Count Karlstein Page 2

  This was no ordinary shooting contest. For one thing, it wasn’t held regularly every year or even every five years; it was held only when the Chief Ranger of the Forest retired. And, of course, there was no ordinary prize: a few gold coins and a scroll and a medal pinned on by the Mayor—but you’d get all that and more if you won any of a dozen shooting contests up and down the valleys. No, the prize here was nothing less than the Rangership itself. The winner of the contest had the right to take charge of every living thing in the forest, whether it grew in the ground, ran over it, or flew through the air above it. And Peter had set his heart on trying for it; and now he was in jail. There wouldn’t be another shooting contest for years and years, maybe. And poor Ma, at the Jolly Huntsman, was in despair—especially as the place was filling up with men and muskets from far and wide.

  I begged Frau Muller for an hour or two and went down to the village to give her a hand.

  And found—sitting at the kitchen table, grinning all over his silly face and digging his great fingers into a pigeon pie—no less a criminal than my poaching brother!

  “Peter! What are you doing? Have they let you out?”

  “Not likely,” he said, stuffing another handful of pie into his face. “I escaped!”

  “What!”

  “I pinched the key from Constable Winkelburg’s belt and got out,” he said. “You should have seen Ma’s face!”

  I saw it then, as she came in with a tray of dirty glasses. I’d never seen anyone look so unhappy, poor soul—anxious and jumpy, as if all the policemen in Switzerland were galloping toward her at this very minute, whiskers bristling, ready to bear her off and hang her as an accomplice. And Peter just sat there feeding himself, looking as pleased as a dog with a new trick. Great smirking lump.

  He couldn’t understand for the life of him why we were cross.

  “They’ll never bother with me,” he said defensively.

  “ ’Course they will!” said Ma. “You’re a wanted man, now, my lad! There’ll be a price on your head and a poster on the wall of the police station. You’ll be an outlaw—you’ll have to flee the country! If only you’d waited there for another week—”

  “And missed the shooting contest, aye,” he said. “Sit there like a blooming pansy in a pot and listen to ’em shooting—not likely. I’ll get out and take me chance. Anyway, like I said, they’ll be too busy to bother with me. There’s a famous criminal on his way!”

  “How do you know?” I said. I had only an hour; I was trying to make some pastry, and I pushed him away from the table.

  “I listened to the sergeant,” he said. “There was a message from the authorities in Geneva, and Sergeant Snitsch had to read it out to Constable Winkelburg. It’s a feller called Brilliantini, an Italian. He’s been in jail in Geneva, and he got out by some trick or other, and all the police forces are being warned to keep an eye open for him.”

  “He could be going anywhere,” said Ma. “Why expect him to turn up here? Oh, I wish you’d stayed in that cell….”

  “No, Sergeant Snitsch reckons he must be heading this way, ’cause of all the money that’s going to be around when the shooting contest’s on. He’s a swindler, see, this Brilliantini, a confidence trickster. Old Sergeant Snitsch reckons he’s going to catch him and get promoted—and Constable Winkelburg’s quaking with terror in case he has to arrest him….” Peter shouted with laughter, and I slapped him with a wet dishcloth. Everyone knew that laugh, and if they heard it in the bar, word would get around in no time and he’d be back in jail. With handcuffs on, this time, and a heavier sentence.

  “What are you going to do?” I said to him. “You can’t stay here.”

  “ ’Course I can!”

  Ma said nothing, but just sighed deeply and went out again.

  “You can’t,” I said. “Don’t be stupid. She’s worrying herself sick over you—and where are you going to hide? In the stables? In the cellar? You’d never stay in one place for long enough! You’d stick your silly face out of the window to say hello to Rudi or Hansi and blow kisses to Hannerl, and then you’d want your musket to practice with, and then you’d want to go outside just to stretch your legs and you’d forget and come back through the parlor and stop and say hello to the customers—I know you, Peter! You’re just irresponsible!”

