Nachtstürm Castle (2 page)

What better way is there to pass the time when one is travelling than in the exchange of tales? Most often, it is the keen–eyed stranger or the comical matron who fills the hours with prophetic news, while the importuned traveller stares with wide eyes and clenched hands. But in lieu of such a colourful person, Henry must do – and if he is not as eccentric as the normal fare, having left the poplin curtains in the parlour, yet he excels in this: that
he
might hold the listener quite literally in his arms.

“We shall stay along the Southern route: Provençe, Vienna, Florence – as far from the sensible English countryside as may be attained.”

“And the Umbrian Valley?” Catherine asked with great courage, although she shivered slightly in his arms.

“Naturally, my love. What better place than that named after shadows? For that is what you sought at Northanger, was it not? Most vainly, too.”

“Oh! But it is what I found in the Thorpes, I am afraid.”

“Bravo! Yes, wickedness must be slyer now. Voluminous capes are not at all the fashion and attract attention either in Town or Shire. Skulking, too, is frowned upon. Villainy must take on a greater mask than a bit of cloth – it must take on the very face of sanctity; it must have all the appearance of good and none of the goodness.”

“Henry, how you talk so!”

“No!
 
But consider, Catherine.
 
We shall come to the Umbrian Valley, with its tangled vines and brambled trees, a massy castle in the distance, rising upon a cliff, with the sun setting incarnadine against the swollen clouds.
 
And in the east, the moon obscured by those same billowing clouds that threaten a terrible rain.
 
And supposing our carriage – rattling up the winding mountainside – were stuck for some duration in the mud (for although it has not yet rained, yet there is mud), and I were to jump out to help the servants move the carriage upward, when – lo! There comes a man dressed in a many caped greatcoat – yea, more capes than mine.
 
No, say not it is impossible, Catherine – who with but one push frees the carriage. Then with a tip of the hat – and yes, it is a very tall hat and the brim just wide enough to obscure his features if the poor light were not sufficient – he disappears.

“Only imagine what terror must possess you then as I relay the whole to you. You should draw the curtains, you should beg to turn around, you should not desire to sleep in a castle or an abbey, you should suspect that man of grave doings – do not sigh so! Of course I must use that word – you should suspect him of everything that is evil. And why should you not?
He
did not, like any honest man, sweat and grunt and then offer his hand once the deed was accomplished. He offered no name – no name, nor no card. The ill–bred monster indeed, my love. He should be thrown out of Bath in a trice! But imagine our surprise when we never hear from this gentleman again! When our stay at the castle, while suitable drafty, is nothing more awful than that? What if – oh horrors – we learn that he is the younger, athletic son of a local Doge, happily married, with fifteen children! And worse, that his only crime was committed at the tender age of seven, when he stole a biscuit from the kitchen.”

“Henry, you are teazing me. There shall be no rain, nor castle, nor mysterious stranger. I have learnt, darling. You cannot fool me again.
 
Hm?”

“I’ve no desire to ‘fool’ you – if indeed such a word can become an action. I merely paint a scene to pass the time.”

“I might have read passages of
Udolpho
to you, if that were all you desired.”

“But then you should be pressed up against the door, squinting in the little sunlight. Our current position is enviable – I assure you.”

“I faint to hear what bedtime tales you recite to our children!”

The conversation at this point was discontinued until the next day, when Henry found Catherine standing on the deck of the channel ferry. She held her bonnet in her hands, and the loose wisps of dark hair flew around her face, making her look more the part of the heroine than e’er before. Henry himself was not meanly composed, as Catherine’s eyes reflected when she turned rosy cheeked to face him. The wind nipped but did not freeze, and so the two stood joyfully at the rail – remarking on this perspective or that as the more picturesque.

After some half–hour, when it was generally agreed that one view of the sea is fairly much like another, Henry took up the strain of the previous day’s conversation.

“I repent for my hasty words yesterday.”

“Do you, Mr Tilney?”

“Yes, indeed. I perceive now that I was grievously wrong.”

“And so you were, dearest. I have no fear of brambly miles – I have travelled very well alone, you know.”

He coloured at this, remembering his Father’s, General Tilney’s, own villainy in turning the then Miss Catherine Morland from his home. But rallying, he smiled and said, “Is that hint meant for me? I would by all means leave you to your new–found courage, if that is your heart’s desire...for you know I care for nothing else. Shall I throw myself into the sea for your comfort?”

“No! Nay!” our heroine cried, grabbing his arm as he placed his foot upon the ledge.

“I pray thee, fair damsel – do not arrest me. Thy beauty is too much to bear!”

“Oh, Henry!” she laughed, and pulled him to herself.

He immediately took her arm in his and proceeded to stroll the deck. And if there was a gleam of pride in his eye as he paraded his young wife – can we blame him?

“You must allow me to make amends for my terrible story,” he insisted after several minutes.

