Borrower of the Night

expected. The essential beauty hadn’t changed.

The old houses of Rothenburg are tall, six or seven storeys in height. The style is like that of the black-and- white Tudor houses of England, with wooden timbering forming complex patterns across the stuccoed facades. The stucco is painted in pastel colours – cream, pale blue, buff. The high roofs taper steeply to the ridge pole; set in the faded rust-red tiles are odd little windows, like half-closed eyes peeping slyly. Some of the houses have oriels with leaded windows and roofs like kobold’s caps.

Against the sober antiquity of the houses, flowers blaze like rainbow-coloured fires. Everybody in Rothenburg must have a green thumb. Red geraniums spill out of window boxes; white and purple-blue petunias cascade over ledges; emerald-green ivy and vines climb the crumbling walls. From over the shop doors wrought-iron signs, delicate as starched lace, indicate the wares to be found within. Most of the signs are gilded; in the sunlight they shine like webs spun by fabulous spiders.

I went through the marketplace, with its Renaissance Rathaus and fifteenth- century fountain, and took Herrngasse across town towards the castle – my home away from home for the next couple of weeks.

I still couldn’t get over that piece of luck – that Schloss Drachenstein had been converted into a hotel. It wasn’t unusual. Many stately homes and ruined castles have been turned into guest houses by noble families whose bank statements are shorter than their family trees. But that Schloss Drachenstein should be one of the number – that I had a reservation, confirmed by a letter bearing the Drachenstein crest – it was almost too good to be true. I am not superstitious – not much – but I couldn’t help regarding that as an omen.

The Schloss hadn’t even been open to visitors when I was in Rothenburg the first time. I had viewed the tangled weeds of the park through the closed and padlocked gates, which were worth a visit in themselves, being gems of the wrought-iron work for which the region is famous. There were other things to see, so I hadn’t lingered, but now I could find my way around without having to ask directions.

The roughly oval plateau on which the town is built juts out, at several points, in long rock spurs. At the westernmost point of one such spur, the first Count of Drachenstein, Meninguad by name, had constructed a massive keep that looked down on the valley, and had protected its eastern side with walls and moats. Over the centuries the castle had grown, and peasants seeking protection from marauders had built their huts under its walls, in the spot that would one day become a prosperous merchant town.

The moat had been filled in long before; but I was surprised, when I reached the park, to discover that the gates I remembered were gone. The weeds had been cropped, and as soon as I passed through the stone gateposts I could see the Schloss ahead.

From the guidebook I knew the general plan of Schloss Drachenstein. It was built in the form of an open square enclosing an inner court. An eighteenth-century count, inspired by a visit to Versailles, had torn down one side of the old castle and constructed his version of a chateau on the foundations. It was not a good idea. The facade, which now faced me, was leprous with decay, and the very roofline seemed to sag. Behind this monstrosity I had a tantalizing glimpse of older walls built of rough brown stone.

The door was a graceless modern replacement, with a bright brass knob. The hinges squeaked, though, when I pushed on it; somewhat cheered by this Gothic note, I went in and found myself in a hall that ran straight through the chateau from front to back, with doors opening on both sides and a staircase at the far end. There was a desk under the arch of the stairs. Someone was sitting at the desk; I couldn’t see clearly after the transition from sunlight to the shadowy interior. As I tramped down the hall I felt self-conscious, as I always do when I have to make an entrance like that. And when I got a good look at the girl behind the desk, I felt even more bovine than I usually do.

Honest to God, she was the image of my adolescent heroines. She had a heart-shaped face, ivory pale, and framed by clouds of dark hair so fine the ends floated out in the still air. Her eyes were big and wide-set, framed by long, curling lashes. Her mouth was a pink-coral masterpiece; her nose was narrow and aristocratic. She was sitting down, but I knew she wasn’t tall. She wouldn’t be tall. She probably had a figure as petite and fine-boned as her face.

I thought things I prefer not to admit, much less write down. I said, ‘Guten Tag. I have reserved a room.’

