Iron Butterflies (8 page)

“Truda—” I dared not be as plain with her as I could with Letty, with any of the people I had known from my birth. “I wish you to come with me, but only if you yourself also desire that. I would not take you against your will.”

For the first time she looked at me directly. I could read nothing in her expression, at that moment she was as stolid appearing as the heavy furniture about her.

“It is for me to serve the gracious lady in any way she wishes.”

Just as I had no clue from her face, neither could I read anything in her voice. How I wished that at that moment the faculty for reading thoughts would descend upon me. Was my demand too selfish a one? How did I know what personal ties she might have here and which she would long to hold to? I needed some help so badly! I, who never thought I would admit that, or that I had been a fool in allowing myself to be so cut off here in Hesse-Dohna.

“I shall speak to the Gräfin.” I made my decision. It could be no worse than the one which had brought me to Axelburg. What I held in mind the strongest was that Truda had some connection with Colonel Fenwick.

“It is as the gracious lady wishes.” Truda resumed her packing.

The Gräfin, now suitably dressed in court mourning, made a second entrance into my bedchamber shortly after, followed by a footman with a tray. As I sipped lukewarm chocolate and ate the rolls which accompanied that, my hostess never stopped talking, mainly about the duties now engrossing the Gräf, who had been one of those selected to escort the new Elector from his place of semiexile to Axelburg. Her face was flushed and her eyes sparkling. It would seem that this hour of grief meant new and horizon-widening action for the Von Zreibrukens.

“He agrees”—she spoke of the Gräf—“concerning
the wisdom of your going to the Kesterhof. It shall not be for long, dear Amelia, I assure you! Once all is carefully prepared you shall return—and in such triumph! Then you shall take your rightful place—you shall see!”

I thought it best not to point out that I had already decided where my rightful place was, and it was not staying in Axelburg as the butt of envy and perhaps active enmity. Now I did cut into her stream of speech with my request for Truda's company into this temporary exile.

“But of course,” she agreed at once. “You could not possibly travel without a maid. There is the staff at Kesterhof, but none trained as bodyservants. Truda does very well, Katrine tells me. She is not a peasant— her father owns the inn at Himmerfels and she would not be in service but she is the third daughter and wishes to earn her dowry. Ah”—she consulted a jeweled watch, the chain of which hung about her neck—“it already grows late. You must be on your way, my dear. I shall send you messages daily so you will know all that occurs. It will not be long before you can join us again!”

I noted that the closed carriage awaiting me did not bear any crest on the door, and the coachman and footman wore no livery, only discreet black coats. The Gräfin had said her farewells in the great hall, and when Truda and I were inside the coach I saw the window shades were down, even as had been those in the carriage which had taken me to the palace the night before. It would seem that my exit from the city was to be made as inconspicuous as possible.

So we drove away in a half gloom, the tolling of the bells still making such a clamor that we could not have talked had we wanted to. I longed to ask Truda if she had been able to dispatch my message to the Colonel, but I would have to wait.

The carriage kept to the ill-paved streets of the older part of town, for we were tossed about and our pace was hardly faster than a brisk walk. Outside, through
the clamor of the bells, I could hear a multitude of voices, as if a crowd gathered.

Then, after what seemed at last an hour of such rattling with stops and starts in plenty, the carriage picked up speed and we were shaken about until I felt distinctly queasy. I dared at last to pull aside the curtain nearest to hand, and found I was looking at a stretch of ragged turf backed by a rise of tangled brush. Plainly we had left the city behind. Here even the bells were muted, though we had not altogether escaped their incessant tolling.

Seeing that there appeared to be no reason now for traveling in a closed coach stifling for air, I asked Truda to raise the curtains and give us a view of the countryside. I could see few farms, though we did catch a glimpse now and then of a distant roof or a rutted track turning off into the underbrush. There was a wild look about this country, as if we traveled through a land which was mainly deserted by men. Even the fields we passed were largely unplanted, covered instead with a choking growth of wild tangle, as if fast slipping back into the hands of nature again. When I commented on this Truda had an answer.

“It is all because of the wars, gracious lady. There was much fighting here.” She shivered. “Sometimes yet they find what is left of dead men. Many farms were destroyed, burned—the people killed or else driven away. None were left to work the land as once it was.”

