Authors: Donna Lea Simpson
It was human!
She staggered to her feet and followed the sound, all the while castigating herself as mad, and heard it again as she came to a large clearing where the snow was well-trampled and the moonlight lit the opening. There, in the middle of the trodden snow, was Countess Gerta.
Elizabeth breathed a deep sigh of relief and took one step forward, but then the countess threw back her head and let out a long, keening howl while she undid her cloak and flung it to the ground.
“Countess,” Elizabeth said, starting forward.
The woman turned and Elizabeth fell back, alarmed by the distorted expression on her pale pixie face. The countess tore at her dress collar and howled again, the sound echoing in the woods.
Taking a deep breath and swallowing back her fear, Elizabeth approached, holding out one hand as one would to a growling dog, and speaking in what she hoped was a calming voice.
“Countess… please, Countess Gerta, let me help—”
The woman lashed out with crooked bare fingers and snarled wildly, her bloodshot eyes starting out from their sockets. She tore at the sleeves of her dress, rending one with a terrible ripping sound.
“My God, what is wrong with you?” Elizabeth muttered, almost weeping with vexation and horror.
“She is ill,” a voice said, behind her.
Elizabeth whirled. “Nikolas! Thank God you’re here; help her!”
“I have every intention of doing so,” he said quietly. “As I always do.” He approached his sister, talking soothingly, but she snapped and growled even at him. He wrapped her in his arms and she struggled wildly, then abruptly it was over and she fainted. He mantled her in her cloak and lifted her in his arms. “Come with me, Elizabeth,” he commanded, but she was already following him.
What a strange parade they were, she thought, following him through the woods, across the lawn, and towards the castle edge. He followed the path along the base of the castle to a small wooden door.
“I suppose I should never risk coming in the front door,” he said and grunted as he squeezed through the door and down a narrow corridor with his burden. “You caught Cesare and I at that once, carrying Gerta through the great hall.”
Wordless, she followed him along one of the dark secret passages, then up stairs—many, many stairs—him grunting with his burden on the precarious stone steps as they made their way to a room. He pushed open a panel and staggered into a tiny room with his burden.
Mina shot forward and pulled the woman from his arms, carrying her to a narrow bed by a humble hearth. It was some kind of small dressing room or servant’s closet. Elizabeth looked around herself curiously but did not recognize the room as one she had ever been in or seen.
“How did she get out this time?” he demanded of the silent servant, who had already begun to strip the wet clothes from the unconscious countess. When he got no response, he grabbed Mina’s shoulder and she shrugged him off, then made some gestures, pointing to her own head where a red welt marked her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” Nikolas said and patted Mina’s shoulder. She gave him an enigmatic look and then went back to her business.
“Come,” Nikolas said to Elizabeth. “You are shivering, too, and freezing.” He grasped her shoulder and guided her back through the secret door and through the maze of passageways to her own room. Once there he sat her down near her fire after stirring it to life, then pulled off her sodden slippers and stockings and chafed her feet.
“Tell me,” Elizabeth said, staying his hands and gazing down into the weary gray eyes she had come to love. She knew what haunted him now, and she felt so sorry for him. Perhaps it would help if he was able to talk about it.
He retrieved a blanket from her bed and wrapped her in it, then sat down on the floor at her feet. Silent for a long time, he finally spoke as Elizabeth almost slept, she was so weary. But his tale awoke her.
“The death of her husband and her terrible time bearing the twins did something to Gerta. She was well before that happened… or at least I think she was. I wonder now, for Hans brought her back here to calm her, he said. But she always was… nervous; I thought then that he just meant that.”
“When did this… this awful delusion start?”
“A couple of years ago. She… oh, Elizabeth,” he said, hanging his head. “She thinks she transforms into a werewolf. All the old stories have infiltrated her poor weak brain, and she really believes it. Thus, at the full of the moon she goes into this… this trance, and escapes.”
