The Dead Travel Fast (25 page)

It was a long speech for Florian, and I had no doubt, a painful one. I wanted to put a hand to his arm to console him, but it seemed an intrusion. “I understand, Florian. Either Cosmina or I must have been living a lie, and it is difficult to doubt the one you love.”

He turned swiftly to me to deny it, but I raised a hand. “Let us be truthful in goodbye. I know you loved her. I did as well. There is nothing shameful in your regard for her, Florian. We do not choose where we will love.”

He considered this a long moment, then turned back to his pigs.

“Will you remain here, now that she is gone?”

He shrugged. “To stay, I die. To leave, I die. Here I have memories. They cut me, these memories. But I am content to suffer. So I stay.”

There seemed no possible reply to this that would not diminish the magnitude of his pain, so I fell silent for a time as well and watched the pigs, sleek and content.

“The improvements in the village will lighten the burden of your work,” I said hopefully.

He shrugged again, an Oriental gesture of resignation. “Perhaps. But the villagers carry fear in the heart.”

“They are fearful? Of what?”

“The
strigoi
at the castle,” he replied.

“They ought not to be. I know the countess still believes that Count Bogdan walks, but no one else does.”

“Tereza believes,” he rejoined. “And she speaks with a loose tongue. She tells the people Count Andrei flew and Count Bogdan walks undead. The people fear the
strigoi
is come to them.”

I did touch his arm then. “Florian, you must help to persuade them that this is nonsense,” I said, feeling the hypocrite even as I said it. If I, an educated and modern woman had thought it possible, how much likelier were unschooled peasants to believe in such things?

“Is it?” he asked swiftly. He bent towards me. “I am glad you will be leaving. This is not safe, to be here.”

“Florian, you cannot believe it. The Dragulescus have been patrons and friends to your family for so long. You cannot believe they are monsters,” I told him, my tone sharp.

“I see the roof where Count Andrei falls. He says he catches himself, but it is not a possible thing.” He paused, his mournful eyes bright with speculation. “I am believing he flew.”

I felt the anger rising hot and thick within me. What hope did the count hold to banish the rumours if his own steward fed them? “Then I can only say I am surprised you would continue to work for him if you believe it. You should be shamed to take his money.”

Florian gave me a fatalistic smile. “Folk here say, ‘Better a mouse in the pot than no meat at all.’” His expression softened. “I am being a poor man. I must take any coin, even the Devil’s.”

I felt a prick of shame myself then, for I had forgot myself and the fact that Florian must work for his meat. I meant to earn my own keep, but I had Anna and Charles and other means of keeping myself from the workhouse. Here, there was not even that dread institution to provide for Florian should he leave the count’s employ.

“We are neither of us free men, are we, Florian?” I asked finally. And I put out my hand to shake his.

That afternoon, I took my courage in my hands to go and bid farewell to the countess, for although she deplored my presence, the proprieties must be observed, and it was necessary to take formal leave of her before our departure. I found her in her bedchamber, sitting before the fire and stitching at a piece of tapestry bound tightly within its frame. She was working a scene from Greek mythology, a stretch of golden stitches forming a beach and a swathe of blue and green for sea and sky.

She waved me to the chair opposite and I took it, rather surprised that she even bothered with the gesture of welcome. I nodded towards the tapestry. “How lovely,” I told her, and she fixed me with her cold grey eyes and gave a sharp little cough.

“The sacrifice of Iphigenia. Surely you know the story, Miss Lestrange. The eldest daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, sacrificed by her father for a good wind to launch the effort to retrieve Helen of Troy.”

I realised then that her needle was laden with scarlet thread and she was setting tiny, precise stitches just at the throat of the graceful figure stretched upon a plinth.

“Yes, I recall it,” I told her, finding the scene distasteful now and unpleasant. “I have come to bid you farewell and to thank you for your hospitality.”

She pushed the needle into the fabric, setting another tiny stitch into Iphigenia’s throat. “Of course, Miss Lestrange. You have been a most welcome and entertaining guest.” The words were the purest
politesse
, but there was no warmth in them.

