The Golden Portifor - 8. Chapter 8

There was a knock on the door of Serge’s study in Engelngasse, which he liked to call his ‘cabinet’ – a room all scholars, or would-be scholars, should work in, as he believed. His grandfather’s cabinet in the great house of Olmusch was an annexe to his library, where Roman busts, illustrated medieval bibles, a feathered headdress from the Americas and a narwhal’s horn were exhibited amongst many other curiosities. From there the Baron conducted his correspondence with the scholars and statesmen of Europe. Serge so far was still working on his curiosities, but he had assured Willi that he was undoubtedly the most curious object he had ever discovered and he would certainly have a special case made in which to exhibit him.

‘Enter!’ he called out. It was Jan Lisku, with news that Father Heer had arrived and everything was ready for their departure to Tarlenheim. Serge stood and looked out from his high window across the city of Strelsau, whose roofs and spires were still streaked with white from a snowstorm the previous week. It was the Monday after the Second Sunday in Advent, and Serge had found he would have an unexpected, but very welcome, companion on the road. Father Fabian Heer had business in Husbrau and Serge had been very happy to offer to ride along with him.

When Serge came out into the yard in his riding gear, Jan was giving his last instructions to Margrit and Gottlieb, who were the caretakers of the Sign of the Angel for the next ten weeks. Gottlieb had been left the projects of renovating the ageing stable accommodation and the construction of two new stalls in the barn for the accommodation of visitors and potential new purchases. He had the help of an elder brother, an apprentice carpenter. Margrit was pledged to clean the house thoroughly from top to bottom, and not overfeed Gottlieb. Serge hoped that would be enough to keep them out of mischief. Jan Lisku would return to check up on them after Christmas and also collect the next quarter’s salary from the Hofburg.

Erebus was saddled and awaiting Serge, with Jennet and Brunhild already occupied by Jan and Karl. Acheron, burdened with their baggage, was to be led on the road by Jan. The warhorse didn’t seem too much upset by the indignity; of the two blacks his was the milder personality. Both servants were now properly fitted with red livery coats under their winter cloaks, as they would be going amongst their fellows at Tarlenheim and there was to be no mistake they were attached to the Olmusch establishment. Serge also reckoned it would please his mother to see the familiar livery taken by her son, who would one day himself be the Baron of Olmusch.

‘Good morning, Father Heer!’ Serge hailed the third mounted figure in the yard.

‘My lord. A fine day, if cold. I can’t say how pleased I am to have your company on the unfamiliar roads into Husbrau.’

Serge urged Erebus out on to Engelngasse and the party trotted down across the Neustadt to emerge at the Lindenstrasse Bar, taking the westbound highway that led out into the province of Merz. For the horses’ sake Serge did not intend to push the pace on the hard-frozen roads, and they would stay overnight at the market town of Geldstadt, where the main road for Hofbau branched off the route to Ebersfeld. It was only twenty miles and they would arrive at their destination well before dusk.

‘I hope you’ll make a few days’ stay in Tarlenheim, Father,’ Serge began. ‘I wish I could invite you up to the house, but that’s not a thing I have a right to determine.’

‘I quite understand, Sergius. But if you can secure access for me to the library there, that’s all I’d want of you.’

‘That I think I can promise. It’s time I had a proper look at it myself. So tell me, what do you have in mind for your stay in Husbrau? Is this anything to do with the Jesuits’ project to edit the texts of all the lives of the saints?’

‘Indeed it is, Sergius. The good Dr Van Papenbroeck depends very much on the contributions of scholars all over Europe, and I’m his only correspondent in Ruritania; a realm which has its small crop of saints though they’re not much known outside the kingdom, other perhaps than Vitalis, Apostle of the Rothenians, whose tomb is in the cathedral he founded on the Altstadt. Your ancestor, St Fenice of Tarlenheim or Medeln, will be well enough known to you of course, but her life and works are little appreciated these days in the wider Church. There is a ‘Life and Miracles’ by Bernard of Modenheim, her chaplain, which is full enough as it was composed to support her canonisation. But then there are her own writings and prophecies, which are extensive but barely appreciated since she mostly wrote in the Rothenian tongue rather than Latin.

