The House of the Wolf (10 page)

Countess Sylva must have sensed this, for she hesitated and her delicately diplomatic questions ceased. Coleridge hoped he had not given her offence. He felt himself to be somehow poised on the pinnacle of an edifice which was slowly crumbling beneath him. He was too sensitive, really; there was no reason to feel that, but their gathering at Lugos, rather than being an interval of pleasurable scholarship, was starting to generate a tension which was far from what the professor had intended when he had organised it.

He would feel more at ease once he had received Menlow’s report. There must be some plausible explanation for Nadia Homolky’s experience of the previous night, though Coleridge could not for the moment assign some convincing reason.

To his relief he saw Menlow rise from his seat and, passing along the room, stoop for a few moments’ colloquy with his host. He received smiling assent for his absence from table, and a few moments later his tall, gaunt form had passed through the far door. It was the prelude to the general breakup of the lunch-party, and everyone drifted into a smaller and less grand side-room scattered with comfortable velvet-covered divans where coffee and liqueurs were served to the replete guests.

During a lull in the conversation Coleridge found the Count at his elbow. He raised his glass in answer to the Count’s salutation, feeling momentarily refreshed, his mind poised on the edge of contentment.

‘To the gypsies!’ Homolky said mockingly. ‘You will find the experience interesting, Professor.’

CHAPTER 13: IN THE GYPSY CAMP

A keen wind stung Coleridge’s face, bringing tears to his eyes, while the smoke and flame from the bonfires warmed his body at the same time. Barbaric music filled his ears, and his sight was dazzled by the light of flares striking back from tarnished mirrors and giltwork on the tawdry stalls set about like a maze on this dark winter afternoon.

The Count had not exaggerated. It was interesting, to say the least, but Coleridge was vaguely aware that the Gypsy Fair represented a dangerous combination. Mingling with the food and drink he had consumed, the brilliance of the lights and the vividness of the music had a dizzy and intoxicating effect on the brain, while the alternation of extreme heat and bitter cold was an invitation to pneumonia.

He would have to be careful. The intoxication came partly from Nadia Homolky, whose arm was twined in his intimately; she nestled into the warmth of his fur coat as she pressed closely to his side, and once again Coleridge was uncomfortably conscious of the dangerously erotic aura emanating from both the younger ladies of the Homolky household.

Now she was brushing against him through their thick clothing as they threaded among the booths, her face alive with mischief and her golden hair caught carelessly in beneath her fur cap.

‘Is this what you expected, Professor?’

‘I am not quite sure to what you refer,’ he answered drily, hoping that Raglan or the girl’s parents were not in the vicinity. Probably he was reading too much into her attitude; she had been naturally anxious to enlist his services after her terrifying experience, and her carefree manner toward him might well be nothing more than a young girl’s trusting nature. At the same time he must be careful not to arouse young Raglan’s jealousy through Nadia Homolky’s casual coquetry.

They were interrupted by the same roaring noise that Coleridge had heard that morning when descending the narrow path to the waterfall. The girl looked at him excitedly.

‘Wild animals, Professor! Don’t you find it absolutely absorbing?’

Coleridge shook his head. There was a grim irony in her words of which she was apparently unaware.

‘I would have thought you had had enough of wild animals for the moment, Miss Homolky,’ he said gently.

He bit his lip with vexation at his carelessly uttered words, because the girl drew in her breath and her eyes were again clouded with fear as they had been that morning. Once more the shadows seemed to close in momentarily, and the lights and wild music of the fairground appeared faint and far away.

‘Forgive me,’ he said quickly, before the girl could speak.

She drew closer to him as though his proximity gave her comfort and protection from danger.

‘There is nothing to forgive, Professor. I am still a child in some ways, I am afraid. And fairs and such gatherings are an exciting contrast to our somewhat quiet life here in Lugos.’

Her eyes were sparkling now.

‘They remind me of the days when I was small and Father used to take me to concerts and fairs and outings in Pest.’

Her gaze was wide and distant as she spoke, and to Coleridge it seemed as though she saw not the crude booths and the teeming life of the peasants about them, but the gracious salons and ballrooms of the capital.

She laughed then as she caught her companion’s glance.

‘And the zoo,’ she said, squeezing his arm. ‘We have a wonderful zoo in Pest. We must visit it sometime.’

Coleridge was again slightly embarrassed by the intimacy of the girl’s manner and her assumption that they might together visit the capital on some future occasion. He drew her over to one side where a savage-looking group of Magyars were doing a fire-eating act, breathing great streaks of flame high into the air.

