Girlebooks Presents
NACHTSTÜRM CASTLE
A Gothic Austen Novel
by Emily C.A. Snyder
© Copyright 2000, 2010 Emily C.A. Snyder
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other, except for brief quotations in printed reviews—without prior permission of the publisher.
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Published by Girlebooks at Smashwords.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. The author’s use of names of actual persons (living or dead), places, and characters is incidental to the purposes of the plot, and is not intended to change the fictional character of the work or to disparage any company or its products or services. The book has not been prepared, approved, or licensed by any persons or characters named in the text, their successors, or related corporate entitities.
Chapter I
Domestic Felicity and Other Diversions.
Mrs Catherine Tilney was a well–read girl, but not a stupid one. Perhaps at one time she had been given over to unbridled imagination that saw ghosts in every cupboard and skeletons in every shoe, but her visit to Northanger Abbey – the ancestral home of her husband – had cured her immensely, if the far more sinister Bath had not. Indeed, long ago last year, she had irrevocably put aside her childish fancies of Gothic windows and horrific closets along with her maiden name, and now was content to be the quiet wife of Henry Tilney – who sometimes liked to teaze his handsome bride about her youthful fears.
“Do you remember,” he would say, whilst reviewing the bills, “the japan closet?”
To which she would respond, “I remember your story, my love.”
“And was it a nice story?”
“Oh, very nice indeed! But nothing to the reality.”
Thus passed a happy month or two between muslin and greatcoats until the day that Henry seized upon a most excellent plan. They must tour Mrs Radcliffe’s country, and – if at all possible – stay one night in a dank and gloomy castle.
Catherine laughed, proclaiming this to be his finest jest yet, and then blushed as he pressed the programme, raising feeble objections such as, “But I am so happy here!” and “We have only just settled,” and “Nay – I have left all that behind me,” and “How shall we afford it?”
To which Henry could not help replying with a broad grin, “Oh! That does not signify! We may apply to the Viscountess, or I may preach a popish sermon – ”
“ – So that the parishioners will fill the collection in the hopes of sending you far away to a popish country?” Catherine countered.
“You perceive me very well! Perhaps I shall laud the abilities of that Corsican rogue while I’m at it and we may earn enough to go to Paris. But come, beloved, what do you think of such a scheme? We have never had a proper honeymoon, for all that I promised you one, and – ”
But Catherine interrupted him, declaring that she’d had adventures quite enough when her husband had wooed her, and that no manner of supernatural soliciting would uproot her now from her sensible and happy – yes, perfectly happy, Henry! – home.
“Nor,” said she, “shall the Woodston ghost or any such visiting change my mind.”
The ghost to whom our heroine referred was, as the clever reader has no doubt already divined, none other than Henry himself – for it had delighted our hero this past year to teaze his young bride and her fanciful imagination with none of the mercy he regularly enjoined his parishioners to shew one another. In their first month of marriage, Henry had contracted a somnambulation which manifested itself most terribly when Catherine had been too long reading in the parlour at night to satisfy an amorous bridegroom.
Later, it pleased Henry to devise curios for Catherine to find about the house: a child’s slipper, an engraved locket with a dark curl of hair, even a little chrysalis which Henry maintained all were gifts from the various ghosts that haunted Woodston and its environs. “Nor shall they be satisfied, my love,” Henry had intoned, “until their curse is broken!”
“Curse?” our heroine had asked with, it must be admitted, one eyebrow raised.
“That Woodston shall be haunted ‘til life be brought again,” Henry had replied, taking his wife’s hand and leading her with his shoulders a–slump, resignation in his voice, and a twinkle in his eye. “I’m afraid, my dear, that the parish must be peopled!”
“Well!” Catherine had laughed, “if the spectres will have it so!”
Little did it surprise Catherine, then, when a few days after Henry’s failed attempt to lure her abroad she was met one evening by a gypsy. Very broad of face she was, stooped and swathed in fantastic shawls – several of which looked suspiciously like Catherine’s parlour curtains. Hobbling up on a twisted cane, the gypsy put forth her hand and cackled, “Farthing for your fortune, miss? Hm, hm. Farthing for your fortune?”
Having just visited her dear friend Mrs. Sullivan in the village, and having just avoided the garrulous Mrs. Bates, Catherine felt disposed to part with a farthing and extend her own hand.
The gypsy minced and mewled, doing a little jig to rattle the coins and bits of wood that Catherine saw with some dismay had been tatted to her beloved poplin drapes.
“Great fortune, I see for you, young miss! Great fortune indeed! Hm, hm. A voyage I see for you, with a man – no, two men – and a puppy.”
“We are not travelling with the puppies, Henry.”
“Henry? Henry?” the gypsy cried indignantly, skipping back and forth without aid of cane. “Do you mistake Donna Fortuna for a man? Hm? Hm! But ah! Young miss has the sight herself, does she not? For here,” grasping her hand and pointing to some line or other, “yes, hm, here I see that very name. In the line that leads to young miss’s heart, hm? Yes?”
“Oh, I should think so!” our heroine laughed. The air held the warm smells of meadowlawn and honeysuckle, and everything was her delight.
“And yet,” the gypsy droned, “and yet, hm, hm, and yet I see you do not love him as well as you ought. I see he grieves. This line here, hm? Where the lines split. Grave danger, miss. Hm, hm. Donna Fortuna knows all. God give you good even, miss. Hm, hm.”
With which direful words, the gypsy hobbled down the road and out of Catherine’s sight. Our heroine lingered for a little while in the garden, the night being too fine to go indoors, particularly with the will–o–whisps dancing through the grass, but when the last of the mild twilight fell, she pushed open the door and turned the corner, completely unastonished to find Henry sitting in his favourite chair, neatly dressed as though just from service, a book of sermons in his hand, with one foot on a cushion and the puppy on his other.