“But the wars.” I was sure that she meant the great devastation which had rolled over this land in Napoleon's day. “Those were done years ago. Surely by now people would have returned—”

Once more that stolid, secretive look returned to her fresh face. Perhaps it was a warning against my probing farther. But she did reply.

“This was never very good land, gracious lady. Once it was all forest—kept for hunting. There was a burning, and in the bad days much of the wood was cut
down to feed stoves—sold in Axelburg during the winter. Also—” She hesitated so long that I dared to ask:

“Also what, Truda?”

“It has always been said that the land hereabouts is unfortunate, gracious lady. Men in the past have worked out their hearts trying to bring it to fruitfulness. In return they gained only death or ill fate. It has been cursed, they say, so even from the old times.”

I knew that she was not telling me all. From the stories of Madam Manzell at school I had heard that the cruelest of forestry laws had prevailed in many of these countries. A peasant had no respite if deer ate his growing crops, the wild boars and pigs raided his fields. There would be the torture of wicked mantraps set to capture any poacher. If this had been forestland, the farmers could well have suffered greatly from the laws and the whims of the noble or nobles claiming rulership here.

Now that she had mentioned “forest” I could indeed sight stumps of larger trees among the saplings and brush. A few of these, reduced to blackened trunks, stood gaunt black ghosts of another day. It was a desolate country and I liked it less and less.

We drew up twice at inns to change horses. Those places were plainly poor shelters, only a man or two in their stable yards, who hurried about their tasks, barked at by our coachman. I noted that they did not look toward the carriage as natural curiosity might bring them to do, nor did, at either stop, anyone come from the inn itself to ask if we would have any refreshments. The doors remained shut, no head showed at any window.

Truda and I shared the contents of the luncheon basket, though I had to urge her to accept such food and then she took only a small share of the plainest. Nor would she drink any of the wine which was packed with it.

The road began to climb and our pace slowed. Here there were further signs of devastation, more tall
standing dead trees, outcrops of dark stone. Once we stopped at a place where a small stream gushed into a basin formed crudely of rocks where the horses were allowed to drink. There I insisted on getting out and walked up and down to stretch my cramped limbs.

No one of my escort wanted this, but I used a manner of authority to silence their protests and went a little along a ledge of bare rock to look out over this countryside, somber and grim as it seemed to me. The road was not well cared for, though gravel had been dumped into the deepest of the ruts, and the brush cut back on either verge. We had halted on the highest point of a hill and from here the way curved down into a valley, this one well forested, green and alive. To the right from where I stood—running in a northerly direction, the land rose steeply to a near mountainous height. Part way up that steep slope was a building of greater size than any farmhouse or inn.

I had no spyglass through which to see it in detail, but I gained an impression that it could be close to a ruin. The lines of its forbidding bulk held the dark threat of a robber baron’s keep, the stones which formed those walls of an unusually harsh gray, unsoftened by any growth of vine. I wondered what it was and whether it might still be inhabited—by more than the ghosts of an evil past.

Truda followed me, staying at my heels. I tried to believe that her constant companionship was out of loyalty to me, an offering of protection, not because she had been set the task of gaoler. I pointed to the building on the mountain side and asked her its name.

“It—that is Wallenstein, gracious lady.” After one swift glance in the direction I indicated, she turned her head sharply away and did not look again.

Wallenstein! The ill-fated fortress prison into which the erring Ludovika had disappeared so long ago, to be swiftly and conveniently forgotten except as an example of all which was false and sinful. The Gräfin’s words flashed back into my mind. What had it been like for that pleasure-loving, highly selfish young
woman to be immured in that pile for the rest of her life? It was the dark castle of some story ogre and not of the real world I knew at all.

The Gräfin had mentioned there was still a garrison stationed there. For what purpose? Was it still a prison, perhaps one like the Bastille of unsavory memory, kept for prisoners of state? I longed to ask such questions, but it was plain Truda would not talk willingly about the place and I had no desire to try her patience too high.

