Chapter V.
There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see.
-Fitzgerald
There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see.
-Fitzgerald
THE DARK CASTLE began to lose some of its strangeness after a few days, although nobody answered any of Sophia’s questions and she was more curious about her new home than ever.
On the second day it rained and Sophia could not go out to play in the courtyards. So she explored the vast, gloomy keep, which kept her busy for the whole morning. There were so very many rooms that Sophia very nearly got lost again as she had the first day, but by the afternoon she knew her way about the castle almost as well as Jacob and Gertruda.
A great many of the rooms she went into were empty, or had only chests and old furniture in them. In one was a collection of weapons—fowling pieces, axes, swords, flint-lock guns, daggers, and even a suit of armour—all mixed up together in boxes and racks or propped up in corners.
Most of the rooms she looked into were bedrooms, swept and tidied, but with no sheets on the beds—except for the two bedrooms that Bastein and Demerov slept in.
The buttery next to the kitchen was one of Sophia’s favourite parts of the castle. Crates, barrels, and sacks lined the walls while overhead hung joints of meat and strings of sausages. On a shelf by the window stood pans for the milk that was brought to them by a cowherd who stopped at the castle gate to fill Gertruda’s milk pail every evening.
Sophia had never gone down to the castle cellars by herself, but once she followed Jacob when he went down to fetch a bottle of wine. The wine cellar was very cold and rather damp in the middle of the floor. Cobwebs hung in the corners (for Gertruda did not tidy up there often) and strange shadows danced on the walls when Jacob’s candle flickered in a draught. After going there once, Sophia did not wish to go again.
It was pleasantest in her bedroom, with the wind blowing the fresh smells of the warm fields and cool forests through the wide-open windows, and Sophia spent the best part of her time there. She felt like a bird high in a nest, safely tucked away in her own little round world.
Nobody ever came up to see her, but she was not lonely with her books to read and her bird and an occasional bee for company. The little white pigeon flew all round the little room and sometimes quite out of the window and up onto the roof, but it never went far and it always came back.
It was often the only company Sophia had, for Jacob and Gertruda paid very little attention to her and Bastein and Demerov paid even less. There was not much to do indoors and she would have found the days very dull, except that Gertruda found that she was good at needlework and so gave her breadcloths to stitch. Gertruda hated sewing.
So Sophia stitched away up in her high tower like the Lady of Shalott, sewing pictures on the cloths with red, blue, black, and gold thread. She did good work—Mrs. Huxley had been proud of Sophia’s needlework—and every Saturday when Gertruda went to market, she took some of the cloths to sell.
Generally Sophia worked birds and trees and flowers, or tried to copy some of the strange letters that her father had written in the old Bible. As she grew better at making them, she began to work the first sentence in it all around the border of an ivory-coloured bread cloth, with curlicues between.
Sophia had soon learned to help around the castle in other ways, too, and although nobody ever mentioned it, she had grown very useful.
She was sweeping the stable yard one evening when she heard the clankle of cowbells and a voice from outside the postern gate shouted a word in a strange language. Sophia knew that it was the cowherd Hans bringing his cows home to be milked. She wanted very much to see him milk into Gertruda’s pail, and so she put down her broom and ran to the gate.
Gertruda came out of the kitchen fumbling with a large ring full of keys. She had just put one of them into the lock and lifted the heavy bolt on the gate when she caught sight of Sophia.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said in a dreadful whisper. ‘Go inside at once!’
Sophia was so surprised that she stood still for a minute.
‘What for?’ she asked.
‘Get along, or I’ll give you a good dusting with the besom!’ said Gertruda, who was very angry.
Without another word Sophia turned and ran into the kitchen where Jacob was fixing supper. She peered out the window, but all she saw was Gertruda handing the pail through the gate to Hans.
‘Jacob,’ she said, ‘why is Gertruda so cross? She made me come inside and I hadn’t even finished sweeping. I only wanted to see Hans milk.’
‘It’s because she doesn’t want him to see you,’ said Jacob.
‘Why not?’
He replied with his usual lift of the shoulders.
‘Orders,’ was all he would say.