‘My task this Advent is to establish for Dr Van Papenbroeck the number of manuscripts of Bernard’s Vita et Miracula beatæ Feniciæ that survive in Ruritania, and her native province of Husbrau in particular. But I have in mind a much more extensive project concerning her own writings, of which no printed edition so far exists.’

Serge was very intrigued. ‘This would be something that my grandfather Olmusch would be very happy to forward and publish I would think. He’s a great advocate for Rothenian language publications, the older the better.’

‘I had hoped he and his society might be interested, and in due course I’d much value an introduction to the Baron. Have you consulted the Archaiographia Ruritanensis which Dr Antonic of the Rudolf University published some ten years ago?’

‘No, Father, though my grandfather’s opinion of it is not high.’

‘It has its faults certainly, but it’s a good starting point, especially as there are so many local copies of the Vita: three in the University Library, two in the cathedral library and one in the abbey of St Waclaw, as well as another two in the royal library at the Hofburg. Antonic knows of one manuscript he describes as in bibliotheca comitis Tarlenhemiæ but has no details otherwise, and I rather think he’d not seen it but included it as hearsay. He hasn’t yet replied to my query on the matter. So I’m going to investigate. Then there is at least one other copy in the library of the abbey of Medeln, which he had seen but does not date. My hope is that one or other of these Husbrau manuscripts will be Bernard’s autograph copy, and I hope to settle that question before Christmas.’

‘Why’s that important, Father?’

‘Well Sergius, the Van Papenbroeck method is to edit the printed version from the oldest available manuscript, the idea being that this would be the version closest to the author’s original intent, and the oldest copy of all will of course be that which is from the author’s own pen.’

Serge pondered this and rather approved the method, which made sense to him as a nascent scholar.

The highway was taking them along a low ridge to the south of the Starel, the river glittering below them in the pale winter sunshine. Serge became aware of a subdued chatter from the servants behind. Karl Wollherz was evidently highly excited to be on the road and out of Strelsau for what must have been the first time since his parents had brought him there from Ostberg. Questions were tumbling out of the boy which Jan Lisku was struggling to keep up with. The distraction was a relief to Serge, who imagined that otherwise he would be resisting requests to stop at roadside shrines, the more difficult to do as he was in company with a clergyman. Father Heer at least was not badgering him on the subject.

***

They reached Tarlenheim as the sun was beginning to set on Wednesday, after quite a hard day’s journey not made any easier by grey showers of sleet whirling down on them from the surrounding hills all through the afternoon. Their horses’ heads were down and mud spattered them up to their withers as they plodded into the market square of Tarlenheim, the great town church of St Fenice looming opposite them, dark against the pale sunset sky. Lamps were already lit in the surrounding houses.

‘We leave you here, Father,’ Sergius said. ‘I hear good things of the White Lion Inn. If there are any problems, send up to the great house and I’ll arrange something. Otherwise, I’ll come looking for you on Friday at Medeln Abbey, as we arranged, and by then I should have some news of the manuscripts in our library up at the house.’

‘A blessing, Father,’ solicited Jan. Having been duly obliged, Serge and his two servants said their farewells and turned the horses away from the square and on to a road heading west and up into the river bluffs overlooking the town. It was dark and the horses were not happy with fall of night, but Serge knew the way well enough and soon the lights of the great house of Tarlenheim were ahead of them.

Flambeaux burned at the lodge gates where the keeper hurried to open them for the Freiherr Sergius and stood, head bared and bowed, as he passed. A curving lane under oak trees brought them to the front of a many-gabled house, light blazing from its ranks of casements. Serge dismounted at the great Gothic porch with some relief. Tarlenheim servants bustled out, and he directed them to accommodate his own servants and horses and, after ordering Jan Lisku to attend him at his bedchamber as soon as he was able, Sergius walked up into the house of his fathers.