  “And you’re middle-aged,” he grumbled. “Born old, you were. Nag, nag, nag…And it just shows how much you know, because shall I tell you what I’m going to do? I’m going to stay down in the cellar and do nothing for three days but clean my musket and think hard about that target. I’m going to do some exercises too, to strengthen my arms and make them even steadier. I’ve got me heart set on that contest, Hildi. I’m going to win it. You think I’m irresponsible….But there’s a part of me inside that can concentrate harder’n you can imagine. All still and cold, and deeper than a forest lake…And that part of me’s where I shoot from. When I’m shooting for that prize, I’m going to be stiller than the mountain—you’ll see. You don’t know me, Hildi, you don’t know me at all….”

  Of course I knew him, silly brute. But I was impressed all the same. He’d never talked to me like that before; he sounded quiet and serious, and I thought: perhaps he can win the contest, at that. But it wouldn’t have done to say so.

  “If you’re going to hide in the cellar, you’d better get on down. And if I hear from Ma that you’ve caused her any trouble, I promise I’ll go and get Sergeant Snitsch myself and give you up. She wouldn’t do it, because she’s too soft. But I won’t think twice about it, I warn you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” was all he said; and he took his musket from the wall and went down the steps into the cellar like a choirboy going to Mass.

  I finished the pastry and rolled it out and then I had to hurry back. Before I went, I told Ma what he’d said, quietly, in a corner of the parlor so as not to be overheard.

  “He’s a good boy,” she said. “But how’s he ever going to show his face at the contest? He’ll be arrested as soon as he shows up…oh, dear….” She was going to cry, so I kissed her swiftly and left. Another party of guests entered as I did so—that’d give her something to do. I’d never seen the village so full.

  I stopped outside the police station on the way back, because I saw Sergeant Snitsch nailing up a poster outside and I couldn’t help wondering if they were offering a reward for Peter already. They weren’t—but the poster bore out the truth of what he’d told us in the kitchen.

  The sergeant, a great red-faced man with ginger whiskers, nailed this to the wall, stepped back to see if it was straight—and put his foot right in the middle of a cowpat. When I laughed, he glared at me as if I’d put it there myself, on purpose, and told me to be on my way and not to loiter with intent on the public highway. He always talked like that: in phrases out of the police handbook. Then when he bent over to pick up a stick to clean his boots with, a cart trundling by splashed mud all over the back of his trousers—and just as he stood up to shake his fist and bellow at the driver for using a vehicle in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace, the door of the police station flew open and out scampered Constable Winkelburg.

  The constable was a thin, unhappy-looking man with a droopy mustache, a droopy nose, and droopy shoulders. He was so agitated now that he couldn’t stand still but kept jumping from one foot to the other.

  “Sergeant! Sergeant! The prisoner—the prisoner—”

  “What? What? Get a grip on yourself, Constable! Don’t stand there quivering like a jelly! What about the prisoner?”

  “He’s gone, Sergeant—he’s vanished—”

  So I decided to vanish, too, and let them find out for themselves that Peter had escaped. It was bound to come out; I was surprised they hadn’t discovered it already.

  And later, at the castle, I discovered something myself—something that made my blood run colder than it’d run since I’d listened with Peter to the stories of the Demon Hunter through the cracks in the floorboards….
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  It was late in the evening, and Lucy and Charlotte had gone to bed. They were in the habit of reading ghostly romances—The Mysteries of Udolpho, or Zastrozzi, or Matilda, or The Hermit of the Forest—until their candle flame sank into the little glassy lake of wax with a sharp whiff of smoke, and darkness fell into the room like a soft, silent avalanche….Scaring each other stiff, in fact. Tonight it was the turn of Rudolph, or The Phantom of the Crags. I tucked them up and left them to their horrors, and then climbed the spiral staircase that led to Count Karlstein’s study. I was going to ask a favor. Sorry as I’d be to miss the shooting contest, I wanted to ask him if I could go with them as their lady’s maid when they went to the hunting lodge. I knew they’d welcome my company; and surely he couldn’t object to a simple thing like that?

  But I didn’t go into the study. I didn’t even knock; because when I got to the narrow landing (with the lancet window looking out over the steep leaded roof and the moon blowing along through a wild and gusty sky), I heard him talking. And the first word I heard was: “Zamiel…”

  A chilly shiver passed through my heart. That word brought back in an instant all the terrified trembling of my childhood; and it was made worse, not better, for being spoken not in joky terror by Peter, acting the fool, but in the matter-of-fact tones of someone discussing a legal contract. I pinched the candle out and bent to listen closer. Yes, I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. And a good thing too.

