The House of the Wolf (3 page)

CHAPTER 3: THE PRIEST’S TALE

As the melancholy procession came nearer, its members slipping and stumbling on the hard-packed ice of the rutted road, the professor could see that it was formed exclusively of grim-looking, mostly bearded men who wore stout boots and clothing composed largely of fur. Some of them carried rifles in their gloved hands, and pale lantern beams shone across the snow. As they neared the main road the lamps were extinguished, being now quite eclipsed by the light of the moon.

Coleridge guessed that the lanterns had been necessary to dispel the darkness and gloom within the woods. He wondered idly what they could have been shooting at this time of night; perhaps there had been an accident and the man on the rough wooden stretcher, made up of thick wooden poles hacked from the living tree and lashed together with leather belts and thongs, had been wounded.

Then the men with their burden came fully into the light, and Coleridge perceived that the occupant of the stretcher was dead because the face was covered. It was just a heaped mass of fur which lay there, its only human indication a bare arm which dangled below the edge of the covering, the fingers and forearm covered with rivulets of black blood which had frozen in the bitter air.

Their progress was slower now that they were coming upward on the steeper path to the spot where the sledge stood, and Coleridge could see that the tall, distinguished-looking man who headed the procession, walking alone and mumbling something from a small leather-bound book he carried, was either a priest or some sort of civic dignitary.

Coleridge’s guide briefly removed his heavy fur hat as the cortège came up to the level of the sledge and then quickly replaced it. The savant guessed that there would be danger of frostbite under these conditions, and he quickly checked the earflaps on his own headgear. He was much impressed with the respect and natural dignity the driver exhibited, and he admired the way he was now calming the restive horses with smooth, experienced movements of the reins.

The guide inclined his head as the tall man leading the procession stopped and gave the passenger a courtly bow. The professor saw that he was indeed a priest, for an elaborate silver pectoral cross glistened at his breast as it caught the rays of the moon.

‘Father Balaz,’ the guide mumbled to Coleridge in his heavily accented English.

The professor inclined his own head to show courtesy to the priest and wondered whether he should get down from the vehicle, but the tall man indicated with a gloved hand that he should remain where he was.

Then followed a muttered conversation that Coleridge was unable to grasp, but he had forgotten the cold in his absorption in his guide’s discourse with this strange and arresting figure. Father Balaz had a long, ravaged face like that of a mediaeval saint, with great grooves that ran down from beneath his eyes, passing the corners of his mouth and ending just short of his chin.

In the silvery light of the moon they looked like the streaked tears Coleridge had seen depicted on the faces of religious statuary in some Latin American churches. Balaz almost resembled a living statue as the mumbled colloquy continued.

In the meantime the procession had passed, the feet of the men making crisp crunching noises in the crusted snow, each and every one giving a slight bow to the man in the sledge as he went by. Coleridge saw, to his horror, as the rough stretcher passed, that there was a good deal of blood on the tumbled furs which covered the immobile figure and that the hand which protruded from beneath the covering was much torn and mangled.

There had been an accident, then. He controlled his patience as best he might and waited while the long file of men and their burden moved on toward the streets of Lugos. The priest concluded his business with the sledge-driver at the end, drew himself up, looked at Coleridge with deep-set melancholy eyes above the greying stubble of beard, and made the sign of the cross in the air.

Coleridge received the benediction with another courteous half-bow and shifted awkwardly beneath his thick coverings as he watched the priest hurry off to rejoin the others. The driver was silent too as he stared after him in turn. There was an odd interval, broken only by the impatient snorting of the horses. The guide turned in the seat of the sleigh and answered his passenger’s unspoken question.

‘There has been another death. Father Balaz is extremely perturbed.’

He shrugged.

‘The people hereabouts are very superstitious, you see.’

Coleridge found impatience welling up within him, cutting through the numbing cold.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said, more irritably than he had intended.

The driver crossed himself, still staring after the dark figure of the priest, now a black speck on the icy road before he too turned an angle of a building and was lost to sight.

‘Another killing, sir,’ he said, lowering his voice as though they might be overheard in that remote place. ‘The third this year.’

Coleridge looked at him sharply.

‘What do you mean, killing?’

The guide put his lips together in a straight line.

‘A local villager. A woodman. Torn to pieces by a wolf.’

The driver could not stop the trembling which visibly agitated his frame now.

‘A great black wolf which leads a pack hereabouts.’

He fixed the professor with mournful eyes.

‘The villagers say there is something supernatural about it. The beast has been sighted and shot at on a number of occasions, but it seems to have a miraculous ability to avoid bullets.’