The family was already at table, for the custom of the house in winter was to eat at sunset. Serge decided against changing out of his travel gear before joining them. He paused and took a deep breath as he came to the doors of the great hall. He had not been in company with his family as a group since the funeral of his grandfather in Strelsau several years ago. Much had changed since then, and his position in the family must necessarily change too. A servant opened the door for him. The familiar dark panelling, gloomy family portraits, elaborate plaster ceiling and high casements momentarily took him back to his own childhood days, though now the hall seemed a less intimidating and cavernous place than when he used to hide and play under its tables. The room was large but a great seigneurial hearth and strategically-placed tile stoves warmed it nicely, and Serge discarded his cloak at the door.

The family occupied a cross table at the head of the hall in the old style, though the side tables reserved for dependents were empty. Serge walked across to the high table and executed a formal bow to the lord of the hall, his uncle and godfather the Graf Sergius, and to his aunt, the Gräfin Catherine. He then repeated the bow to his father and mother, who was smiling her welcome.

The Count of Tarlenheim stood and formally welcomed Serge. ‘It’s been some time since you were here, young man. Welcome back to our house. Take a seat at the end there, next to your lady mother,’ he said, gesturing to his right hand side. Serge noted that this placed him at the opposite end of the table to the children of the family who were old enough to be sitting at dinner, and appreciated his uncle was recognising him as one amongst the adult Tarlenheims.

Before he took his seat Serge had a warm embrace from his mother, the Gräfin Aimée. ‘My dear Serge, how you’ve grown, quite overtopping me in height now. I’m sorry not to have seen you in your military finery. My dear friend the Gräfin Melusina of Hentzau wrote me a long letter about the Martinmas review and said you were undoubtedly the most handsome and dashing officer on parade, with the exception of His Royal Highness, and that a hundred ladies fell in love with you.’

Serge blushed red, his body choosing immediately to compromise his adult status. He was lost for a reply, and settled for asking after her health. His eyes strayed to the far side of the table and he caught the eye of one of the two blonde boys sitting there. It was his brother Boromeo, now aged thirteen, sitting glum and withdrawn next to a very different boy of much the same age, their cousin the Graf Oskar, the heir to Tarlenheim. Young Oskar was having a very lively chat with the family chaplain, smiling and laughing. The contrast between the two children was very striking. Serge rather guessed that the cousins did not get on, and wondered why.

The women and children withdrew after the last course, leaving the men to their wine, nuts and tobacco pipes. His uncle took them over to the oak settles ranged around the hearth and used the tongs to light his pipe with a coal from the blazing fire. Serge had heard somewhere that the benches had been brought down from the abandoned old castle on the hill, the original home of his dynasty. They were designed with high backs for draughty halls, just like this one. Several wolfhounds followed the men over to the hearth, their claws clicking on the tiles, and made themselves comfortable at the count’s feet.

‘Well now, Sergius my boy, your father has filled me in on your arrival at Strelsau and the use you’ve been making of your time there, and I am pleased. Your grandfather Olmusch and I were of the opinion that opportunities like this do not come along very often for a lad your age, if ever, and so we exerted ourselves to the uttermost to gain you the position. It seems to me that it was a gamble of sorts: who knew whether or not you and the crown prince would hit it off? But it seems that you’ve not just befriended the prince but moved very quickly into the favour of many others in the Hofburg.’

His father puffed out a cloud of blue smoke from his own pipe and added ‘Of course, no one could expect any success with the king, who’s not been much of a friend to the Tarlenheims of late. He was no help to our father in his last difficulties, and there was a mutual dislike. All noted the king did not have a mass said for his soul in the chapels royal at his death. Our position at court has not recovered since old Oskar died and to be honest we don’t have the means to cut any sort of figure.’