“You have already.”

“I have
apologised,
but I have not amended.”

“I fear your amendments, beloved.”

“As well you ought. But I have spent a long restless night – I only seemed asleep, my love – thinking of our mysterious stranger, and I have concluded that I painted him very ill.”

“What?”
 
Catherine laughed.
 
“Only
ten
children?”

“Such a fine family could never belong to one such as him, my dear.”

“Then he has no family?”

He bowed.

“No wife either?”

“What purpose can a wife serve in such a romance?”

“Ah ha! I have found you out now, sir! A wife has a
great
part in romance!”

“Only on the final page – or better, in an attic.”

“And his is quite mad above?”

“You forget: we determined that he had no wife.”

“May he yet?” Catherine asked, her voice rising to betray her mere nineteen years.

“I certainly would not hope so!” was our hero’s feeling response.

“How cruel!”

“Is it cruelty, madam, to guard
you
from this man?”

“I?”

“ – Nay, ‘tis duty.”

“Henry!”

“I dare say, if he is a decent chap, I may challenge him to a duel, what?”

“I shall take your flintlock from you!”

“Then may I have your Radcliffe?”

“Darling, you have surpassed
her
already.”

“Thus am I content.”

The remainder of their sea voyage passed with no prolonged reiteration of the matter. But Catherine’s suspicions had been piqued. What could Henry mean by teazing her so? The question, coupled with the romantic destination he himself had chosen and his means of convincing her to journey there, seemed to imply that a staged adventure would be their fate. No matter, she thought, although she had fallen prey once before to his gentle mockerys and had found herself cowering before linen, she would not do so again.

“I shall be perfectly sensible,” she said vehemently to herself that evening.
 
Which, this statement being made the same evening as she first stepped foot in France, a nation not historically known for her discretion, may have given a more thoughtful heroine pause.

Yet all the same, that night Catherine dreamt once more of Tilneys and trapdoors.

Their first stop was the Paris of Napoleon during that brief Treaty of Amiens. There they viewed all the great monuments, from Versailles to the Place de la Bastille.
 
Having arrived just before September, they missed the third exposition in the Louvre by a mere fortnight – which grieved Henry greatly once he learnt of it – and they missed
Evalina’s
authoress, Frances Burney, by eight months – which Catherine, being completely without prescience, grieved not at all.
 
They did see the future Empress several times as they perused the more expensive shops on the more expensive boulevards – but since neither of them knew who she was, they thought little of her.

The edifice which excited the sensibilities of our heroine the most was the great Cathedral of Notre Dame.
 
The day they journeyed there happened to be politely grey, throwing weird shadows over the towers and buttresses, making the gargoyles seem more ominous and the saints more æthereal. Catherine entered the hallowed place with large eyes and flushed cheeks, her fingers gripping her husband’s arm in awe and righteous fear. She could not look upward enough to the ancient windows and vaulted ceilings. Every side chapel was greeted with a stifled gasp – which gasps caused Henry to chuckle and Catherine to blush.
 
Even in its semi-dilapidated state, with the shattered hall of Kings and occasional forgotten bale of hay, the Lady of Paris brooded with the mysteries of the ages.
 

It was, Catherine acknowledged guiltily to herself, everything she had dreamt Northanger Abbey would be.
 
In that dim monument, she half expected to hear the distant weeping of an imprisoned Emily.
 
And in her imagination, she nearly did.

Thus, when the great bells rang out the noon hour, joined by all the smaller bells of Paris that had survived the recent Terror, our heroine started and yelped aloud.
 
Such an outburst, so wholly inappropriate in that holy place and yet so thoroughly
Catherine
, amused our hero to no end.
 
Particularly when, a moment later, pungent incense wafted from the nave, a choir of voices rose in Latin hymn, and Catherine , overcome with emotion, fainted.

That she had
wanted
to faint her whole life, and that she had hoped – as all women secretly do – that there would be a handsome man nearby with quick reflexes, as there was, still could not excuse the absurdity of the location.
 
Fortunately, that place being so large, Catherine’s momentary lapse was noted by none but Henry – who had also hoped one day to catch Catherine in his arms and thought it rather better than his dreams to do so in Notre Dame.
 
One other observed the incident, a Dominican sister in prayer who, being French, rather thought that the English girl should have remained in her gentleman’s arms significantly longer.

Regardless, Catherine awoke some moments later to Henry’s cheerful laughter, which caused our heroine to blush and beg her groom to quit the place at once.
 
Henry obliged, still chuckling to himself as they made their way past the transept.
 
Our hero was justly chastened by his first viewing of the rose window, however – for while his wife’s habit was exclamation, his was silence – and so in quiet reverence he stood gazing for some fifteen minutes at that majesty, at the end of which Catherine laughed at him, wondering at the effect of beauty upon her husband.