The War Hound and the World's Pain (4 page)

“You have promised to explain the castle’s mysteries,” I said. “And why there is no animal life in these parts.”

“It is true,” she said. “There is none.”

“You have agreed with me, madam,” I said gently, “but you have not explained anything to me.”

Her tone became a shade brusque. “I promised you an explanation, did I not, sir?”

“Indeed, you did.”

“And an explanation will be forthcoming.”

I was not, in those days, a man to be brushed off with insubstantial reassurances. “I’m a soldier, madam. I had intended to be on my way south by now. You will recall that I returned here at your invitation and because of your promise. Soldiers are an impatient breed.”

She seemed just a fraction agitated by my remark, pushing at her long hair, touching her cheek. Her words were rapid and they stumbled. She said: “No soul—that is no free soul, however small—can exist here.”

This was not good enough for me, although I was intrigued. “I do not follow you, madam,” I said with deliberate firmness. “You are obscure. I am used to action and simple facts. From those simple facts I am able to determine what action I should take.”

“I do not wish to confuse you, sir.” She appealed to me, but I refused to respond to her.

I sighed. “What do you mean when you say that no soul can exist here?”

She hesitated. “Nothing which belongs,” she said, “to God.”

“Belongs? To God? The forest, surely … ?”

“The forest lies upon the”—she made a baffled gesture—”upon the borders.”

“I still do not understand.”

She controlled herself, returning my stare. “Neither should you,” she said.

“I am not much impressed by metaphysics.” I was becoming angry. Such abstract debate had caused our present woes. “Are you suggesting that some sort of plague once infested this land? Is that why both men and beasts avoid it?”

She made no reply.

I continued: “Your servants, after all, suffer from disease. Could they be suffering from an infection local to this area?”

“Their souls—” she began again.

I interrupted. “The same abstraction …”

“I do my best, sir,” she said.

“Madam, you offer me no facts.”

“I have offered you facts, as I understand them. It is hard …”

“You speak of a sickness, in truth. Do you not? You are afraid that if you name it, I shall become nervous, that you will drive me away.”

“If you like,” she said.

“I am afraid of very little, though I must admit to a certain caution where the Plague is concerned. On the other hand I have reason to believe that I am one of those lucky souls apparently immune to the Plague, so you must know that I shall not immediately run quaking from this place. Tell me. Is it a sickness of which you speak?”

“Aye,” she said, as if tired, as if willing to agree to almost any definition I provided. “It could be as you say.”

“But you are untouched.” I moved a pace towards her. “And I.”

She became silent. Was I to think, I wondered, that the signs of that horrible sickness which possessed her servants had not yet manifested themselves in us? I shuddered.

“How long have you lived at the castle?” I asked.

“I am here only from time to time.”

This answer suggested to me that perhaps she was immune. If she were immune, then so, perhaps, was I. With that consideration I relaxed more.

She seated herself upon a couch. Sunlight poured through stained glass representing Diana at the hunt. It was only then that I realized not a single Christian scene existed here, no crucifix, no representations of Jesus or the saints. Tapestries, glass, statuary and decoration were all pagan in subject.

“How old is this castle?” I stood before the window, running my fingers over the lead.

“Very old, I think. Several centuries, at least.”

“It has been well-maintained.”

She knew that my questions were not innocent or casual. I was seeking further knowledge of the estate and the mysterious sickness which haunted it.

“True,” she said.

I sensed a new kind of tension. I turned.

She went from that room into the next and came back with wine for us. As she handed me my cup I observed that she did not wear a marriage ring. “You have no lord, madam?”

“I have a lord,” she said, and she stared back into my eyes as if I had challenged her. Then, seeing my question to be fairly innocent, she shrugged. “Yes, I have a lord, captain.”

“But this is not your family property.”

“Oh, well. Family?” She began to smile very strangely, then controlled her features. “The castle is my master’s, and has been his for many years.”

“Not always his, however?”

“No. He won it, I believe.”

“Spoils of war?”