Sophia considered this. It seemed that she was not only a prisoner of the dark castle, but a secret prisoner as well. What was she there for and what did they mean to do with her?
A whole week passed, and one day Demerov and Bastein went away and Muncaster and another man came to take their place. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a great, thick neck and a small patch of hair on the top of his head. He had only one scar on his face—a great white one that ran over his temple and down his cheek. There was something about him that was different from the other three men. It was not his bad-humour, for they all had some of that, and it wasn’t the great, lean, grey dog that followed him about everywhere he went. It was more his way of stamping about and telling people what to do as if he were used to always being obeyed. Everyone else seemed rather afraid of him. Even Muncaster, although he pretended that he didn’t fear him and generally waited about for several minutes before obeying him, always ended up doing what Borrit had told him to.
Sophia unfortunately made him angry the very first day, although she certainly didn’t mean to. Borrit and Muncaster had been having a late supper—the sun had already set—and so they were a bit crosser than usual, when they heard a knock at the front gate. Nobody in the castle liked visitors, as Sophia had soon found, and Borrit and Muncaster looked up sharply while Jacob and Gertruda stopped what they were doing and listened.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Borrit.
‘It isn’t Hans because he always comes to the stable gate,’ said Jacob.
They all listened and heard the sound again—a noise like a stick tapping curtly on the wood. There was only one sort of knock that Sophia had heard before that sounded like it and that was a nightstick’s.
‘It sounds like a policeman!’ she said.
‘Jacob, don’t just stand there,’ said Borrit. ‘Go see who it is.’
Jacob went out and they heard him open the gate and speak to someone.
‘What if it’s Hergyll?’ asked Muncaster.
‘We won’t let him in,’ said Borrit.
Jacob returned in a few moments.
‘Well?’ asked Borrit gruffly.
‘It’s one of the military police,’ said Jacob.
‘What does he want?’
‘He has an order for the count. Von Rimmel wants him in the capital about something.’
‘Did you tell him the count isn’t here?’
‘Yes. He insists on coming in and seeing for himself.’
‘Too bad for him. Tell him to leave.’
‘I did. He won’t go.’
‘It’s one of Hergyll’s spies, I’ll warrant,’ said Borrit, getting up from his chair. ‘I’ll soon settle with him.’
‘You’d better give him some excuse,’ said Muncaster. ‘Otherwise he’ll be suspicious and he may come back.’
‘I don’t care if he does come back; he can’t get in here, and he won’t find anything. The count’s gone.’
‘He may find…’ said Muncaster, not finishing his sentence, but looking significantly in Sophia’s direction.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Borrit as he disappeared through the hall door.
The windows had been left open because it had been very warm earlier in the day, and they could overhear parts of the conversation.
‘Well?… He told you he wasn’t here, didn’t he?… At the capital, of course. Did you ask for him at his house?’
‘The servant there said he wasn’t home either,’ they heard the other man say. ‘Von Rimmel particularly wants to see him.’
‘Is that why he sends the military police after him?’ asked Borrit.
‘Don’t ask me anything,’ said the man with a short laugh. ‘I only do as I’m told. I’m not going to arrest Ratavarian, you know.’
‘Then why don’t they send an ordinary messenger?’
‘They already sent several to no purpose. Are you going to let me in, or aren’t you?’
‘I can’t let you in. One of the servants is down with smallpox.’
‘Smallpox, eh?’
‘Yes, just came down with it yesterday. Of course there’s a quarantine.’
‘He looked well enough to me.’
‘Not Jacob. He’s all right. You don’t think we keep only one servant here, do you?’
‘All right, but that won’t do for von Rimmel.’
‘It will have to. If he doesn’t like it, too bad for him.’
‘That’s easy enough for you to say, but what do I tell him?’
‘To send someone else next time. He ought to know better than to send the military police on message-boy errands.’
What the man replied to this they didn’t hear.
‘Well, good-bye!’ said Borrit and closed the gate.
He came back very pleased with himself.
‘That was von Bülow,’ he said. ‘I knew him in Stuttgart. He’s a simple fellow.’
‘He didn’t sound as if he was convinced,’ said Muncaster.
‘Don’t worry about him. Anyway, if it’s the count he wants, he’s barking up the wrong tree.’
