Iron Butterflies (14 page)

Yesterday I had climbed the stool by the window and realized that, even though I could in some way force my body through that narrow way, nothing lay beyond but a frightening drop down into a depth I could not even measure. There was the cot, the stool, the table ledge—and in one corner a place for other bodily necessities, which was merely a hole in a three sided ridge, leading far down into darkness.

For want of any better employment I moved the stool to the side of the ledge table and started to trace those marks which must have been left by those who had proceeded me here in imprisonment. There were names—mainly, I noted, of women. None were as deeply scored as that I had found the night before by chance. That lay directly at the end of one of the supporting chains where the rusty metal was embedded in the wood. For a second time I traced the letters with a finger tip.

I had no doubt that the “Ludovika” who must have spent much time and no little energy in setting those letters there was the same woman whose story had been used as an object lesson thereafter to all unfaithful wives. Perhaps she had richly deserved what had happened to her—yet—

It was the device under that name which fascinated me more. Now that the light from the window was better, I could see the lines of indentation. There was a circle, and it contained a five-pointed star—the lines of that surprisingly straight for being drawn freehand. I could have covered it all well with my flattened palm, thought I had no desire to touch the wood anywhere near it.

Peering even more closely now, I could see that in each point of the star there were smaller lines which were much dimmer than those which enclosed them, merely squiggles, though I believed that each differed from the other. It was certainly not any crest or part of an armorial bearing.

Glancing along the table I noted that beneath or above some of those other names were also symbols. But the majority of those were rudely scratched crosses or other religious designs, none having been done with the exact precision of that which lay to mark Ludovika’s despair.

Despair? No, somehow I could not couple that deadening expression with the woman of the Gräfin’s tale. Rage, bursting, unappeasable rage might better express what she must have felt to be so entrapped after
her years of freedom to do just as she pleased. I was as sure of that as if the long-vanished Electress still paced up and down the narrow space here between door and window, her hands doubled into fists, her mind dealing only with the vengeance she would wreak—if she could.

So vividly did that picture of her come into my mind that I found it, a fraction of a second later, startling. It was as if there was some link between past and present, that she reached out with her hatred and found something in me which bound us together.

I shivered, steadying myself with both hands on the edge of the shelf table. Yes, I had reason enough to want justice for myself, but surely I had a right to that! My present plight was none of my own contrivance, save I had been foolish when I should have been wise. But to my mind I had never harmed any other soul to gain my way. Unless—

Truda! What if she had been disposed of merely because she knew too much? That fear was back with me again. Perhaps I would never know.

I sat staring at that star within the circle, the symbol which—which— I made myself now loosen the grip on the table, advance my left hand, the one which still wore that branding ring. With the tip of my forefinger I touched the middle point of the star. Though those subordinate lines were so faintly etched in connection with the others, I could feel the one there against my flesh. Was I waiting for warmth to rise? But that was folly! I had only imagined that!

Still it was without my conscious willing that now my fingertip traveled about the points of the star, counterclockwise, lingering for the period of several breaths on each of those symbols I could feel so well, see so little. This was as if I were following some ritual, some necessary pattern as one might unseal a secret lock—

Nor at this moment did I regain that sensation of fear which had sent me back in such a hurry in the night. Rather there was something sensuous, pleasant, almost comforting in the feel of the lined wood under
my questing finger. In my mind that oddly vivid picture of the raging woman faded. Something else was growing, a confidence, a belief that, though every possible fact appeared against me now, there was hope and more than hope ahead.

Having traced the pattern to the end, I sat back on the stool, my hands now folded in my lap, my eyes on the wall, on the chains set there to support that ledge. Rusty they were on the surface, still I did not doubt that the metal beneath them was still core strong. I saw that they were not set into any blocks, but rather wedged between the stones. There was no hope of freeing either, I was sure. If I did—then what good would a short length of chain do me. Such certainly would not give me a ladder to climb down the side of the cliff on which this fortress had been erected.