He laid his head on her lap, his hair a mass of dark curls that glowed with threads of silver among the dark. He was wearing himself out in the service of his family, she thought, tenderly stroking his great shaggy head. “My God, Nikolas, how terrible this is for you. But can you not… confine her somehow?”
“I will not use restraints,” he said, gazing up at her with a fierce light in his dark eyes. “She is not an animal; she is my sister.”
“I don’t mean restraints,” she said with a soothing tone that calmed him. “I mean locks. Bolts on the door.”
“That is what we have always done. That small room is her prison, to my shame, when she is in this state.” He bowed his head once again. “I have never wished to distress my poor, poor sister, but as the moon waxes full she becomes ill, feverish, agitated, and I have always used that… that illness as an excuse to have her looked after by Mina in that tiny closet. I thought it secure; until recently it sufficed, and we were able to confine her during this time with a lock on the door and the ministration of Mina, who is fiercely loyal and utterly dependable. And we—Uta, Adele, and I—could conceal her weakness from the rest of the family with tales of fever or frailty. It has long been known that she is not well. But… something has changed.
The delusion has deepened, and she is becoming more clever. Even through a bolted door, and tonight, even past a wary guard, she escapes.” He sighed. “It started to worsen a few months ago. That was indeed my sister and myself you saw as you arrived at Wolfram Castle; Gerta had escaped that evening and gone farther than I would ever have thought possible. She had wandered far afield and I had to chase her down on horseback. I was afraid she would freeze to death before I found her! I am only fortunate that in her madness she returns to the same spot again and again.”
“How terrible that the old folklore has transformed in her mind into this… this delusion.”
He nodded. “But it is a powerful hallucination, defeating every attempt at reason I have made.
She thinks… once she is in her right head she truly thinks she became a werewolf in her trance. I have tried reason, I have tried ridicule, but the idea remains. And she… she enjoys the idea of it, the power, the thrill of becoming the animal of our family’s lore. Even when she is quite well, during the waning moon, I think she still glories in her secret knowledge. This I do not know how to defeat. How will it end?”
“Nikolas, I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice gentle as she touched his hair.
He looked up at her, his cheeks ruddy in the firelight. “Elizabeth, no matter what, you must promise me you will not go into the forest again. There are truly wolves there!”
“But… but the villagers killed it.”
“They are pack animals, and there are many more. In the nighttime it is their forest.
Undisturbed, they are harmless, but confronted, if they think they or their offspring are in danger…”
She shivered. “I followed her tonight because I saw her as she left, and I thought I could catch her before she entered the forest.”
“Please, do not do that again.” He reached up and squeezed her hand. “A wolf, though not violent left alone, will defend one of its pups, or its mate, to the death.”
“Rather like you,” she said, petting his head and kissing him. “I think you and those wolves have much in common.”
“Come to me, Elizabeth,” he said, standing and pulling her up. “My sister will sleep the rest of the night now, and into the day. After one of her delusions she always falls into a kind of faint and is weak until the moon rises again.”
“But Nikolas—”
“No,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “I need you tonight, Elizabeth… please. No more talk. Just hold me.”
She hesitated only a second and then whispered, “Come to my bed.”
They lay together and she kissed him deeply, wishing she could tell him all she felt, all she wanted, but knowing that this night he needed just to be held close by one person who would not demand anything of him. He fell deeply asleep and so did she, but he was gone from her bed when she awoke the next morning.
Fanny brought in tea, but Elizabeth lay in bed staring up at the coffered ceiling and ornate depiction that centered it, a painting of cherubs and heavenly messengers.
“Miss… will you be going down for breakfast?”
Rousing herself from her reverie, Elizabeth swung her legs over the side of the bed and shivered wearily. She met the girl’s gaze and realized that Fanny knew that Nikolas had been there. Her stare was wide-eyed and wondering. Once again Elizabeth was in the position of being involved with a man and having the servants aware of it. They likely whispered the gossip in the servants’ hall.
“Yes, I will be going down for breakfast. Thank you, Fanny.”
