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Will dismounted and gazed about at the ruin of Stanca Corbului. The castle’s roof was broken open, its mighty towers crumbling. The bailey was filled with stout canvas tents. Several campfires snapped against the afternoon gloom, wafting glowing sparks upward like prayers to heaven. An ancient stable block had received some rough repair, and a skinny lad came from under its blackened eaves to take the reins of Will’s pony from his hand. Marcu leapt from his saddle and hurried toward Will.
“Lord Dovedale, please do not be angry,” he began, taking in the Englishman’s clenched jaw and stormy countenance.
Will turned toward him. “Do not be angry? I have been brought a long way to find a derelict castle where I was led to believe would be a princely seat.” He flung up a hand to indicate the leaf-strewn flight of stone stairs that ascended to the lightless maw of the castle, one ponderous door hanging from its twisted hinges like a drunkard, and the other missing. “I find a ragged camp of brigands in the wilderness. Is there even such a person as Prince Grigore Corbinescu? And mind your tongue tells no lie, or I’ll have it from your head before you draw your next breath.”
A clatter of hooves announced the arrival of the rest of the party. The noise and activity of men greeting one another, unsaddling their ponies and seeing them attended, and the tolling of a great, deep-throated bell cracked the tension between Will and Marcu. Tom slid from his mount with a groan and stood spraddle-legged, leaning forward with his hands on his knees.
“Me arse is broke, and me back with it,” he said. “And I’m near froze. Look, it’s bloody snowing again.”
The flakes drifted from the sway-bellied clouds, wafer-thin blades of ice at their tips making their kisses sting. Night seemed to be thrusting its burly shoulders into the day, claiming the last hours of the afternoon without benefit of a sunset. A bearded man stepped up to a haystack-sized mound of branches and twigs and touched a torch to it. The wood took fire with a whoomp, and cheers arose from around the camp.
Will looked to Falke, still astride his shaggy pony. The doctor dismounted with fluid ease.
“What is this,” Falke asked. “Where is the prince?”
Marcu held up a placating hand. “The voievod awaits you, Lord Dovedale. He keeps his quarters in the old chapel, just beyond the stables. It would be well that we go to him at once, for the night comes early.” He waved forward a man armed with a shepherd’s axe and a pair of pistols. “Dr. Falke, if you will take the lady and go with Radu, he will show you to your accommodations. I am sure Mademoiselle would like to rest.”
“Go on, Falke. See to Elke.” Will glanced at the girl who sat her pony like a man wearing a boy’s breeches and blouse with a shaggy sheepskin vest. She did not appear fatigued in the least, nor surprised to find Stanca Corbului reduced to an encampment, and her gaze rested on him with the complacent weight of death. He turned his attention back to Marcu.
“I’ll be more than happy to meet Corbinescu now. Tom will accompany me.”
The chapel proved to be a stout, square building with a bell tower wearing a conical hat of red enameled tiles. Here was the source of the tolling bell that had fallen silent with the kindling of the bonfire. Marcu paused in the doorway to make the sign of the cross and bow. He then entered and lit a candle in the great, fluttering blaze of votives that stood in racks before the nave and moved to kiss the icons of the Virgin and Christ. He turned to address Will who hovered at the threshold, Tom at his shoulder.
“You are welcome here, Lord Dovedale. Please enter as an esteemed guest.”
Will stared into the dim chapel, blinded by the hundreds of dancing candle flames that dispelled all shadow from the entry and bathed it in gold. Beyond, in the cool dark of the nave, Marcu was a mere shape as insubstantial as dream, and his words held the solemnity of ritual. Will stepped forward, passing through the whispering illumination that beat the air with a hush like wings. When he came into the nave, it was with a feeling of having traveled, and he blinked to clear the cobwebs from his eyes.
Around him, the chapel hummed with a quiet energy that coursed beneath its age-darkened frescoes. Along either side wall were the stalls that had once been reserved for the powerful, and the austere sweep of the stone nave between them should have been cold, but it was not. A single pillar candle flickered on the sanctuary altar, its minute warmth radiating outward with the power of a blazing hearth. Marcu approached it and knelt, prayer pulled from him in a murmur as a stray thread is tugged from some woven thing, unraveling the fearful weariness of the man and knitting a hard glint of gold into the wavering candle flame. When he stood, the sickly pallor of his face had turned ruddy and glowing.
“Come,” he said. “The voievod rests within.”
