Chapter III.
Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns,
And as the portal opens to receive me,
A voice in hollow murmurs through the courts
Tells of a nameless deed.
-Radcliffe
Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns,
And as the portal opens to receive me,
A voice in hollow murmurs through the courts
Tells of a nameless deed.
-Radcliffe
IT WAS SO DARK that at first Sophia could not see anything. Then a glimmer of lightning lit up the surroundings for a short moment. It was just long enough for Sophia to see the House.
It was not a proper house at all, but a castle. The walls soared up above her as if they were going to fall on top of her any minute, and black windows peered out of them here and there like dark eyes. The cart stood in a courtyard in front of an arched door of heavy oak. This door swung open at a shout from the man and he carried in Sophia’s portmanteau and his own valise while Sophia followed slowly and uncertainly.
The room that she came into was a large, wide hall with a lofty ceiling, dimly lighted by a great open fireplace at one end. The skin of some animal lay beneath her feet and dusty heads of elk and antelope gazed glassily at her from perches on the walls. The great door closed behind her with a heavy thud and the man who had closed it stepped forward. He was an old man, with grey hair and a grey moustache, and was apparently the servant of the castle for he came up and took the scarred man’s coat for him.
‘It’s a good thing that you arrived before the storm,’ he said to the man, taking no notice of Sophia except to give her a quick glance as he passed.
‘So it is. I don’t fancy a wetting on a night like this.’
‘Did you have any trouble crossing the border?’
‘No; the road was completely deserted, and no wonder, so late as it was. Where is the count?’
The old servant raised his shoulders to show that he didn’t know.
‘He went into the city two days ago and I’ve had no orders from him since,’ he said.
‘Have you anything to eat? We’ve had nothing since noon.’
‘Yes, there’s a meat pastry in the kitchen. I’ll send Gertruda to put away the cart.’
‘Tell her to hurry before the rain sets in. It ought to be taken back first thing tomorrow morning, or someone may come looking for it.’
The man in the grey suit sat down at a trestle table pulled up near the fire—for light as much as for warmth, for it was exceedingly dark in the hall. Sophia sat down across from him and opened her brass birdcage. A little snow-white pigeon hopped out and flew up to the rafters above them where it sat smoothing its feathers, quite happy to be free after being shut up for so long.
Sophia looked around the dark hall. It was one large room with flagstones for a floor and a high ceiling held up by stone arches. It was very clean: there were no cobwebs or dust to be seen and it had a clean, cold smell, like a dry cellar. Every time someone talked or scraped his chair legs on the floor the stone arches echoed so that it sounded like two people speaking or two people scraping their chairs. When no one was making any noise at all the air hung still and heavy like a stopped pendulum. It was so still and empty and cold that it reminded Sophia of a church. She liked churches, but she wondered what it would be like to live in a place so much like one.
The furthest end of the room was the darkest of all and once Sophia thought she saw something moving in the shadows. But it was only her fancy, for when occasional thunder-flashes lit up the windows in that end of the room there was nothing there but the elk heads and curious old weapons from a bygone era.
The servant soon came back with, besides the pastry, two roasted eggs, a bottle of wine, and several apples that had spent the winter in the cellar and were rather dry and wrinkled but very sweet. Perhaps you know what it is like to go on a long journey and to arrive at a strange place, cold and hungry and tired. Nothing seems quite right or as it should be and Sophia almost wished she were back in England. But as soon as she had had her supper she began to feel wonderfully better and the strange, dark castle began to feel almost warm and home-like.
The servant stood by the table watching them eat and talking with the man.
‘I trust the journey went well?’ he said.
‘As well as can be expected,’ the man in the grey suit replied.
‘How long did it take you?’
‘Seven days and a half. I found cutting through Bavaria saved me several hours.’
‘Did you meet anyone?’
‘You mean anyone I knew? No. The trip was quite uneventful. Are you and Gertruda the only ones here, Jacob?’
‘Demerov and Bastein arrived this afternoon.’
‘Where are they?’
‘They went out on some orders. They said they would be back tonight.’
‘Then I won’t have to hang about here long—and glad I am of it. I suppose Borrit and I will have to take the next watch?’
The servant again raised his shoulders. ‘What do they tell me? I suppose the count will give you your orders when you get to the city.’
‘Well, I hope I shall have some time to myself, after all that travelling, but it’s just as likely he’ll put me to work again at once. Is this venison, Jacob?’