As an expert on the folklore of Europe the professor was intensely interested in what the man was saying, but his commonsense side was momentarily in conflict with the academic in his nature. A grain of sense told him that there could be nothing miraculous about a wolf and its ability to avoid bullets; nothing, that is, but animal cunning.

But his special interests were aroused. This was really the raw stuff of folklore, and it was ironic that the two sides of his nature should be tested in this way; he had not come across it before.

But his manner was noncommittal as he replied.

‘I am sorry you have such troubles in Lugos. Perhaps I could help. I am an expert shot.’

The driver shook himself as though he were emerging from a bad dream.

‘The authorities would be grateful for your assistance, sir. I believe the Count has also offered the family’s help to the local Chief of Police.’

His eyes were grim as he turned back to the reins.

‘The soldiers have been out already. They saw no sign of the beast. It is cunning, you see. But it had returned to the body when our people came across our poor friend, the woodman. They were unable to hit it, according to Father Balaz, though it was less than a hundred yards away, in clear snow.’

He whipped up the horses, and the sledge creaked on toward the Castle. Coleridge felt a bleakness in his soul that was far more searing than the cold.

CHAPTER 4: THE CASTLE

The castle rose above them, gilded silver by the moonlight and looking as unlikely as some eccentric iced cake, Coleridge thought. As they drew nearer, the splintering passage of the sledge was echoing back from the street of small houses which led up to the main entrance, and mingled with it was something else. At first it sounded like the magnification of their own passage, but he then became aware that there were other horses and vehicles approaching from the opposite direction.

The first visible indication was two great staring eyes which jerked about the dusky road, now in shadow from the ancient tumbled façade of the buildings opposite and the deeper mass of the Castle walls at their left as they went on down the frozen street. The eyes presently resolved themselves into a pair of lanterns suspended from short poles and set out at angles from a solid wooden cart built of massive timbers and drawn by four coal-black horses.

Other carts followed, each painted in gaudy colours, some decorated with elaborate carving that now threw back the rays of the lamps as they swayed and flickered at the end of their poles. A low animal rumbling sounded deep from within a wooden slatted cage that stood on one of the open vehicles, and through the opening in the tarpaulin that surrounded the cage on three sides to keep off the wind, the professor glimpsed the dark snout and burning red eyes of what appeared to be a large bear.

The men who drove the carts, with swarthy women beside them, had dark, sullen faces and wild eyes above their fierce moustaches; they looked neither right nor left but tugged moodily at the reins, one or two smoking elaborately engraved silver pipes. Coleridge could hardly take his eyes off them until the creaking cavalcade was again swallowed by the dusk.

He realised it was the third procession he had seen since his arrival in Lugos a few short hours ago, each one more extraordinary than the last. His guide, who had sat hunched on the seat of the sled while the bizarre caravan passed, now straightened himself, cleared his throat, and spat reflectively.

‘Difficult and dangerous people, Professor.’

Coleridge turned back in his seat and huddled deeper into his protective furs.

‘But who are they?’

The driver stroked his chin with his free hand, his left skilfully controlling the horses so that the vehicle avoided the worst of the ruts which fell to a sort of ditch or moat which hugged the edge of the road. Above them the great sheer walls of the Castle, not a light showing this side, looked as though they were made entirely of frost.

‘Hortobagy!’

The driver struggled for the English equivalent.

‘How do you call them in your country?’

Then he turned with quiet triumph.

‘Gypsies. They are a wild folk, sir. They are here for the first of our Winter Fairs, which starts in a few days’ time.’

‘That sounds interesting.’

The driver shrugged.

‘It is interesting enough. But there is much quarrelling and drunkenness, too. Though it brings good trade to the village and business for the likes of me, so perhaps I should not grumble overmuch.’

He turned back to the reins, pulling the powerful team round. The road curved now, easing away from the village street, which continued onward past the main wall. There likewise was curving of the great mass, which angled inward as though anxious to be quit of the village.

Coleridge glimpsed lights at ground level which shone and glinted on the thick ice of the moat and on vast iron-studded doors with a courtyard beyond. Above that hung the immense bulk of the Castle, hereditary home of the Homolky family. Those windows in the façade which were still lighted exhibited delicate tracery of stone and lozenges of different coloured glass which glinted ruby and green and gold, almost like church windows, but with a secular splendour foreign to churches. To Coleridge, in the biting cold of the street, they seemed to beckon with all the warmth and comfort of civilised values.

‘We have arrived, sir!’ said the professor’s guide, pointing with a flourished whip. ‘The House of the Wolf!’

