Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,36
the open doorway into a vast hall. Natalia had an impression of crossed swords and heraldic plaques high on the walls. Mounted stags’ heads. Oil portraits in gilded frames. Sunlight streamed down from a clerestory window, but the air held an arctic chill. The countess said, “Do you ride, Fräulein Faber? Do you hunt? The Russian girl my son brought here could hunt, I’ll say that for her.”
“You can learn,” the countess said, linking arms with her. “I will teach you.”
They proceeded down a long hall with closed doors on either side and came at last to a kitchen. Freshly baked loaves of bread were cooling on wire racks; bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling, scenting the air. “Katya, put the kettle on,” the countess said to a girl standing at a worktable peeling potatoes.
“This is Fräulein—what is it? Fräulein Faber, from Berlin,” the countess said. “She is to be our guest.” Katya wiped her hands and curtsied. The countess continued her interrogation: Fräulein Faber lived in Berlin? She was very young; had she finished school? She didn’t look seventeen. The countess pinched Natalia’s arm. “Skinny,” she said. “We will put some meat on your bones.” Then she asked: Was she Roman Catholic?
“Mother,” the count said. “There’s no need to grill our guest.”
“I’m interested,” the countess said. “It is unusual for us to have such a lovely young guest, isn’t it, Katya?” The countess touched Natalia’s arm and gazed at her hungrily. Natalia lowered her eyes. She felt almost faint under the intensity of the countess’s gaze. When the countess learned her first name she wanted to know if she could address her as Natalia. “We are not formal here, are we, Miklós?” she said.
She turned to her son and said, “You know that Trajan has been lame for some time now? Vladimír insists it’s not serious, but I know horses. I know Trajan, and I suspect Vladimír is keeping something from me. Miklós, are you listening to me? I want you to have a word with Vladimír.”
“Today?”
“Yes, when else?” the countess said. To Natalia she said, “Vladimír is my groom. He is a Sinti, and like many Sinti, he has a sixth sense with horses, but even so, he is not infallible. He’ll listen to you, Miklós. Go now, while Vladimír is in the stables.” Then she said, “Don’t gulp your coffee, you’ll get heartburn.”
The count emptied his cup in the sink and went out the kitchen door.
“So, your mother is in Dubrovnik?” Countess Andorján said to Natalia. “Years ago, my late husband owned a part interest in a stone quarry in Dubrovnik. I would go with him when he had meetings with the other investors. It was a good enterprise, profitable, and then my husband sold his share of the business, and we had no reason to make those trips to Dubrovnik. Tonight, my child, we will put you in the Green Room. It faces west; the morning sun will not wake you. If, in the night, you need anything, knock on my door. I am a light sleeper, and my room is across the hall.”
One night in this castle, one night, and in the morning, I will leave, Natalia thought.
“Throw that pest outside,” the countess said, when an orange cat strolled in through the open door and stretched out on the floor. Katya gave him a saucer of milk. The count returned, stepped over the cat, and stood leaning against a sideboard, arms crossed. He said that he and Vladimír had agreed that by any measurement of time you cared to use, horse years, human years, Trajan was a good age and he wasn’t going to recover from an injury as quickly as he had when young. The horse would come to no harm if they waited and watched.
“I hope you and Vladimír are right, ” the countess said. “I am still worried. No one feels what that horse feels. But I do.”
* * *
In the morning, when Natalia walked into the kitchen, the count was again immersed in the pages of a Berlin newspaper. He looked up and asked if she’d slept well, and she said, yes, she had. She was being polite. In truth, she’d lain awake for hours, listening to wolves howling in the distance, dogs barking, clocks striking the hours from somewhere deep within the castle. In the moonlight the furniture had cast malevolent shapes on the walls, and these shapes