We creaked and rattled on down the slope into the valley where the trees closed in about us, keeping out the afternoon sun, so we traveled through a green gloom where the sounds made by the coach were a noisy intrusion. There appeared to be no flowers—no color anywhere—only the green of smothering leaves, the brown-black of gnarled bark. I did not sight nor hear a single bird. We were caught up in this monstrous tapestry of a woodland, the only living things.

It was sudden when we broke into the open again. The heat and light of the sun were intensified by the time we had spent among the trees. Here was a building ahead. I had crowded close to the left-hand window beside me, striving to see what I could of it. This was no fortress suggestive of a castle, though it had greater bulk than I somehow expected. The first floor was stone-walled, but above that was wood and there was an upper balcony which seemed to run straight across the house at that level.

The eaves, the balcony, even the wide window frames were all carven and must once have been painted, even as were the houses of the older part of Axelburg, for the sun pointed out dim blue, red, green, and tarnished gold. Flower boxes had been placed at intervals along the balcony and these were filled with plants, some in full bloom.

Chapter 8

Preparations had been made to receive us. The wide
front door was open and lined up at one side of that was a number of servants. Most of the men wore a simple livery, all bearing the Von Zreibruken crest on shoulder or breast. The women were in peasant dress, with deep blue, green, or rust-brown skirts swirling full to just above their ankles, flower-embroidered aprons, blouses with full sleeves, their hair drawn up to be hidden under caps from the peaks of which floated bunches of ribbons.

Among the welcomers I recognized one of the footmen from the townhouse and not far from him stood a woman in a plain black dress who wore jet earrings and a cross pendant from a necklace of the same stone. Her cap was of black lace and below it her face bore a forbidding likeness to one I knew well. It might be Katrine grown several years older who came forward to curtsy to me.

The woman in black was introduced by the footman I knew as Frau Werfel, the housekeeper. She did not smile as she dismissed the rest of the company with an abrupt gesture.

“If the gracious lady will be so kind as to follow—” Even her crow-crack voice could be Katrine’s. I did not
answer her invitation at once, rather I stood where I was for a moment to survey what I could see of the Kesterhof.

In spite of the weather-faded paint, the massed flower boxes, the house gave no appearance of warmth or welcome, though, in contrast to that evil fortress castle we had viewed from the heights, it might be termed a pleasant lodging. Had I once more been maneuvered into choosing wrongly?

However, since no one can foresee the future, I had to live day by day, doing the best that I could in the time immediately to hand.

Once we were inside, Frau Werfel made continued excuses for the house as she ushered me along. Those were mechanical, I was sure, delivered as a matter of form. It was plain that the Kesterhof was held to a high standard of neatness and order, though it certainly lacked the age-dimmed magnificence of the townhouse.

Its history of a beginning as a hunting lodge was plain, for the walls of the main hall were literally covered, from shoulder height upward, with the horns, or entire mounted heads, of long dead beasts. The glaring glass eyes of wild boars seemed to follow one along in a desire for vengeance, the upcurling tusks at their snouts, glistening yellow-white as if freshly polished—as perhaps they might have been.

The vast room had a stone manteled fireplace at one end, empty of wood now, since it was summer. Though the hall remained chill, the dank cold hung as heavy as a forgotten tapestry. To one side a staircase reached upward. That was far less imposing, also, than that of the townhouse, but it was enclosed with a paneling as high as the balustrade on the outer side and shoulder tall against the wall. This was of very dark wood and so intricately carved that it was difficult to perceive at first that each of the wide panels in turn pictured some episode of a never-ending hunt, mostly the cruel conclusions with men butchering some stricken creature.

Judging by the garments worn by those hunters, I believed that the artist who had wrought this had either derived his inspiration from very old pictures, or perhaps the carvings themselves had come into being some three or four hundred years in the past.

Once up on the second floor, however, the Kesterhof underwent an abrupt change. The walls here were not festooned with trophies of the chase, nor were they carven, rather they were covered with a rich, crimson, damask-appearing silk. Stationed precisely the same distance from one another along the corridor were chairs upholstered in velvet of the same bright shade, a table or two balanced on gracefully turned legs of white picked out in gold. It reminded me a little of the palace—yet the red was too heavy, the gold too visible to be altogether to my liking. I thought it represented in a way the Gräfin when she was most overdressed and to me the most lacking in taste.

