Nachtstürm Castle (11 page)

It was at that moment that Henry determined to explore the family graveyard as soon as the rain let up. But upon returning to his room he had discovered two curious things that caused him to place the time of his proposed expedition to that very evening. The first incident happened as he passed the corridor where his beloved, not two hours later, would find herself so mistakenly imposed upon. The sepulchral chill had given him pause and he had turned to glimpse the face of his bride emerging from the shadows.

He called Catherine’s name; she fled, crying “Mater, pièta!” The reacquaintance with his wife’s doppelgänger had caused him some alarm.
 
Did this substantial ghost yet roam these halls?
 
Worse – had Catherine been subjected to her presence?
 
How did his wife fare? Had she need of him?
 
Self–anger filled him; he had been a negligent husband this week. He had allowed the library and the mystery to woo him and he had proved a poor lover indeed. Catherine would have every right to renounce the name of Tilney for his inattention. All the newly-wedded fears coursed through him, hastening his steps to their chambers, ready to swoop Catherine up into his arms and convince her of his ardour through kisses.

But no sooner had he approached that wing than the second strange occurrence happened: he saw Old Edric emerge from their rooms. That man’s motions bore no hint of stealth or furtiveness. He closed the doors solemnly – yea,
slowly
– as though only making his nightly rounds. Edric even bowed to Henry as they passed – a glimmer of sharp knife shimmering briefly in the old man’s bleak attire. That done, Henry opened the doors and found the scene of destruction much the same as Catherine would shortly. A quick search divined that the letters nothing had been taken, although judging from the slits in bedding, chair and cloth, Henry surmised that Edric had been searching for the very letters that our hero kept always on his person.
 
Nor could Henry blame Edric for so urgently desiring these most valuable documents, since they bore proof against his word.

Catherine had appeared soon after and the sight of her terrified countenance stirred all the knightly sentiments within our hero. He would solve this mystery tonight and leave with Catherine tomorrow. And he must go out tonight for surely any longer and who knew what else Old Edric would steal! His wife’s sudden confidence had shaken his determination, as well as gratifying his sense of adventure.
 
So it was with a light step that he made his way down out of Nachtstürm and to the graveyard.

Horrible place! Across the natural bridge Henry strode, winding down to the shambling church – half plaster, half marble – its solitary bell keening in the rain–drizzled wind. Frightful angels loomed like gargoyles and twisted shadows over the broken ground. Crosses and obelisks, pillars and bas–reliefs, all a grisly mockery of the sun–washed stone garden of the Florentine Medici’s – O! how long ago! And above all this towered the great marble mausoleum of the Barons of Brandenburg.

If, Henry supposed, the Baron had truly taken his own life, then he would not find him in this hallowed ground.
 
A man might be dishonoured in his own home, but not his eternal one.
 
The familial mausoleum would tell all.
 
And reveal as well, perhaps, whether a wife lay beside him in her eternal rest.

Through the bracken, winding past the minor gravestones of the spinstered daughters and bastard sons – cruel fate, thought Henry – he approached the edifice and by the faint moonlight read the chiselled names upon the door.
 
But the moon played coyly through the tattered clouds, until at last she burst through, lighting on the name he most longed to see.
 
Yes, just as he suspected, the late baron appeared to lie entombed.
 
His death was doubtful, but some cleric was not – and in that instant, Henry felt a rush of pride for his brother clergy.
 
Look though as he may, no Cecelia of any family was likewise inscribed upon the slab; he must look elsewhere.

That same moonlight illuminated a willow tree, a little past the monument.
 
Its trunk was gnarled, stumped and gibbous; its limbs a collection of wooden writhing forms as horrible as ever those that threw themselves into Charon’s boat.
 
Its branches hung low and thick, glistening in the rain, waving tremendously in the wind.
 
They swayed, now caught in motion in the lightning flash, now twining together in Fate’s knotted veil, now drifting apart with a sigh like a religious at her prayers. But most extraordinary of all was that entrapped within the agitated boughs of that blighted tree was a girl, as white as the moon herself, pacing anxiously about her confines, and humming a tune nearly indiscernible from the tempest’s howl.

Henry started at this, and glanced upwards to assure himself that the moon had
not
, indeed, deigned to walk this globe mourning for her Hippolytus, but remained fixed in the sky. She did. So sighing, he turned again to the willow tree, watching the flow–white motion of this earthly Artemis’ hem between the shifting leaves, the quick motion of her arms and feet. Creeping against the side of the mausoleum, he approached her silently – but no matter his stealth, she sensed him and broke off pacing. A word, a name fluted towards him, caught up by the wind and silence halfway. And with that zephyr, God’s hidden finger, the leafy veil parted to reveal Catherine stepping towards him.

The distant lightning which illuminated her lovely face, her desirable form, obscured his own from her view. Henry’s capes rustled like numerous wings, the coattails billowing about his legs. Beneath his hat, his dark complexion took on a more sinister aspect. Once coiled against the stone edifice, he now rose to his full height, a stray moonbeam falling across his handsome mouth as he called urgently, “Catherine?”