That chanting—the wailing— I had dismissed that as an attempt to prey upon my nerves—the wailing at least. Though the chanting now seemed to be a different matter. One thought of chanting in relation to a church. This was a fortress, a prison. My thought flashed off to my single look at the Princess Adelaide, the formidable Abbess. Perhaps I had been wrong about my wardress. She was, instead of a gaolkeeper, rather a member of some religious order—housed here at Wallenstein—strange as that might be. Some vow of silence could make her mute.

Then the chanting in the night might well be a part of worship. I knew little of the formal church here in Hesse-Dohna, of what rites they followed. But that any order under the command of, direct or merely influenced by, the Princess Adelaide would look upon me with favor was too much to be expected. If, however, I were here by not the Baron’s orders but by those of another, there might be a new bargaining. Perhaps I could make clear my own desire to have nothing the late Elector had seen fit to bestow on me—beginning with a husband. Again I found my fingers on that ring, striving to twist it off—with no better result than I had met before.

The day was very long and I found it maddening at times to be pent in this cell, tormented by my thoughts, with nothing to do. I made myself relive from the beginning the whole of the decision which had brought me here, seeing now how very great had been my folly. The Colonel—I had been (I decided now, bitterly) far too influenced in a strange way by the very personality of the man. He had, in some manner, exuded confidence to the point that I had accepted him as a guarantee of safety. I should have been warned at how slight that protection was when he had avoided me so persistently during the voyage, the trip to Hesse-Dohna, left me to the company of the Gräfin—disappeared utterly once he reached Axelburg.

Our wild adventure in the night, when I had at last made the acquaintance of my grandfather, had once more made me feel that, in his company, all would go well, that danger was kept at bay. But he could not even protect himself. Arrested, the Gräfin had reported. Perhaps already dead—

Dead—the wailing behind the wall lashed out from memory. We find it hard to think of dying when we are strong and young. It is an end which comes to others, but not us. I could not accept death even now.

I made myself lie down on the cot after I had eaten from the food brought by my silent wardress at what might have been, judging by the light outside, mid-afternoon. It was again a stew-soup, with the hard bread, the tankard of beer. But that I pushed aside and boldly demanded water.

She took no notice of my words, only standing by the door to wait for me to eat. However I learned then that my supposition that she was a religious must be right, for she looped between her age-crooked fingers as she waited a cord which was knotted, her touch resting for a long moment on each knot, though her lips did not move in any prayer that I could perceive.

When I had done she came to the bench table, but she lifted the tankard from the tray and put it down with some force on the board, leaving it behind. The
door closed. I surveyed the tankard suspiciously—the drugged wine I remembered only too well. Could this drink have been doctored as well—leading to all I had heard, or thought I heard, in the night? That could well be—the stuff was bitter enough to cover the taste of any dose. I was thirsty, but the liquid of the stew would have to serve for tonight. Taking up the tankard I went and emptied its contents down the convenience in the corner. Perhaps they might believe I had drunk it.

As the light from the window faded, I drew about me again that velvet covering which I had used as a shawl, and which the wardress had not taken with her when she gathered up the used bed linen. I hated the touch of the stuff, it was spattered in places by what seemed old greasy stains. I wondered if it were indeed a remnant of the days when Ludovika had been pent here.

I think I dozed off at last. There were no more visits and I decided that two meals a day was to be my due. However, I was much stronger, and certainly far more clear headed than I had been the night before. A queer expectancy awoke me into the dark. I had no way of telling the hour save that the night was very black and it took me some time before I could even make out the windowsill.

Then it came—that same distant chanting growing ever stronger beyond the wall. I imagined a procession of women, perhaps only a handful of ancient, forgotten sisters of an order also now unknown to the world outside these walls, passing through the night on their way to some chapel. But that way must lie in part just beyond my wall.

Listening so intently as I did now, I began to believe that what I could hear was a single voice, not the well-blended chorus of a number. My wardress alone, finding her tongue to mark out a ritual which made her days here meaningful?

I was off the cot, close to the wall. This time I did not reach for the tankard to signal. That was of no use. I would only get mockery in return. Still I would not
leave this post, that sound, as unintelligible as it was, meant I was not alone in a place where the only voice ever to be heard would be my own.