‘But you, my boy,’ continued his uncle, ‘may well reverse that in due course. The connections you’re making can lead to all sorts of opportunities, and the captaincy in a guard regiment offered as a gift may be the first of many such. Of course, it’s personal and since it doesn’t come with a half-company it can’t be sold on, but still, it’s the first straw in the wind.’

Serge was boy enough still to find the way his honest friendship with Prince Henry was being discussed in such transactional terms rather undignified. But his studies had told him that materialism was the way of the court, and famous courtiers of the past, like Castiglione and Charny, were nonetheless men of great honour and charity. It just saddened him a little that the Tarlenheims had come to this sort of grubbing around. But he knew his family’s fortunes had suffered considerably and it had deeply marked his father and uncle as they struggled to retrieve them. So he reassured his uncle that he was sensible of his good fortune and would endeavour to do all he could to repay his generosity in making it possible.

Talk between the older men then moved to the affairs of the estate and the countryside, to which Serge listened with half an ear. After about an hour of it Serge made his excuses and said he needed to retire after a hard day in the saddle, remembering before he went to ask permission from his uncle for the learned Father Heer to consult the library during his stay in Tarlenheim.

‘The prince’s almoner, eh? We’ll have him to dinner too. Fix a day, Sergius.’

A green-coated servant lighted him to his bedchamber, which was one of the rooms on the first floor of the west wing. He found his own red-coated servants awaiting his instructions.

‘We got this fire lit, sir,’ said Jan Lisku, indicating the hearth. ‘There’s a stove too, but we didn’t have the time to get it started. The people here hadn’t got round to it. To be honest I was taken aback by how few there are for such a big house.’

‘Maybe they have the sickness in the place,’ wondered Karl, ‘and are all home in bed.’

‘Not likely, I think,’ Serge replied. ‘If there’s a sickness, it’s in the purse.’

‘Ah, sir, I wondered.’ Jan nodded. ‘The whole wing opposite is shut up, and the great stables more than half empty.’

‘I saw to Brunhild and her friends, my lord!’ chirped up Karl. ‘They’re out of the weather, and we put blankets on them. They have nice beds of straw, and plenty of oats and water. Acheron was quite friendly to me, sir, whatever Gottlieb says.’

‘How about your own accommodation?’ Serge asked.

‘There’s a dormer room, but it has no hearth or stove and only a narrow bed with one sheet,’ Jan informed him.

‘Then Karl can do the duty of the coucher.’

‘What, sir?’ said his puzzled page.

‘You can do like I do at the palace when the prince goes to bed, Karl. Cuddle up in a nest on the floor here by the hearth, where it’s warm. And Janeczu, you take my winter cloak up to your room to help stave off frostbite. Mass in the oratory is usually around eight thirty in winter, so make sure I have hot water at eight. Now I have several candles, so take one up with you, Jan, and I’ll do some reading before I go to sleep.’

The room was by now warm so Serge stripped down to his drawers and lay out on the counterpane and took his book. Karl removed all but his shirt and dithered, until Serge asked him what the matter was. ‘Need to wee, sir.’

‘Ah. Look, there’s a commode.’ He got up, dropped his own drawers and lifted the lid, then side by side he and the grinning boy pissed away the contents of their bladders. He pulled Karl up on to the bed next to him after they were done, and settled under the sheets while the boy sat next to him on the counterpane. They spent over an hour testing his reading, until the boy’s wavering attention told him it was time for sleep. Before he burrowed into his nest of cloaks and cushions Karl knelt before a crucifix on the wall and said some silent prayers, his lips moving.

‘Did your mother teach you to do that, child?’ asked Serge, for some reason very touched by the boy’s action.

‘Yes sir, so I pray for her, and father and the baby every night ... and you and Master Jan, sir, and also for Brunhild.’