Another stitch, this time a drop of blood staining the sand crimson. I looked away, fixing my attention upon the painting of the countess and her sister, the beautiful Tatiana.

“I am sorry about your sister,” I said impulsively. “Dr. Frankopan explained what became of her. That must have been very difficult for you. I have a sister myself, and I understand the bonds of sisterly affection,” I finished, rather pathetically. The grey eyes lifted to mine and I saw resentment and scorn there. She did not want my pity, and it was presumptuous of me to offer it.

I rose and turned to leave, but even as I did so, something tugged at my memory.

“Her inheritance,” I said quietly. I subsided back into my chair, conscious of the countess watching me closely even as she worked. “Tatiana was the elder and it was she who inherited the fortune. It was to have passed to Cosmina upon her marriage or her majority, her twenty-fifth birthday, I suspect. That was why you were so eager to marry her to your son. I could not imagine why any mother would willingly unite her son to a girl who carried the taint of madness in the blood, but I see it now. You have had the control of her money all these years, and if she married your son, you would still have a claim upon it, would you not? But if she inherited in her own right, the entire fortune would be at her disposal. She could do as she pleased, even to taking the money from here and establishing a household elsewhere. And you did not want that.”

The hand that held the needle stilled, and I realised she was watching me with a predatory amusement.

“You are enjoying yourself, Miss Lestrange, go on.”

My mind was working feverishly, dredging up all the bits of gossip I had heard, recollecting the odd looks and the unexplained discrepancies I had noted.

“Cosmina stole my rosary and the letter, I believe that. And I think it likely she killed Aurelia as well. But the carving fork, her look of surprise when I revealed where it had been found. The imploring glances she sent your way. You conspired with her, didn’t you? You had a greater reason to wish for Aurelia’s death. You were an insulted wife, outraged and betrayed. And she carried the proof of that betrayal in her womb, a proof that might well cost your son a portion of his own inheritance.”

It fitted together, so neatly I was astonished I had not seen it before. “I do not know how you persuaded her to do it, what promises or threats, by what tricks or cajolery, but she did. And you took the carving fork, did you not? For yours was the only other key to the silver. Cosmina cleaned it and returned it, but you took it away, and meant to keep it, for it gave you a hold over her to keep the instrument of Aurelia’s destruction. What then? Did you fail to give her what you promised? I suspect you convinced her you could persuade Andrei to marry her, and you failed again. Is that why she attacked your son? To be revenged upon you both? And how cleverly it was done. If she had succeeded, she would have killed him and I would have borne the blame of it. She would have inherited her fortune and could have secured the castle itself as her own, with no one the wiser to her crimes. Only you would know she had destroyed Aurelia, and you would never reveal it. But she attempted the life of your son, the one act you could not forgive, and even as she stood in his room, imploring you to save her, you turned your cheek and offered her no succour. And now she has ended as her mother did, with no one to whom she can confess the truth and even if she did, who would believe her? For the Dragulescus are masters of all they survey,” I finished, sickened by the tidy menace of it all.

I rose. The countess coughed again, more deeply this time, and when finished her colour was high.

“Do you think you will tell this to Andrei?” she asked pleasantly. She took up a dainty pair of scissors and snipped off the scarlet thread, putting her work aside.

“He has a right to know the truth,” I said stoutly.

She laughed, an unpleasant and unwholesome sound. I thought of the madness that ran like a broken thread through the women of their family and I wondered to what extent the countess herself was damaged.

“My dear, my son will never believe you. He knows what Cosmina is. She is a creature flawed from birth. She has told lies and engaged in malicious and petty acts from the time she came to live with us. It is no great stretch to think she has merely expanded her repertoire to include the trick of murder. It is what he chooses to believe because it is logical and neat, and my son has a logical mind. It comforts him to fit things into tidy categories and fix them with a label, as an entymologist will label his specimens. He feels he understands Cosmina, and if you go to him, you will ask him to create a new understanding, a place where I am a greater evil than she and where you are to be believed above his own mother. What man is capable of that?”