The chant broke off, not as sharply as it had at my rapping the night before, but rather as if the ritual it signified had now been completed. There was silence, the thick silence of the night, not even any sound of wind from beyond the window.

Then—a sound from within the very room where I stood. I threw out my hands, caught at the edge of the ledge table. That was moving! Again a clank. And—

Light—thin, wavering, yet to my eyes dazzling, through the dark. It formed a line above the ledge table, high enough so that I had to tilt back my head to view it. The line became wider—the size of my palm, wider still. Stones were moving away, leaving an opening, not the size of a full door, but a hole large enough through which I could see—like a window—a window much wider than that of my cell.

Chapter 14

The source of the light was beyond my line of vision.
What I did see, half light, half shadow, was a face framed with a filmy veil, a portion of which fell forward to half mask the features. Even through that gauzy covering I could make out wide, dark eyes, a half-open mouth. But this was no hag such as played my keeper. Rather I was sure that the face was very young, hardly more than that of a child.

As we stared at one another through that wall opening she raised higher the source of the light, a two-branched candlestick of dull black in a strange twisted design, while the tapers set into it gave off an aromatic scent, not as heavy as church incense, yet pleasing when it fought the dank odor of the cell.

“Death—” Her lips shaped the whisper which hissed in to me.

I did not know her purpose here, but, because I was certain she was so young, and unlike the wardress, I answered briskly:

“Nonsense!” Why I chose that particular word of refusal to be overawed by my strange visitor I could not have said. Its effect upon her was surprising. She stood as one completely startled herself, uncertain as to what she must now do.

“I do not know why you are trying to frighten me—” I continued in the same tone. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Beneath the shadow of the veil on her face I saw her tongue tip move across her lips.

“Death—” That one word I could understand before she lapsed into pure gibberish and I drew back a fraction. The idea that I was confronting a madwoman—or girl—could not be dismissed.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I endeavored to keep my voice as calm as possible. One should not, some remnant of recall told me, excite the insane.

Both her hands were in sight now. The one which did not hold the candle moved in a series of slow gestures, as if her fingers plucked something out of the air, balled the invisible together, and then tossed it at me. What she thought she was doing I could not understand. But, mad or not, she and her secret wall-opening might be my only key to escape and I would humor her if I could learn anything from her.

“What is your name—?”

Her head went up in a proud toss. “Ludovika!” She proclaimed as one who had recited some title which put her far above any common person.

That I was being visited by any spirit of a long-dead woman I refused to accept. On the other hand, to play her game might well be the only way to keep her attention, to discover if, through her, there was any form of escape.

She was staring at me searchingly. Then, suddenly, she put aside that air of arrogant assurance; there came over her face a look of warmer humanity.

“You do not believe, you are not afraid, are you?” The note in her voice was indeed high and young, that of one still close to childhood.

I must take the chance, I decided. “You play Ludovika, yes—that I believe—” I said with caution.

She laughed, almost maliciously. “It is a good game. The rest—they believe. They have to—I have the
power!”
She nodded confidently
“She
had the power—she could hex—kill even. I know— They shut her in there—right where you are—but they couldn’t keep her—not for long. She could make them do what she wanted—she got away— Only they think the devil took her—and lets her come back. But that’s me—I do as she would do—I make them afraid. I’m learning—a lot—when I know enough—then they will be afraid of
me,
just as they were of her. But—” She held her head slightly to one side surveying me, not with any sign of malice, rather curiosity. “You’re not afraid. Don’t you believe me?”

“I believe what I see,” I returned. “If you have Ludovika’s power and she was able to get out of this cell—then use it and get me out.”

I saw her lips stretch into a smile. The hint of malice was back in her face. Now she made an impatient gesture with her free hand to sweep the veil back off her features. Yes, she was very young.

“Why are you here?” she countered. “Are you like Ludovika—one whom they fear? Do you know the hexing?”

“I am one somebody fears,” I agreed. “As to hexing—” I shrugged. There was no reason to admit to yes or no on that. I was sure that her help might be better engaged if I left that question unanswered.