‘Guten Tag, gnadige Frau. Ihr Name, bitte?’

Her voice was a false note in the picture of perfect grace. It was flat and hoarse, and quite expressionless. Her lovely face was blank, too. The big dark eyes regarded me without favour.

I gave her my name, and she nodded stiffly.

‘We have your letter. I am sorry to say we cannot offer the luxury to which you Americans are accustomed. The Schloss is being renovated and the rooms in the chateau are all occupied. You requested a chamber in the older portion of the Schloss, but – ’

‘No, that’s fine,’ I said heartily.

My big friendly grin won no response. If anything, the girl’s expression became slightly more hostile.

‘Aber, I forget. Americans like the old, the ruinous, the decayed, do they not? Come, then, and I will show you the room.’

She insisted on carrying both my suitcases. As I had expected, she was a tiny little thing, and her refusal to let me touch my heavy bags made me feel like a boor as well as a big lumbering clod. I suspect that was what she had in mind. She didn’t seem to like me much. But short of wrestling her for the suitcases, I couldn’t do anything but follow meekly.

We went out of the back entrance into the central court. The walls forming the other three sides of the court were a marvellous mixture of architectural styles – not surprising in a place that had had nine centuries in which to develop. The wing to my left was of the timber-and-stucco type, like many of the houses in town, but bigger and more elaborate. Scaffolding shielded its face, and there were pieces of lumber and miscellaneous tools scattered around – the renovations of which the girl had spoken, I gathered.

The right wing was a four-storey sixteenth-century construction, with richly carved window frames and an ornate Renaissance roofline But the wall straight ahead was old – old enough to have been standing long before Count Burckhardt’s time. Its great doorway had a massive stone lintel with a crumbling bas-relief in the shape of a shield bearing the Drachenstein device – a dragon crouched on a rock.

The courtyard was beautifully tended, and as pretty as a postcard. The grass was a rich, velvety green, and shrubs and flower beds were scattered about. A thick hedge hid the part of the court to my right. From behind its shelter came a murmur of voices. Other guests, I thought – and I wondered whether I knew any of them.

Her shoulders bent under the weight of my bags, the girl led me through the door into the Great Hall of the Schloss. It was two storeys high, roofed with enormous dark beams. Along one wall was a row of armour, with swords and spears and other deadly weapons hanging on the panelled wall above. A huge stone fireplace filled one corner of the room, which was unfurnished except for a carved chest, big enough to hold a body or three . . . I wondered why that particular idea had flipped into my mind. Suggestion, no doubt, from the arsenal on the wall.

We went up a flight of stairs to a gallery that ran around three sides of the hall. From this a door opened onto a corridor. On the stairs I tried to take one of the suitcases, and was promptly squelched; but I took no pleasure in the drag of the girl’s shoulders as she trudged ahead of me along the corridor into an intersecting passage. It was a relief when we finally reached the room she had selected for me.

The room was lit by a pair of tall windows that opened onto the west side of the castle grounds, a wilderness of tangled bushes and weeds. Also visible were the mouldering ruins of a structure older than the Schloss itself. It was, I decided, the original keep of the first castle ever built on the plateau; it had to be a thousand years old. I guess Americans are bemused by sheer age; the words dug into my mind and reverberated, awesomely. One thousand years . . . It looked its age. The top floor, or floors, were missing; the ruined walls were as jagged as rotten teeth. Beyond the keep, the ground dropped abruptly, in a series of steep steps, to a wooded and verdant valley half veiled by the mists of afternoon heat.

The view was the only good part of the room. Hilton would have turned faint. The brown stone walls were bare except for a few old paintings, which were so blackened by time that it was hard to see what they were meant to represent. The bed was modern; the pink spread and canopy were new, and their bright cheapness clashed badly with the dignified antiquity of the walls. An ugly green overstuffed chair and a cheap bedside table were also new. They were dwarfed by the dimensions of the room, which contained no other furniture except a flat kitchen-type