The Dead Travel Fast

it,” I finished helplessly.

He said nothing, but busied himself uncovering dishes and pouring out strong black coffee. The smell of it turned my stomach to water, but he had brought tea besides, and a cup of that with a nibbled bread roll comprised my breakfast.

“How is he this morning?” I asked finally. I had hesitated, both from the fear that he should have taken a turn for the worst, and out of the concern that speaking of him would grieve Charles. It is no easy thing for a man to measure himself against another and be found wanting.

But Charles was more a gentleman than I had credited him, for he brought me news of him and delivered it without resentment. “He does well enough, although he has not yet roused. Dr. Frankopan stays with him, and the countess comes and goes. Cosmina has been there as well, doing what she can. There is naught to do but wait until he wakes. His pulse is strong and his colour good, and although it was a shock of some magnitude to his mother to find that he is an opium-eater, Dr. Frankopan does not think the habit is of long enough standing to have damaged his constitution.” Charles hesitated, then took a breath and plunged on, speaking rather more hurriedly. “He murmurs a good deal in his sleep, and once or twice he has called your name.”

I finished my tea before I could master my tears enough to speak. “Thank you for that. It could not have been easy to tell me, but I am glad to know it.”

“Do not thank me. Half of them seem to think it proof of your guilt-as if he speaks your name to accuse you. Still, I know you are guiltless, and so will everyone else once he wakes.”

A sudden chill ran through me, stiffening my hand so that I nearly dropped the cup. “Charles, I am innocent, but someone else is not.”

“What do you mean?”

I replaced the cup carefully onto the saucer and rose to pace the room. “They think I pushed him, but we know I did not. What if he did not fall or fly of his own accord? What if he was pushed, but by someone else?”

Charles absently took a sweet from his pocket and sucked at it, furrowing his brow. “I did not think on that. I suppose it is possible.”

“Of course it is possible. Charles, I have been on the observatory walk. He did not fall. He was never careless and he is surefooted as a chamois goat. I would wager my life upon it-either something supernatural has attacked him or there was a deliberate and malicious attempt upon his life by someone in this castle.”

“Perhaps the same person who killed the maid Aurelia?” Charles offered.

“Yes!” I whirled to face him, my conviction rising. “I am certain of it. The peasants would say it was his father, Count Bogdan, who tried to destroy him. But what if the superstitions and monsters are merely a diversion? What if there is nothing afoot here more sinister than simple human evil?”

“And whom would you suspect of the deed?”

I stopped pacing and thought, turning each of the castle’s inhabitants over in my mind. “Frau Amsel,” I said. “Aurelia carried the late count’s child, a possible successor to the Dragulescu name and fortune. She was slain with her unborn child. If the present count died, who then would benefit? The countess would want a male to inherit, it is the way of things here. And who better than Florian, Frau Amsel’s son, who already has a grasp of things and would keep the estate under the countess’s rule? There would be no other direct heir of the Dragulescu line. She would have only to adopt him, and such things are easily arranged.”

“Possibly,” Charles said, his voice tinged with doubt.

“And she loathes me. It would give her great pleasure to dispatch me at the same time by putting my shawl in such a place as to implicate me. She could easily have slipped into the garden to retrieve it. And it was she who named me in the count’s workroom when she retrieved my shawl.”

I was hungry then, suddenly and ravenously hungry. I sat to eat the other things Charles had brought, dipping my spoon into the bowl of mamaliga.

Charles said nothing, turning my pretty theory over in his businessman’s mind. At length he nodded. “It is a sound enough suspicion, I suppose. Although I notice you do not entertain the notion that another, even likelier suspect may have done the deed.”

I took another spoonful of the hearty porridge. “Who?”

Charles sat back, managing to look simultaneously smug and uncomfortable. “The count himself.”

I put down my spoon. “You think Count Andrei did this to himself? You are mad.”

“Am I? Or perhaps you are simply unwilling to consider all possibilities.”

I folded my arms and when I spoke it was with a stranger’s voice, clipped and cold. “Go on.”

Charles leaned forward. “You said yourself that the maid Aurelia carried a rival claimant to the estate. Who better to resent this than the sitting count?”

“Precisely,” I replied by way of retort. “The sitting count. He had no need to put Aurelia’s child out of the way. He had secured his inheritance as his father’s lawful heir.”

“But was he? How easy might it have been for the girl to produce a piece of paper, a bit of forgery with Count Bogdan’s signature upon it, claiming responsibility for the child and naming it his heir? You said there was a quarrel between the countess and her husband. He meant to put her away and marry the girl. Perhaps he had taken steps to do so, irrevocable steps that would have disinherited your paramour.”

I flinched at his use of the word “paramour” but I did not rise to the bait. “Surely the fact that Count Bogdan was dead put paid to whatever schemes the girl might have had to see her illegitimate child established as a Dragulescu heir.”

Charles shrugged. “If she was cunning and ruthless, she might well have gambled upon her child’s blood. Think how easily one might bribe a country priest or solicitor to draw up a bit of paper to stake her child’s claim. She could promise them a hearty share of the estate upon settlement. Many a villain has been bought with less,” he said sagely.

“I suppose it is possible,” I admitted, though grudgingly so.

“Or perhaps the count simply bears the hot blood of his ancestors,” Charles mused, “and thought to answer the insult done to his mother by dispatching the maid and her offspring. A colder plot, to be sure, but not impossible.”

I did not answer this; I could not. Was it possible? Could he have killed the girl with no greater provocation than the knowledge that she had supplanted his own mother in his father’s affections? It was monstrous; it could not be so. And yet, the possibility of it lived, like a monstrous thorny weed, pricking at my convictions.

“You are angry with me,” Charles said at last.

I stirred the mamaliga, but it had gone cold. “I am not angry, only heartsick and longing to go from here.”

He reached a hand to cover mine. “I will take you, as soon as it may be arranged, wherever you wish to go-to England to see Anna, to the Highlands, to Timbuktu. I will make it so.”

His hand was warm and comfortable over mine, but I was no longer the girl who could reasonably contemplate warm and comfortable. Still, I managed a smile and thanked him, and soon after he left me alone with my thoughts.

That evening it was Cosmina who brought my meal. She entered quietly and put the food upon the table and opened her arms. I went to her, resting my head upon her shoulder.

“I am glad to see you,” I told her, my voice muffled. She put a hand to my head, cradling me close as one might a beloved child.

When she drew back, there were tears standing in her eyes. “I am so sorry, Theodora. I ought never to have brought you here. I hesitated to come tonight because I feared you would be angry with me.”

“Angry with you? Whatever for?”

She grasped my hands in her own. “For inviting you to this place. For this,” she said, taking in my little prison with a glance.

I had not drawn the curtains yet, and she walked to the window where the setting sun had already dropped beyond the mountains and the long shadows of evening were beginning to lengthen.

“There is a Scottish word for this time of day. You told me once, but I cannot remember it.”

“Gloaming,” I told her, coming to stand beside her at the window. “When the light has fled but the stars have not yet shown themselves. That is the gloaming, the loveliest and saddest hour of the day.”