Nachtstürm Castle (13 page)

That these two poles should clash cannot surprise us, given our previous history with them. That they should face each other as Henry saw them now – young Will, apparently bereft of every other hurlable weapon save himself, leaping at Old Edric, while that venerable man staved our young hero off with nothing more than the top of a roast platter – even this extraordinary means of culinary battle turned titanic given the two opponents. Edric moved aside and young Will fell upon the impromptu shield, rolled, and curled into a ball, nursing one wrist. Grabbing a poker, Edric advanced, his slow sootiness more frightening than William’s impetuous attack.

Edric said something, a thin smile on his lips.

“Nein,” William spat back, followed by a word which cannot be printed in any language.

Again, a question from the old gentleman. The poker rested just beneath William’s chin.

William would not respond, although his delicate colouring flushed red.

Edric continued conversationally, his aged hands unnaturally steady as he dangled the poker closer to the young man’s throat. Henry, still crouched in the corner, waiting for the right moment to leap from his place and so save young Will, had just shifted his feet, ready to strike, when Old Edric suddenly said, “Would you not agree, Herr Tilney?”

“Readily,” was our hero’s reply, stepping from the shadows, much to William’s surprise. “Were you only to tell me to what I am agreeing.”

“A simple matter,” Edric replied, removing the poker from William’s throat and holding it as though it were the merest cane, “and a petty one. The…hysterics…you witnessed (brushing one sleeve) came from Master Wilhelm’s disbelief when I told him that your
wife
wore a certain locket of most curious design this morning. Does she not, Herr Tilney?”

Henry looked at young Will’s face, the dark eyes wide with anguish and anger, and then to Edric’s downturned countenance. He could not lie – such was not his nature, nor his inclination – yet, being a man of no little intelligence, he discerned that much more than a mere academic quarrel were at stake. So bowing he said, “You have been letting my wife teaze you again, Edric. No doubt she regaled you with tales of one of our first conversations, which revolved, in part, around the price and worth of muslins.” Edric’s lips drew in a tighter line, as Henry continued on, jovially. “Indeed, her estimation of my knowledge in the matters of the female accoutrement is, perhaps, a trifle biased. I know enough to compliment, flatter, make pleasing conversation, and, perhaps, even enough to save myself wasted cost on a poor fabric or a worse job in constructing a garment – for you must know that I am very close to my sister who, although she certainly needn’t now, still enjoys designing and executing her own fashions.
 
As a perpetual student myself, and a bachelor for far too long, I found her interest in the subject worthy of my own interest.
 
So much for muslin.
 

“I must regret, however, Mr Wiltford, that I cannot lay even half the claim I can to fabric to the question of adornment. And, you must pardon an indulgent husband, if the treasures he lays in the lap of his beloved grow so numerous that he cannot keep track of them all. We are not exceptionally wealthy, Mr Wiltford, and yet I hope I may claim to have spoiled my wife enough to have forgotten some of the particulars. It is a little hope, and yet fodder for an excellent sermon, is it not?”

William could only agree.

But Edric would not be swayed. “I doubt even
you
, Herr Tilney, could have mistaken this locket for another.”

“Pray tell. Whyever not?”

“Its design is most...unusual.”

“Yes, you said as much. Enlighten me: does it sing upon opening?”

“It is monogrammed.”

“Extraordinary,” Henry murmured. Then, turning to William, he inquired, “With a C, perchance?”

“So,” Edric returned.

“And within – for, surely, there must be something within. Poison, perhaps? Gunpowder? A reliquary?”

“A ring,” William said, glaring at Edric. Then, in an urgent whisper to Henry, “Please, if you have it then a terrible thing has happened! I must see your wife!”

Such was the young man’s force that Henry at once acquiesced, leading the way back to the dining room.

Catherine was just as he had left her, although the servants had rearranged themselves about the door so they could better watch the sport within. But when the three gentlemen finally emerged from the cluster of serving men and maids, the most extraordinary change happened. William caught his breath and so did Catherine – both flushing and glancing away as though Lancelot and Guinevere met under Arthur’s nose. Catherine’s hand still covered the bauble and chain about her throat, which caused Edric to flush for an entirely different reason. The reactions were not lost on the servants who glanced back and forth in ecstatic glee; until with a sharp command Edric dismissed them all, storming off himself. William, unable to look Henry in the eye, murmured an apology, and tore away in another direction.

Only Catherine and Henry remained, now.

A shadow fell between them, as the lights from the candles danced in the wake of the commotion.

With an amazing reserve, Henry said, “Give me the locket.”

“Henry!” Catherine exclaimed, flushing deeper.

“Catherine,” very low indeed, “the locket. At once.”

“Oh, Henry – I cannot!”

“It will not come off?”

“Yes – no – oh!” And she fled for the door. But he was too quick for her and caught her about the waist, struggling with the clasp. She beat a little against his chest, but to no avail, and once the locket came free in his hand, she collapsed against him, weeping. “I did not want it, oh, Henry, I did not mean to....”

“Sssh. Of course, Catherine.” He stroked her hair, feeling the base of her neck as though to reassure himself that the chain had not somehow crept up around her throat again. “I did not hurt you, dearheart?”

“Oh, no, no, Henry. It’s only – oh, how can you ever forgive me?”

