I sat up in bed, knees drawn to my chest, arms hugged tightly about them. The ribbons had not fallen from my plaits, that much was apparent. Only two possibilities remained. Either I had unbound my hair in my sleep or someone else had done so.
I thought of the dream I had had, reliving each moment of it in the cold light of day. There had been an embrace with the count, a moment of abandon when I had given myself up to his caresses. And then his hands in my hair, fingers twisting through the weight of it. Had I been dreaming of something that actually happened? Had I-or someone else, I thought with a shudder-been unbinding my hair when I dreamt of the count doing so? Was it possible that something that had actually happened in my room had invaded my dreams?
And if so, then what
But what if I had not? My door was bolted, as it had been the night the dog had appeared in my room. What creature of flesh and blood could pass through stone? I thought of the ruddy, gloating corpse of Count Bogdan in his coffin and felt my stomach turn to water.
I rushed from my bed and dressed hastily, coiling my hair tightly into place, thrusting each pin as if it were a stake to contain a malignant creature. My hands trembled, but my resolve was firm, and I left the little room in the tower determined to keep my wits clear and my heart stout.
I worked in the library alone for some time before I was interrupted by Clara Amsel, sent to find me on behalf of the countess. The older woman looked pale after the ordeal we had suffered the night before, but if I expected our mutual experience to bind us closer, I was mistaken. Frau Amsel had never shown a sign of desiring better intimacy with me, and she looked at me with scarcely concealed dislike as she disclosed her errand.
“The countess is unwell today and Dr. Frankopan insists she keep to her bed. Still, she wishes to see you,” she finished, with a glance of interest at the sheaf of papers I had stuffed beneath the blotter.
“I would be very happy to see the countess,” I told her. “I will need a moment to tidy my papers and then I will find my way to her,” I said by way of dismissal. But Frau Amsel was not to be dismissed, and instead she stood by, a plump, silent sentinel as I tamped the pages of my manuscript together and secured them in my morocco writing case.
I left it upon the writing desk and followed her, wishing I had insisted upon taking a moment to wash my hands or neaten my hair. There was something rather grand about the countess that made one feel grubby and mean.
Even her room was majestic, I realised, as Frau Amsel rapped upon the door and waved me in. The room was decorated with silver-gilt embellishments and hung with lily-green silk, a lovely combination, but a chilly one on a cold, sunless morning. A fire roared upon the hearth, and the countess was covered in a multitude of coverlets and heavy furs.
“My dear Miss Lestrange, how kind of you to come,” she said rather breathlessly.
“It was kind of you to invite me,” I returned.
She waved me towards a chair, a pretty affair of silver-gilt, embellished by feathery carvings meant to depict the wings of swans. A tapestry portraying the courtship of Zeus and Leda warmed one long wall, and upon another hung a portrait of a young Count Andrei next to a painting of a pair of beautiful young women. Andrei wore the traditional robes of a Transylvanian boyar in his, but the girls clung together in magnificent court gowns of white tissue, their skirts billowing together like a pale silken sea.
The countess followed my gaze. “My sister,” she said, with a touch of wistfulness. “Cosmina’s mother. That was painted the year of our debut in Vienna.”
“Cosmina is very like her mother,” I observed, noting the same high, white brow and thoughtful blue eyes.
“Yes, it comforts me to look at her sometimes. I remember the old days and it makes me happy,” the countess confided.
She fell silent then and I glanced about the room, noting that it wore the same settled air as my grandfather’s room, the domain of an invalid with all the necessary comforts close to hand. On a wide table next to the bed were gathered everything the countess would require for her amusement or her care. Unguents and potions jostled with the latest novels from Paris and a stack of fashion papers. There was a basket of correspondence, the envelopes thick with coronets and coats-of-arms, and a pot of scented powder and a stack of fresh handkerchiefs rested upon an Orthodox Bible. Jostling them was a pretty ormolu clock laden with porcelain roses and thick with gilding. The paintings and tapestry were the only pieces of secular art permitted in the room, for the rest of the space was given over to mournful icons in heavily gilt frames.
“I wanted to thank you for your help yesterday with Andrei,” she began, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
“Madame, I beg you will not mention it. I am not certain I acted for the best,” I told her truthfully.
“But you did!” she protested. “It had to be done, and I am grateful for your support. I am surprised that an outsider would be so sympathetic to our ways,” she added with a nod of approbation. “Even for Ferenc it is difficult, and he has lived among us for many years.”
“I understand his family are Hungarian,” I put in, grateful to steer the conversation from the events of the previous night.
The countess lifted a derisive brow. “Hungarians who have lost all sense of whence they come. They once loved this place as much as we, but they have sold themselves for the Austrian Emperor’s favour. The Germans, they sit in their palaces in Vienna and think to understand us, but they never can. It is like asking a cow to understand a lynx. They do not speak the same language, they do not value the same things.”
I gave her a rueful smile. “Rather like the Scots then, ruled from London by people who do not understand us at all.”
“Precisely. And like the Scots, our troubles are of long standing, born in the mists of time. Long ago this land was settled by Romans, the warrior legions who wrested these mountains from the hill tribes and civilised them. In the middle ages, Transylvania was independent, ruled by ruthless princes who did what they must to keep the Germans and the Turks and their empires at bay. Always there were wars and bloodshed in these valleys. This castle was built by the first Count Dragulescu to hold the valley against either empire. He lost his life upon the highest battlement, defending his homeland.”
“Dreadful,” I murmured, thinking of the legend the driver had told me of the Devil’s Staircase.
Her lips twisted again. “Dreadful was the fate of his wife, the first countess, a beautiful Wallachian princess, she whose daughter was sacrificed to build this castle. When the count, her husband, fell in battle, she knew she would not survive the siege of the Dragulescu fortress, that once the enemy breached the walls, she would be taken and used cruelly, as no woman ought ever to be used. But she would cheat them, she decided. She wished to die with her honour held high for all to see. She flung herself from the tower to the river below, where the silver water ran red with her blood.”
I blinked. “The tower? The tower where I am lodged?”
“The very room.”
I drew in a slow, shuddering breath.
The countess went on. “Can you imagine how desperate, how frightened, she must have been? To destroy herself, and with it, all chance at immortality in the comfort of God’s presence?
“Of course,” the countess continued, “she may well have thought of those Roman generals who were the first Roumanians, the sons of Jupiter, come to settle this land before the Huns. They knew how to die with honour.”
“And how did the Dragulescus keep their home if the count was killed in battle?”
“The count had a younger brother who rallied his soldiers, and at the last moment, the castle was saved. Many centuries later, when the Hungarians came to power, the Orthodox Dragulescus converted to Roman Catholicism and swore an oath of fealty to their Magyar masters.”
I nodded towards the gallery of dismal icons. “But you are Orthodox.”
“Devoutly. It is well for the Dragulescu men to maintain they are Catholic, and my son does, as did his grandfather and my husband. But the women are free to embrace the true faith, for all that they are of the Dragulescu blood. I am not a Dragulescu only by marriage, you understand. I was born of the blood, a second cousin to my husband, and the blood of dragons flows in my veins.”
