Red Magic (6 page)

There followed the rustle of bedclothes
being invitingly lifted.

"Come on, Red, get in," he
coaxed. "It seems we both could use some comforting."

When she didn't reply, simply retreated to
the sofa with her blanket, he observed, "You're going to have to get used
to sleeping with me sometime. And all I want is to hold you. I give you my word
nothing else will happen."

"The worth of your word is well known,
Herr Graf," Caterina snapped, using the baronial title the Emperor had
just conferred.
"Especially if it is given to a
woman."

"Suit
yourself
,
Lady von Hagen," came his reply. His voice was always compelling, but now,
coming out of the darkness, it seemed particularly gentle, full of compassion.
"We shall talk it all out in the morning. Both our heads will be clearer
then."

"I have nothing to say to you,"
she retorted, trying to ward off the confusion she felt. Why was he being like
this?

"Well, Caterina, you may have nothing
to say to me, but I have some important things to say to you. Right now though,
I think we are both too upset. Tomorrow will be soon enough. So," he
concluded in that same gentle tone of voice, "good night,
little
cousin."

Chapter Four

In the woods on the ridge, an owl hooted.
The night dragged on as Cat sat on the sofa, wide awake. She drew up her knees
and let her thoughts wander, considered and rejected a host of desperate plans.
The whole time she fingered the locket she always wore, the one with the
picture of Saint Brigitte.

Aunt Teresina Tanucci, the one the rest of
the family spoke of with such aversion, had given it to her. This lady, a great
aunt on her mother's side, was a strange old creature who had lived without a husband
on what should have been her dower portion for some fifty years. In spite of
the disapproval the Landrat felt for her spinister's life, he always said
Teresina Tanucci was "an expert farmer, and a damned lucky one, too."

Still, she lived close to the bone, with
little more refinement than her peasants. Too much was spent in taking care of
strays of all kind, human and four legged. She took in, without preference,
foundlings, cats, dogs, monkeys, hawks, and horses. Some of the babies who
appeared at her doorstep in baskets, if they survived the precarious time of
infancy, were taken in by the Sisters of Saint Hildegard, but many, those
obviously from overflowing peasant families, were raised to work upon the land.
Teresina took
an abiding interest in all of them.

The Landrat sometimes referred to Aunt
Teresina as "that smelly old badger." In fact, Auntie T was rather
like that, fat and shuffling. Leaves or straw, somehow or other, was always
stuck on her voluminous, out of fashion skirts, or in her gray and yellow hair.

"Dirt isn't healthy," she'd say
fastidiously. The pronouncement had become a kind of family joke at von
Velsen's. Although her rugs were regularly beaten and the servants always
seemed to be scrubbing the walls and floors, the place still smelled strongly
of the many animals she kept.

Her barn was filled by dairy cattle and
oxen as well as old and lamed horses. From the latter, she had, over time,
managed to breed some fleet, beautiful ones. In fact, she drove everyone who
liked to bet crazy, because every few years she'd appear with one of her young
studs at the St. Anne's Day races down in Passau
and sweep all before her.

Occasionally she'd sell one of these
champions, but she would never sell to anyone she suspected of treating animals
badly. Many a young hell-for-leather, pockets full of gold, rode
all the way out to her farm only to have to ride away again without making the
expected purchase.

In fact, many years ago, someone had stolen
a stallion he'd been refused. The following day, the horse had returned by
himself, badly marked by spurs, mouth bloody from the use of a cruel bit. The
thief, however, was worse off. His body was discovered in a ditch beside the Passau road, trampled and
broken.

The peasants whispered that Auntie T had simply
called the horse back. A lot of queer stories about Fraulein Tanucci's power
over animals had always floated around the valley.

As soon as Caterina got her first pony,
she'd wheedle Papa for a servant to ride with her to see Auntie and her
menagerie. Sometimes both Wili and Caterina were allowed to ride by themselves
to visit the squat little house whose acres cut a corner out of the hectare of
their mother's dower land. Auntie was always glad to see them, although the
girls sensed that neither of their parents was entirely pleased by these
visits.

Still, it was always fun. There were always
interesting things to see and do. Sometimes there were hawks with broken wings
that needed mending. There were generations of cats, sitting in every window,
scampering under the house or into the barn. Sometimes they'd find Auntie
doctoring the cats for worms, forcing a mixture down their throats with a
squirt. Sometimes she'd be with her peasants in the stables, running gnarled
hands over the sleek sides of her cattle or her favorite mares.

Aunt Teresina was respected by the peasants
as a healer. Doctors never went to her farm, for she knew all about herbs and
surgery, too. If an arm or leg was broken, Aunt Teresina could set it. If a
child or a newly birthed mother had a fever, she treated them with decoctions
of plants and roots she found in the fields and forests of her own land.
Peasants from all over made pilgrimages to her for cures.

The von Velsen girls learned much by
following Auntie as she went through her day in the barn or as she slowly,
leaning on her cane, traversed the woods or meadows. She showed the girls where
to find special plants, told them what illnesses they cured. Later, in her
kitchen she'd teach how each was prepared.

One spring, while Wili was visiting her von
Hagen cousins, Cat was given permission to spend a week with Auntie T. She'd
been excited to go, not to have to study regular schoolroom things, just be all
day with her interesting and fond old aunt and all the animals.

It had been fun, just as much as she'd
imagined, until the third night when she'd suffered from a horrible nightmare.
She'd dreamed that a group of creatures with animal heads were all around her.
It had been particularly terrifying because, unlike most bad dreams, she had
been unable to make herself wake up. The monsters had held her next to a
roaring pine fire in the woods and pricked her underarm with a needle while
she'd screamed.

