The Pierced Heart: A Novel Read online

  When Charles gets down from the carriage at the castle door there is no-one to meet him, and after lingering for a few minutes in the hall he returns to his room to find lunch has been left, and the fire is burning. And on the table, by his wine, a note in a thin and cramped hand.

  I must be absent for some hours.

  Do not wait for me.

  R

  Charles takes off his coat and sits down on the bed. Then he leans back against the pillows and puts his arm behind his head. An echo in flesh, if he did but realise it, of the waxen woman lying sleeping and unsleeping far below.

  When he wakes the room is in shadow and the fire low. He scrambles to his feet, aware immediately of an ache in his neck and a stiffness in his back. He can’t believe he’s slept into evening, but the sky is dark, and he can hear, far off, the grind of thunder. He’s hungry now, even if he wasn’t earlier, and gulps the food on the table like a man famished, before going to the window and throwing open the shutters. Unfallen rain hangs heavy in the clouds, and the air crackles with sulphur, even though the storm is still miles away. Charles is rather idly wondering why that should be—some strange atmospheric phenomenon? The direction of the wind?—when there is a distant flare of blue lightning. And then there is another flash and a heavy roof-tile hurtles spinning down and smashes into splinters on the courtyard below, only this time the light is directly above him, somewhere to his right. Charles leans out as far as he can, and thinks he catches a movement on the parapet. He looks down at the windowsill and realises that it’s wider than he thought—hardly a balcony but wide enough, just, for him to get a footing. But he’d be mad to try it without some sort of anchorage. He looks back into the room and lights on the tasselled cord holding back the curtains. He ties one end quickly to the bedpost and the other round his waist, then ventures out—with some trepidation—onto the ledge. The stone isn’t just narrow but slippery, and Charles slithers twice as he turns slowly round to face up towards the roof. The rain is plunging down now and sheeting headlong into his eyes and mouth, but as the lightning flares again Charles sees the scene above him with the acuity of fever or a diseased dream. On the edge of the parapet, a few yards from the tower, the Baron is outlined against the sky, a dark shape against the greater dark, his long coat whipping and cracking about him like the wings of some vast crow, his silver hair plastered black against his skull. Charles tries to call to him—tell him he is recklessly risking his life—but his words are lost in a detonation of thunder and a bolt of lightning that explodes in a boom of white electric glare. And when the darkness descends once more, the Baron has gone.

  Charles edges back down into his room, and then turns to scan the courtyard below. But as he suspected, there is no body, no corpse. Then on some impulse he cannot explain, he opens the door and goes down to the gallery. But as always, it seems, the hall is deserted and only one small lamp burning below. Charles is just about to start down the stairs when he notices that one thing, at least, is not as it was when he last passed here. The little door he noticed before—the door he saw the Baron appear from and then carefully lock—is now standing open. Charles looks around, then moves as swiftly and silently as he can towards it. It’s the entrance to a staircase, and Charles realises that it must give access to the tower rooms. He hesitates, then pushes the wooden door a little wider and starts up the steps, only to stop a moment later. He can hear voices. One, the Baron’s. The other, a girl’s. Light, young, and almost—hard as this is for Charles to absorb—joyous. They speak in German, but it seems more formal than a casual conversation—in fact, the only comparison in Charles’s experience is the question and answer of the catechism classes he attended for a little while as a boy. But that was before Elizabeth was taken; before his mother lost interest in everything, even her own son, in the abyss of her grief. He listens awhile longer, and concludes it must indeed be some form of interrogation, though what the subject can possibly be, Charles has no idea. Sometimes the girl replies with confidence, and receives affirmation in return; at others, her voice is less sure. No more than ten minutes have passed since the Baron was clinging to the roof in the rain, and yet his voice drones on now, soft, and hoarse, and low. Charles is starting to wonder if the man was ever on the roof at all, or whether the strange atmosphere in this strange house is starting to play tricks with his mind, but at that moment the voices cease, and there is the sound of footsteps coming towards him. Charles considers for a split second standing his ground and confronting the Baron, but some instinct tells him not yet, not yet. So he turns and retreats the way he came, and there is no trace of him remaining when Von Reisenberg emerges and, once again, locks the door watchfully behind him.