She froze, eyes growing wide and panicked, and so mistaking her expression, he rushed towards her to take her in his arms, to cover her face in kisses, to carry her back to Nachtstürm, and order the carriage to take them from that accursed place at once.

Light lanced across his arm as he reached for her, glittered upon the gold of his wedding band.
 
It reached up and touched his cheek, his brow, his eye; shifted to shiver across the flair of her blouse, the sweep of her neck, the rain–diamonds in her sable hair, and her white feet as she fled with a: “Por Dios, non!”

Her flight gave him but brief pause – long enough to berate himself for mistaking that girl for Catherine now
thrice
– but there was no time now to reflect upon his merit as a husband with the mystery so close at hand. He gave chase.

Bursting from that haunted tree, leaping gravestones and forcing wide the neglected gate, running down the mountain pathways – the church’s bell clanging horridly behind him – passing fences and meadows, ducking through a grove and emerging at last from this, Henry saw his quarry standing still and defiant at the edge of a cliff. Her resemblance to Catherine pierced his heart and he longed to touch her, to change her by sheer will into his beloved – but when he approached a single step she took one back and he dared go no further. The chase had loosed her hair and it joined the undulations of her moonlit gown and echoed in her eyes. This at last convinced Henry that here was no Catherine, for
her
eyes always held everything that was gay and lovely, while the eyes of the girl before him spoke of long haunted nights and dreams with no peace.

She said something – a warning, a threat – and stepped closer to the ledge. Henry waited an interminable moment. She stepped still closer to the cliff once more; her heels hung off the precipice. He dared inch towards her and when she did not leap, he moved again – grinding his boots in the soil, ready at any moment to leap and bring her to safety. His hand quivered in readiness. She jumped.

With the lightning he moved, lunging after, skidding just before the ledge that crumbled slightly beneath his weight. His breath caught in his throat.
 
He had been too late. For there, upon an unseen grassy knoll beneath, she lay sprawled – arms and legs akimbo, neck bent painfully to the side and up, struck against a rock – face and form still in the first graceful languidity of death’s embrace.

He must find a way down. A rambling path, some seven feet below, gave him purchase, although not quickly enough, until at last he came upon the poor form of the dead girl. A wild hope passed through him as he approached her: all the Bavarian tales resurfaced of a kiss awakening those in deepest sleep. But he had no more than entered the circle of moonlight about her when the body disappeared entirely – evaporated like the morning dew.

Such a sight is not quickly recovered from, even when one is the inimitable Reverend Henry Tilney. And so in shock and wonderment – and, it must be admitted, awe – he approached the spot where she – lady, ghost or fancy he did not yet dare to judge – had so recently lain. But what he found was a simple, chilled gravestone, curiously free of lichen and finely wrought, upon whose face was elegantly chiselled,
Cecelia.

Writing had been engraved below it.
 
A stone cross stood above it.
 
Tracing the epitaph with his fingers, sounding out the words sparked Henry’s mind.
 
He drew from out his breast pocket the sonnet which he had been labouring to translate and checked it against the inscription.

Ella si va, sentendosi laudare,

Benignaments d'umilta vestuta;

E par che sia una cosa venuta

Da cielo in terra a miracol mostrare.

Yes; the second verse of the sonnet – ‘twas the same.
 
He had rendered, with some alteration to preserve the rhyme, something like:

Where'er she walks she hears her virtue praised,

Still, sweetness and humility’s her gown;

And so she seems a wondrous thing sent down

From heaven to earth: a miraculous grace.

Hardly words to be laid on the tomb of one who had taken her own life, Henry thought.
 
And if in fact what he had seen
was
an apparition sent to draw him to this very place – was, in fact, a
ghost
….
 
He recoiled from such a term on purely rationalistic grounds, but empiricism gave him pause; he could not deny the witness of his eyes.
 
With a grunt, Henry muttered that such a thing should have appeared to his wife –
she
might have appreciated a spectral visitation!

The succession of girl, ghost, and grave disconcerted our hero and seemed on that strange night a sort of omen more potent than his silly storytelling weeks ago. He could not delay. He was filled with concern for Catherine. He had been graced with divine premonition and must return post–haste before tonight’s events could ever be repeated and a second grave added with Catherine’s sweet name upon it.

He rose and found his way back to Nachtstürm – noting as he passed once more through the cemetery that the arrangement of the wall suggested that the graveyard continued the hallowed ground even to the hidden ledge.
 
Thoughts of this gave way, though, as he strode through the doors and corridors of the keep to his beloved, whom he all but consumed with his eyes. Was she real?
 
Here?
 
Alive – with no scar or mark upon her?
 
Oh, pray God he was a fool and only caught up in some wild imaginings propagated by place and desire to please his bride. And yes, her skin was warm to touch, her face frightened but unhaunted, every inch of her
his
Catherine.

But when he bent to kiss her, she shied away.
 
And when at last she slept, he saw about her throat the locket.

While Mr and Mrs Tilney involved themselves in their various adventures, Colin had retired to the kitchen to visit his bonny English lass and share a loaf of bread, a mug of ale – and she. And, since the fire was cheery and she fit so well in his arm, and he had a curious nature and she extensive knowledge, their conversation consisted mostly of surprisingly accurate gossip.