The Dead Travel Fast (13 page)

We said little during the descent, for Florian had judged it correctly, and the way was slippery with mud and rotting vegetation. At the foot of the mountain was a path I had not yet taken that paralleled the river, winding past the odd farm and dark copse until it ended at a piggery. It was a ramshackle stone building, mended and patched to keep the pigs warm and dry, and beyond it lay a large field, carefully fenced and furnished with a good stone trough and a tidy mud puddle for the fat porkers. There were a goodly number of the animals, snuffling and rooting about the field, and several of them let out squeals at Florian’s approach.

“They are handsome animals, your pigs,” I offered.

Florian smiled, his boyish face lit with pride, and his accent grew thicker with his enthusiasm. “The best in the valley. Almost ten years to make such a herd,” he observed with satisfaction.

“It must be very gratifying,” I said, thinking out loud, “to apply one’s self to a project and see such substantial results.”

“Count Bogdan trusted me only to keeping the pigs. But I always think I do this well and he will give me more to do.”

“And did he?”

Florian shook his head. “No, miss. Count Bogdan trusted no one. He tell me he gave me the pigs because he does not care if they live or die. But I care.”

“And they are thriving now,” I pointed out.

“Pigs are simple. They have only to be growing fat and content,” Florian said, pointing at the largest of his sows, a great solid creature with a train of plump piglets scampering after.

“We ought to envy them that, I suppose. Tell me, do you have more responsibility under the present count?”

I am not certain what made me ask it, but Florian did not seem to mind the intrusion. “Count Andrei does not think so much about these things. Farmers pay the rents, and this is all the count is caring about. He gives me the harvest this year,” he said, his complexion flushing with pride. His eyes were downcast, but it was apparent he was deeply pleased to have been given such responsibility.

“Perhaps the coming of Count Andrei will be the making of you,” I said lightly.

He did not respond, but gave a low whistle. A tame pig trotted up to have its ears scratched. Florian hummed a folk song as he rubbed at the pig’s head, and I ventured a question I had been longing to ask.

“Florian, what do you make of the ceremony in the crypt? Do you think Count Bogdan will rest now?”

His hand faltered on the pig, then resumed its gentle stroking. “I pray God he will. All that must be done, it was not done,” he said carefully, “but perhaps what is done is enough.”

“I confess I am rather glad it all stopped when it did. I do not think I could have borne seeing a man’s heart taken out—” I broke off, sickened at the thought.

Florian gave me a sad smile. “It is their way, miss. I have lived here very long time. Roumanians are different to Germans. The magic and monsters are being real here. They say the waters of the Carpathian rivers must be your heart’s blood to understand it.”

“I want to understand it. It is a very beautiful land,” I told him truthfully.

“Then you must stop the thinking that Transylvania is like other places. It is different here. See what is. Not what you are wishing it.”

It was rather good advice, I decided. We left the piggery then and made our way to the village proper where, at Florian’s suggestion, we stopped to take refreshment. The village looked no better than it had during my previous visits; indeed it looked rather worse, for the recent storms had churned the sole street to a muddy expanse passable only at great risk to one’s shoes and hems. An enterprising soul had placed a bit of wood over the worst of the puddles and we reached the inn with scarcely more dirt than we had gathered at the piggery.

We were greeted by the innkeeper, a tall, thin man with a short, plump wife. He welcomed us heartily in German, speaking to Florian with some warmth and greeting me cordially, if not familiarly. Then he withdrew, shifting smoothly to Roumanian to call orders to his wife.

A few members of the local peasantry had also stopped to pass the time. They had fallen silent at our arrival, and though Florian nodded gravely to each of them in turn, they rewarded him with the merest inclination of the head in reply. To me they exhibited nothing but furtive curiosity, no friendliness or welcoming sally was forthcoming, and I wondered how much the villagers knew of the castle business.

The innkeeper and his wife alone greeted us with anything approaching warmth, but their custom depended upon good feeling, I reflected with some cynicism. They must pander a little to keep their business in good standing, and it was only after I caught the innkeeper’s wife flicking me a nervous glance that I realised the root of their worry: we were castle folk, and if we reported any ill feeling to the count, it would be a simple matter for him to see to it that the inn was shut, depriving the innkeeper and his family of their livelihood.

