to tell the Sapper about it, anyway.”

  “If he does publish the story, he’ll have to get the dog right.”

  She tightened her arms around the sleeping creature. “I’m so glad Gabi was found. But have you any idea what that man wanted? He’s the Bran doctor, isn’t he? I’ve seen him drive past in that extraordinary wagon of his.”

  I could feel Queen Marie’s warning look, but I was ahead of her in my caution. “Princess, I’m sure that you know how irrational men can become when it comes to politics. I fear we will find that someone has turned the doctor’s mind, and driven him to this act of lunacy.”

  “But how did he get in?” she demanded. This time, it was the guard near the door who straightened sharply at her question.

  “I would imagine that a man with a medical bag is a common sight here these days, with your father ill? Well, we are all fortunate that this Bedlamite met his match in a small dog and a student of Bulldog Drummond. And you can be very certain that the guards have learned their lesson, and that it shall never happen again.”

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Sherlock Holmes followed the Prince out of the Queen’s sitting-room and down a hall to a nearby room—a library, of a sort, although designed less for reading than to impress male friends with its solid expanse of leather spines. Prince Barbu pulled the doors shut in the face of the guard outside, then gestured Holmes to an armchair while he walked over to an elaborate drinks cabinet. He filled two glasses from a decanter of transparent liquid, bringing them back to the chairs. “I don’t know if it’s time for a drink or morning coffee, but I imagine the latter will arrive before long. In any event, I need this first.”

  Holmes took a generous, medicinal swallow, relishing the travel of warmth down his throat. It was tuica, but with a rich complexity that made the others he’d drunk taste like paint stripper. He took another sip, then both men reached for tobacco. When the smoke was rising, the Prince flicked ash from the end of his cigarette.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  And Holmes did, from his arrival in Bran the previous evening, having accompanied the Queen to Sinaia, through tracing Russell to a country house on the other side of Brașov, to the motor-cycle chase through the mountains. He kept to the main points, but even without the details, coffee had been served and the palace was about its morning business before he finished.

  “I did not see what happened with Russell after we arrived,” he ended. “Although I understand that she and Princess Ileana between them over
came the doctor. And I did see a revolver in his medical bag, afterwards.”

  “Why were you not there?”

  “One of us had to stay on the forecourt to distract the guards. Russell is quicker on her feet than I.”

  “Although not fast enough to avoid the guards.”

  “She’d done her job, and they were doing theirs. She saw no reason to hurt them.”

  The Prince laughed; Holmes did not.

  The Prince reached out to refresh their coffee cups, and sat back, considering. “This Bran doctor. He honestly imagines that he has a right to Castle Bran? He’s not simply a lunatic?”

  “There does seem to be at least a fragile basis for his conviction that the family has a claim to the building. Inheriting his uncle’s money made it appear to be within his grasp—at least, until Russell and I began to throw barriers in his way. Tonight’s violence was a last, desperate act of fury and despair. No less dangerous for that, of course, but it was not what he planned at the start.”

  “Is he mad?”

  “I would call it madness. A psychiatrist might not.”

  “I hate that he troubles the Queen, just now. There is too much on her mind as it is. The King. Their son. Ileana’s English school.”

  Holmes studied the other man, running his hand over his hair, as if smoothing away his own discomfort. “Do you…that is to say, Sir—do you love her?”

  The Prince looked startled at the abrupt question. However, he did not protest, or declare it inappropriate. Instead, he gave a little smile. “She is my Queen. I would give her my life. She, and her daughter.”

  And Holmes nodded, as if this was answer enough. “I don’t know that self-sacrifice will be required of you, merely a degree of ethical flexibility. My wife believes that, were the Queen to learn of Dr Mikó’s…delusions, it would taint her affection for Bran and its people.”

  After a moment, the Prince nodded. “It might. Not at first, but the thought would persist. She would find excuses to be elsewhere. Which would be a pity. Bran is the one place she can be herself.”