Castle Shade Read online

  “Or the bat,” I murmured.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. So we are operating under the assumption that the peculiar incidents in the nighttime are either aimed at the Queen, or done by the Queen—or by someone close to her.”

  “You prefer the idea of coincidence?”

  I looked at him; my eyebrow may even have raised a little. Granted, the head-cold had rendered me less than brilliant, but there was no reason to insult my intelligence. “Holmes, not only is there the question of causation versus correlation—the Queen is near; a man walks at night; therefore the one caused the other—but you are also making the assumption that because no one has yet mentioned seeing a shadow walking the town in the past weeks, no shadow has been there.”

  He had the grace to look a touch chagrined, but only for a moment. “Agreed, last night’s incident is no basis for an hypothesis. However, as a means to confirm the ongoing evidence, it is worthy of inclusion.”

  “Fair enough. And you’ve been working on this case longer than I. But assuming the Queen is the target of some kind of prankster—or rather, if I understand you, her reputation is the target—that raises two questions. First off, why? General trouble-making? Revenge for something she’s done? Or an actual attempt to raise the rabble against her, and thus the monarchy itself? And more seriously, how does this justify making an actual threat against her daughter?”

  “At this point in the investigation, it does appear that there are two separate schemes. I regard that as unlikely, although possible. I trust that further data will develop any link between the two.”

  I chewed, literally and figuratively, for a minute. “Didn’t you find anything else? Other than the foot-prints? I can’t see that merely walking around in the dark achieves anything, considering that you and I may have been the only people awake to notice.”

  His face seemed to relax—was that relief?—before he reached into his pocket and drew out a handkerchief wrapped around an object no larger than a child’s fist. He lay it on the table, pulling back the pristine linen to reveal a deerskin pouch with draw-strings made of silk. He pulled it open and poured the contents out onto the handkerchief.

  I snatched aside my plate. “Is that hair? And teeth—though not human, thank goodness. What do you suppose those bones are from?”

  “It is human hair, yes, knotted together in a pattern—rather like the mourning brooches of my youth. The teeth could be those of a shrew, or a mole. The bones are a mix, small rodents mostly, though that broken one is more likely from a bird.”

  “The leaves look like—tea?” Reluctantly, I lowered my face over the handkerchief and tried out my nasal passages. “Is that bergamot I smell? It’s Early Grey!”

  “Pardon?”

  “The Queen’s preferred tea is Earl Grey, according to Gabriela. What’s on the folded-up bit of paper?”

  He pulled it apart with his fingertips: a pentagram—a five-pointed star within a circle, drawn on a scrap of thick paper using a fountain pen.

  I studied the macabre little collection. “I’d guess it’s meant to be a witch’s hex bag, though it has an amateur air about it. You might want to wash your hands before you finish your breakfast.” He poured the collection back into its pouch—and then he did go into the next room to wash his hands.

  “Where did you find it?” I called.

  “It was at the entrance to the farmer’s chicken house, as if it had been accidentally dropped there.”

  He came back in. “Was it? Dropped accidentally, that is?”

  “I think not.”

  I slowly applied butter to a roll. “Someone wishes to suggest that there are witches in the neighbourhood?”

  “I believe it was intended to do more than suggest. Although to be certain, we shall have to take a short walk into the woods.”

  “I’ll get my boots.”

  * * *

  —

  Twenty minutes later, the two of us stood looking down at a depressing sight. I nudged one limp body with my foot. “Did you know there was quite so much of the stuff?”

  “No, I thought perhaps it had been mixed with that left over in the feeding trough. In retrospect, I should have known that a farmer does not put out chicken feed so late in the day that it stays out overnight.”

  “We probably shouldn’t leave these here.”

  “It would attract attention, I suppose.”

  “And I’d guess the villagers would find a flock of mysteriously dead wild birds nearly as disturbing as domestic ones.”

  In the end, we piled the eight small feathered corpses underneath a half-rotted log, and Holmes did his best to bury the remaining kernels of corn, to save the rest of the local wildlife from the experimental avicide.

  Instead of returning to the village, we continued up into the hills.

  “Holmes, would you agree that the intention was for the village to think a witch placed a curse on those chickens during the night?”

  “I would.”

  “A night when the Queen was expected to return—or at any rate, when she was not far away.”

  “She was expected here yesterday,” he pointed out.

  “Would the village know her plans?”

  “Certainly. They generally ring a bell to announce her arrival, but one doesn’t always hear it. And you’ll have noticed that the dogs are being kept inside their gates. When I was here before, they were left to wander all over.”

  “Sorry, but I’m a bit confused. First you were talking about vampires and the atrocities of the Countess Báthory. And you mentioned a girl seeing a ghost. Now witches?”

  “Interesting, is it not?”

  I must be better, I thought: his gnomic utterings were irritating me again. I replied in my customary way; namely, I ignored him. “What do you suppose will happen when nothing, er, happens?”