I was shown into a room not far from the head of the stairs which was no state chamber but rather akin to the golden sitting room which the Gräfin had made her own back in Axelburg. The furniture was of the latest fashion and upholstered in pale green with bouquets of flowers. Their muted shades of rose, cream, and lavender were repeated in the rug, and again on the long brocade curtains which half overhung others of lace. There were a wealth of small curiosities all about, on tables, mantel, and in a cabinet or two. Figurines, vases (without flowers), boxes meant to hold sweetmeats or other trifles, crowded one another in this very feminine room.

A half-open door showed a bedroom beyond, where the bed was curtained with green patterned in gold, the rest of the furnishings as rich.

Yet there was nothing here to make one welcome. Rather it made me feel an intruder into quarters already claimed by another who would sooner or later arrive to exhibit annoyance at finding me already in-stalled. I nearly turned to Frau Werfel to suggest another suite might be better, and then realized the folly
of my own feelings. So instead I thanked her and she took my words for dismissal, whisking away in a whisper of skirts.

My trunks were brought up and Truda went about unpacking with the same quiet skill she had used in putting in what she now shook out. I sought the nearest window to draw aside the edge of the drapery and the lace panel beneath that to peer out.

Below was a courtyard surrounded by a wall, even as the one at the townhouse. It was cobble paved and fronted on, at the far side, by stables. Beyond that I could see treetops, many of them so tall they must be of the original forest preserve when this had been a lodge.

Still farther out, across that greenery, were heights reaching up and up, like that stark mountainous wall on which perched that fortress-castle of ill omen. All this suggested wild country in sharp contrast to the room in which I stood. Somehow I did not like the look of that outer land. By coming here I had made myself entirely dependent upon those in this household—I knew that and it made me uneasy.

Truda worked swiftly, with concentration upon what she did, as if to establish a wall between us. She had said very little during our journey, in spite of my attempts to break through the barrier of rank and gain some knowledge of the girl herself. I longed passionately at that moment for Letty with her constant flow of chatter and her dear friendliness.

Reluctantly I untied my bonnet ribbons and dropped that headwear on a small table, shook out the crumpled folds of my skirt. I would never be at home here, or, I was very sure, anywhere within Hesse-Dohna. At that moment I longed to stop Truda, tell her to repack, that we had no intention of remaining under this roof. It crossed my mind that I must learn soon just how much freedom of movement I really had.

First I must discover what was of most importance at the moment and caution made me approach that in a roundabout way.

“Truda, before we left—did you have time to say goodbye?”

How quick of wit was she? Would she recognize my need to know if my message had been passed along.

Though she never looked up from her work, she did answer promptly.

“Yes, gracious lady.” Brief but not quite to the point. However, I thought I could not expect more.

I sat down on one of the small chairs, a little surprised at my sudden sense of relief. For, even as she had said that, she had also nodded, and that double affirmation I took as assurance she had done all she could to let the Colonel know what had become of me.

That there was also a warning in her answer I guessed. I looked about, at those silk-covered walls with their gold-framed pictures of flowers, of young girls wearing the clothing of my grandmother’s day and frolicking in gardens, or conducting flirtations with bewigged and satin-coated gentlemen. Could such walls have—ears? They made me impatient, those carefree picture maidens—impatient and a little more uneasy at what they might just conceal. I shook my head, trying to lose those fantastical thoughts of peepholes—of spying. I must certainly calm my nerves and cease peopling my world with such dark imaginings.

With Truda’s aid I changed from my plain traveling dress into one suitable for the house. Then I resolutely decided that I must indeed put to the test what was my position here—that of an honored and carefree guest—or—that of a to-be-watched charge. I left my sun and light filled room for the comparative darkness of the paneled staircase.

As if she were one of the figures on that path of the cathedral clock, released not by the chiming of an hour but at the sound of my steps, Frau Werfel appeared at the foot of the stairs before I gained the horn-trimmed hall. She dipped a curtsy, her hands encased in black lace mits, clasped at waist level, her sour face impassive as she asked:

“The gracious lady desires?”

“This is a very old house, is it not, Frau Werfel?” I began my campaign obliquely. If the woman was as house proud as the evidence would make it seem, perhaps I could so open communication with her.