Then the rumbling roar with which he was becoming familiar again sounded, and the girl cast an apprehensive glance over her shoulder.

‘It is only the bear,’ Coleridge said quickly. ‘I saw it on my way through the village last night.’

‘Poor beast,’ the girl murmured sympathetically.

They had come to a sort of clearing in the middle of the booths where a large crowd of people, mostly peasants, but including some of the better-dressed and more prosperous tradespeople, had formed a large circle. Coleridge realised the word must have spread about Lugos very quickly that the Fair was open, since the Count had made his request only an hour or two before. That probably accounted for the makeshift condition of some of the sideshows, because the crude wooden platforms showed signs of hasty erection in some cases and a number of stalls had their canvas awnings pinned up temporarily on wooden battens. Coleridge guessed that the gypsies, above all people, were anxious to earn some money while it was there and that they obviously led a very insecure existence.

The huge brown bear, its eyes dark and unfathomable, was balanced on a large wooden ball which its sharp claws gripped clumsily as it slowly rotated. The animal travelled cautiously over the rough ground, occasionally bowing its head as though acknowledging the smattering of applause which greeted its prowess.

A dull chinking noise came from the heavy metal chain which linked the leather collar round the beast’s neck with the wrist of its trainer, a tall, heavily bearded man who appeared, from his richer clothing and proud bearing, to be the chief of the gypsy band, or at least one of its principal leaders.

The bear got down from the ball at last, having traversed the complete circle, and with a squeal of pleasure seized the juicy turnip its master proffered. It squatted on its haunches in the light of the flares, sinking its sharp teeth into the vegetable, which it held between its massive forepaws.

Its keeper, wild eyes flashing and gold earrings jangling, came round the crowd with his fur hat held out to make a collection. Coleridge saw with amusement that many of the crowd were edging away now that the entertainment was over, but the huge gypsy’s face darkened with anger and he spat curses at those meaner members of his audience who continued to retreat, this time with alarm and fright.

But Nadia Homolky had darted forward, reaching for her small leather purse. With a disarming smile she counted out some coins into the man’s huge palm, and at once his angry manner dissolved into ingratiating cupidity. He bowed low over her hand, breaking into a flood of excited sentences which the girl answered in his own language.

She returned to Coleridge, her features flushed and amused, her eyes dancing in the light of the flares and lamps.

‘You have a way with the savage, I see,’ Coleridge said. ‘Both of the human and the four-legged variety.’

Nadia Homolky laughed, pressing closer to Coleridge’s side.

‘Come and have your fortune told,’ she said mockingly. ‘It will be interesting to see what fate has in store for us.’

And she dragged the unwilling savant forward to where a broken-toothed crone beckoned at the entrance to one of the most lurid-looking booths which was decorated with primitively painted signs of the zodiac.

It was getting toward dusk now, and Coleridge’s face was buffeted by the wind, chill and bitter after the warmth of the fairground. He pulled away from the girl, seeing Raglan deep in conversation with the Count and his wife a little way behind them. He guessed that the pair were monopolising the young man, either temporarily to separate him from their daughter or to find out a little more about him from his conversation.

Coleridge would have been diverted had he not felt himself in a somewhat anomalous position with regard to Nadia Homolky. She had been vivacious and unconstrained in her manner while they were at the Fair. It had been an interesting experience, but the professor realised, somewhat to his annoyance, that most of it had passed in a blur.

Normally he would have taken careful notes and absorbed all the atmosphere and folkloric implications of these hard, wild, and proud folk who carried on their ancient traditions with an absolute contempt for what passed for modern civilised standards.

It was not only the problems of Lugos and the girl, but also the girl herself with her rich, vibrant personality, that disturbed Coleridge’s settled bachelor ideas. Now, he examined her covertly as they walked, their boots crunching in the heaped snow at the side of the road, the icy ruts glittering like steel beneath the faint oil lamps which illuminated the streets of Lugos.

Preserving a deep silence, they walked back across the bridge where his sled had passed Captain Rakosi and his cavalry troop the previous evening. The girl’s eyes were on his face, and she again had the troubled look.

‘You have not yet heard anything, of course?’

Coleridge knew what she meant without being told.

‘It is too early,’ he said cautiously. ‘I have asked Dr. Menlow to analyse that material. He is carrying out the tests now. I am hoping he will have some information for me by the time we return to the Castle.’

The girl seemed relieved, but still she persisted.

‘And then what?’