He kissed her. “Forgive you, Catherine? But it is already done. Now, will you tell me what happened?”

She sniffed. “I cannot.”

“Surely you know how you came into the possession of this locket!”

Sitting up, she retorted, “Then surely you can tell me where you went last night, and why our rooms were ransacked? Or perhaps you will explain why Edric and William were battling? Or why I am called Fortuna by everyone? And why there is another woman who wears my face? Can you answer me these things, Henry? Because if you can, then I think I will answer you!” And, wiping her tears, Catherine disentangled herself from her husband, and left.

Fortune had been kind to Catherine in many things: granting her every request from her first visit to Bath and subsequent stay at Northanger Abbey; her marriage to Henry which was the sequel to the first two; and now to her horrid stay at Nachtstürm Castle – replete with every device and daemon that a young lady could ever require. But even Fortune extends only so far, and so, although she had managed to produce an ensorcelled locket once, she could hardly hope to produce it again. Particularly when Henry was, even now, chasing after young Will with the dastardly object in his hand. But truly, what more could we desire of Fortune than such an inexplicable object as the locket, whose power over Catherine – during her brief, glorious possession of it, or it of her – had been so complete and so utterly strange that our heroine should even manage to disdain the hero! But Providence does not care for messy endings – although He does not seem to mind disordered middles – and so much as Fortune might have liked to oblige us all by returning the locket to Catherine, that singular piece of jewellery never touched our
heroine
again.

But let us not at once mourn its present departure, nor Fortune’s current lack. For Providence is no idle term. And so, as Catherine tore back to her chambers, careening against walls as she brushed tears from her eyes, she chanced to halt briefly beside the forbidden corridor where, only the night before, she had been set upon by young Will. Hand still to her mouth, Catherine felt a blush steal upwards to her cheeks as though her lips could not contain their colour. She leant against the wall, grateful for its coolness. Breathing deeply, she rested her hand against her bosom – a familiar gesture from the past several hours. The locket, of course, was not there; but as amputees will rub their stubbed limbs as though feeling their ghostly appendages, so Catherine still felt the weight of that elliptical curse upon her breast – and more, the hot, heavy kisses of the unfortunate heir to Nachtstürm.

It would, of course, be entirely out of line to suggest that, even for a moment, Catherine ever truly doubted her devotion to Henry. Had she, I am certain that a cart full of mouldy cabbage should have pelted her from several cultish readers, along with cries of outrage, and a similar cart full of three month-old apples for the authoress. But there is, alas, a division betwixt our true selves: that self that covenants, and our selves of the moment.
  
Into that rift, William Wiltford had clumsily stumbled.

Catherine’s knowledge of men had been limited as a child to her father, her brothers, and Mr Allen – all of whom could and did evoke admiration, respect and filial devotion, which excellent qualities easily transferred themselves to infatuation and quickly thereafter to nuptial love for the Reverend Henry Tilney. But of that silly quickening of the heart for any dapper man in a smart blue coat, which most girls who have staked out a new bonnet have undergone – of that sort of inconstant practice, Catherine had no experience. Even in her books she had shewn constancy! So lacking, she had no defences against these many spectres of kisses and lockets, barons and lovers, just as she had no defence against the double spectres of herself.

Catherine shook her head and screwed up her face, like a child at a disagreeable subject. There could be no doubt in her mind now that her adventures in Nachtstürm Castle were
not
, after all, the result of Henry’s careful planning. The certainty had been growing within her since the previous night’s escapade – only now formalised in the wake of Henry’s inability to answer her questions. She reeled from the thought! That Henry could not appease her every demand! Could not answer questions, which should have been so simple, had her adventures been of his device! Again, she felt the spectral warmth upon her lips, the warring of herselves – and tore once more down the hall.

Their rooms provided no comfort this time from the strangeness of Nachtstürm. Granted, the fire burned just as merrily as it had their first night there, the bed just as soft, the rug just as thick, the chairs just as magnificent for curling up in – but as our imagination colours our situation, so it also alters our perception of such ordinaries as the mantelpiece. I can hardly tell you what Catherine saw as she entered their apartment, which room she saw: that of her first arrival, or of its destruction like the night before. I do not know; Catherine hardly knew herself. Except that she moved immediately to the wall that held the hidden door and began searching frantically for its opening. Well versed in novels, she pressed every stone, rubbed her hand over every imperfection, scraped her fingernails on the mortar.
 
When these proved unsuccessful, she set at once to the candle sconces, the portraits and tapestries, even the bellpull – much to Colin’s bemusement, when his mistress sent him hastily away.

“It must be here
somewhere!
” Catherine cried, slumping into one of the armchairs that replaced its original not four–and–twenty hours before. Remembering the ramshackle room last night, our heroine briefly considered pulling off the leg on the chair she currently inhabited – even, but only for a moment, (for she
was
a sensible girl who appreciated a good night’s sleep, and more, had a horror of insulting her hosts), she considered violating the bed in the hopes of a hidden lever beneath the mattress.

The moon had risen high enough to just crest the windowsill; its light settling audaciously on the stubbornly solid wall. Angered at the celestial jest, Catherine rose to twitch the drapes shut, but no sooner had she done so than she heard a creak behind her – a giant, heavy groan.