She shook her head. “A gambling debt.”

“Your master is a gambler, eh? And plays for good-sized stakes. Does he participate in our War?”

“Oh, yes.” Her manner changed again. She became brisk. “I’ll not be cryptic with you, Captain von Bek.” She smiled; a hint, once more, of helplessness. “On the other hand it does not suit me to pursue this conversation further at present.”

“Please forgive my rudeness.” I think that I sounded cold.

“You are direct, captain, but not rude.” She spoke quietly. “For a man who has doubtless seen and done so much in the matter of war you seem to retain a fair share of grace.”

I touched the cup to my lips—half a toast to her own good manners. “I am astonished that you should think so. Yet, in comparison with your servants, I suppose I must seem better than I am …”

She laughed. Her skin appeared to glow. I smelled roses. I felt as if the heat of the sun were upon me in that room. I knew that I desired Sabrina as I had desired no one or nothing else in all my life. Yet my caution maintained distance. Far that moment I was content merely to experience those sensations (which I had not experienced in many years of soldiering) and not attempt fulfillment.

“How did you come by your servants?” I sipped my wine. It tasted better than any of the other vintages I had sampled here. It increased the impression that all my senses were coming alive again at once.

She pursed her lips before replying. Then: “They are pensioners, you might say, of my master.”

“Your master? You mention him much. But you do not name him.” I pointed this out most gently.

“It is true.” She moved hair from her face.

“You do not wish to name him?”

“At this time? No.”

“He sent you here?” I savoured the wine.

“Yes,” she said.

“Because he fears for your safety?” I suggested.

“No.” Sadness and desperate amusement showed for a second in the set of her lips.

“Then you have an errand here?” I asked. Again I moved closer.

“Yes.” She took a couple of paces back from me. I guessed that she was as affected by me as I was by her, but it could have been merely that my questions cut too close to the bone and that I was unnerving her.

I paused.

“Could I ask you what that errand can be?”

She became gay, but plainly her mood was not altogether natural. “To entertain you”—a flirt of the hand—”captain.”

“But you were not aware that I stayed here.”

She dropped her gaze.

“Were you?” I continued. “Unless some unseen servant of your master reported me to you.”

She raised her eyes. She ignored my last remark and said: “I have been looking for a brave man. A brave man and an intelligent one.”

“On your master’s instructions? Is that the implication?”

She offered me a challenging look now. “If you like.”

The instinct which had helped me keep my life and health through all my exploits warned me now that this unusual woman could be bait for a trap. For once, however, I ignored the warning. She was willing, she suggested, to give herself to me. In return, I guessed, I would be called upon to pay a high price. At that moment I did not care what the price was. I was, anyway, I reminded myself, a resourceful man and could always, with reasonable odds, escape later. One can act too much in the cause of self-preservation and experience nothing fresh as a result.

“He gives you liberty to do what?” I asked her.

“To do almost anything I like.” She shrugged.

“He is not jealous?”

“Not conventionally so, Captain von Bek.” She drained her cup. I followed her example. She took both cups and filled them again. She sat herself beside me, now, upon a couch under the window. My flesh, my skin, every vein and sinew, sang. I, who had practiced self-control for years, was barely able to hold onto a coherent thought as I took her hand and kissed it, murmuring: “He is an unusual master, your lord.”

“That is also true.”

I withdrew my lips and fell back a little, looking carefully at her wonderful face. “He indulges you? Is it because he loves you very much?”

Her breathing matched mine. Her eyes were bright, passionate gems. She said: “I am not sure that my master understands the nature of love. Not as you and I would understand it.”

I laughed and let myself relax a little more. “You become cryptic again, Lady Sabrina, when you swore that you would not be.”

“Forgive me.” She rose for fresh cups.

I watched her form. I had never seen such beauty and such wit combined in any human individual before. “You will not tell me your history?”

“Not yet.”

I interpreted this remark as a promise, yet I pressed her just a little further:

“You were born in these parts?”