  “Zamiel?” said another voice—a cringing voice, an oily voice, that I knew at once: it belonged to Herr Arturo Snivelwurst, secretary to Count Karlstein and tutor to the girls. A lip-licking, moist-handed, creeping, smarming little ferret, with pomaded hair that he spent half an hour every morning carefully sticking into place so as to look like Napoleon. “Did I hear your grace aright?”

  “Zamiel, I said, Snivelwurst,” said Count Karlstein. “The Demon Huntsman. The Prince of the Mountains!”

  “Ah,” said Snivelwurst. “Um.”

  “Now, listen carefully. For reasons I won’t go into now, I have an agreement with that gentleman. Every year on All Souls’ Eve he comes to hunt in my forests. He takes whatever prey he likes, and he’s welcome to it….But this year, our agreement runs out and I have to provide—are you listening, Snivelwurst? Are you following me?”

  “Like a bloodhound, sir, most eager for the chase!”

  “This year,” said Count Karlstein, “I have to provide a human prey—”

  A gasp (oily) from Snivelwurst; a gasp (stifled) from me, and I clung to the little tin candlestick with both hands as I strained to hear what Count Karlstein said next.

  “A living human,” he went on, “or two, complete with soul. Now”—he said briskly, and I heard a chair being pulled across the wooden floor and the creak of the ancient floorboards as the count settled down in it—“the question is, who shall it be?”

  “Ah, yes, a very vexing question, I can well imagine, your grace. Who shall it be? Indeed! A sorrowful task, picking the right merchandise,” said Snivelwurst carefully. He wasn’t sure what Karlstein was up to, and he didn’t want to say the wrong thing.

  “To be sure, Snivelwurst. But in this case there’s only one thing for it. It’ll have to be my nieces.”

  A silence then, in which I imagined Snivelwurst putting his finger to his jaw and pretending to consider this suggestion; and in which I nearly sank to the narrow floor in a deadly faint. I’d been cold enough already, Heaven knows, but now I felt as if some cunning mechanism inside me had overturned a bucket of ice-water and let it cascade down the length of my spine. I listened carefully—they were speaking again.

  “…quite easy,” the count was saying. “The beauty of it is, there’ll be no one about poaching. These damned peasants are so superstitious that none of ’em’ll show their warty noses outside on All Souls’ Eve; but even if they did, there won’t be anyone in the forest—they’ll all be down in the village, getting drunk and preparing for the shooting contest!”

  “Magnificent!” said the secretary, and I heard a slippery, shush-shushing noise that puzzled me for a moment until I realized that he was rubbing his wet hands together. “Truly Napoleonic, Count Karlstein!”

  “Zamiel’s going to appear at the hunting lodge at midnight. We’ll take ’em there tomorrow, Snivelwurst, stay the night, come back on Friday—and leave ’em there asleep with the door locked. That won’t keep him out, but it’ll keep them in—eh? His Dark Majesty can gobble ’em up where they lie, or make ’em scamper through the forest for a while, as he pleases. I shan’t miss ’em.”

  “Oh, nor I, your grace! Pair of hoydens!”

  You greasy little liar, I thought. They’ve never given you a moment’s trouble; lively they might be, especially Lucy, but for Heaven’s sake where’s the harm in that? And to lay them down, sleeping, as an unholy gift for the Demon Huntsman—that was a plan so evil that the author of Rudolph, or The Phantom of the Crags herself couldn’t have thought it up. I stood silently, my mind reeling and my heart beating like a drum. What on earth was I to do now?

  Footsteps! The door handle turned! I shrank back against the stone wall and held my breath.

  The door opened, the warm light streamed out, and the shuffling, ferrety figure of the secretary hovered in the doorway.

  “Never fear, Count Karlstein!” he said, looking back and bobbing his head up and down on his narrow little shoulders. “I shall obey your every command!”