‘And what happens when he finds that the doctor has not been here?’ asked Muncaster.
‘He won’t ask. He’s too lazy for that. Very likely he won’t even think of it.’
‘Hergyll will—and Hergyll will investigate, too,’ said Muncaster. ‘He might come here to investigate.’
‘I hope he does. He’ll find more than he bargained for if he does.’
‘I don’t like it anyway.’
‘I don’t care whether you do or not. You’re a coward anyway, Muncaster.’
‘Well, you’re a liar.’
‘Do you think I’m going to stand for that?’
‘You called me a coward.’
‘And you are one, and I’ll call you anything I like. You’re a lazy blackguard and you lost your commission because you stole the payroll.’
‘Hush! Not so loud,’ said Jacob. ‘Suppose von Bülow were still out there. He’d hear you fighting in here.’
‘I didn’t steal the payroll; it got lost,’ said Muncaster.
‘Ha! Call me a liar, will you? You’re the liar. Take back what you said.’
‘I won’t take back anything,’ said Muncaster sulkily, although he looked as if he were thinking twice about it.
‘You won’t, eh?’ said Borrit grinning. He was quite sure that Muncaster would give in.
‘You did tell a lie,’ said Sophia suddenly. ‘You told the policeman that someone was sick.’
Borrit was too surprised to answer at first. They had all forgotten that Sophia was there and had heard everything. As for Sophia, she did not know quite why she had said what she had, except that she didn’t like Borrit bullying Muncaster.—And Borrit had told a lie.
‘Well, you little vixen!’ Borrit exclaimed, quite angry. ‘You’ll tell me my business, will you? I’ll teach you some manners!’ and he took a step towards her.
‘Oh, so you’ll hide behind Jacob, will you?’ he said.
‘Don’t hit me,’ said Sophia.
‘Humph,’ said Borrit. ‘You’re not so bold now, are you?’ But he sat down in his chair.
After that Sophia was as afraid of Borrit as every one else and she did her best to keep out of his way.
It was not very difficult to do so because Borrit was gone from the castle nearly every day. At first he had been careful, especially after the military police came, but after several days he no longer stayed to guard the castle all day long and often went out for several hours at a time. Sometimes Muncaster went with him.
The odd feeling that had given Demerov the ‘creeps’ still hung over the castle and Sophia could feel it, but it was not so strong in the courtyards as in the dark keep, so she spent most of her time playing in the stableyard with the chickens or in the garden. She had made the square stone watchtower in the corner of the garden into a playhouse with stones for chairs and a box for a table. It made a splendid playhouse, for it had an upstairs even though the roof was falling in. The only trouble with it was that it was rather dark in the lower level because there was only one small window looking out into the garden.
In the upstairs Sophia made a little bed of hay by one of the loopholes. It was the one that looked westwards over the little green meadow, and she sometimes forgot to play for looking out towards the shady forest not so far away.
There were many games to play in the tower. Sometimes she played that the castle was being beseiged and she was one of the defenders. Sometimes she pretended that the tower was a dungeon and she was a prisoner. Once she pretended to be a burglar. But it was never very much fun with nobody to play with but her pigeon.
Sophia was playing there one afternoon when she found something better than games. It began when she discovered a queer hook, shaped rather like the handle of a door. She would have thought no more about it, but as she played by the wall, she noticed a long, straight crack between the stones. It was quite an even crack and ran up the side of the tower very much in the shape of a door, and the queer hook was fixed in the wall beside it. Suddenly Sophia wondered if perhaps there was a secret door in the castle wall and at once the thought of escaping into the clear air outside filled her with excitement. She caught hold of the hook with two hands and pulled with all her might.
At first the wall would not budge at all, but as Sophia stubbornly kept at it, it began to move little by little until a bright line of light appeared in the crack. Sophia put her eye to it and saw a broad green bank and beyond it, beckoning to her, it seemed, the wonderful forest.
She again pulled on the hook with all her strength, planting one foot against the wall beside it and growing quite red and out-of-breath. Very slowly the crack widened until there was a small opening. Sophia was a small girl but though she squeezed herself into the opening and wriggled, she could not quite get through. She leaned on the door with all her weight and felt it move the littlest bit and at last, with a final great effort, she pressed through and was on the further side.