I darted a quick glance at Florian, thinking on Dr. Frankopan’s concerns about the dangers of loose talk. It would not do for any of us to share too freely the dark happenings at the castle with the innkeeper. Doubtless his position gave him the opportunity to spread a great deal of gossip in the valley, and I made a note to mind my tongue in his presence.

Florian, in spite of the cordiality of the innkeeper’s greeting, fell into a melancholy mood and said little. I asked him about his time in Vienna and his love of music, but even those topics did not rouse him, and after few more attempts to engage him, I was forced to admit defeat. He was preoccupied and turned in upon his thoughts, and it struck me then how similar he was to the villagers. For one of the castle folk, Florian seemed for all the world a simple farmer. He cared about his pigs and he dressed like a peasant, with the same tight white trousers and embroidered shirt rather than a gentleman’s tweeds.

Eventually, I tired of making conversation and amused myself by looking about the inn, careful to avoid the avid glances of the other patrons. It was a modest little establishment, only the front room of a private family home, but neat as a pin, with a row of polished metal tankards hanging from the ceiling and an immaculate blue-tiled stove sitting in the corner for warmth. But as I looked more closely, I saw that several of the tankard hooks were empty, as if their occupants had been sold off, and the clothing of our host and his wife, while clean and tidy, bore the hallmarks of long use, the colours faded with much washing and telltale patches at the elbows and knees.

The innkeeper’s wife came then bearing mugs of dark beer and platters of sausages and ham, cheese and bread. She brought pickled cabbage and beets and a great bowl full of mushroom soup. The other patrons ate nothing and drank only beer or the local plum brandy, and for an uncomfortable moment, I wondered if we had been served the family’s supper. But it would be an unthinkable breach of courtesy to send it back, and I nodded to her in thanks. She bobbed a clumsy curtsey, and as she left I saw strapped to her back a peculiar contraption, a little wooden box where a swaddled infant slept.

“How clever,” I observed. “It would keep the child close to the mother and not interfere with her work. Like the Indians in America.”

“Have you been to America?” Florian asked.

“No. Indeed, apart from my time at school, this is my first sojourn out of Scotland, although I mean to travel more. I find I have a taste for it.”

“I do not know why there is travel,” he said, his expression one of genuine puzzlement. “To love one’s home, one could not leave it and be happy.”

“And do you love your home so much?” I asked, reaching for another crisp, sizzling sausage.

“I speak of Austria,” he said softly.

“Of course, how stupid of me. You were but a child when you left, yet still it must be home to you.”

“Many things may make a man’s home,” he told me, his face sober, even anguished. He paused for a moment as if gathering his emotions close, then continued, his mien lighter and more conversational. “I hate this place when we come, but I learn to love Transylvania. We have everything here, here there is mountains, sky, forests. And we have the best music.”

“You have never heard a bagpipe,” I put in teasingly, the remnants of my Scottish pride pricked only a little.

“But I have!” Florian protested. “We have here a bagpipe, and the flute, made from the shinbone of the sheep, with music so sweet, it would charm the leaves from trees.”

A spirited debate on the merits of Scottish versus Roumanian music followed, and I discovered through the innkeeper that Florian was rather famous in the district for the sweetness of his tenor voice besides his other musical accomplishments. The innkeeper’s wife and I prevailed upon him to sing for us, and the innkeeper fetched a sort of lute, pear-shaped and rather medieval-looking, to accompany him. The other patrons, whose conversations had never risen above guttural whispers, fell entirely silent and assumed expressions of mournful interest as he began to sing.

We settled in to listen to him, and I was entranced from the first note. He sang in Roumanian, and I longed to understand the words. The innkeeper’s wife leaned near to me, her lips close to my ear as she translated into German.

“He is singing the
miorita
, a sorrowful song of three shepherds. One learns that his two friends are planning to kill him. He does not resist, for it is his philosophy to accept death. Just before he dies, he asks them to carry a message to his mother, to tell her he has married a beautiful woman—Lady Death.”