  It is not till near two that the storm abates, and a good while after that before Charles slips into a fitful and fretful sleep. He dreams again of Molly, but she is not, now, in the kitchen in his uncle’s house, but a cold mimicry of life among the Baron’s female figurines. He reaches to touch her face, but it is as if his hand is pushing through thick water—as if he, too, is imprisoned in immobility—but then he is recoiling in horror as the eyes in the fake face brim suddenly with living tears. And when he looks down at her body he sees that she, too, has been flayed to lay bare the unborn child, but these painted wounds gape with real blood-sodden flesh, and the baby—his baby—throbs in her open womb, dying, as she is dying—wax, as she is wax—

  He sits up with a strangled cry. The sweat rolls down his back, and his hair is wet against the back of his neck. He takes great gasps of air, willing his heart to slow, his breathing to abate. He has no idea how long it is before he notices there is a line of light slanting across the floor and realises that the door to his room is open, though he’s sure he bolted it before he went to bed. Then the light is gone and the room is drowned in dark. A dark he has never seen so deep before. Dark so absolute that he can see nothing, not the outlines of the furniture, not even the tiny sliver of moonlight between the shutter and the sill. He sits, motionless, alert now to every tiny sound in the room, and his senses start to distrust themselves as the fizzing silence mingles with the sound of—what? Bare feet on the thick carpet? A hand drawing back a damask drape? And then he shudders as if stung. An icy finger is running, slowly, teasingly up his bare arm, so lightly it scarcely feathers his skin, but so piercingly it’s as if a needle of fire is threading his veins. He puts his hands out wildly, blindly, but encounters nothing, touches no-one. Then he hears the sound of laughter—playful, mischievous laughter—that seems to echo all about the room. He makes to get up but finds himself constrained. Something is binding his wrists, holding him down. He tries to wrench his hands free, but feels a cord dig against his skin. And now his arms are being drawn back behind him—he struggles but the grasp is too strong, and his wrists are forced hard against the wood of the bedstead and he hears the rustle of satin being tied. And now he is in no doubt. A woman is climbing onto his lap and tearing open his shirt with frozen fingers. He can smell her scent, feel the caress of silken ringlets and the tip of a hot wet tongue slipping across his chest and down, down, down. And then there are lips at his throat that sharpen into teeth, and a cold hand that stifles his breathing, and the low murmur of a man’s voice, speaking words he cannot understand.

  When he wakes the next morning there’s a tell-tale stain on the sheets that leaves him red with shame. But there is nothing to say he did not dream it entirely—no marks about his wrists, no tear to his shirt, and when he goes to the door it is locked, and from the inside.

  But later, when he strips off his night-shirt to wash, he finds two tiny spots of blood at the neck, which were not there before.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “WHO IS SHE?”

  Charles is standing at the door of the Baron’s library. It is eight o’clock, and the storm has cleared, leaving a sky blanched to pallid washy blue and the Danube running high and turbid brown. Charles has not yet breakfasted, but his host must have so done already, or else has no more appetit
e at this hour than he does after dark. The Baron is sitting, his back to the blinded window, with his pen in his hand and a pair of small wire spectacles on the end of his nose. He does not raise his head when Charles enters, nor when he speaks. It is several long slow moments, indeed, before he places the spectacles on the desk and raises his head.

  “To whom do you refer?”

  “The young woman I overheard talking with you last night.”

  The Baron looks at him steadily. “I have no idea what—or whom—you mean. There is no young woman in this castle.”

  “I am afraid I do not believe you. I distinctly heard a woman speaking with you—a young woman—”

  “I say again,” interrupts the Baron, “there is no young woman here. Are you sure you did not dream the episode, Herr Maddox? A large dinner, and several glasses of both wine and slivovitz such as I am told is your habit, can produce the most vivid and disturbing dreams. Dreams that take on all the appearance of reality, and deceive the senses, even on waking.” He eyes Charles narrowly. “I am sure I do not need to elaborate any further. You have indeed had such an experience, have you not?”

