Authors: Donna Lea Simpson
“No!” Elizabeth exclaimed, shocked beyond horror; and yet her worst fear and her last guess were confirmed. “But she is his aunt!”
“Oh, this is terrible,” Frau Liebner whispered, her hands clutched together.
“Mina has just told me he was… he was with her last night.”
Feeling ill, Elizabeth held her stomach. “Are… are you absolutely certain?”
“I think it is so. The boy… the boy is so terribly wounded. I know not whether dis terrible affair is the result of dat, or… or the cause of it.”
Elizabeth tried to tame her wildly racing thoughts; after the initial shock, her mind sped over her recent conversation with the young count and his beliefs about Nikolas’s culpability in his mother’s death. She considered Christoph’s statement to his sister that he was evil and that she should not be around him. She shared some of what he had told her just that evening and then said, “Is it possible that Countess Gerta has been… has been harboring these awful suspicions all these years and has fed them to Count Christoph? Is that where he has gotten these beliefs from?”
“Yes,” Frau Liebner said, understanding dawning in her eyes. “Perhaps that is so. Gerta was never easy after Eva and Jakob were born. She told me then she had enemies. I didn’t know what she meant—it sounded so dramatic, and she al ways was a girl who liked to be the center of all attention, so I thought she was just making things up, you know, to be more important—and then I forgot about it, for she never said it to me again.”
“Where would she get that idea, though, that Nikolas killed Anna and Hans?”
“Who knows?” Frau Liebner said. “Out of her own weak mind, perhaps.”
But Elizabeth thought not. “Is it possible… is there anyone…” She stopped and shook her head.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m not sure. It’s just an idea. Let me think about it.” Slowly, she said, “I have been wondering something else, too. Are there any drugs or plants or substances that can cause that awful lethargy that Gerta and now Charlotte sometimes suffer from?”
Frau Liebner’s eyes widened and Uta gasped.
“Mina!” Uta shouted.
The maid came running, and the countess gesticulated to her as she asked the question. The maid nodded.
“She says yes, dere are,” the countess said. “She knows much about plants and herbs, learned at her mother’s knee.”
“What are the… the plants?”
Mina, her lined face pale, shook her head in frustration. There clearly were no gestures for what she needed to say.
“Write it down,” Elizabeth said.
Uta replied, “She does not write.”
Mina hurried away but came back almost immediately with a piece of paper and charcoal. She drew something and showed it to her mistress, but Uta could not see it. She handed it to Frau Liebner, who shrugged.
Elizabeth snatched the paper and gazed at it intently. It was a crude sketch of a flowering plant, but the shape of the flower was distinct. “Of course!” she gasped. “It’s a poppy. Are poppies grown here?”
“Yes, in garden,” the countess said. “The seeds are used for cooking.”
“And maybe for other things,” Elizabeth said. “Do you think Gerta could be taking opium herself, and maybe… maybe feeding it to Charlotte?”
“No, she would not do such a thing,” Frau Liebner said. “Would she? Why would she do such a thing?”
“I do not know,” Uta said, her face gray.
She was exhausted; Elizabeth stared at her for a moment and then said softly, “Countess, please, say nothing to anyone of what we have been speaking. Let me do some investigating.”
Frau Liebner took her old friend’s hand and said, “Yes, it is not for us old ones to solve this, but for the young ones.” Still holding the countess’s hand, she turned back to Elizabeth. “But you must wait until Nikolas has returned.”
Elizabeth didn’t promise, having plans of her own. Instead, she said, “Do you think Countess Adele suspects any of this is going on?”
Frau Liebner sniffed. “Adele is intelligent but terribly unable, sometimes, to see what is directly before her.”
“And who would suspect such an awful thing?” Uta added. “I do not know what to think about Christoph. Is he bad seed? Is he evil? Or is he terribly misguided, abused?”
“Ma’am,” Elizabeth said, slipping down onto her knees and taking the old lady’s two hands in her own, moved by the woman’s pallor and trembling. “I’ll do everything I can to find out the answers. But while I do, try not to brood on it. Just until we know more.”