“Part of it is near five hundred years old, gracious lady. It has been added to, and his lordship’s father had some alterations made. Then his present lordship was pleased to make many more. Since the great forest is near gone and there has been little hunting since the war, the changes are marked.”

“You say that the forest is gone. But from my window I saw a number of trees—we drove through what appeared to be dense wood on our way here.”

“A wood, yes, gracious lady. But there is no longer enough such cover for true hunting. His lordship has ordered replanting, also that as many of the old trees as possible be preserved. But it will never again be as it once was.”

She had not moved from her position, nor had she suggested any tour of the house. I gathered my courage and said firmly: “I find so ancient a place most interesting, Frau Werfel. Would it be possible to see more of those older parts—?”

Her expression did not change. I could not guess whether or not she was pleased, or if she was being pushed into action against her will. Once more she made a stiff curtsy as she replied: “If the gracious lady will then but follow me—”

Gloom appeared to fill the older rooms. The hall with all its trophies was the largest of these. Those chambers opening off of it were also paneled in dark wood, the windows so narrow as to suggest they had been installed for a fortress. Perhaps in those wild early days every nobelman’s dwelling place must have been so secured against attack. From my listening during my school days to Madam Manzell’s store of often gruesome accounts I knew that open warfare between one baron and another had not only been the usual way of life, but had existed in these lands long after there had been a semblance of common law and order elsewhere.

There had been no attempt to widen these windows, but glass had been inserted into their stone frames. The light they admitted was very little, especially since it was now close to dusk. Frau Werfel produced from a sideboard a twin candlestick, but even those candles could not give me more than a shadow-filled impression of sparsely furnished, low-ceiling boxes of rooms which bore no relation to the modern chambers on the next floor.

Trophies, though not as thickly mounted as those in the great hall, continued to be the main decorations, though here and there was a fan of hunting knives and short swords, or a pair of crossbows, on the walls. There was a cold forbidding feeling which was more chilling than any draft from under an ill-fitting door. Outside summer might nod in flowers and sunlight, here was frost and winter’s blight.

Frau Werfel, contrary to what I expected, voiced little or no comments about the rooms or their history. Her attitude was one of strained patience and would have quickly withered anyone less determined than I. She made no attempt to show me into the servants’ area or the kitchen and I had no reason to request that, for by the rules of noble society I could have no possible interest in what went on there, beyond the fact that the service itself was not interrupted.

At length, having seen a fourth dull, dark chamber which was a duplicate of three before, I had to surrender. It was, Frau Werfel astutely informed me, the custom of the house now to use only those upper rooms which had been modified by the present Gräf, and that my dinner would be served above and not in one of these dreary lower chambers.

I reclimbed to my sitting room little wiser than I had been when I descended, and more than a little dismayed at what I had seen. The rooms themselves had a very dampening effect upon the spirits. Truda had completed her unpacking and was gone. As soon as the door closed behind me I sped across the room
and pushed aside drapery and curtains to look out once again.

That balcony which ran immediately below the window must have some exit. At the moment I was a little reluctant to scramble through the window itself, but I thought that I could see a door at least two rooms farther on. So I went back to the outer hall and counted doorways. The room with the balcony door was so masculine in its furnishings that I half expected the Gräf himself to rise from behind the desk there and forbid my entrance. However it was empty, save for the rather more massive furniture, another trophy of antique pistols arranged fanwise on one wall, and a portrait of a hawk-nosed, grim-eyed man in the elaborately curled wig of another day. He wore a breastplate of gold-chased metal over a velvet doublet and one hand gripped the hilt of his scabbarded sword, while he stared malevolently down at me, his eyes so well painted that they appeared to both challenge and follow my actions.

The latch of the balcony door turned easily under my hand and I stepped out on that upper way. It ran, I discovered, around three sides of the Kesterhof, not present at the back of the house which faced a remnant of the original forest, as repelling in the quickly-falling dusk as a solid wall.

There was life about below. I saw and heard grooms at their business in the stable yard, and lights began to shine out from the back of the house. Still that life was not mine and I felt that I was like one at a play observing a scene but still waiting for the main characters to appear and the real action begin.