  “When the village fails to rise up in terror, after a witch curses a hen-house and accidentally drops her hex bag on the way out? Our troublemaker may assume that someone found the bag and noticed the grain, and decided it was suspect. Things do go awry, at times. I expect he—or she, granted—will spend the day waiting to hear the news, then wonder why it hasn’t risen up. I expect that soon, tonight or more probably tomorrow, he will make another attempt. Not in the same place, if the intent is to frighten the village rather than a single household. And I expect it to be something more emphatic than chickens. Russell, are you familiar with the phenomenon of group hysteria?”

  “Peculiar behaviour that appears contagious—an epidemic of dancing in Strasbourg, fits that looked like epilepsy in Salem. Often involving women and girls—hence the term ‘hysteria’—and often blamed on witches. You think such a thing is starting up here?”

  “One cannot overlook the number of young women and girls involved,” he pointed out.

  “Well, they do make up somewhat more than half the population.”

  “Yes, and because women are often kept in a position of subservience, they may prove more sensitive to unspoken tensions and threats than men.”

  I was so stunned by this statement that I came to a dead halt. Half a dozen steps on, he noticed that I was behind him. “What?” he asked.

  “You did say you realised that you have a blind spot when it comes to women, but I hadn’t thought…”

  Indeed, I had not thought. I’d been so wrapped up in the turmoil of having lied to him about Mrs Hudson, I had overlooked this bedrock truth about Sherlock Holmes: once the man’s attention came to focus on an inequity, all his energies would go to setting it aright—even if the problem was one in his own self.

  His eyebrow rose. “You think that, even though I have spent the past four months in a series of investigations with women at their centres, I might simply accept my relative blindness and dismiss its ramifications?”

  �
�Well…”

  “I hope, my dear Russell, that I am not so hidebound as to overlook the lessons life hands me. In any event, long before you and I met and my masculine sensibilities were delivered into your gentle hands, I was in fact aware that women are vulnerable in ways men are not. There were even times when I accepted a case based solely on that knowledge.”

  “True.” But it was troubling. Humility was not a thing one expected from Sherlock Holmes—not even for his wife of nearly five years and partner of ten. If he was willing to reconsider…

  I pulled my thoughts away from that tortuous pathway: this was not the time to explore such an essential matter. Instead, I would add it to the growing list of Topics in Need of Discussion that now included what to do about Mycroft, how to find a replacement for Mrs Hudson in Sussex, and how not to lie to one’s spouse.

  “So,” I said, “if our troublemaker plans on increasing his efforts, once the Queen is back in Bran, should we not be getting out word to the villagers? Or at least to the farmers, if you think it’s a matter of poisoning some poor animal. I’d hate for a family to lose their only milch-cow because this chap wanted to make a point.”

  “And give ourselves away, if it is a farmer doing this? No, Russell, I fear that the task of keeping guard belongs to us.”

  “No sleep tonight, then.” I resolved to sneak off for a nap, in the afternoon. Assuming we weren’t called to rescue more chickens or drop boiling oil on a storm of revolting peasants.

  Speaking of peasants, we seemed to have left the castle rather far behind. Left everything far behind, come to that. “Where are we going?”

  “You need to see the woods, Russell. And some of its inhabitants.”

  The track underfoot was narrow, but definite. In the winter, it would be so slick with mud that a person could easily skate all the way back to the village, but it had not rained for some time. The trees here were a mix, beech and fir with the occasional oak tree and maple. Squirrels and blackbirds were everywhere, and we startled deer several times during the day. Eagles sailed over our heads, and once a brief flash of motion, brown-and-pale, registered itself as having been a forest marten.

  The air was warm and still. We walked for half an hour, in easy silence for the most part, before my wandering mind realised I was about to walk into Holmes one step before I hit his back.

  “What are—good God!”

  A corpse hung from a tree, skin peeled away to reveal red muscle, white sinew, bone—then my senses caught up with my eyes and re-interpreted the shape: a deer, strung up for butchering.

  I gave a cough of relieved laughter. “Is it deer season?”

  “Best not to ask,” he answered. His right hand went up in a gesture of greeting. I saw nothing until the figure moved—and suddenly I was looking at an entire domestic setting. Across the clearing, a small cottage lay half-buried under honeysuckle. To one side stood a small woman the same colour as the trees behind her—the first Roumanian woman I’d seen whose clothing wasn’t brilliant with primary colours. She was not much over four feet tall, with the wrinkles of a centenarian but the straight back of a woman in her prime, and her blue eyes gleamed like flames from the shadows. One hand held a wickedly thin filleting knife.

  “Buna ziua, doamna,” Holmes said.

  “You again,” she replied, and turned back to her task—which had to do with the deer and at which I did not look too closely.

  Holmes, however, felt no such compunction, but walked across the clearing to the rough table where she was working. I followed, eyeing the herbs that hung from hooks near her door. If I was not mistaken, a couple of those leafy bunches could poison half a village and all its livestock.

  He pulled something from his pocket and held it out to her: the hex bag, its enveloping handkerchief pulled back. “Please, doamna, what can you tell me of this?”

  She glared at the thing, then stabbed the thin knife down into the lump of flesh she was working on and pointed at the table with her chin. He laid the bag down, working open the draw-strings, and would have poured out the contents but for her gesturing for him to stop. Instead, she leaned over it to examine the leaves and bones, then pulled a twig from a nearby bush and used it to stir things around. With a grimace, she tossed the twig away and passed judgement.