He gestured at the right-hand stall nearest the altar, an enclosed box of intricate carvings and painted screens. Marcu opened the doors of the stall, bowed, and stepped aside. There, wrapped in furs and embroidered coverlets, lay a slender man with long, dark tresses and a drooping moustache. His eyes were closed, but at Will’s approach they snapped open. They were fathomless oubliettes of night, and Will’s step faltered as at the edge of an abyss.
“You came,” the man said, his voice like the rustle of dry leaves that had blown across the stone floor upon their entrance. “You are here, and we may hope that you will find that which we seek.”
“I have not always been as you see me now.” Corbinescu waved a thin, languid hand, and Will noted the skeletal fingerbones glowing beneath the translucent skin; the nails ambered and clawlike. The prince drew in a long, delicate breath, an invalid’s fortifying breath, a predator’s scenting of the air. Marcu stirred at his post beside the opened screen, reaching into the shadows beside the stall for something Will could not see.
“I am the last Corbinescu, Lord Dovedale—may I call you by your Christian name? We are to embark together on a quest that shall bind us as brothers. Yes, the last of my house, for all the rest lie in the crypts here, uneasy in their sleep. They fear for our bloodline but are helpless to save it. That task falls to me, and I am … as you see.”
“I am eager to hear the truth of this quest. Your antiquarian has vanished into thin air and left bloody mayhem in her wake. I have been denied a refusal of your ‘commission’, despite its obvious ruse.” Will stepped closer to the bedridden prince, anger subsuming a fear that lived like an alarm in the cells of his body. He wished for sunlight and open air. “What illness grips you, sir?”
Corbinescu laughed, a dusty exhalation like the hiss of a cat, his jaw dropping open to expose his crimson gullet. His teeth were sharp and yellow.
“An illness, he names it,” he cried with manic jollity, the deep eyes flicking toward Marcu with something like a taunt glinting within them. In an instant, the laughing face collapsed into gaunt gravitas. “I have indeed been ill, William. Sick unto death, and more than death, ever since Elisabeta returned. Before her coming, I was strong. I worked to claim from the current monarchy some recognition of our history, a crumb of my birthright. I was respected, if not indulged, and my people prospered. I thought to rebuild Stanca Corbului for their good. To this work, I would return. She must be vanquished. There is a way for one who can see it and possesses the courage to walk it.”
The taunting light returned to Corbinescu’s eyes, a sly humor to his face. He struggled to a more upright position on his pillows and hunched forward like an animal preparing to pounce, his long nails scratching at the coverlet with spidery fervor.
“Come closer,” he said, his voice taking on a deep and silky tone. “The light is so dim, and I would see your face clearer.”
Tom plucked at Will’s coat sleeve. “Don’t you get no closer, Billy.”
Will took another step, the disgust he’d once felt in holding the deformed infant expelled in Algood’s surgery rising within him like a tide. With it came the desire to crush the life from this man as he had smothered it in that infant. Corbinescu leered, reading him plain, and a tremor of delight passed over the wasted frame.
In one fevered instant, the prince sprang upright, Tom dragged Will back by the sleeve he’d been plucking, and Marcu stepped forward with a silver aspergillum, its wetted tip fashioned in the form of a bird in flight, a swallow. The holy water flew in flame-kindled diamonds and struck Corbinescu in the face. The man shrieked and cowered back into the bedding, dragging a fur over his head. Marcu intoned, Asperges me, Domine … gently, he closed the screens of the stall on the quiet sobbing of the prince.
Turning to Will and Tom, he said, “I was destined for the priesthood, but Elisabeta came. My brother needed me. My voievod needs me, and I came from the monastery to serve him. Pray God, we may save him.”
“What the devil’s happening here,” Tom sputtered, his hand still on Will’s shoulder. “Billy, this ain’t no part of finding some old antiques. We’ve known it for a while now, but this—”, he flung a hand at the stall, now silent.
Will ran his fingers through his hair, his expression shuttered as he turned his gaze on Marcu. “I think you’d best explain.”
Marcu nodded, casting a glance at the stall. “Please come to my tent. He will rest now, and I will try to tell you the impossible.”
Splendid!! I crave more, more of the tale, more of your writing.
Liz, this was the perfect way to end a stormy, cozy weekend. I see this tale in my head exactly like a film (something between the Guy Ritchie Sherlock and Nosferatu) and that's all down to your credit as a storyteller 🫶