  Charles flushes under his intense pale stare. When he replies he has, all unconsciously, brought his hand to his neck.

  “This was not a dream, Freiherr. It was observation, not hallucination.”

  “Ah.” The Baron smiles dryly. “I had indeed heard that you place great store by—what was the phrase—logic and observation? And indeed, I concur, in some measure, with the principles espoused by your celebrated great-uncle. But were he a scientist, as I am, rather than a mere thief taker, he would know that observation can deceive, and logic cannot always be trusted.”

  Charles is badly wrong-footed now—unsure whether he’s more offended at the casual disparagement of the man Maddox once was, or the fact that his own professional life has clearly been so comprehensively investigated, and without (and this really does concern him) his being in the slightest aware of it. The detective has become the detected, and in the most unsettling manner.

  “Even were that true,” he says, his eyes cold and his cheeks hot, “I have no reason, on this occasion, to distrust the evidence of my own senses. I had seen you, on the parapet only minutes before, taking what appeared to me to be the most gratuitous and unnecessary risk given the ferocity of the storm, and I came out onto the gallery with the sole purpose of raising the alarm on your behalf. I can assure you that by that time I was both wide awake and wet through, from watching at the window.”

  “If you are so concerned for your health, or for your wardrobe, you would perhaps be better advised to remain within your quarters, unless your presence elsewhere is explicitly requested.”

  It is barely courteous—barely less than an outright rebuke—and they stare at each other, aware that one of them must retreat, or the encounter break open into absolute animosity. Charles is never averse to a fight, and he’s perfectly prepared to press hard for answers, but he’s also mindful that all he is likely to achieve is a permanent and uncomfortable rupture that will be almost impossible to explain to his clients in Oxford. He’s trying to think of a retort that doesn’t constitute a complete capitulation when the Baron—rather surprisingly—blinks first.

  “I had intended, yesterday, to talk to you of my work, but I was, as you will recall, most unfortunately called away. That is why I was on the roof last night. To climb to such an exposed place in the middle of a storm might appear to the uneducated to be mere folly—which no doubt accounts for many of the impertinent rumours promulgated about me hereabouts—but I would have hoped a man with your pretensions to intelligence would have realised at once that a phenomenon such as lightning can, perforce, be studied only in a storm. I have written a number of monographs on this subject, which I should be most happy to show you. I have, for example, offered a theory of my own concerning the variant known as ball lightning, which has hitherto never been explained, and which country people believe to be the sign of the devil’s hand. But forked lightning such as we witnessed last night is, I am afraid, only too commonplace and mundane—”

  “Then why should you put yourself at such risk to study it?”

  Is there now the faintest of flushes across the Baron’s hollow cheeks? He picks up his spectacles once more and takes his pen.

  “There were some minor observations I wished to make. I believe breakfast awaits you, Herr Maddox.”

  There is no question of the flush now, and Charles elects merely to bow and depart. But now he has food for thought as well as body.

  When he returns to his room, he goes immediately to the shelves of books and looks among them for any written by the Baron himself. There are several, as it turns out; most on his chemical discoveries, but one in German—Ueber Blitz ohne Donner—that judging by the diagrams might well be on the subject of lightning. It’s not the first time Charles has wished he had a better facility for languages. But as he flips through pages densely printed with words that seem to go on forever and have nothing like enough vowels, he remembers with a smile something Maddox said to him when he was a boy—Maddox, who devoted so many years to the study of classical tongues but had rather less time for the modern variety. And what was it his uncle had said? “Life is short, my boy. Far too short for German irregular verbs.” He’s still smiling as he puts the book back and scans the rest of the bookshelf to find, rather to his surprise, a copy of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine from four years before. The journal falls open at a piece titled “Letters on the Truths Contained in Popular Superstitions,” and several pages in Charles finds a brief reference to the Baron’s name. He’s just making a brief note in his pocket-book when there’s a sudden loud knocking at the door, and he marks the page with a slip of paper and puts the journal hastily back. It’s Herr Bremmer, come to enquire whether he would like to resume his researches in the library. Uneasily aware that he appears to be neglecting the task for which he has been hired, Charles gathers his notebook quickly and follows the librarian out of the room.