The next day she'd awoken feeling quite
sick. Her underarm, the part to which the creatures had been so attentive, was
sore and swollen. There was a queer nausea, almost the same as if she'd stolen
too much wine, a thing she'd done with her sister at a Carnival party in Passau. The headache and
nausea she felt seemed very much the same.

Aunt Teresina was the first thing Cat saw
when she woke up, for she'd been sitting by her bedside. She had a basin in
hand, had seemed to know that Cat would wake up and
vomit
.
Then, utterly nonplussed, she'd taken the basin and gone out, leaving orders
with her maids that Caterina was to be confined to her bed. One of her
foundlings, an oversized lumpy adolescent called Trudchen, was set to nursing
Caterina.

Trudchen, although only a few years older
than her charge, was an excellent nurse. She carried broth and teas from the
kitchen and coaxed Cat to swallow them, she brushed her long, red hair, helped
her to wash and even, to Cat's utter astonishment, read aloud to her.
Caterina's father would have been amazed, as he held the opinion that a peasant
could never, under any circumstances, be taught to read.

"That sore place under your arm, Lady
Cat, is from a brown spider. My mistress says that's why you had all those
awful bad dreams and why you're sick."

Bandages dipped in
a
herbal tincture were applied by Trudchen every hour. These proved to have a
wonderfully numbing effect. On the third day, the perpetual stinging had
subsided to an itch and the swelling had gone.

"Here, love," Auntie T said, when
Cat's arm had healed, "tomorrow your mama wants you home, so here's a
going away present. Promise me you'll always wear it." The square, mannish
hands deposited a carved wooden locket on a chain around Cat's neck. The locket
was large, the kind that usually contained a portrait of a husband or lover.

"Open it," her Aunt urged.

Cat did as she was told. There was a
painting inside, but it proved to be of a lovely young woman whose tumbling
brown curls were crowned with flowers. A dappled fawn was curled at her feet.

"Her friend is just like the little
darling we saw when we went looking for mushrooms among the birches," Aunt
Teresina reminded.

"Yes," said Cat, thinking of the
beautiful rock-still baby they'd spied on their first morning's foray
into the woods. The fawn had been almost invisible in its hiding place beneath
a flowering spray of wild apple.

"Who is the pretty lady, Auntie?"

"Who?
Why, imagine a Tanucci woman not knowing!
Especially
you, Caterina Maria Brigitte!"
An arm slipped around the girl's
shoulders. Drawing her close, Auntie whispered, "She is our special
guardian, Saint Brigitte."

"Why, I've never seen her pictured
like that."

"Well, this is how she is known to the
mountain folk."

"It was her Saint's Day the morning I
woke up sick."

"Indeed it was," her aunt replied
with a curious smile. "'Tis a late name day present for you. Now,"
she added, "I'm going to show you a secret.
Pay close
attention, Caterina Brigitte!"

Those old, rough fingers pressed one of the
wooden rosettes that ornamented the case. Cat was surprised when the locket
popped open again, this time in back.

"See how it opens? See the
secret?"

Cat examined the newly revealed
compartment. Inside was something that gleamed.

"It's a Protector for you now that you
are growing to be a woman. Take it out, but be very careful."

It took Cat a moment to extract the object.
It turned out to be an extremely thin blade, almost a needle, set on a small
section of horn.

"If anyone ever tries to harm you,
just fetch it out. Keep it in your hand like this," Auntie T demonstrated,
palming the blade so that it disappeared. "Then take it like so," she
said, her fingers moving deftly, "and do this!"

In a flash the gleaming point was against
Cat's neck. Her eyes widened and she sat very still, hoping that Auntie T would
be very, very careful!

"There, where the big vein swells!
Don't hesitate, just push it in. If you cut that vein, whoever it is won't
trouble you for long."

Cat's eyes remained wide as the old woman
returned the blade to her.

"Now," Teresina Tanucci said
crisply, "you show me that you know what to do."

Feeling very queer, Caterina did as she was
told. She was surprised at how easy it seemed, almost as if she'd practiced
already.

"Very good," said her aunt after
a few minutes. "Now put it back and keep it a secret. No one should know!
Not ever! Not your mama, not your papa, not dear Wili, not your favorite
servant! Not any one! Show them the pretty saint, but not the secret! And
practice taking the little protector out every night, so that you can do it
easily. Practice holding it, imagine sticking it in."

"But, ah—why,
Auntie?"

"So you won't be afraid to use it if
you have to. You are pretty, Caterina, and men are evil! Now promise me that
you'll always wear it, even when you sleep, and that you'll practice, exactly
as I showed you, every night!"

It seemed awfully strange, but with Aunt
Teresina's watery green eyes fixed upon her, Cat made the promise solemnly.

* * *

Even after she was at home again, Cat felt
a queer compulsion to do as her Aunt had instructed. After the light had been
blown out and she was hidden inside the bed curtains, she'd click open the
locket, take out the needle-like blade and then thrust it into the neck
of an imaginary attacker.

She soon learned that there was punishment
for neglecting the exercise. It came in the form of nightmares, nightmares
filled with the same terrifying creatures she'd seen in the horrible dream.

Even stranger, when once she tried to tell
Wili about the secret in the locket, her tongue had gone so thick she couldn't
move it. Next, her throat closed and she began to choke. As she fought to get
her breath, she felt utterly terrified. It was, all in all, such an alarming
experience that Caterina never even considered telling anyone again.

* * *

After she received the protector, Auntie
Teresina died. One of the peasants came to give the news to Landrat von Velsen.

"She had a lung sickness, sir, and a
fever."

"And she did not send to us?"