The horses’ hooves rang steel-hard on the drawbridge as they clattered across to where the great mass of the Castle awaited to ingest them.

Coleridge paid off the guide, cutting short the man’s mumbled thanks, and followed the bearded servant, who tucked his luggage beneath his gigantic arms as though they had been nothing more than feather bolsters. The professor kept his briefcase and removed his heavy fur hat as he followed the man across the stone floor of what looked like a gatehouse within the inner arch of the Castle courtyard.

The clatter of the horses’ hooves across the cobbles in the icy air was already receding and was then cut off altogether by the slam of the massive gatehouse door. They reemerged into the open air again, crossing a smaller courtyard where the snow and ice had been meticulously cleared from the massive setts.

Facing them was a graceful arched portico whose glass doors, set back in the shadow, showed forth slanting beams of yellow light. The servant held the door courteously aside for Coleridge to enter, and he was at once aware of the rush of warm air. He blinked as another servant, more elegant than the first and in smartly cut livery of a military pattern, ushered them across a black-and-white tiled hall.

A large log fire burned in a vast fireplace at the right, and sporting trophies were ranged about the uneven stone walls. A marble balustraded staircase made right-angled turns in the far corner as it ascended to the upper floors, and Coleridge made out the carved blazons on the heraldic shields which bore the coat of arms of his noble host and which were set at intervals in the staircase balustrade.

Three enormous brass lanterns suspended from the darkened beams of the far-off ceiling held quivering banks of large red candles, which cast a shifting, mysterious light downward onto the tiling of the floor as Coleridge followed the two men across to one of a number of doors set into the fireplace wall. Already his painfully tingling ears were attesting the return of circulation.

The second servant patiently waited while Coleridge divested himself of his heavy outer clothing. He sat down by the fireplace and changed into indoor shoes while the bearded man removed his boots and other garments to some inner chamber.

When he had thawed out and felt himself to be sufficiently presentable, he picked up his briefcase and followed the uniformed man, who was patently some sort of household major-domo, toward the far door which the white-haired man held ajar for him.

It was a smaller room into which he showed the guest, panelled with some rare wood and furnished with great taste and elegance. The lighting here came from electric bulbs set into wrought-iron wall lanterns and from overhead chandeliers, and Coleridge guessed that this was a more modern part of the Castle, though still of great antiquity.

There was no sound except for the faint sputtering of the logs on the fire and the sonorous clicking of a large-pendulum clock which meticulously measured out the minutes against the far wall. So far as Coleridge could gather in his first glimpses, there was no-one in the room, and he looked about curiously as the servant courteously indicated a great carved chair at the right-hand side of the fireplace.

It was almost a repetition of the scene at the inn earlier, and Coleridge felt a certain inward satisfaction that he was at last at his journey’s end and would not have to venture out into the bitter air and on his seemingly endless travelling again tonight. He put down his briefcase on the huge polished refectory table which stood near the chair and thawed out.

The majordomo had reappeared from behind him with an embossed silver tray on which stood several tall crystal goblets of amber glass and a flagon of some reddish wine. Despite the professor’s protestations he filled a goblet and put it down on the tray within the guest’s reach.

It was obvious the man did not speak English, as he merely smiled without answering Coleridge’s thanks, and the American then saw with a slight sense of shock that he had no tongue; only the remains of a pink root which showed like a gaping sore in his mouth before he closed it again.

It was a barbarous glimpse of something of which Coleridge had been dimly aware on his journeyings in Hungary, and it merely emphasised the civilised veneer of this great house, a veneer which covered the cracks in the façade of this huge and largely backward country.

The majordomo smiled again, this time without exposing his deformity, and pointed with a gentle gesture toward a door in the far corner of the gracious room. Then he went out the same way he had come in, leaving the professor to his sombre thoughts. He wondered whether the man had been involved in some bizarre accident; it did not seem likely that he had been the subject of a surgical operation. It was improbable that things were so advanced in this remote corner of Europe.

There remained two other possibilities – that the man was the victim of some congenital deformity that had been with him since birth. Or was there something even more sinister, a practice that might have persisted since the days of the Wallachian tyrants who had ruled this blood-soaked land? That the man’s tongue had been literally torn from his mouth to render him mute and prevent him from speaking about his betters’ affairs? Coleridge’s expression was grim as he raised the goblet of wine to his lips. As he had expected, it was excellent.

He was still sitting there in the mellow firelight sipping the dry and subtle vintage when he became aware that the far door was open. A tall, thin man with a shock of white hair stood there regarding him with a sardonic expression.