  “Of course you will,” said Count Karlstein, without any expression at all.

  “Good night, sir! Good night!” said Snivelwurst, and pushed the door carefully shut before turning and going down the stairs in a light, tripping scuttle, like a rat in the ballet. Thank Heaven! He didn’t see me. I stood quite still for a long time before I dared move, but I had to eventually, as I was shivering so much I was sure I’d drop the candlestick—and that would be the end: I’d find myself in the hunting lodge too, trussed and gagged, wide-eyed in the darkness, waiting for the first ghostly wail of the hunting horns in the midnight sky….

  There was nothing for it. I’d have to tell the girls; they’d have to run away. But where, in the name of Heaven, could they go?

  I felt my way down the stairs, pausing only to light my candle at the dim fire in the hall before climbing again to the east wing, and to the two rapt faces over their leather-bound book of phantoms.

  They were still wide awake. They had a fingernail’s-length of candle left and the wick was beginning to lean over, like a sleepy soldier on parade. Lucy pinched it out straight away when I came in with mine, so as to save it for later.

  “Hildi, what is it?” said Charlotte. “We heard you coming—we’d just got to the bit where the Phantom appears on the battlements, and we thought—”

  I shushed her and she stopped, rather startled, a real person, alive and anxious, being more worrying than a host of phantoms in a book.

  “What is it, Hildi?” said Lucy. “You look upset. Have you been to see Susi Dettweiler? Is she hurt badly?”

  “No, Miss Lucy, I haven’t. But you’ll have to listen, now, without interrupting, because this is serious. You understand?”

  Lucy sat up, but Charlotte just pulled the quilt around her and watched me with wide eyes. I told them what I’d heard. And they seemed to shrink as I told it: not to get smaller so much as to get younger—more innocent, somehow.

  “You’ll have to hide, Miss Lucy,” I said when I’d finished. “Only till All Souls’ Eve; then you can come out again, because the danger’ll be past.”

  “But where can we go?” she said, and I thought: oh, no, she’s going to cry. Her voice was shaking and her lip was quivering, and she swallowed hard. But she didn’t give way.

  “I think I know of a place,” I said. “It’s a fair way off, but you’ll be safe there for a while.”

  Then Charlotte sat up.

  “It’s just like Emilia, or The Poisoned Chalice,” she said. “She had to run away too, you remember? And then the rob
ber chieftain captures her and they tie her to a stake and—”

  “Miss Charlotte, we’ll have to get a move on,” I said. “Get all your warm clothes and put on everything you can. Cover yourself up tight—it’s so cold outside that you’ll freeze otherwise.”

  Lucy jumped out of bed and ran shivering to the great oaken wardrobe. She paused for a second, and then pulled back the heavy curtains across the window. The bedroom overlooked the sheer drop into the valley and the mountains opposite, and the wildness of the scene—though I’d known it all my life—seemed suddenly more harsh, more wild and terrifying, than I could bear. Lucy looked back at me, and in her eyes I could see that she felt the same as I did. It was a fantasy to Charlotte—play, almost. But not to Lucy.

  She swallowed hard, again, and began to dress. Charlotte jumped out of bed and did the same, shivering and hopping with chill on the drafty wooden floor. They bundled themselves so thickly with furs and rugs and scarves and hoods that I began to wonder if they’d manage to get through the door; and I filled a bag with spare linen for them.

  “Where are we going, Hildi?” said Lucy.

  “Are we going to the village?” said Charlotte. “Can we go to your mother’s inn? Would she hide us there?”

  They liked Ma. She’d looked after them for a day or so when they’d first arrived a year ago, before Count Karlstein found Frau Muller to take charge in the castle, and they’d been so happy to have someone warm and kind nearby, after days of traveling in a strange land among somber grown-up strangers who didn’t speak their language, that they’d wept like fountains when she’d had to go back to the Jolly Huntsman. But the inn was full; and besides, it was bound to be the first place to be searched. And then, of course, Peter would be found. I told them what he was doing.

  “He’s a fugitive from justice!” said Lucy. “He’s an outlaw. We won’t betray him, don’t worry. We know what it’s like to be on the run from a cruel fate….”