***

After the morning mass in the cold chapel, where his breath steamed in the air as he made his responses, breakfast was served in a parlour off the hall, which at least had been properly warmed. Determined to get to grips with the puzzle that was his brother, Serge filled a plate from the buffet and took a seat next to Boromeo.

‘Hello, dear brother. It’s been quite a while since last we met,’ he commenced cheerily. The boy did not return his greeting, but grunted something inarticulate. ‘You weren’t at Grandfather Oskar’s funeral in Strelsau,’ Serge breezed on, ‘so it must have been at our aunt Hesther’s wedding back in ’86, when you were all of nine and I was twelve. Didn’t we play in the woods that day?’

Boromeo nodded. ‘Your servant was there too.’

Serge trawled his memory and indeed Jan Lisku had by then been retained at Olmusch as a page and had accompanied the Baron’s entourage to Tarlenheim, the only time he had left home before their great expedition to Strelsau. He had delighted at riding on the outside of the Baron’s coach all the way to Tarlenheim, which Serge had envied him, being stuck inside the swaying, stuffy vehicle.

Boromeo carried on. ‘You wanted to show him all your secret places in the castle woods. You climbed the trees and left me down below.’

Was the boy resentful at him? Is this what it was all about? ‘Well, I’m sorry at that. I was clearly not a good friend to you that day. So you’re home from school with the Jesuits for the season. How is it at Modenheim?’

Boromeo’s train of resentment was not to be diverted however. ‘You never write me letters, like you do to mother and the others.’

Serge lost his smile. ‘No, I don’t. And I’m sorry for that, though I hope mother conveys to you the greetings and good wishes I always include. She doesn’t let you read them? No? Well, we have a chance to make up for things now I’m out in the world. I promise to write to you, if you promise to write back.’

There was no answer, and having bolted down what was on his plate Boromeo left the table with only a cursory farewell. Serge had very mixed feelings about the encounter, though puzzlement was the chief of them. He was by nature an easy-going, good-humoured and articulate youth, skilled at making bridges with people and never lost in company. It began to occur to him how different a boy his brother was, and it might be a challenge to make any sort of relationship with him that was comfortable.

An unaccustomed frown clouded Serge’s brow as he sought out the library. It was in the closed east wing of the house, dark and cold. He had never been allowed to enter it as a child in the days of old Count Oskar, and the opportunity to penetrate its doors had not occurred since. They were not locked as it happened, and all within was in deep gloom as the windows had been shuttered. Green cloths were laid over tables and seats. It was also musty in the way familiar to Serge from the similar if smaller library at Olmusch. It was indeed the largest library he had been in to date, though he imagined the University and cathedral libraries at Strelsau would be on a different scale entirely. But that at Tarlenheim was in fact bigger than the library at the Hofburg, which he had got to know quite well.

Serge opened the lower shutters to let in some light and found the presses reached from floor to ceiling, the shelves stuffed tight with books, some laid horizontally in the spaces above the spines of those ranked upright. The collection had at some time been properly ordered, with presses devoted to the literature of the Greeks and Romans, to law and theology and to French and German literature. He was a little disappointed to find not as much as he had hoped on the history of Ruritania and the Rothenian people. What there was consisted of universal histories and tracts on noble families. He saw no manuscript collection on view, and pondered whether such works were locked away or kept in the family’s muniment room. He would have to ask his uncle, whose head for business indicated that the family’s collection of deeds, accounts and indentures were very much his province.

One press was given over to an inordinate amount of natural philosophy, which was of no immediate interest to Serge until he realised that entire shelves were devoted to what he realised must be hermetic works, some of them of very dubious content from the titles stamped on their spines. It began to occur to him how it was his late grandfather had acquired his reputation as a scholar who skated beyond the edge of what the Church felt acceptable in studies of the natural world and the forces which guided it. Serge had never read such works, but he picked out the thick volume stamped as Mysteriorum Libri Quinque or Y^e Five Bokes of Misteries. All Europe knew of its author, the notorious occultist Dr John Dee.