“In Germany, yes.”

“And not very long ago.” This was partly to flatter her. It was unnecessary, that flattery, I knew, but I had learned pothouse habits as a soldier-of-fortune and could not in an instant lose them all.

Her answer was unexpected. She turned to me, with a wine-cup in each hand. “It depends on your definition of Time,” she said. She gave me my filled cup. “Now you probe and I mystify. Shall we talk of less personal matters? Or do you wish to speak of yourself?”

“You seem to have determined who and what I am already, my lady.”

“Not in fine, captain.”

“I’ve few secrets. Most of my recent life has been spent in soldiering. Before that it was spent in receiving an education. Life is not very brisk in Bek.”

“But you have seen and done much, as a soldier?”

“The usual things.” I frowned. I did not desire too much recollection. Magdeburg memories still lingered and were resisted with a certain amount of effort.

“You have killed frequently?”

“Of course.” I displayed reluctance to expand upon this theme.

“And taken part in looting? In torture?”

“When necessary, aye.” I grew close to anger again. I believed that she deliberately discomfited me.

“And rape?”

I peered directly at her. Had I misjudged her? Was she perhaps one of those bored, lascivious ladies of the kind I had once met at Court? They had delighted in such talk. It had excited them. They were eager for sensation, having forgotten or never experienced the subtle forms of human sensuality and emotion. In my cynicism I had given them all that they desired. It had been like bestowing lead on gold-greedy merchants who, in their anxiety to possess as much as possible, could not any longer recognize one metal from another. If the Lady Sabrina was of this caste, I should give her what she desired.

But her eyes remained candid and questioning, so I answered briefly: “Aye. Soldiers, as I said, become impatient. Weary…”

She was not interested in my explanation. She continued: “And have you punished heretics?”

“I have seen them destroyed.”

“But have taken no part in their destruction?”

“By luck and my own distaste, I have not.”

“Could you punish a heretic?”

“Madam, I do not really know what a heretic is. The word is made much of, these days. It seems to describe anyone you wish dead.”

“Or witches? Have you executed witches?”

“I am a soldier, not a priest.”

“Many soldiers take on the responsibilities of priests, do they not? And many priests become soldiers.”

“I am not of that ilk. I have seen poor lunatics and old women named for witches and dealt with accordingly, madam. But I have witnessed no magic performances, no incantations, no summonings of demons or ghouls.” I smiled. “Some of those crones were so familiar with Mephistopheles that they could almost pronounce the name when it was repeated to them …”

“Then witchcraft does not frighten you?”

“It does not. Or, I should say, what I have seen of witchcraft does not frighten me.”

“You are a sane man, sir.”

I supposed that she complimented me.

“Sane by the standards of our world, madam. But not, I think, by my own.”

She seemed pleased by this. “An excellent answer. You are self-demanding, then?”

“I demand little of myself, save that I survive. I take what I need from the world.”

“You are a thief, then?”

“I am a thief, if you like. I hope that I am not a hypocrite.”

“Self-deceiving, all the same.”

“How so?”

“You hide the largest part of yourself away in order to be the soldier you describe. And then you deny that that part exists.”

“I do not follow you. I am what I am.”

“And that is?”

“What the world has made me.”

“Not what God created? God created the world, did He not?” she said.

“I have heard some theorize otherwise.”

“Heretics?”

“Ah, well, madam. Desperate souls like the rest of us.”

“You have an unusually open mind.”

“For a soldier?”

“For anyone living at this time.”

“I am not quite sure that my mind is open. It is probably careless, however. I do not give a fig for metaphysical debate, as I believe I have already indicated.”

“You have no conscience, then?”

“Too expensive to maintain nowadays, madam.”

“So it is unkempt, but it exists?”

“Is that what you would say I hide from myself? Have you a mind to convert me to whatever Faith it is you hold, my lady?”

“My Faith is not too dissimilar to yours.”

“So I thought.”

“Soul? Conscience? These words mean little, I’m sure you’d agree, without specification.”