He pronounced Jacob’s name Yahkub, so that for a long time Sophia did not know how it was really spelled.
‘It is. One of the villagers brought a haunch by yesterday. Are you going to the capital, then?’
‘Not to-night. I’ll rest while I can. Has anything more been seen of Hergyll?’
‘No.’
‘Well, as I say, it was probably just coincidence.’
There was a sudden lightning flash, much brighter than any of the others, and a great clap of thunder suddenly shook the castle. Sophia jumped and listened in wonder as the huge noise rumbled and died away somewhere far up in the castle above them. She wondered how high up the castle went.
With the clap of thunder the wind rose and there was a sudden rattle of rain in the cobble-stoned courtyard.
‘Here it comes,’ said Jacob. ‘They’ll be wet when they arrive.’
‘And in an ill humour too, I’ll warrant.’
As he finished speaking, the door leading to the kitchen opened and a woman came into the hall. She seemed to be another servant; her clothes were plain, her hair was pulled back into a tight knot on the back of her head, and she looked cross.
‘Did you see to the horse, Gertruda?’ asked Jacob.
The woman nodded without saying anything and sat down in a chair by the fire.
No one had spoken a word to Sophia since she had arrived. It was all very different from what she had been expecting, and she had a great many questions that she longed to ask, but she had rather a feeling that nobody would answer them if she did. She began to yawn over her supper and soon grew so sleepy that she slipped from her chair and sank down onto the skin which lay before the hearth. It was a bear skin and the head had been left on and stuffed with sawdust. It had glass eyes and its mouth was open ferociously and it looked very old, but it was very soft and Sophia curled up in its warmth and closed her eyes. Jacob and the man with the scarred face went on with their conversation. The snapping of the flames was so near and the men’s voices were so far away that the two sounds seemed to get muddled together in Sophia’s head until the flames seemed to be talking and the men crackling.
‘Who is she?’ said Jacob.
‘I don’t know. All I have is the count’s orders; he didn’t explain them.’
‘Are you going to leave her here?’
‘That’s what he said. Does it matter?’
‘I’ve had no orders about her, that’s all. What am I to do with her?’
‘Gertruda can look after her.’
‘Gertruda won’t like that.’
‘She won’t be any trouble. She was very quiet on the journey and scarcely asked any questions. Besides, there’s plenty of room here so she won’t get in your way.’
‘As if we didn’t have enough work of our own,’ said the woman, speaking for the first time.
‘Pooh! You’ve little enough between the two of you. Demerov and Bastein will cause you more trouble than she will. Look, she’s asleep already.’
‘What do we know about children?’ asked Jacob.
‘She can look after herself, I’m sure.’
‘But how long is she to stay here?’
‘You’ll have to ask the count that. I already told you I don’t know any more than you do. I wouldn’t worry, if I were you. The count will tell you soon enough what he wants done.’
‘What can the count want with a little child?’
‘What does it matter? That’s not our business.’
‘But why is everything done so secretly?’
‘I wouldn’t inquire into it too much. This place is full of mysteries. Nobody but the count seems to know the reason for anything that’s done—unless it’s Borrit, or young Rupert.’
Suddenly above the patter of the rain came the sound of shouts and ringing hooves in the courtyard, and Sophia became fully awake and sat up.
‘That’ll be Demerov and Bastein,’ said the man. ‘You’d better bring another pie, Jacob.’
‘Gertruda, take the child to her room,’ said Jacob.
‘And her box too, I suppose?’ asked Gertruda.
‘Of course her box too. You can’t leave it there in the middle of the floor, can you?’
Gertruda got up slowly and picked up Sophia’s portmanteau, grumbling about ‘two great hulking men sitting about and doing nothing.’
‘Come, you!’ she said shortly to Sophia, and Sophia scrambled up from the rug and hurried after her, catching up her bird (which was pecking at crumbs on the table) as she went. They went out through a door at the near end of the hall and as it closed behind them Sophia heard the outer door open and the sound of men’s voices and boots entering.
She followed the woman closely as she led the way down a dark passage and up a flight of stairs. They had no candle and Sophia couldn’t see anything as they made their way upwards except when the lightning flashed in at a window. She only knew that they went through many doors and climbed many steps. Once another great thundercrash came on the heels of the lightning and resounded through the castle, making the stones under Sophia’s feet tremble and echoing away through the rooms above them as before. At last Sophia heard the woman fumble at a latch and open a door and she followed her through a narrow doorway into a room.