Elizabeth left the two ladies alone to console each other. She knew she would have to be careful. She didn’t feel there was any danger in asking a few questions, but discretion would be important. She could not confront Countess Gerta or Count Christoph without upsetting the household and possibly endangering Mina, the source of the information. When Nikolas got back, there would be time for open discussion, but not before.
Her first thought was to interfere in any way she could with the illicit and incestuous relationship between Countess Gerta and her nephew. If she could do that and get to the bottom of Christoph’s deep hatred and suspicion of his uncle at the same time, it would be a miraculous feat. She pondered all of the twisted threads of the awful family secrets hidden by the thick walls of Wolfram Castle as she wrote in her journal that night. It helped to lay out all of her conjectures and worries on paper, for it aided in her logical assessment. One thing she decided as she wrote: they were right about interfering between Christoph and Gerta. It was a necessary first step.
That night there would be no danger, for Christoph had spoken openly of his resolution to stay by his sister’s side while she was ill. Elizabeth sent Fanny to sit with the two of them.
The next day Countess Uta feigned an illness she did not feel and asked if one of her nieces would stay with her that evening as long as she needed. Countess Adele would have done so, grudgingly, but Uta asked if Gerta would attend her bedside, and somehow, with the promise of relating old scandal, she managed to get the woman to stay. It was a poor measure and bound to fail quickly, for Countess Gerta could not maintain concentration for any length of time. Quickly alternating between lethargy and an awful feverish excitement, she was unpredictable, and their hasty plans could fail at any time. At least there was no full moon, the period that exacerbated her condition so terribly.
The three of them—Uta, Frau Liebner, and Elizabeth— agreed among them that they could only do so much, and that would have to be enough. Not one of them considered Adele a possible confidant, for her temper was uncertain and her relationship with Gerta such that she would be unable to keep a secret from her sister; she was sure to reveal it in spite or in shock, and not one of them wanted to risk the consequences of such an untimely revelation.
Again that night in her own room, Elizabeth took up her journal and quill and wrote for a while, trying to work out the mysteries surrounding Wolfram Castle and the turmoil that roiled within. Why, she mused on paper, would the young count be the aggressor in the relationship? It just didn’t seem to her as something he would even consider as possible, though she was a newcomer and so not aware of all of the undercurrents and stresses in this odd household. But when did it start? Was it possible that the Countess Gerta, disturbed and unhappy, turned to her nephew for comfort, and that it became something else as he got older?
And did the countess purposely drug herself, or was there a far more sinister explanation for what was going on with Countess Gerta, and now probably with Charlotte? She stopped writing and gazed at herself in the mirror above her desk; she was pale and frightened looking, quite a contrast from the woman in love she had seen just a few mornings ago. But her life had taken an odd turn, and now she had become the unwilling repository of a disturbing family truth, and without even Nikolas to confide in.
She stopped the ink bottle and wiped the quill. A terrible thought occurred to her: What if Gerta was not the one drugging Charlotte? Who was, and why? There was no action taken in life by any person that did not have some goal.
Perhaps Charlotte was the one they should be watching over. She had awoken during the day and had seemed better, but she was still weak. Christoph was not to be trusted as a guardian, in Elizabeth’s own estimation. The night before, though he had said he would stay with her, he had wandered out in the middle of the night and had not come back, Fanny had told her.
Fanny was again going to watch over the girl but had first to ready herself for another sleepless night, so she was that moment downstairs.
The house was dark and quiet as Elizabeth slipped out of her room into the hall. She was filled with an uneasy feeling that she could not explain as she padded quietly down the hallway to her pupil’s room. Surely she was imagining things? Christoph was supposed to be with her, and Charlotte had a maid just in the next room to hers; this was a well-run household, with people coming and going and servants around most of the time. She tapped on the door but didn’t hear anything, so she opened it and peered into the darkness. There was no Christoph, certainly, for he would not sit in the room without so much as a candle to light the darkness.
“Charlotte,” Elizabeth whispered, slipping into the room. She heard a noise in the darkness and tiptoed across the room, following the sound, holding her flickering candle high. What was it? Where had it come from? A click, and she fell back in fear and horror. A panel in the wall had moved!
