Borrower of the Night

It had been a beautiful object – a rich man’s prized possession. But the silver had turned black and the revolting rodents had ruined the box. One corner was completely gnawed away. I lifted the top with a quick twist that ripped out the decayed hasp and lock. The chest was beyond repair.

Most of the interior was filled with the remains of a linen bag, also gnawed by rodent teeth. When I tried to lift it, the rotted cloth dissolved, spilling a heap of coarse grey powder into the bottom of the box.

I touched it with a cautious finger, wondering what it had been. The centuries might have reduced any substance, solid or semi-solid, to this state. My fingertip, penetrating more deeply, touched something hard. I extracted it and held it up to the light.

Not more than an inch in height, the small gold figure might have been an amulet; there was a rounded link at the top of it. After considering the object, I decided I would not care to wear it. It was meant to represent an animal of some kind. The wide, grinning jaws and pop eyes rather suggested a frog, but no frog I had ever met had such a wicked look. The Drachenstein crest had nothing to do with frogs. Whatever this monstrosity had been meant to be, it was not a dragon. It certainly wasn’t one of Riemenschneider’s pieces. He couldn’t have produced an abortion like this if he had wanted to. In fact, the trinket had a look of antiquity far older than the sixteenth century.

I shrugged and dropped it into the pocket of my robe. Maybe it was a talisman or lucky piece belonging to an ancestor of Burckhardt’s – that same crusading count who had brought the jewels back to Drachenstein. The amulet had an eastern look . . .

And with that, a dark and elusive memory stirred unpleasantly in the back of my mind – stirred and subsided, like a slimy thing in a swamp.

Chapter Ten

MY SLEEPNESS NIGHTS were beginning to catch up with me. I didn’t wake till almost noon next day. I had dreamed that some faceless intruder was tampering with the little chest, but when I stretched out an anxious hand, I found it on the nightstand where I had left it. That had been a stupid place to put it, but I had been too tired the night before to think straight. I tucked the chest into a corner of my suitcase and locked the case.

I didn’t see Tony till lunchtime. I found him alone at our table. George had gone off to Creglingen to see the altar there. Tony seemed vexed by this. His mood was not improved when the Grafin came in, a royal procession of one, and joined us at our table. I wondered what she was after this time.

‘I wished to tell you again how sorry I am that your vacation has been so unpleasant,’ she began. ‘It is unaccountable. Never, until you came, have we known such violence.’

‘Is that right,’ I said. ‘You surprise me. I would think a place like this had seen a lot of violence over the years.’

‘Many years ago, perhaps. But this is ancient history now. There has not been a prisoner in those horrid cells since sixteen thirty. And on that occasion Graf Otto was severely reprimanded by the emperor.’

I exchanged glances with Tony. Damn her, the woman knew every move we had made.

‘You are well acquainted with the family history for someone who is not a Drachenstein by birth,’ I said.

‘I was forced to amuse myself. To be buried in this provincial spot after Prague, Vienna, Budapest was not easy for a spoiled young girl. My husband loved his home and would not leave it. I painted, embroidered, studied music; but these soon pall.’

‘Especially when one has mastered them,’ Tony said. It was a reluctant compliment, and not an empty one. I too was sure the old lady could master anything she attempted. She acknowledged his courtesy with a chilly smile.

‘So then I turned to a study of genealogy. As a professor of history, you will understand its fascination. Are you making progress with your research into the Peasants’ Revolt, and Count Burckhardt?’

‘I’ve been to the town archives.’ Tony eyed the woman with what he obviously thought was a look of fiendish cunning. ‘I imagine you’ve used them too.’

‘Oh, yes. I know the story of the Countess Konstanze’s death.’

‘Does your niece know it?’ I asked.

‘She does not. She is already sufficiently unbalanced on that subject.’

Tony was turning red – a sure sign that he was about to lose his temper.

‘Irma must know the story,’ he said. ‘How else can you account for what she said in the seance?’

‘Must I account for it? “There are more things in heaven and earth,” as your poet so cleverly puts it.’

‘Rrrr,’ said Tony He turned the growl into a cough. ‘I would be more willing to admit the supernatural if there were some quasi-logical reason for a haunting. Even a spectre has to have a raison d’etre. You surely know the classic explanations – unexpiated crime, for instance.’

‘How clever!’ exclaimed the Grafin. ‘;But what of innocence abused and unavenged? Konstanze was falsely accused – ’

‘Naturally.’

‘Yes, we moderns know the folly of the witchcraft persecution. Yet her fate was not surprising. She was a learned woman who had been educated by a family priest in her home near Granada. His lessons apparently gave her ideas which were, in that day, dangerously heretical. It is said that she was in commumcation with Trithemius, at Wurzburg.’

‘That must be apocryphal,’ Tony said. ‘Trithemius died in fifteen sixteen. But that doesn’t account for the lady’s restlessness. She can’t be worried about her reputation; we know she was innocent. And I’m afraid we’re in no position to punish her persecutors, or give her Christian burial.’

He looked at his hostess with the candid wide-eyed stare that had brought out the motherly instinct in many middle-aged ladies. I could have told him it wouldn’t work; the Grafin had about as much maternal instinct as a guppy. She smiled gently.

‘It is very mysterious.’

After she left, Tony and I discussed the interview. We agreed on one thing: the Grafin almost certainly knew about the shrine. One of the most common motives assigned to restless spirits is their desire to tell their descendants where the gold is buried. The Grafin must have been familiar with the whole corpus of supernatural literature; her failure to mention this point was significant.

‘She knows,’ I summarized, ‘but she doesn’t know where. If she had the shrine, she’d throw us out of here. She has every excuse; our snooping has been outrageous.’

‘I don’t know.’ A visit from the Grafin always depressed Tony. ‘She might let us stay on just for the fun of watching us stumble around. We must look pretty ridiculous, and her sense of humour is decidedly macabre.’

‘She couldn’t risk it,’ I argued. ‘If we find the shrine, we’ll turn it over to Irma – unless Elfrida can lift the loot before we make the discovery public. She’d have to silence us, in that case. Why should she take such a chance unless she had to? I’m sure she hasn’t found it. Not yet.’

Tony looked more cheerful.

‘I guess you’re right. Shall we have a look at Burckhardt’s room?’

‘Right now?’

‘Right now. No more roaming by night. That’s when all the kookie things happen.’

‘Okay,’ I said agreeably.

But when we reconnoitered, we found Schmidt’s room occupied by a buxom chambermaid who was scrubbing the floor. It was clear that the process would take some time, so we retreated. I tried to console Tony – not, of course, by telling him I had already searched the room – but by pointing out an unpalatable fact that had just occurred to me.

If the Grafin knew about the shrine, she had certainly searched Burckhardt’s room and all the other obvious hiding places. She wasn’t stupid; if she had not located the shrine, it must be concealed in a more obscure spot than we had anticipated.

The idea didn’t cheer Tony much. It didn’t cheer me either. My reasoning was not invalidated by the fact that