On the second day it rained and Sophia could not go out to play in the courtyards. So she explored the vast, gloomy keep, which kept her busy for the whole morning. There were so very many rooms that Sophia very nearly got lost again as she had the first day, but by the afternoon she knew her way about the castle almost as well as Jacob and Gertruda.
A great many of the rooms she went into were empty, or had only chests and old furniture in them. In one was a collection of weapons—fowling pieces, axes, swords, flint-lock guns, daggers, and even a suit of armour—all mixed up together in boxes and racks or propped up in corners.
Most of the rooms she looked into were bedrooms, swept and tidied, but with no sheets on the beds—except for the two bedrooms that Bastein and Demerov slept in.
The buttery next to the kitchen was one of Sophia’s favourite parts of the castle. Crates, barrels, and sacks lined the walls while overhead hung joints of meat and strings of sausages. On a shelf by the window stood pans for the milk that was brought to them by a cowherd who stopped at the castle gate to fill Gertruda’s milk pail every evening.
Sophia had never gone down to the castle cellars by herself, but once she followed Jacob when he went down to fetch a bottle of wine. The wine cellar was very cold and rather damp in the middle of the floor. Cobwebs hung in the corners (for Gertruda did not tidy up there often) and strange shadows danced on the walls when Jacob’s candle flickered in a draught. After going there once, Sophia did not wish to go again.
It was pleasantest in her bedroom, with the wind blowing the fresh smells of the warm fields and cool forests through the wide-open windows, and Sophia spent the best part of her time there. She felt like a bird high in a nest, safely tucked away in her own little round world.
Nobody ever came up to see her, but she was not lonely with her books to read and her bird and an occasional bee for company. The little white pigeon flew all round the little room and sometimes quite out of the window and up onto the roof, but it never went far and it always came back.
It was often the only company Sophia had, for Jacob and Gertruda paid very little attention to her and Bastein and Demerov paid even less. There was not much to do indoors and she would have found the days very dull, except that Gertruda found that she was good at needlework and so gave her breadcloths to stitch. Gertruda hated sewing.
So Sophia stitched away up in her high tower like the Lady of Shalott, sewing pictures on the cloths with red, blue, black, and gold thread. She did good work—Mrs. Huxley had been proud of Sophia’s needlework—and every Saturday when Gertruda went to market, she took some of the cloths to sell.
Generally Sophia worked birds and trees and flowers, or tried to copy some of the strange letters that her father had written in the old Bible. As she grew better at making them, she began to work the first sentence in it all around the border of an ivory-coloured bread cloth, with curlicues between.
Sophia had soon learned to help around the castle in other ways, too, and although nobody ever mentioned it, she had grown very useful.
She was sweeping the stable yard one evening when she heard the clankle of cowbells and a voice from outside the postern gate shouted a word in a strange language. Sophia knew that it was the cowherd Hans bringing his cows home to be milked. She wanted very much to see him milk into Gertruda’s pail, and so she put down her broom and ran to the gate.
Gertruda came out of the kitchen fumbling with a large ring full of keys. She had just put one of them into the lock and lifted the heavy bolt on the gate when she caught sight of Sophia.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said in a dreadful whisper. ‘Go inside at once!’
Sophia was so surprised that she stood still for a minute.
‘What for?’ she asked.
‘Get along, or I’ll give you a good dusting with the besom!’ said Gertruda, who was very angry.
Without another word Sophia turned and ran into the kitchen where Jacob was fixing supper. She peered out the window, but all she saw was Gertruda handing the pail through the gate to Hans.
‘Jacob,’ she said, ‘why is Gertruda so cross? She made me come inside and I hadn’t even finished sweeping. I only wanted to see Hans milk.’
‘It’s because she doesn’t want him to see you,’ said Jacob.
‘Why not?’
He replied with his usual lift of the shoulders.
‘Orders,’ was all he would say.
Sophia considered this. It seemed that she was not only a prisoner of the dark castle, but a secret prisoner as well. What was she there for and what did they mean to do with her?