She gathered her courage and raced to the section of the room where the noise had originated, but it took her a moment to find the panel, and when she slid it back and entered the secret passage, it was too late; whoever had been there was gone. Perhaps it was only Mina, she tried to tell herself. It was possible the vigilant servant had had the same thought and feared for the young countess’s safety but had fled when she heard someone coming. Elizabeth retreated and slid the panel back in place, moving swiftly to the side of Charlotte’s bed and gazing down at the pallid girl. She was motionless and pale, but her breathing was still even.
Elizabeth set the candle on the table and took a seat at her bedside, not sure what to do. Her mouth was dry from her rapid flight. She raised the glass of cool water by the bedside to her lips and was about to take a drink when she saw, through the bottom of the glass, an unstopped bottle on the table. Why was it there, and with the lid off? What was it?
She put the glass down and picked up the bottle, sniffing its contents. It was almost odorless, whatever it was, with no hint of laudanum, and it was more than half empty. And it was clear, like water. She dumped both the contents of the bottle and the glass into the slops pail and set the glass on the table near the door. A chill ran down her spine as she wondered— had she just interfered in something? Had she just stopped the young countess from being drugged yet again, or had she been too late?
She stood and leaned over, watching the young countess’s face in the light of the candle she held. Charlotte’s color was better than it had been and she was deeply sleeping, but it did not appear to be a drugged state. In any case, Elizabeth was not leaving the room for the rest of the night, and she would be sure that Charlotte was transferred to Frau Liebner’s room the next day even if she had to batter back Countess Adele’s objections. It would be worth the risk of dismissal to protect her charge. She settled in the chair by the bed, prepared for a sleepless night.
Resolute, she wore down all resistance the next day, buoyed by the support of Frau Liebner, whom Countess Adele at least respected. Though she had considered other alternatives—
Melisande had offered to take care of Charlotte and had even pleaded that it would help her keep her mind off her father’s difficulties—it came down to a matter of trust. Only Frau Liebner and Uta had her absolute faith. How she had come to be the arbiter of such a grave matter she didn’t know, but by virtue of her love for Nikolas and her care for Charlotte, she would take this task seriously, as though her own life depended upon it. And when she thought of Nikolas away on his journey of compassion, she somehow knew that she was doing what he would want. No matter the state of their own relationship, she would do for his family whatever she could until he came back to reclaim the authority.
And Charlotte, over a period of a few days, recovered from her stupor; it was as though a different girl emerged from the lethargy, one with a sharper wit than Elizabeth had thought her student possessed. The drawing room finally saw them all again as the count’s journey numbered seven days and the moon was again waxing toward fullness.
Frau Liebner was an anxious visitor, sitting in watchful silence by Countess Gerta near the fire. Bartol Liebner stoked the fire and adjusted a screen for his sister-in-law. Count Delacroix, his usual bonhomie present, played chess with his niece, whose distressed countenance was becoming more gaunt with each passing day that delivered no news of her father; Charlotte sat nearby, well wrapped and quiet in a comfortable chair, reading a book. It was an unusual sight, but one Elizabeth welcomed. Countess Adele played the piano softly, instructing her nephew in the intricacies of a difficult piece as he tried it on his violin.
For the casual observer it would seem a harmonious family scene, but Elizabeth, knowing them all as well as she now did, was too aware of the tensions present and the terrible implications of even the most innocent glance. Count Christoph watched Countess Gerta as he did badly at his violin piece, and Elizabeth could see that woman’s flighty, flirtatious Conversation with Count Delacroix nearby was as painful to him as it was to his stoic aunt, who pretended not to hear as she played softly the difficult chords. Melisande Davidovich was making every effort to appear normal, but concern over her father’s fate was causing her attention to drift, and she lost match after match to her uncle, even when he coaxed her to make certain moves.
But underlying it all Elizabeth felt an odd strain, as of a string pulled taut and plucked by mischievous fingers. Bartol Liebner felt it, too, she thought, for his normal joviality was absent. He sat down by her.