The girl left, and Elizabeth collapsed back on the bed. She couldn’t hide it from herself any longer. Love for Nikolas coursed through her veins with every drop of blood: She curled into a ball, holding her pillow to her stomach. How was she going to continue to face him day after day, knowing that he didn’t feel the same, knowing that her love was doomed to remain unrequited?
He cared for her, she could feel it in his touch, but love… did he even have that to give? He had never asked anything from her, nor had he ever promised her anything. While giving unconditionally to her, he held himself aloof.
Why? She frowned, arose, and began to dress. He cared for her and he was physically attracted for her. She had never met a man so perfectly formed to be a husband and a father, and yet he claimed family responsibilities kept him from marrying. As unreasonable as that seemed to her, he clearly believed it. She now knew that those family responsibilities included the care of a sister descending into madness. That was a burden indeed, and she could understand his weary resignation in the face of it.
But what kept him from consummating his illicit relationship with her? The fear of getting her with child? When had that ever stopped a man from taking what he wanted? Perhaps he was that rarest of beings, an honorable man, the kind her mother had sworn did not exist.
And yet… perhaps his reticence to go beyond what they had already done together was best.
If he was simply incapable of loving her as she had come to love him, then making love could only add to her pain when the inevitable parting arrived. She had to know the truth. With her feelings engaged, she would not let him simply push her away anymore. She would have an explanation.
“GERTA is sleeping peacefully still, nephew,” Uta said, groping for Nikolas’s hand.
“Good. I suppose Mina has told you that Elizabeth knows all… or almost all, now?”
“Yes. You should have told her all of this long ago instead of going to her room every night and diddling with her. She is not a pet: she is a woman of strength and intelligence.”
Nikolas grimaced in impatience as his great aunt took his hand and squeezed it hard. “Easy to give such sage advice,” he muttered.
“Do not be impertinent with me,” she said, her imperious voice still steady, despite her years.
“Did you think I did not know? Of course I know. I know everything. Katrina and I are in agreement; you should marry Elizabeth Stanwycke.”
“You of all people in this household know why I cannot marry her.”
“I know why you
think
you cannot marry: you are a great fool.”
He jerked his hand away and stood. He would not be called a fool in his own house, even by someone he venerated as he did his great-aunt.
“Do not pout because I dare to call you a fool,” she said, gazing up in his direction. “I think you a fool about a great many things. You think you are the only one who can care for this family, the only one who can set to right the wrongs of a generation. You are crippling them all by trying to carry their weight. Let them aid in their own salvation; let them shoulder their own burdens.”
“If they were truly their own burdens, perhaps I would, great-aunt,” he said carefully, tamping down his anger at the old woman’s interference. If anyone had earned the right to give him advice, it was her. “But this is up to me to do. I will brook no opposition on this point.”
“Fool,” she muttered. “Never was there a greater fool than a man who believes that only he is capable of saving his family from destruction while they do nothing to aid themselves.” She brooded for a moment, but then said, “Gerta will require watching again tonight. I am going to have her in this room with me, for I do not trust the lock on the dressing room any more; it seems to melt away in the face of her madness. If I were as superstitious as people think me, I would say it was unnatural how that happens every time. But I think that it is just that she is getting more crafty and cunning with every cycle. And I am going to give her laudanum, no matter what you say.”
“I will not have my sister stupefied with drugs,” he said, his voice deliberately calm. No one would do that to her, he had sworn to himself and to heaven.
“You will not have her drugged, you will not have her restrained! You truly believe only you know what is best for her.”
“And what if that is so?”
She was silent for a long minute, her head bowed and lace cap askew, and Nikolas began to think she had fallen asleep, but she roused herself and said, “No, no, I know that you are correct this time. I will not give her laudanum. I do remember her reaction last time, and how ill she became. Despite appearances, Gerta is dear to me, if only… if only she could be again the girl she once was.” Her weary old voice broke.
Nikolas knelt down again and took Uta’s hand, squeezing it gently, touched by the tears that rolled out from under the wrinkled eyelids. “The best we can do is care for her.”