Gertruda set the box down just inside the doorway and groped about for a candle. As she was doing so, the lightning came again and shone in through the windows on three sides of the apartment. It seemed a very small room and, from the sound of the wind rushing around it, very high up. Then the woman lighted a candle and Sophia could see it better.
It was a round room. There were only a few pieces of furniture—a bed, a washstand, a chair, and a heavy wooden chest. There were three windows facing three different directions; their sills were deep and their panes were made up of many little diamond-shaped pieces of glass soldered together with lead. The floor was of wood and partly covered with a rush mat. The ceiling was open and one could see the underside of the shingles on the roof, which was also round and went up to a sharp peak in the centre like a witch’s cap. The beams which braced the walls arched underneath it, criss-crossing each other like the spokes of a wheel, and where they met in the middle a lamp hung down on a chain. There was no fireplace, and Sophia shivered to think how cold the little room must have gotten in the wintertime.
The woman placed the candle on the chair and went out without a word, shutting the door behind her. Sophia went to a window and looked out. It was then that she realised how very high up the room was. It was at the very top of the keep, higher than any other room in the castle. It was a little round tower that stuck up above the roof of the keep like a watchtower, which in fact it was. There was no courtyard on the side of the castle which Sophia saw through this window and the steep stone walls plunged straight down to the ground very far below. The wind had risen and howled around the tower in great gusts and Sophia could see, when the lightning shone, the storm whipping the tops of the mulberry trees below like waves on a frothy ocean.
She was too tired to think much more about anything and so, laying aside her travel-stained clothes, she put on her fresh white nightgown which smelled of lavender. Mrs. Huxley had put in the lavender and the smell of it made Sophia homesick. She climbed into the high old bed and found it very soft and the bedclothes freshly aired.
But although she was so tired, for a long time she could not fall asleep because of the unfamiliar surroundings, the howling of the storm, and—a something else that she did not understand—a strange feeling of fear and mistrust and wrong and remorse—a feeling that was terribly strange to her and yet somehow seemed unaccountably familiar. It seemed to belong to the dark old castle and it frightened her.
But her weariness prevailed at last and she fell asleep while the storm howled around the little tower and the white pigeon on the rafters above ruffled up its feathers and put its head under its wing.
It was not a proper house at all, but a castle. The walls soared up above her as if they were going to fall on top of her any minute, and black windows peered out of them here and there like dark eyes. The cart stood in a courtyard in front of an arched door of heavy oak. This door swung open at a shout from the man and he carried in Sophia’s portmanteau and his own valise while Sophia followed slowly and uncertainly.
The room that she came into was a large, wide hall with a lofty ceiling, dimly lighted by a great open fireplace at one end. The skin of some animal lay beneath her feet and dusty heads of elk and antelope gazed glassily at her from perches on the walls. The great door closed behind her with a heavy thud and the man who had closed it stepped forward. He was an old man, with grey hair and a grey moustache, and was apparently the servant of the castle for he came up and took the scarred man’s coat for him.
‘It’s a good thing that you arrived before the storm,’ he said to the man, taking no notice of Sophia except to give her a quick glance as he passed.
‘So it is. I don’t fancy a wetting on a night like this.’
‘Did you have any trouble crossing the border?’
‘No; the road was completely deserted, and no wonder, so late as it was. Where is the count?’
The old servant raised his shoulders to show that he didn’t know.
‘He went into the city two days ago and I’ve had no orders from him since,’ he said.
‘Have you anything to eat? We’ve had nothing since noon.’
‘Yes, there’s a meat pastry in the kitchen. I’ll send Gertruda to put away the cart.’
‘Tell her to hurry before the rain sets in. It ought to be taken back first thing tomorrow morning, or someone may come looking for it.’
The man in the grey suit sat down at a trestle table pulled up near the fire—for light as much as for warmth, for it was exceedingly dark in the hall. Sophia sat down across from him and opened her brass birdcage. A little snow-white pigeon hopped out and flew up to the rafters above them where it sat smoothing its feathers, quite happy to be free after being shut up for so long.