  “Pah. Where this from?”

  “Someone left it in Bran, to make it look like a witch had done a wicked deed.”

  She glared at him. “What deed?”

  “Minor trouble-making. I stopped it.”

  “Bun,” she said. She waved a dismissive hand over the leather bag. “Child’s game,” she pronounced, then jerked the knife from the slab of meat and resumed her work. Holmes returned the bag to his pocket and thanked her, leaving a pair of coins on the table.

  “Holmes,” I hissed, when we were out of earshot, “was that an actual witch?”

  “Think of her as the traditional alternative to the village doctor. Nurse, herbalist, and occasional midwife.”

  “I can just imagine what Dr Watson would have to say about it.”

  “Aspirin and quinine are made from bark, digitalis and cocaine come from leaves, hesperidin is—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Still, I found myself looking around for her black cat and broomstick.”

  “Her cat is a tabby, and I believe Mrs Varga uses her broom to sweep the floor.”

  “And she doesn’t think that’s a real hex bag you found.”

  “I wanted it confirmed.”

  “I wonder what gave it away?”

  “I should think the Earl Grey tea.”

  “Don’t witches drink tea?”

  “Not Earl Grey. It is a distinctly English beverage. I doubt there are a dozen people in Roumania who have heard of it.”

  “And around here, most of those will be connected with the castle in some way.”

  “It does narrow down our likely suspects.”

  “And I agree with Mrs Varga. That whole hex bag, with rat’s teeth and a diabolical pentagram drawn by a fountain pen, then put into a rather expensive little bag, was designed to impress the gullible.”

  The day grew hot as we walked on, following the same well-beaten path along the side of the hills. Every so often, a lesser foot-path would branch off to one side, with a glimpse of a dwelling at its end. None appeared made of gingerbread, although any of them might have belonged to axe-bearing woods-men.

  At the third of these lesser pathways, I stopped to examine a mark carved into a tree, just up from the main route. I had seen similar marks along the other two as well. And when I looked to say something to Holmes, I saw that he was waiting, an expectant look on his face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You noticed something?”

  “These are what a folklorist would call apotropaic marks—‘run away’ marks. Put at vulnerable places to repel witches. Like pagan versions of the mezuzah. Or…like the gate carvings in the village. Do they have them inside, too? On their chimneys?”

  “Some do.”

  This one was a sort of W with an overlap of the middle arms. I had seen them before, used as a pilgrim souvenir representing the initials of Virgo Virginum—both invoking the Virgin Mary and providing the sort of crosshatching thought to confuse evil spirits.

  “Isn’t it odd that they let your Mrs Varga live in the area, yet mark their paths and houses to drive her away?”

  “Not necessarily her in particular. Although I do imagine they take care to ensure that she doesn’t stray into their private area.”

  “Yet they ask her to heal their goats and, I don’t know—make their amulets? Help at childbirth?”

  “Probably.”

  “Isn’t that a bit like trusting the crocodile in your moat to let you go for a swim?”

  “You of all people, Russell, should not be surprised at the lack of consi
stent logic in a system of belief.”

  “Fair enough. But tell me, honestly: how long did it take you to notice the marks, when you first came along this path?”

  His mouth twitched. “A little longer,” he admitted, and on we went. But it was a good ten minutes and three more scratched W marks before his finger went out and his voice drifted back to me. “It was that one.”

  Before I could react, something else did. A furious snorting and scrabbling in the bushes, alarmingly close, had me eyeing the tree-trunks for reachable branches—then moments later a trio of young piglets scurried across the path ahead, in the direction of the noise. The crackle of dried leaves and snapping twigs receded down the hill, and my heart ceased trying to climb out of my throat.

  Wild pigs were dangerous. Though maybe the Roumanian branch of the family was not as pugnacious as those I’d met in India.

  I cleared my throat, to bring my voice under control, and asked Holmes, “Do I need to worry about any other deadly creatures in the woods? Has the Queen decided to introduce tigers into the Carpathians, perhaps?”

  “No introductions, only the natives. Such as wolves.”

  “So you think that was a wolf I heard, last night?”

  “Very probably. And of course, bears.”

  “Bears, again? Oh, lovely.”

  We saw no other large predators before we emerged from the forested area onto a narrow, rutted road. To our left lay the main road to Brașov. To the right, the lane would curve around to Bran. And just over the fields, in what was sure to be the least hospitable piece of ground for miles, we could see the Romany village.

  Writers of travelogues adore sprinkling their pages with picturesque descriptions of criminal men with flashing eyes and barbaric women with flashing legs, dancing to wild music amidst the naked children, bony horses, and old crone fortune-tellers. Writers of travelogues are rarely forced to scrape a living in a place where they are not permitted to own land or hold jobs, and from which they will be driven at the least suspicion of crime, disease, witchcraft, or any trouble at all. One might imagine that a writer of travelogues would see dignity in a people who have maintained their identity since they first wandered out of India a millennium ago, but that is not the task of the writer of travelogues.