“Like Ludovika!” She nodded. “I thought maybe it was so when I saw them bring you here. They set Sister Armgrada on you—she cannot talk, you know. So they think she cannot carry any tales. What will you do if you get out—hex them—those who sent you here?”

“I will do what I can to make things difficult for them,” I assured her. Magic would not enter into that, but just let me be free and I could perhaps make some disturbance in Hesse-Dohna which would both keep me safe and return at least in small measure what had been done to me.

My visitor laughed again. “Good! I like you.
She
would have liked you too. You are not afraid, and you want to strike back! That is what one should always
want to do—fight!” She uttered the last word fiercely as if she, also, faced some battle she was determined would go her way. “All right. I shall help you. I cannot open this wider—can you climb through?”

The window space was not too wide, but if I slipped off the bulky dress my wardress had left me, and perhaps even the heavy petticoat beneath that, I thought I could make it. I was unfastening the clumsy hooking as I asked: “What is beyond?”

“One of the passages. It is narrow,” she warned. “But you can make it—I think.”

I bundled off the dress, the petticoat, and rolled them together. Then I knelt upon the scarred table ledge. The girl drew back to one side. She was out of my sight until I put my head and shoulders through the window. The passage in which she stood was indeed narrow. I would not have to reach out my arms very far before my fingers struck the stone of the other wall. I wriggled through with difficulty, then reached down and picked up the clothing I had shed.

My visitor sniffed disdainfully. “Sister Armgrada’s castoffs! Phu, they stink! You’d better not put on the dress. There is a place where you”—she was measuring me with her eyes critically—”will have to turn sideways to get through.”

Her own dress must have been a trouble in those narrow ways she spoke of. The gauzy veil fell a little below her waist, but the gown she had on was of another time. In the limited light of the scented candles it was pale, without any color save a glint of metallic thread running in an elaborate pattern over its folds. The bodice was cut very low, near slipping off her thin, adolescent shoulders, perhaps only the sharply nipped-in waist held it on her at all, while the skirts were very wide.

She wore a necklace of what seemed to be pearls, and more were in drops from her ears. There was a faded magnificence about the garment, as if it were a shadow of a court dress of an earlier time. Yes—of Ludovika’s time. So much had this girl entered into the
role of the Electress that she had somehow found this faded glory. Her body had none of the roundness of maturity, her breasts were small and not plumply cushioned above the low circle of the neckline, her bare arms were bony and her skin looked slightly grubby. Her hair, under the veiling, had been bundled up in a loose fashion, a crude imitation of the precise curls of a court coiffuer, the ends straggling down over her shoulders. Having seen me through the window, she now held the candle a little higher and toward the wall. I saw the projection there even as her fingers closed about it, dragging it down. Once more sounded the grating, then that opening in the wall came together, so that from this side also I would have guessed it had never been, had I not seen it open.

She looked over her shoulder as she turned away from the wall and smiled again, her free hand now flicking at the wide skirt of her gown.

“Do I not make a proper ghost?” she demanded. “The good sisters—there are three of them, you know—all old frights who look more like the witch they pray against then
she
ever did—they had Father Homan in twice to lay me—praying and waving holy water and the rest of it. Now they try to pretend I am not here at all. They shut their eyes and pray so loud you would think they would rock the very stones off the walls! Just let them wait a little longer. If I can just find out what
she
knew—then they would have something to pray about!”

She raised her candlestick the higher now and moved along the narrow way. It was necessary for her to turn slightly sideways and bunch together her skirts in one hand, in order to pass. I had pulled on the petticoat, made very sure that my packet of gold was well fastened about my waist, and pulled the coarse dress about me as a shawl. For my guide was right, slender as I was, I found the path none too wide.

The passage ran straight for a space, inward and away from the outer wall. There was another place where it was narrow again and I wondered how the
girl ahead had managed to get by the projecting stone so lightly—perhaps it was by long practice in clambering around through these ways.

