A fire burned in the kachelofen, and a makeshift nursing station had been set up nearby—bandages, scissors, a glass bottle of disinfectant, and the bottle of Bernadette’s homemade genepy. The bed was made up with clean white sheets. Pulling back the covers, I saw that Greta had dressed the wound, but my thigh was as swollen as a tree trunk. When I tried to get up, an explosion of pain shot through my body. The very thought of drinking more made me ill—the gin hangovers of my previous life were nothing in comparison to what the genepy did to me—but the pain was so strong that I poured myself a shot and drank it down.
The next days passed in a blur of sleep and misery. The wound became infected, and I could do nothing but stay in bed, suffering. I slept and woke and slept more and woke again. I swallowed more genepy, trying to stop the pain. The images in my mind bled into the reality around me until everything took on the hue of a dreadful hallucination. Soon there was little to separate the dream world from the waking one.
Greta fed me my meals, sitting by my bed and spooning Valpelline soup—hearty fare made of cabbage and meat—into my mouth. She changed my bandages, put logs on the fire, dusted and swept, replaced empty bottles of genepy, and left. She emptied a porcelain bedpan that, she informed me with pride, had been in the family for three hundred years.
Some days after my surgery, when I was strong enough to sit up in bed and eat alone, Greta arrived one morning with a tray of coffee, slices of black bread, and a jar of strawberry preserves. A luxury, she said of the preserves, dropped with that month’s helicopter delivery and sent up by Bernadette.
“When was the helicopter here?” I asked, a rush of disappointment hitting me. The helicopter had come and gone without me.
Greta shrugged, then went on to explain the arrangements being made for Dolores’s funeral, describing the bouquets of flowers they had taken from the greenhouse, and the prayers they had chosen to say in the chapel, and the dinner Bernadette would prepare after the internment in the mausoleum. I stared at her in amazement. Greta behaved as if she were innocent, as if she had not colluded with Sal and Vita, and Dolores had died of natural causes.
Later that day, I woke from a nap to hear a flute playing in the courtyard of the castle. I pulled myself out of bed and dragged myself to the window, pain shivering through me each time I put pressure on my leg. Pushing back the heavy curtains, I found a small, morbid party below, dressed all in black and walking together to the chapel: Basil and Greta, Bernadette and the dogs, led by Sal playing the flute. At the tail end of this party came a large, limping figure wearing a black veil. Vita. The matriarch. The family secret.
That night, after Dolores’s funeral, when the castle was quiet and dark, I woke to a presence in my room. I strained to see, but the sky was cloudy and moonless outside my window, and the fire had gone to ashes hours before. And yet, I could feel the hot gaze of a living creature standing nearby. I heard the slow intake of breath, and the slow exhale of it. Fumbling with the matches at my bedside table, I lit a candle. The room popped into clarity, revealing Vita.
She stood at the side of my bed, gazing at me through the curtains, her fingers wrapped around the bedpost. She wore her funeral clothes, a black velvet coat and a black silk dress, the bodice dotted with dark embroidery, the skirt stiff with crinoline. She came closer, and I saw that the dark markings on her dress were not the silk of embroidery at all, but moth holes, large and frayed. Light from the candle fell over her pale face, illuminating the deep lines and wrinkles in her skin. Perhaps it was the weak light, but it seemed to me that Dolores’s death had brought her closer to her own. Her eyes seemed hollow, skeletal.
“What is it?” I whispered, hearing the tremor in my voice. I did not want her near me, let alone hovering over me like that.
“I came to help you.” She glanced at my bedside table, filled with bandages and bottles. She put her hand on my leg.