There was set beside it a copy of his Monas Hieroglyphica, which Serge knew for a famous Kabbalistic work, and he noticed how well used that particular title had been. He opened it and scanned the title page, noticing the printing at Frankfurt. A smile quirked up his lips as he deciphered the opening motto ranged around the glyph of the title: Qui non intelligit aut taceat aut discat, ‘a man without understanding should either shut his mouth or open his mind’. He doubted the emperor to whom it was dedicated had been amused by the sentiment; if, that is, he had ever opened his copy. He checked Count Oskar’s annotated bookplate and found the date and place of purchase as Vienna in 1652, then put the work aside. He might not learn much from it, but he might find there something about the way his grandfather’s mind worked.

Serge began to take down the adjacent titles, Dee’s Propaedumata aphoristica, the Maior et Minor Claves Salomonis regis; the Libri Tres de Occulta Philosophia by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa; the Tractates de Chrysopoeia Alchemica and the Alchemica of Stephanos of Alexandria. There were many more, and it occurred to Serge that for the family’s sake these titles should not be on open show to the world in their library, especially if Father Heer was likely to be visiting in a day or two. He had best mention the problem to his father or uncle. The library was too cold and gloomy to sit there and catch up with his correspondence. He owed letters to Willi von Strelsau, Lady Ulrica and his grandparents at Olmusch, as well as a note to Father Heer down in the town. So he made his way back to the warmth of the parlour and rang for Jan Lisku to bring his writing case.

***

Serge rapped on the door of the exchequer room, as it was called. He found his uncle where the butler said he would be, behind his green baize desk, a pipe in his mouth and the plume of a pen behind his ear. He was intent on his ledgers, but smiled when he looked up and saw his nephew.

‘Come in, lad. Pleasure to see you. You have the look of a man who’s after something.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Serge confessed. ‘It’s actually for Father Heer. He’d like to search amongst the manuscripts we possess for a medieval life of St Fenice. I couldn’t find them in the library, so I was wondering where they might be.’

The count gave a shrug. ‘Old is it? Then most likely in the muniment room. Don’t know where that is? It’s down in the cellars under the chapel. The key’s hanging there, so by all means take it and go look. Something else?’

‘Yes, sir. While I was looking around the library, I came upon a lot of volumes of Count Oskar’s. They deal with subjects that some might find dubious: alchemy, thaumaturgy and, I fear to say, the summoning of spirits and demons.’

‘You don’t say? I’ve not got round to the library since the old man died. Not really had that much time. Dubious, you say?’

‘I know several of them have been condemned by the Church to be burned. Now I wouldn’t recommend we do that, but I think it might be politic to at least remove them from the open shelves.’

‘Hmmph. Perhaps you can attend to that for me.’ The count sighed. ‘The old man caused no end of problems in his time for me and your father, and that one is minor compared to some of them, believe me. What a strange family we are. At one end of the scale we have the blessed Fenice, which puts us up there with the kings of France as a family with an honest-to-goodness saint of the church in our lineage. And just to balance things out, there’s my father.

‘Sit yourself down, Sergius, it’s really time you and I had this conversation. You’re a sober lad and clever with it, and you should know something of the circumstances of your grandfather’s departure from the world, so far as we’ve managed to work them out.’

The count charged his pipe and used a taper to light it. He took a couple of meditative puffs before beginning. ‘Now it was the year ’87. Your father was with the Imperial forces in Hungary, as you’ll recall, and you had been safely at Olmusch for five years by then. I was holding the fort here with my mother, bless her. Your grandfather Oskar had been gone from home for over two years at this time, and all we ever got from him were debt bonds to settle raised in Jewish houses across Europe. What he was doing, God – or the Devil – alone know.