Coleridge put his hand under the girl’s elbow and helped her to jump up onto the narrow pavement inside the bridge parapet as a heavy farm cart approached, the two great horses reeking steam through the nostrils, the creaking of the wheels in the ruts making conversation difficult. The heavily muffled driver, who actually had ice gleaming on his moustache, must have been one of the Count’s estate workers, for he gave the girl a respectful salute.

‘We must take things as we find them, my dear young lady,’ Coleridge said, answering her question. ‘We can do nothing until we have some precise data.’

She nodded vigorously, as though the idea were new to her.

‘You are right,’ she said decisively.

There were heavy footsteps on the icy road behind them, sharp above the distant music of the fairground. The couple turned to find a huge bearded figure.

‘Forgive the intrusion,’ said a jovial voice, ‘but you must not expect to monopolise Miss Homolky during the entire Congress.’

Coleridge smiled. It was Dr. Duncan Abercrombie, the Scottish medical man who had gained quite a reputation for his papers on vampirism in the Middle Ages, with special reference to medical aspects of the phenomena.

‘You are perfectly correct,’ said Coleridge.

Inwardly he was pleased at the interruption because he had no wish to draw undue attention to himself and the girl. Already people must be wondering what they had found so much in common, and though Raglan’s addresses had been diverted by the girl’s parents, Coleridge had no desire to give the young man further cause for jealousy.

Therefore, he was content to drop behind a little, leaving the girl and the burly savant to keep up an animated, bantering conversation in which Abercrombie courteously tried to involve him from time to time. They were almost opposite a part of the village where several side-streets debouched into the main thoroughfare, and Coleridge became aware of the low sound of voices, faint chanting, and the shuffling of many boots.

The two in front had also heard it, and they halted, watching as the pale flare of lanterns and a long file of black-clad people entered the main street from the lane opposite. Coleridge could make out the green onion dome of a large church, faintly visible against the darkening sky. He had not noticed it the previous evening because it had been completely dark when he reached Lugos and he had been facing away from the structure when they had passed on their way to the Fair earlier that afternoon.

People were standing on the heaped snow of the pavements now; half the population of Lugos seemed to have suddenly appeared. A group of black-clad mourners were sobbing brokenly as they followed the draped coffin resting on a farm cart drawn by three black horses. A man standing bare-headed near Coleridge crossed himself and said something in a guttural undertone.

The girl caught the question in Coleridge’s eyes.

‘The man killed by the wolf,’ she said in a low voice. ‘They are taking the body to lie in state in the church. The funeral will be on Monday. Father and all our family will be there, of course.’

Coleridge nodded, his mind pervaded by melancholy. He caught a glimpse of Father Balaz now, comforting the bereaved. He must have slipped away from the Castle soon after lunch. Naturally, it would not have been seemly for him to have accompanied the party to the Fair.

‘They appear in rather a hurry,’ he said, sotto voce, to Abercrombie.

The big man had been staring at the peasant who stood the other side of Coleridge, and the latter realised his colleague either spoke the language or at least understood it well enough to make out what the man had been saying.

‘They are a very superstitious people hereabouts,’ Abercrombie said. ‘The old man there, for instance. He was just remarking to his neighbour that people who die by the bite of the wolf are best underground as quickly as possible.’

He smiled wolfishly himself as though at some cruel joke.

‘We are in the very heart of folklore here, Professor! I must put that in my notebook.’

And he promptly took out a wine-coloured leather-bound volume from a capacious side-pocket and laboriously jotted down something in it under the light of the nearest streetlamp. Coleridge watched the procession tail off toward the distant church until the lanterns were nothing but faint pricks of light in the darkness.

It seemed to him that ever since he had set foot in Lugos, less than twenty-four hours ago, everything had been split into segments of light and shade – the former representing the happier interludes at the inn, at breakfast, and lunch; with darkness represented by the processions centring on the dead man who had just passed him for the second time, the gypsies with their barbaric magnificence, Rakosi and his unsuccessful cavalrymen, the wolf and Colonel Anton, the girl with her weird tale. Even Father Balaz seemed like some bird of ill-omen.

A splendour of epaulettes and befrogged greatcoat grew before his eyes, and here was Rakosi himself, saluting in the lamplight and bowing enthusiastically over the girl’s hand. He shook hands with Abercrombie and Coleridge too and then drew the girl over beneath the lamp.

Coleridge was turning away when he became aware that the tall, gaunt figure of Menlow was elbowing its way through the crowd of people which now blocked the street. His face looked worried, and he beckoned Coleridge into the shadowy dusk, out of range of the lamp.

‘You have done the test?’

Menlow shook his head.

‘That is what I wanted to tell you, Professor. I cannot find my microscope or my case of instruments anywhere.’