A whole week passed, and one day Demerov and Bastein went away and Muncaster and another man came to take their place. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a great, thick neck and a small patch of hair on the top of his head. He had only one scar on his face—a great white one that ran over his temple and down his cheek. There was something about him that was different from the other three men. It was not his bad-humour, for they all had some of that, and it wasn’t the great, lean, grey dog that followed him about everywhere he went. It was more his way of stamping about and telling people what to do as if he were used to always being obeyed. Everyone else seemed rather afraid of him. Even Muncaster, although he pretended that he didn’t fear him and generally waited about for several minutes before obeying him, always ended up doing what Borrit had told him to.
Sophia unfortunately made him angry the very first day, although she certainly didn’t mean to. Borrit and Muncaster had been having a late supper—the sun had already set—and so they were a bit crosser than usual, when they heard a knock at the front gate. Nobody in the castle liked visitors, as Sophia had soon found, and Borrit and Muncaster looked up sharply while Jacob and Gertruda stopped what they were doing and listened.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Borrit.
‘It isn’t Hans because he always comes to the stable gate,’ said Jacob.
They all listened and heard the sound again—a noise like a stick tapping curtly on the wood. There was only one sort of knock that Sophia had heard before that sounded like it and that was a nightstick’s.
‘It sounds like a policeman!’ she said.
‘Jacob, don’t just stand there,’ said Borrit. ‘Go see who it is.’
Jacob went out and they heard him open the gate and speak to someone.
‘What if it’s Hergyll?’ asked Muncaster.
‘We won’t let him in,’ said Borrit.
Jacob returned in a few moments.
‘Well?’ asked Borrit gruffly.
‘It’s one of the military police,’ said Jacob.
‘What does he want?’
‘He has an order for the count. Von Rimmel wants him in the capital about something.’
‘Did you tell him the count isn’t here?’
‘Yes. He insists on coming in and seeing for himself.’
‘Too bad for him. Tell him to leave.’
‘I did. He won’t go.’
‘It’s one of Hergyll’s spies, I’ll warrant,’ said Borrit, getting up from his chair. ‘I’ll soon settle with him.’
‘You’d better give him some excuse,’ said Muncaster. ‘Otherwise he’ll be suspicious and he may come back.’
‘I don’t care if he does come back; he can’t get in here, and he won’t find anything. The count’s gone.’
‘He may find…’ said Muncaster, not finishing his sentence, but looking significantly in Sophia’s direction.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Borrit as he disappeared through the hall door.
The windows had been left open because it had been very warm earlier in the day, and they could overhear parts of the conversation.
‘Well?… He told you he wasn’t here, didn’t he?… At the capital, of course. Did you ask for him at his house?’
‘The servant there said he wasn’t home either,’ they heard the other man say. ‘Von Rimmel particularly wants to see him.’
‘Is that why he sends the military police after him?’ asked Borrit.
‘Don’t ask me anything,’ said the man with a short laugh. ‘I only do as I’m told. I’m not going to arrest Ratavarian, you know.’
‘Then why don’t they send an ordinary messenger?’
‘They already sent several to no purpose. Are you going to let me in, or aren’t you?’
‘I can’t let you in. One of the servants is down with smallpox.’
‘Smallpox, eh?’
‘Yes, just came down with it yesterday. Of course there’s a quarantine.’
‘He looked well enough to me.’
‘Not Jacob. He’s all right. You don’t think we keep only one servant here, do you?’
‘All right, but that won’t do for von Rimmel.’
‘It will have to. If he doesn’t like it, too bad for him.’
‘That’s easy enough for you to say, but what do I tell him?’
‘To send someone else next time. He ought to know better than to send the military police on message-boy errands.’
What the man replied to this they didn’t hear.
‘Well, good-bye!’ said Borrit and closed the gate.
He came back very pleased with himself.
‘That was von Bülow,’ he said. ‘I knew him in Stuttgart. He’s a simple fellow.’
‘He didn’t sound as if he was convinced,’ said Muncaster.
‘Don’t worry about him. Anyway, if it’s the count he wants, he’s barking up the wrong tree.’
‘And what happens when he finds that the doctor has not been here?’ asked Muncaster.