  He is more than two hours in the library, desperate all the while to return to his room and finish the article. Even at noon he is thwarted when, for the first time, he is accompanied by a silent black-suited servant to the dining-parlour, and thence back to the library once more. When night falls at last, Herr Bremmer accompanies him, as unnecessarily as before, to the door of his room, informs him dinner has been laid there for him, then bows low. Charles closes the door and stands behind it, listening, but it is only when he thrusts the bolt noisily across that he hears the librarian’s leather slippers creak softly away. Then he goes quickly to the shelf and pulls out the journal, turning to the page he marked. There’s not much, only a few paragraphs. But it’s enough. Enough to make him wonder whether there is an answer hidden here that explains everything he has found so unnerving about this place. An answer that might even account for the presence of the girl, and what it is the Baron really wants with her. He shoves the journal carelessly back on the shelf, not caring that it’s now protruding at least an inch from the rest, then carefully slides the bolt back and opens the door. Then he makes his way silently to the door beneath the tower, unaware, in his haste and his eagerness, that in the far shadows of the gallery, the librarian is watching.

  It is no more than a minute before he hears it. Faint at first, and strangely muffled, but unmistakeable all the same. The sound of a woman’s voice. Breaking, gasping. Wailing and rising now in—what? Pain? Fear? He tries the handle of the door, but is not at all surprised to find it locked. He tries the door again, aggressively this time, calling out and demanding to be let in. But there is no answer. The woman’s voice stops—suddenly cut off, as if smothered by a clamping hand. And then nothing.

  Charles kicks against the door in frustration, but achieves nothing save more scuffs on an already shabby boot. He’s defeated, and he knows it. He waits a few moments more, then turns and walks back to his room, where he flings open the window and takes a deep breath of ni
ght air. The moon has risen full and whey-faced over the Danube, which runs sluggish and oily in the flooding light, but there must be some trick, some strange reflection off the water that makes the sky above glow brighter than the evening star. He’s still trying to puzzle this out when he hears sounds above his head—the sounds of footsteps. He flings the shutter open as wide as it will go and ventures out again onto the ledge. The parapet is only ten feet or so above his head, but the ground is more than thirty feet below. Thankfully he has always had a head for heights, even if not for languages. He reaches out and seizes a dry gnarled branch of the ancient creeper in one hand, and then another, more confidently, as he feels the bough sigh but stay. The wind is beginning to rise, and the leaves silvering the creeper flutter and whisper as he ascends, slowly, hand over clutching hand, his boots scraping blindly against the slabs for a foothold, and he is soon sweating under his coat, despite the cold. But five minutes later he has reached the crumbling stone balustrade and is grasping the edge and starting to haul himself up and over and seeing, in a staggered disbelief, exactly what it is the Baron has concealed here. And now all is clear—not just the references in the journal, not just the girl, but the Baron’s own words, even the specimens downstairs. It is all connected, all is part of the same great and overwhelming secret. And then there is such a sudden blinding glare of light that he closes his eyes a moment, and his fingers slip—slip first and are then crushed by some vicious grinding weight and he is losing his grip and when he opens his eyes again it’s to a hail of dust and dead leaves that blinds him until he feels something touch his hair and skin, something dry and leathery but alive, and he realises that there is an enormous bat trapped in the branches above his head. He tries to cling on, tries to shield his face against the wall, but as the bat flails closer and closer he cannot stop himself pulling away, and as the shift of his weight wrenches a section of creeper from the wall he is plunging down, falling, clawing, feeling death rush up to meet him on the remorseless stone-paved ground.