Who was she? Another prisoner who had somehow found the secret of the fortress and made forays out of her cell at night? I was not sure of that—her youth, the dress she wore, argued that she had access to parts of this castle which would not be hers if she were a captive.

It was plain from her steady progress that she did know where she was going. Nor did she ever glance back to see if I still followed. Finally she came to a halt so suddenly that I nearly ran upon her. Once more she faced what looked to me a solid wall, but she put her face close to it, and from her mouth came that wailing which I had heard the night before.

“Death—death—!” The words trailed off into a sound which was more the cry of a demented person. She was silent then, as if she listened, and I saw her face alive with a look of malicious mischief. If she awaited some sound from the other side of that barrier, she was disappointed. After a moment she shrugged and started on. However, as I passed, I examined the wall with such care as the glimmering withdrawal of her candles allowed me. There was to be seen a similar projection as that she had moved to open the window-door. Another cell—another prisoner? Who? Why was that unfortunate also here?

I had to hurry to catch up, for the passage widened a little here and she was holding her skirts higher and hurrying. Then we were upon a flight of steps leading up and these were so steep that I fell behind, not trusting to my balance, though the girl did not slacken her pace by much.

We came out on a second narrow way, this time slanting off in a different direction. She had halted halfway down then and was again close to the stone. As I came up behind her I saw a slit there and a bit of light. She watched only for a moment then stepped aside and motioned me to take her place.

I was looking down from some height into a much larger room than any cell, and one which did not present such a picture of the past. There was a long table there with benches on either side. Some men in uniform lounged on those, drank from tankards, one or two were actually reading newspapers! I saw racks of muskets against the walls, and other things which I thought might be part of a barracks guardroom. There was talk among those below, but some trick of the walls or the distance reduced that to only a dull rumble of sound.

My guide was again moving ahead and I hastened to catch up with her. It appeared that she wished to play no more tricks. Then one wall of the way we followed became wood paneling as if we had reached a portion of the fortress which was intended for comfortable living. The end of the passage came and once more the girl peered through a peephole, waited some time.

Then she blew out the candles, leaving us in thick dark. I heard small movement before a panel slid aside and she slipped through, gesturing for me to follow.

The room into which we had come was as unlike the cell in which I had been as that was to the bedroom in which I had fallen unconscious before my awakening here. In its appointments and furnishings it was not unlike the state bedroom I had occupied in Axelburg. Here also was a curtained, dais-bed, massive chairs, tapestried walls. But there were no signs of occupancy.

My guide moved quickly to a wardrobe which stood like a menacing cage in one dark corner, for there was only a single candle burning on a nearby table. As I followed her I saw that across the door, there was a massive bar pushed into place, as if this was a fortress within a fortress and my guide must so make sure of her privacy.

She paid no attention to me now as she brought out the wardrobe clothing which she tossed onto a nearby chair and began to twist and turn to reach the hooks and ties of the dress she wore. With the speed of one who has done the same many times before, she soon
shed her ancient dress and donned a high-collared, full-sleeved white muslin which was perhaps not of the latest fashion such as favored in Axelburg, but as close to that as might be found in a more provincial setting. Her hair she combed into a loose fall becoming to a young girl, though not particularly enhancing the lines of her thin face, smoothing it into the semblance of order with a broad ribbon. When she had finished she looked no more than into her teens, though her face lacked that bland innocence which was thought fitting to such an age.

The dress she had discarded she handled with far more care, seeing that it was hung, then a veil lovingly folded about it, within the wardrobe. Having made the exchange, she at last swung around to face me. In the meantime, I had also put on the coarse outer garment my wardress had left me.

Young as she was, my guide still held command of the situation. She pointed to the chair over which her garments had been so lately spread and seated herself in turn on a footstool pulled near to one of the throne-like seats, flanking the wardrobe on the other side.

“Who are you?” She asked that with the snap of one who was seldom, if ever, had her wishes crossed. “They said you were mad, you know.” Her eyes, which were her best feature, so large and lustrous, narrowed a little. “I don’t think I believe them. I did not last night when you struck the wall. You weren’t frightened—But who are you—and why are you really here?”