‘He won’t ask. He’s too lazy for that. Very likely he won’t even think of it.’
‘Hergyll will—and Hergyll will investigate, too,’ said Muncaster. ‘He might come here to investigate.’
‘I hope he does. He’ll find more than he bargained for if he does.’
‘I don’t like it anyway.’
‘I don’t care whether you do or not. You’re a coward anyway, Muncaster.’
‘Well, you’re a liar.’
‘Do you think I’m going to stand for that?’
‘You called me a coward.’
‘And you are one, and I’ll call you anything I like. You’re a lazy blackguard and you lost your commission because you stole the payroll.’
‘Hush! Not so loud,’ said Jacob. ‘Suppose von Bülow were still out there. He’d hear you fighting in here.’
‘I didn’t steal the payroll; it got lost,’ said Muncaster.
‘Ha! Call me a liar, will you? You’re the liar. Take back what you said.’
‘I won’t take back anything,’ said Muncaster sulkily, although he looked as if he were thinking twice about it.
‘You won’t, eh?’ said Borrit grinning. He was quite sure that Muncaster would give in.
‘You did tell a lie,’ said Sophia suddenly. ‘You told the policeman that someone was sick.’
Borrit was too surprised to answer at first. They had all forgotten that Sophia was there and had heard everything. As for Sophia, she did not know quite why she had said what she had, except that she didn’t like Borrit bullying Muncaster.—And Borrit had told a lie.
‘Well, you little vixen!’ Borrit exclaimed, quite angry. ‘You’ll tell me my business, will you? I’ll teach you some manners!’ and he took a step towards her.
‘Oh, so you’ll hide behind Jacob, will you?’ he said.
‘Don’t hit me,’ said Sophia.
‘Humph,’ said Borrit. ‘You’re not so bold now, are you?’ But he sat down in his chair.
After that Sophia was as afraid of Borrit as every one else and she did her best to keep out of his way.
It was not very difficult to do so because Borrit was gone from the castle nearly every day. At first he had been careful, especially after the military police came, but after several days he no longer stayed to guard the castle all day long and often went out for several hours at a time. Sometimes Muncaster went with him.
The odd feeling that had given Demerov the ‘creeps’ still hung over the castle and Sophia could feel it, but it was not so strong in the courtyards as in the dark keep, so she spent most of her time playing in the stableyard with the chickens or in the garden. She had made the square stone watchtower in the corner of the garden into a playhouse with stones for chairs and a box for a table. It made a splendid playhouse, for it had an upstairs even though the roof was falling in. The only trouble with it was that it was rather dark in the lower level because there was only one small window looking out into the garden.
In the upstairs Sophia made a little bed of hay by one of the loopholes. It was the one that looked westwards over the little green meadow, and she sometimes forgot to play for looking out towards the shady forest not so far away.
There were many games to play in the tower. Sometimes she played that the castle was being beseiged and she was one of the defenders. Sometimes she pretended that the tower was a dungeon and she was a prisoner. Once she pretended to be a burglar. But it was never very much fun with nobody to play with but her pigeon.
Sophia was playing there one afternoon when she found something better than games. It began when she discovered a queer hook, shaped rather like the handle of a door. She would have thought no more about it, but as she played by the wall, she noticed a long, straight crack between the stones. It was quite an even crack and ran up the side of the tower very much in the shape of a door, and the queer hook was fixed in the wall beside it. Suddenly Sophia wondered if perhaps there was a secret door in the castle wall and at once the thought of escaping into the clear air outside filled her with excitement. She caught hold of the hook with two hands and pulled with all her might.
At first the wall would not budge at all, but as Sophia stubbornly kept at it, it began to move little by little until a bright line of light appeared in the crack. Sophia put her eye to it and saw a broad green bank and beyond it, beckoning to her, it seemed, the wonderful forest.
She again pulled on the hook with all her strength, planting one foot against the wall beside it and growing quite red and out-of-breath. Very slowly the crack widened until there was a small opening. Sophia was a small girl but though she squeezed herself into the opening and wriggled, she could not quite get through. She leaned on the door with all her weight and felt it move the littlest bit and at last, with a final great effort, she pressed through and was on the further side.
* * *