‘It was to get you out of the way of all these troubles that your parents had decided that Olmusch was the safest place for you, when you were seven. Your honoured grandfather the baron was happy enough to take over responsibility for your upbringing, as you will be in the course of things yourself the Baron of Olmusch, but he knew from your mother the trouble we were sinking into as a family. He gave us more help in staving off complete ruin than it will ever be possible to acknowledge: several large loans free of interest which the estate is only now paying back.

‘The last letter we had from old Oskar was from Prague and he assured us he was returning to Ruritania, and expected to be with us after travelling through Glottenburg to Medeln abbey. Your Aunt Maria, who’s now abbess there, had another letter from him by the same post and I rather suspect she was closer in with his plans than we were. She did mention that our father’s projects were coming to some sort of completion. She didn’t seem that happy about it however. Odd, as the two were thick as thieves for much of the time. She had more of his confidence than our mother ever did.’

‘And what projects were those, sir?’ Serge interjected.

‘There are all sorts of rumours. He undoubtedly spent years searching for the key that would change base metal to gold; his idea of a way to end the money troubles he had caused, no doubt. As you can plainly see, it was no great success. Had it been, we’d not have been left in such a mess.’ The count gave a harsh laugh which ended in a coughing fit, eventually resuming. ‘From what you say about those books in the library, I would give more credit to the theory that he was intent on raising up and interrogating spirits of power, and there at least there is some reason to believe he was more successful.’

‘Surely not, sir.’ Serge’s rational scepticism could not allow this to pass. ‘Such things are mere superstition. The idea of a world of spirits with power to act independently of God is simply not credible.’

‘Is that so, sir?’ his uncle said. ‘Do we not read in scripture of those deceitful spirits that Our Lord cast out of men in his day, and of angels and demons who walked among men.’

‘Yes sir, of course. But scripture says that none of these could exist or act without God’s sanction. They had no power to stand against Him. Did Count Oskar consider he could employ such perilous beings for his own purposes?’

‘So it seems. One of the powers they are said to possess is the knowledge of buried treasure. For my part, I’d be willing to believe that this was the power he sought to meet his desperate needs, and in pursuing it brought spirits into the world who had no business here. So on the Monday after Trinity Sunday, which was the twenty-sixth day of May, he came to the gates of the abbey of Medeln and requested the right of hospitality he had as being lord of Tarlenheim and one of the patrons of the house. The next day, which is the feast of St Vitalis, there was a high mass in the church as being the patron of Ruritania, at which there was quite a distinguished gathering of clerics and noblemen.

‘The abbess of the time was the aged Clothilde, the sister of King Rudolf I, who had presided over the house for many years by then, and she was a formidable woman held in much respect across Husbrau. There are stories about her. Do you know she opened fire with a musket on a gang of Swedish marauders who tried to force the abbey? Brought down their chief too. We had it from her that the whole congregation witnessed your grandfather exercise his right as patron to walk the ambulatory around the choir after mass and he was seen to pass within the gates to contemplate the tomb of St Fenice, as he said he intended. He never came out. When a sister was sent to seek him she returned pale and incoherent. She talked of the smell of sulphur in the choir, and when others went to check they found nothing but a spray of blood across the paving behind the tomb, which had been marked with arcane symbols; mere ripped rags of his clothing and a book dropped open on the floor.’

‘And what would you conclude from this, uncle?’

‘Why Sergius, that the man attempted a great blasphemy and was struck down by the very spirit he had hoped to enslave. You can imagine what people made of that, and we did our damnedest to hush it up, but I have to admit it was not for nothing that the king refused to allow the commemoration of Count Oskar’s soul in the chapels royal.’

***

Jan Lisku inspected Karl carefully as the boy led Brunhild out into the stableyard. He straightened his cocked hat and tied a scarf carefully around the boy’s neck before lifting him up into the saddle. ‘So you know where to go?’

‘Yes, Master Jan. I ride back to the town the way we came last night. The post office in the market place will accept the Tarlenheim bag without payment and then I must take his lordship’s note to Father Heer at the White Lion and wait for a reply if he’s to be found there.’