And whatever villainy the countess was guilty of, none was greater than the piece of sophistry she had just constructed. Of course she was entirely correct. There was no proof she had ever coaxed Cosmina to become the instrument of her revenge—only the carving fork under the pillow and Cosmina’s look of surprise had betrayed her. The structure of my argument had nothing sturdier than sand for a foundation, and I saw the whole of it blow away upon the winds of her scorn.

She rose and rang the bell. “Would you care for some tea, Miss Lestrange? I feel the need for some refreshment.”

My hands fisted at my sides. “No. I will leave this place and I will not speak of this. But I see you for what you are. You are a monster,” I said, my voice low and harsh.

Just then the door opened and the countess smiled over my shoulder, baring sharp white teeth. “Tereza, Miss Lestrange was just leaving. Will you—” But whatever she meant to ask was lost, for she broke off, putting her hands to her mouth, as if to stifle a scream. Suddenly she opened her mouth, and as we watched in horror, a river of blood began to flow, over her lips and onto the floor.

“
Strigoi!
” Tereza cried, pointing with a shaking finger.

Her scream brought Frau Amsel who ran to her mistress, taking up a basin to catch the blood. She turned to me, her eyes wide in her pale face. “Fetch the count! Go now! And take the girl!”

I turned and put an arm around the white and shivering Tereza, urging her to leave. As we quitted the room, I glanced over my shoulder one last time at the gruesome scene. The countess was covered in her own blood, for it had spilled from the basin, staining her hands and skirt and puddling upon the floor. Frau Amsel fretted and fussed and held the basin closer, but even as she did so, the countess raised her eyes over Clara’s shoulder and met mine, her gaze calm and inscrutable. I hurried out with Tereza and found the count.

The next hours were tense and watchful ones. Without Dr. Frankopan, there was no physical nearer than Hermannstadt, and once more Florian was dispatched to the city to find a doctor and bring him back. In the meanwhile, the haemorrhage was stopped and the countess was dosed with a sedative left by Dr. Frankopan and sent to sleep. It was thought too dangerous to move her, and so the count emerged at last and told the rest of us to retire, for his mother rested and he and Frau Amsel would stay with her.

I ached for him, for his eyes were deeply shadowed and mournful, but he belonged to her then, and I left him to spend my last night alone in the Castle Dragulescu.

In the end, it was not my last night, for with the countess’s collapse, our travel arrangements had been thrown in disarray and Charles and I were forced to postpone our departure one day further. It was not a pleasant day, for there was much whispering about the countess’s condition and there were furrowed brows and dark looks among everyone in the household. Charles was fretful and nervous, ready to be quit of the place, and he chafed at the delay, even as I relished it. I had one more precious day to commit to my memory all that I wanted to remember about the place, and I wandered the castle, free of interference and interruption as I took my leave of it.

That evening, as the sun sank beneath the high peaks of the Carpathians, I wrapped myself against the rising chill and ventured into the ruined garden. I knew he would be there, and the burden of farewell lay heavy upon my heart. We had seen little of each other with all that had happened, and whatever idyll we had enjoyed together, it had come to an end. It remained only to say goodbye.

He did not turn as I approached, but Tycho pricked up his ears and gave a little whine of protest. I bent to scratch his head.

“He will miss you,” the count told me.

“And I him. I owe him my life,” I said, burying my face into the ruff of thick grey fur at his neck. After a moment, I wiped away my tears and rose.

“You must not weep,” the count said with some severity. “How can I let you go if you weep?”

“And how can you not?” I asked, knowing the inevitable was upon us.

We walked for a little while then, deeper into the decaying garden. I could see the remnants of beauty there even yet, and I knew it could be made right again.

“I will restore it,” he said, intuiting my thoughts. “I will make it right again. My grandfather would have approved.”

“It will be magnificent,” I said, seeing it in my mind’s eye, beautiful and fertile and full of the promise of living things.

“I will make all of it better,” he said, his voice firm with conviction.

“I know you will. You will be the saviour of this place.”