I felt a frisson of emotion at her words, but she went on, murmuring softly as Florian sang the shepherd’s lament. “
I have gone to marry a princess, my bride. Firs and maple trees were my guests
;
my priests were the mountains high; fiddlers, birds that fly; torchlight, stars on high
.”

When he finished we applauded and the innkeeper’s wife daubed at her eyes with her apron. It was very like the songs of the Highlands, full of woe and lamentation, and I wondered if poverty and oppression were necessary to create such music.

He sang again, a more cheerful song about death dancing through a field of flowers—the souls of children who had died—and by the time he finished, I had had my fill of Roumanian music, no matter how beautiful the melodies.

He must have caught something of my mood, for he gave the lute back to the innkeeper and gestured for me to rise. “We will go now to reach the castle before dark,” he advised.

He settled the bill with the innkeeper and accepted the muted blessings he and his wife insisted upon giving. I did not know if this was a Roumanian custom or if we were particularly vulnerable as we were returning to the castle, but I was glad of the gesture. The rest of the company watched us in heavy silence, and for the first time, I felt the weight of it, an ominous thing. Not to speak in the presence of others struck me as the purest form of aversion, but even as we took our leave, I saw one or two of them cross themselves Orthodox-fashion and cast us pitying glances.

I raised the subject as soon as Florian and I gained the muddy road. “The local folk do not seem hospitable toward strangers,” I ventured.

“They hear what happens at the castle.”

“So soon?”

Florian shrugged. “Gossip travels on the wind. Of course they hear. But they will say little to castle people. They belong to the master. He makes life good or bad for them.”

“You mean the count?”

His mouth worked, but he said nothing.

“Florian, let us speak plainly. The count could make life better for his people, and they resent him because he has not?”

He gave a single short nod, but even as he acknowledged the truth of what I said, his words denied it. “It is for him to rule as he is pleased.”

“Rule? He is a nobleman, but he is no prince.”

“I say again, Transylvania is different place. The old ways are the only ways. The count rules. What he wants, he will do. The peasants are tired. They are hungry and poor. He can be helping them. He does little.”

I felt a swift stab of fear. “Might they rebel then, if they are angered enough by his neglect of them?”

He shrugged. “Count Bogdan was not good. They do nothing. They drink sorrow and wait for the better times. They are sad now because Count Andrei, he is not better.”

“He has only been here a few weeks,” I argued, wondering even as I said the words why I felt compelled to defend him. “There has scarce been time for him to make changes to improve their lot.”

Florian met my eyes then, and I was struck once more by the fathomless sorrow I saw there. “They know the
strigoi
walks here. It is an omen. Evil things will happen.” Florian looked at the sky, noting the angle of the sun. “We must go. It grows late.”

But however I pressed him, he sank once more into his solitude, and I took his arm in silence as we started up the mountain path. The dying afternoon was a beautiful one, with the great blaze of turning leaves flaming over the valley. Gold and scarlet grasshoppers leapt in the dying grasses whilst bronze beetles winged their way to sanctuary for the night. The sun warmed our faces and the crisp air was full of birdsong. It would have been perfect, but for the fact that the hand I held was not the count’s, I reflected ruefully.

Suddenly, a roll of thunder echoed over the mountaintops. A cluster of dark grey clouds had gathered in the east and was rolling slowly towards the mountain.

I must have started, for Florian hastened to reassure me. “Do not fear. We are safe yet. Thunder sounds from far away. But some say it is Scholomance,” he added. “Do you know the Scholomance?”

“It is a bit of folklore,” I said, casting my mind back to my grandfather’s library. “It is a very old superstition, is it not? I seem to remember a lake.”

Florian nodded. “In the mountains south of Hermannstadt, there is lake, deep and black. Here the Devil has school for teaching dark magic. There is taught secrets of nature, language of animals, magic spells. The Devil gives learning to ten pupils. When learning is finished, the Devil says to nine to go home. But the tenth must stay with the Devil. He must ride a dragon and he prepares thunderbolts for the Devil. He brews thunder in the black lake. When the weather is fine, his dragon sleeps under the black lake.”