‘Good. Don’t push Brunhild, though the road’s muddy rather than icy. You can trot her for exercise if you can find a green lane. Come to think of it, once you’re back and Brunhild’s been rubbed down, you can saddle up and exercise Jennet round the paddock, but not our two stallions.’

‘Acheron likes me.’

‘Maybe so, but he and Erebus could trample you underfoot and not even notice they’d squashed you. They’re for his lordship alone to play with. Understood?’

‘Yes, Master Jan.’

‘Good.’ He watched the boy trot off under the archway and down the drive. Karl had no difficulty in managing Brunhild and sat securely and confidently on the mare. The boy was very patient and indeed gifted with horses, it seemed. Maybe that was a skill of his which should be developed. There might be a future for him in stable management rather than domestic service.

Karl duly made his rounds in the town and began the journey back up to the house, Father Heer’s reply in his pocket. He kept an eye open for a ride where he could let Brunhild stretch her legs. Just past the lodge gates a green lane opened between trees leading towards the hills above the house. The mare seemed to read his mind; she looked back at him and snorted, so he kicked his boot heels into her flanks and she took off at a canter.

It was a grand ride. The grass was quite even, without the danger posed by molehills and dropped branches, and he was confident enough to let Brunhild hit a full gallop before the slope began to rise. He was grinning fit to bust as the wind whipped past and billowed his riding cloak behind him. He was bursting with happiness that morning, for he realised that life was indeed being good to him. He remembered the uncanny ghost boy he still believed he had encountered when he ran away, and was so grateful for his warning and that he had done the hard thing and listened to what he had been told.

Brunhild slowed as the ride steepened, but they had nearly crested the rise before she came to a walk. At the hilltop Karl brought her to a halt. He sat the horse and looked down on the world. The sky was a pale winter grey but the cloud cover was high and he could see quite a distance. The broad and shallow valley of the Taveln lay at his feet, the hills on its eastern side opposite him pale in the distance. Below him were the roofs of the great house of Tarlenheim, smoke rising straight from its many chimneys.

Nearer at hand, along the ridge he had just topped, was a tumbled mass of masonry: broken walls and towers and deep ditches. He walked Brunhild closer to the ruins and dismounted, leading her by her reins across a surviving stone bridge, under an arch and into a grassy court, on to which faced the empty windows of roofless lodgings. Brunhild snorted at him and gave him a look which seemed to be asking him why they were there.

‘It’s an old castle,’ he explained, ‘older than the Lines back home in Strelsau. Just want to look around, that’s all. You can stay here. Be good.’ In answer, Brunhild rolled her eyes in a disconcertingly human way and began cropping at the winter grass.

Karl poked his head around a nearby doorway. The stories his mother told him had often mentioned castles as magical places haunted by fairies, witches and the like, so he had some expectations for his exploration, but all he found within was a weed-grown roofless space littered with debris. Nothing daunted, he crossed to the other side of the court where a more substantial range of buildings reared up, including the tallest of the surviving towers.

This time within the doors he found a room with its stone vaults intact and several arched and traceried windows letting in light, though their glass was gone. With his growing experience of ecclesiastical buildings under Jan Lisku’s guidance, he had no difficulty recognising he was in a church of some sort. He knew big houses usually contained chapels, and he supposed castles might do too. Indeed there was a raised stone table at one end which had to be an altar.

He mooched around and found some weathered wall-paintings on surviving spaces of plasterwork, which he imagined might be saints, and one in particular was quite clear and still vivid: a winged child, a coronet on his brow and a halo round his head. His pinions were a dark shade and his face beautiful under a crown of raven hair. Oddly, the face seemed familiar from somewhere, as did the voice which spoke into the silence of the chapel behind him. He turned, and sitting cross-legged up on the altar now was a boy his own age with just such a face as was on the mural; he was quite naked and on either side of his forehead were small, sharp spikes of blue.