Frau Folterkammer waved her hand in a dumb show meant to indicate the room was out of bounds. She ushered Calamity into her room. The fire was made up in the grate and, the casements open, heavy velvet drapes wafted gently in the night wind. Frau Folterkammer went to close the windows. In the centre of the room was a four-poster and Calamity’s suitcase had already been laid at its foot. I agreed to meet Calamity later for dinner and followed Frau Folterkammer to my own chamber next door.
Evening dress had been laid out for me and there was a small en suite bathroom attached to my room. I showered and dressed for dinner. There was a knock on the door. It was Calamity.
‘I just want to tell you that the eyes of the portrait above the mantelpiece follow me round the room.’ I grinned but a look of consternation furrowed Calamity’s features. ‘I’m not joking. And my wardrobe is full of bridal gowns in my size.’
‘How do you know they are bridal gowns?’
‘They look like it.’
‘They probably belong to someone else. It’s not your room, after all.’
‘My name is written inside the collar.’
‘It’s probably some sort of local national costume which you are expected to wear for dinner. You should be grateful to the Count for being so thoughtful. Look, I’ve got evening wear for dinner, isn’t that something?’
‘I’m just telling you, that’s all. Here, take one of these.’ She held out a tin containing garlic capsules. ‘Just in case.’
‘Now you’re being silly.’
She took two from the tin and put them in the breast pocket of my jacket. ‘Maybe.’
Calamity went back to her room and ten minutes later she knocked again. ‘There’s a mob carrying torches outside my window, across the moat.’
I pulled a face and Calamity told me to go and have a look. I peered outside but couldn’t see anything unusual. ‘It was probably the gardeners,’ I suggested. ‘Stop worrying about that and change for dinner.’
‘You really think I should wear one of those dresses?’
‘I think it would be very rude not to.’
She emitted a loud sigh and returned to her room.
Ten minutes later there was another knock but this time it was not Calamity. An old woman stood in the doorway in great distress. She wore a long flowing nightdress and her grey hair fell in untidy skeins from beneath a traditional night cap. She had been weeping and carried a candle. ‘It’s the twins,’ she cried. ‘We must help them, I smelled burning . . . come . . . come . . .’ She grabbed my hand. At that moment, a man, similarly dressed, appeared at the other end of the corridor.
‘Anneliese,’ he cried. ‘No, no, no! Come back.’
Anneliese pulled my hand and dragged me after her. ‘The twins, we must help them, oh the smoke, the smoke!’
‘No, Anneliese,’ shouted the man. ‘No! Stop!’
‘The smoke, oh the smoke! We have to help the poor twins!’
‘Sir, sir, stop her, I beseech you!’
The man was old and ran towards us with a feeble gait. Anneliese dragged me to the door across the corridor from which earlier we had heard the sound of children’s laughter and the music box.
‘No, Anneliese, no!’ cried the man.
‘The twins, the twins . . . oh the burning . . .’
The old man was almost upon us but arrived a half-second too late. Anneliese opened the door to the room and gasped. She stood trembling violently on the threshold and her hands flew to her face; she wept. The man caught her in his arms and comforted her. I looked into the room. It was a child’s bedroom but one that had evidently not been used for many years; white drapes were spread over the furniture and the air had a stale, musty smell. On the mantelpiece there was a photo of two children in Edwardian sailor suits. The room also had a faint smell of smoke. The man led the weeping woman away.
We were shown to a modest hall and seated at a long table beneath shields emblazoned with lions and stars and griffins, and cross-hatched in red and white chevrons like military sentry boxes. Calamity looked ill at ease in a dress that did appear to be very much like a Western bridal gown. The Count arrived accompanied by his three daughters and Monsieur Souterain, their lute tutor. The children were nine, ten and eleven years old and wore richly brocaded and pearl-studded gowns in white taffeta. They were skinny and gaunt, with dark intense gazes that stared out from the violet shadows of their cheeks. They introduced themselves with slow languorous curtsies. Salome, Porphyria and Medea. The lute tutor bowed politely and the Count glanced at Calamity with a look of mild surprise that seemed to be directed at the dress. ‘In our country we normally wait until the big day,’ he said. And then, mindful of having committed a minor offence against etiquette, hurriedly changed the subject. ‘You must tell us all about Aberystwyth.’
We talked for a while of the Pier and the bandstand and Clip the stuffed sheepdog in the museum, but although the Count interjected now and again with polite enthusiasm it was clear our efforts failed to ignite a fire of interest in his dark eyes.
‘The camera obscura is the biggest in Europe,’ said Calamity.
‘How interesting,’ said the man whose family had invented an entire Hollywood movie genre.
‘Yes, and on a clear day you can see Snowdon. And we’ve got a nice castle . . .’ She looked up at the stone eagles and griffins and escutcheons and swords, the chain mail, the old masters and tapestries depicting hawks and riders galloping the flower-embroidered plains of medieval Europe and said, ‘It’s not quite like this, though.’
‘I’m sure it’s delightful,’ said the Count.
‘Do you know the people in the town crossed themselves when they saw us?’ I said.
The Count scoffed. ‘It’s just a joke, they do it because of our family’s history. They find it funny. I suppose it is in a way but one does get tired of it.’
‘Are they still unhappy about the impaling?’ said Calamity.
The Count shrugged. ‘The impaling thing is rather overdone if you ask me. It was just a normal part of keeping order in those days. There have to be laws otherwise there is anarchy.’
‘We heard your ancestor once impaled a donkey,’ she said with a regrettable lack of tact.
The children emitted gasps and the atmosphere froze. The Count threw his napkin down in disgust, causing the knife to rattle against his plate. ‘You know, that, if you will permit me the observation, is such a tiresomely British thing to say. My ancestor impaled an estimated ninety thousand people in the early fifteenth century, not to speak of countless other atrocities, and yet the one crime we are never allowed to forget is the damned donkey. I know you have a reputation as a nation of animal lovers but this is absurdly sentimental.’
I felt the cold moist swab of a lizard’s tongue on the back of my hand. I looked down with a slight shudder. Porphyria was rubbing my skin with her fingers in the same way that a buyer in an Arab bazaar checks the quality of cloth. She made a soft gurgling sound. I jerked my hand away. She stared deep into my eyes, her gaze filled with a mocking glint of corruption, and incanted a ditty:
. . . and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
Conversation around the table died as she spoke and the last words were said to a hushed audience. There was a pause and then Monsieur Souterain raised his hands artificially high, to the level of his nose, and clapped in counterfeited enthusiasm. ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ he cried. It seemed to me, in the absurd exaggeration of his applause, that he lived in daily fear of some terrible fate that fell in the gift of the children to visit upon him. Porphyria twisted her head up and around, throwing the tutor for the briefest fraction of a second a sniff-encased look of withering contempt. The clapping stopped, the final cycle arrested in mid-air by that heart-piercing look. Robbed of their purpose, his fingers fluttered like those of a concert pianist playing Paganini and then retracted into the palms of his hands. He lowered them and stared with a chastised air at his cutlery.
