He gave a single short nod, but even as he acknowledged the truth of what I said, his words denied it. “It is for him to rule as he is pleased.”
“Rule? He is a nobleman, but he is no prince.”
“I say again, Transylvania is different place. The old ways are the only ways. The count rules. What he wants, he will do. The peasants are tired. They are hungry and poor. He can be helping them. He does little.”
I felt a swift stab of fear. “Might they rebel then, if they are angered enough by his neglect of them?”
He shrugged. “Count Bogdan was not good. They do nothing. They drink sorrow and wait for the better times. They are sad now because Count Andrei, he is not better.”
“He has only been here a few weeks,” I argued, wondering even as I said the words why I felt compelled to defend him. “There has scarce been time for him to make changes to improve their lot.”
Florian met my eyes then, and I was struck once more by the fathomless sorrow I saw there. “They know the
But however I pressed him, he sank once more into his solitude, and I took his arm in silence as we started up the mountain path. The dying afternoon was a beautiful one, with the great blaze of turning leaves flaming over the valley. Gold and scarlet grasshoppers leapt in the dying grasses whilst bronze beetles winged their way to sanctuary for the night. The sun warmed our faces and the crisp air was full of birdsong. It would have been perfect, but for the fact that the hand I held was not the count’s, I reflected ruefully.
Suddenly, a roll of thunder echoed over the mountaintops. A cluster of dark grey clouds had gathered in the east and was rolling slowly towards the mountain.
I must have started, for Florian hastened to reassure me. “Do not fear. We are safe yet. Thunder sounds from far away. But some say it is Scholomance,” he added. “Do you know the Scholomance?”
“It is a bit of folklore,” I said, casting my mind back to my grandfather’s library. “It is a very old superstition, is it not? I seem to remember a lake.”
Florian nodded. “In the mountains south of Hermannstadt, there is lake, deep and black. Here the Devil has school for teaching dark magic. There is taught secrets of nature, language of animals, magic spells. The Devil gives learning to ten pupils. When learning is finished, the Devil says to nine to go home. But the tenth must stay with the Devil. He must ride a dragon and he prepares thunderbolts for the Devil. He brews thunder in the black lake. When the weather is fine, his dragon sleeps under the black lake.”
He paused and stared upward at the high stones of the castle, the sharp pointed towers piercing the sky above. “Here the people say, one time in a hundred years a Dragulescu goes to the Scholomance to learn the Devil’s ways,” he finished bitterly.
I took a deep breath and wrapped my shawl more closely about my body. For some unaccountable reason, all the talk of the occult and curses had overcome me, and I felt bowed with foreboding. “I think I have heard quite enough about the Devil for one day.”
I started up the Devil’s Staircase and Florian followed. We did not speak again.
12
That evening we were a smaller company at table, for the countess had kept to her room and Frau Amsel dined with her. The count was distracted, eating nothing but pouring out several glasses of amber Tokay. Cosmina bravely attempted to keep the conversation light and engaging, but although the count replied to her pleasantly enough, the conversation eventually faltered, and when the meal was at last concluded, she excused herself and went directly to bed. Florian followed soon after, and I made a motion to withdraw, but the count intervened.
“I have something to show you in my workroom,” he said, and although his tone was conversational, there was no mistaking the note of command.
Wordlessly I followed him up to the workroom. The candles had been lit and Tycho slumbered peacefully on the hearth.
“Come and see what I have found,” the count said eagerly. I went to the worktable where he had taken up a pretty box of pale wood inlaid with darker wood in an intricate pattern. The front of it was set with a series of knobs, half a dozen, and when he raised the lid I could see they were attached to corresponding rods carved with symbols. A table of similar symbols had been incised on the lid of the box.
I put out a tentative finger. “It is very curious. I’ve never seen the like. Is this ivory?” I asked, touching one of the rods.
“It is. It is a device for making astronomical calculations. The rods are fashioned of bone or ivory, and the whole of it is known as Napier’s bones after the astronomer who designed it.”
“A macabre name,” I observed.
He slanted me a knowing look. “It is the fatal flaw of Transylvanians that we have a fondness for the macabre. Surely you discovered that last night.”
“I cannot begin to understand what happened last night,” I said slowly.
He waved to the sofa by the fire. “Sit. I will try to make sense of it for you.”
I had intended to make my excuses, plead a headache or some other trifling indisposition and effect an escape. But as always, the power of his personality persuaded me to something I had not intended.
But I was determined to preserve some vestige of formality, and as I perched upon the edge of the sofa, spreading my skirts wide between us, I saw his lips twitch in amusement.
He settled himself as far from me as the narrow sofa would permit.
“You think us barbaric,” he began.
“I do,” I acknowledged. “But it is a barbarism I would know better. I do not come from a modern city. Edinburgh is a place where ideas are exchanged and philosophies are born, but no one looks to us for the latest fashions or the most modern conveniences. The Highlands are more backwards still, with folk content to live as they have for a thousand years. And yet Transylvania is a place apart. It is nothing so simple as manner of dress or speech or whether a railway has been put through a valley. It is an acceptance of mythology and feudalism, the two of them tied together in such a way as I cannot separate them, warp and weft of the same peculiar cloth.”
“You think we nobles keep the stories of monsters circulating in order to keep the peasants under our thumbs?” he asked, his tone mildly amused.
“Not deliberately, but I think it suits both master and serf to preserve the old ways. And the worst of it is, all of you and the land itself, conspire to make me believe it as well.”
“Is it so terrible to believe in the dark and terrible things you have been told of? Fear and passion walk hand in hand, you know. We are afraid of being destroyed, being possessed, and yet we crave it. What child has not thrilled to ghost stories whispered under the bedclothes by the dark of the moon? And what man or woman has not longed to be lost in the wood and found again?”
I shook my head. “You speak in riddles and I do not understand you.”
He leaned forward, his grey eyes quite black in the shadowy room. “Then let me speak plainly. You are afraid here and you do not know what to believe. I have told you I will protect you. You have only to trust me and you will be free to enjoy your fears.”
“Enjoy them!”
He gave a little shrug. “Everything may be enjoyed in life, my dear Miss Lestrange. Even fear. It wants only a change in one’s perspective.”
“And what ought my perspective to be?” I demanded.
“That this is an adventure,” he replied, leaning closer still. He was more animated than I had ever seen him, alight with something that nourished and strengthened him. Had he given over taking opium for something stronger still? Or had he begun to feel his power as master of this dark place?
He raised his head slightly, as if catching the scent of me in the air. “You are not thinking as a writer or as a woman,” he chided. “You are trembling and shrinking like a schoolgirl from your fears. If you embraced them, faced them down, you would see the opportunities that lie before you.”
“What opportunities?”