Sophia looked around the dark hall. It was one large room with flagstones for a floor and a high ceiling held up by stone arches. It was very clean: there were no cobwebs or dust to be seen and it had a clean, cold smell, like a dry cellar. Every time someone talked or scraped his chair legs on the floor the stone arches echoed so that it sounded like two people speaking or two people scraping their chairs. When no one was making any noise at all the air hung still and heavy like a stopped pendulum. It was so still and empty and cold that it reminded Sophia of a church. She liked churches, but she wondered what it would be like to live in a place so much like one.
The furthest end of the room was the darkest of all and once Sophia thought she saw something moving in the shadows. But it was only her fancy, for when occasional thunder-flashes lit up the windows in that end of the room there was nothing there but the elk heads and curious old weapons from a bygone era.
The servant soon came back with, besides the pastry, two roasted eggs, a bottle of wine, and several apples that had spent the winter in the cellar and were rather dry and wrinkled but very sweet. Perhaps you know what it is like to go on a long journey and to arrive at a strange place, cold and hungry and tired. Nothing seems quite right or as it should be and Sophia almost wished she were back in England. But as soon as she had had her supper she began to feel wonderfully better and the strange, dark castle began to feel almost warm and home-like.
The servant stood by the table watching them eat and talking with the man.
‘I trust the journey went well?’ he said.
‘As well as can be expected,’ the man in the grey suit replied.
‘How long did it take you?’
‘Seven days and a half. I found cutting through Bavaria saved me several hours.’
‘Did you meet anyone?’
‘You mean anyone I knew? No. The trip was quite uneventful. Are you and Gertruda the only ones here, Jacob?’
‘Demerov and Bastein arrived this afternoon.’
‘Where are they?’
‘They went out on some orders. They said they would be back tonight.’
‘Then I won’t have to hang about here long—and glad I am of it. I suppose Borrit and I will have to take the next watch?’
The servant again raised his shoulders. ‘What do they tell me? I suppose the count will give you your orders when you get to the city.’
‘Well, I hope I shall have some time to myself, after all that travelling, but it’s just as likely he’ll put me to work again at once. Is this venison, Jacob?’
He pronounced Jacob’s name Yahkub, so that for a long time Sophia did not know how it was really spelled.
‘It is. One of the villagers brought a haunch by yesterday. Are you going to the capital, then?’
‘Not to-night. I’ll rest while I can. Has anything more been seen of Hergyll?’
‘No.’
‘Well, as I say, it was probably just coincidence.’
There was a sudden lightning flash, much brighter than any of the others, and a great clap of thunder suddenly shook the castle. Sophia jumped and listened in wonder as the huge noise rumbled and died away somewhere far up in the castle above them. She wondered how high up the castle went.
With the clap of thunder the wind rose and there was a sudden rattle of rain in the cobble-stoned courtyard.
‘Here it comes,’ said Jacob. ‘They’ll be wet when they arrive.’
‘And in an ill humour too, I’ll warrant.’
As he finished speaking, the door leading to the kitchen opened and a woman came into the hall. She seemed to be another servant; her clothes were plain, her hair was pulled back into a tight knot on the back of her head, and she looked cross.
‘Did you see to the horse, Gertruda?’ asked Jacob.
The woman nodded without saying anything and sat down in a chair by the fire.
No one had spoken a word to Sophia since she had arrived. It was all very different from what she had been expecting, and she had a great many questions that she longed to ask, but she had rather a feeling that nobody would answer them if she did. She began to yawn over her supper and soon grew so sleepy that she slipped from her chair and sank down onto the skin which lay before the hearth. It was a bear skin and the head had been left on and stuffed with sawdust. It had glass eyes and its mouth was open ferociously and it looked very old, but it was very soft and Sophia curled up in its warmth and closed her eyes. Jacob and the man with the scarred face went on with their conversation. The snapping of the flames was so near and the men’s voices were so far away that the two sounds seemed to get muddled together in Sophia’s head until the flames seemed to be talking and the men crackling.
‘Who is she?’ said Jacob.
‘I don’t know. All I have is the count’s orders; he didn’t explain them.’
‘Are you going to leave her here?’
‘That’s what he said. Does it matter?’
‘I’ve had no orders about her, that’s all. What am I to do with her?’
‘Gertruda can look after her.’
‘Gertruda won’t like that.’
‘She won’t be any trouble. She was very quiet on the journey and scarcely asked any questions. Besides, there’s plenty of room here so she won’t get in your way.’
‘As if we didn’t have enough work of our own,’ said the woman, speaking for the first time.
‘Pooh! You’ve little enough between the two of you. Demerov and Bastein will cause you more trouble than she will. Look, she’s asleep already.’
‘What do we know about children?’ asked Jacob.
‘She can look after herself, I’m sure.’
‘But how long is she to stay here?’
‘You’ll have to ask the count that. I already told you I don’t know any more than you do. I wouldn’t worry, if I were you. The count will tell you soon enough what he wants done.’
‘What can the count want with a little child?’
‘What does it matter? That’s not our business.’
‘But why is everything done so secretly?’
‘I wouldn’t inquire into it too much. This place is full of mysteries. Nobody but the count seems to know the reason for anything that’s done—unless it’s Borrit, or young Rupert.’
Suddenly above the patter of the rain came the sound of shouts and ringing hooves in the courtyard, and Sophia became fully awake and sat up.
‘That’ll be Demerov and Bastein,’ said the man. ‘You’d better bring another pie, Jacob.’
‘Gertruda, take the child to her room,’ said Jacob.
‘And her box too, I suppose?’ asked Gertruda.
‘Of course her box too. You can’t leave it there in the middle of the floor, can you?’
Gertruda got up slowly and picked up Sophia’s portmanteau, grumbling about ‘two great hulking men sitting about and doing nothing.’
‘Come, you!’ she said shortly to Sophia, and Sophia scrambled up from the rug and hurried after her, catching up her bird (which was pecking at crumbs on the table) as she went. They went out through a door at the near end of the hall and as it closed behind them Sophia heard the outer door open and the sound of men’s voices and boots entering.
She followed the woman closely as she led the way down a dark passage and up a flight of stairs. They had no candle and Sophia couldn’t see anything as they made their way upwards except when the lightning flashed in at a window. She only knew that they went through many doors and climbed many steps. Once another great thundercrash came on the heels of the lightning and resounded through the castle, making the stones under Sophia’s feet tremble and echoing away through the rooms above them as before. At last Sophia heard the woman fumble at a latch and open a door and she followed her through a narrow doorway into a room.
Gertruda set the box down just inside the doorway and groped about for a candle. As she was doing so, the lightning came again and shone in through the windows on three sides of the apartment. It seemed a very small room and, from the sound of the wind rushing around it, very high up. Then the woman lighted a candle and Sophia could see it better.
It was a round room. There were only a few pieces of furniture—a bed, a washstand, a chair, and a heavy wooden chest. There were three windows facing three different directions; their sills were deep and their panes were made up of many little diamond-shaped pieces of glass soldered together with lead. The floor was of wood and partly covered with a rush mat. The ceiling was open and one could see the underside of the shingles on the roof, which was also round and went up to a sharp peak in the centre like a witch’s cap. The beams which braced the walls arched underneath it, criss-crossing each other like the spokes of a wheel, and where they met in the middle a lamp hung down on a chain. There was no fireplace, and Sophia shivered to think how cold the little room must have gotten in the wintertime.
The woman placed the candle on the chair and went out without a word, shutting the door behind her. Sophia went to a window and looked out. It was then that she realised how very high up the room was. It was at the very top of the keep, higher than any other room in the castle. It was a little round tower that stuck up above the roof of the keep like a watchtower, which in fact it was. There was no courtyard on the side of the castle which Sophia saw through this window and the steep stone walls plunged straight down to the ground very far below. The wind had risen and howled around the tower in great gusts and Sophia could see, when the lightning shone, the storm whipping the tops of the mulberry trees below like waves on a frothy ocean.
She was too tired to think much more about anything and so, laying aside her travel-stained clothes, she put on her fresh white nightgown which smelled of lavender. Mrs. Huxley had put in the lavender and the smell of it made Sophia homesick. She climbed into the high old bed and found it very soft and the bedclothes freshly aired.
But although she was so tired, for a long time she could not fall asleep because of the unfamiliar surroundings, the howling of the storm, and—a something else that she did not understand—a strange feeling of fear and mistrust and wrong and remorse—a feeling that was terribly strange to her and yet somehow seemed unaccountably familiar. It seemed to belong to the dark old castle and it frightened her.
But her weariness prevailed at last and she fell asleep while the storm howled around the little tower and the white pigeon on the rafters above ruffled up its feathers and put its head under its wing.
* * *