He looked up to receive her kiss as she entered and hung her bonnet from its place. And for a while it pleased her to speak of nothing but how Mrs. Sullivan was getting on, about recipes she had learnt and about little Jenny Wren’s cough, until it near looked as though Henry would burst. So, smiling, Catherine settled herself in her husband’s lap and after just one more story about the cleverest knitting stitch Mrs. Allen had written to her about, she kissed her husband firmly on the lips and said, “Oh! I nearly forgot to mention. I met the strangest woman today.”
Henry released his breath of the last half hour but then caught it again as his bride stood and began carelessly removing the pins from her hair.
“What woman?” he asked.
“Some foreign woman, I’d hardly know.”
“And did she,” Henry prompted when it seemed Catherine had finished the entirety of her discourse, “perhaps say anything worth noting? I only ask,” he amended, “because you mentioned her so particularly.”
“Did I?”
“Indeed, my love, you did.”
“How extraordinary of me,” Catherine yawned. “I cannot think why. Hm, hm.” With which conclusion she might have gone to bed, except that something seemed to cross her mind and returning to her thoroughly bewildered husband, she said, “Oh, but there is one thing, Henry. I nearly forgot to ask.”
“Ask away, my heart,” came his reply.
“What does one wear in Italy?”
To which Henry made no reply at all but to swoop his lady to himself to rival any ardent Valancourt.
One argument relinquished, all others must likewise surrender, and so a month passed in bantering over carriages and clothing, acquaintances and itineraries, novels and notepaper, and every other necessity whose import rests solely in the home, and becomes inevitably burdensome abroad. For Henry must have at least one flintlock, and Catherine her trusty Radcliffe, and although the former grudgingly agreed to leave the dogs at Woodston, ‘twas far more difficult to convince Catherine that her writing desk was redundant. But at last the happy couple were packed and off – and no amount of pleasant foreboding could convince either that they were bound for an adventure which would be the envy of every Cecelia, Belinda and Emily.
Chapter II
In Which Henry Tangles with Mrs Radcliffe.
What better way is there to pass the time when one is travelling than in the exchange of tales? Most often, it is the keen–eyed stranger or the comical matron who fills the hours with prophetic news, while the importuned traveller stares with wide eyes and clenched hands. But in lieu of such a colourful person, Henry must do – and if he is not as eccentric as the normal fare, having left the poplin curtains in the parlour, yet he excels in this: that he might hold the listener quite literally in his arms.
“We shall stay along the Southern route: Provençe, Vienna, Florence – as far from the sensible English countryside as may be attained.”
“And the Umbrian Valley?” Catherine asked with great courage, although she shivered slightly in his arms.
“Naturally, my love. What better place than that named after shadows? For that is what you sought at Northanger, was it not? Most vainly, too.”
“Oh! But it is what I found in the Thorpes, I am afraid.”
“Bravo! Yes, wickedness must be slyer now. Voluminous capes are not at all the fashion and attract attention either in Town or Shire. Skulking, too, is frowned upon. Villainy must take on a greater mask than a bit of cloth – it must take on the very face of sanctity; it must have all the appearance of good and none of the goodness.”
“Henry, how you talk so!”
“No! But consider, Catherine. We shall come to the Umbrian Valley, with its tangled vines and brambled trees, a massy castle in the distance, rising upon a cliff, with the sun setting incarnadine against the swollen clouds. And in the east, the moon obscured by those same billowing clouds that threaten a terrible rain. And supposing our carriage – rattling up the winding mountainside – were stuck for some duration in the mud (for although it has not yet rained, yet there is mud), and I were to jump out to help the servants move the carriage upward, when – lo! There comes a man dressed in a many caped greatcoat – yea, more capes than mine. No, say not it is impossible, Catherine – who with but one push frees the carriage. Then with a tip of the hat – and yes, it is a very tall hat and the brim just wide enough to obscure his features if the poor light were not sufficient – he disappears.
“Only imagine what terror must possess you then as I relay the whole to you. You should draw the curtains, you should beg to turn around, you should not desire to sleep in a castle or an abbey, you should suspect that man of grave doings – do not sigh so! Of course I must use that word – you should suspect him of everything that is evil. And why should you not? He did not, like any honest man, sweat and grunt and then offer his hand once the deed was accomplished. He offered no name – no name, nor no card. The ill–bred monster indeed, my love. He should be thrown out of Bath in a trice! But imagine our surprise when we never hear from this gentleman again! When our stay at the castle, while suitable drafty, is nothing more awful than that? What if – oh horrors – we learn that he is the younger, athletic son of a local Doge, happily married, with fifteen children! And worse, that his only crime was committed at the tender age of seven, when he stole a biscuit from the kitchen.”
“Henry, you are teazing me. There shall be no rain, nor castle, nor mysterious stranger. I have learnt, darling. You cannot fool me again. Hm?”
“I’ve no desire to ‘fool’ you – if indeed such a word can become an action. I merely paint a scene to pass the time.”
“I might have read passages of Udolpho to you, if that were all you desired.”
“But then you should be pressed up against the door, squinting in the little sunlight. Our current position is enviable – I assure you.”
“I faint to hear what bedtime tales you recite to our children!”
The conversation at this point was discontinued until the next day, when Henry found Catherine standing on the deck of the channel ferry. She held her bonnet in her hands, and the loose wisps of dark hair flew around her face, making her look more the part of the heroine than e’er before. Henry himself was not meanly composed, as Catherine’s eyes reflected when she turned rosy cheeked to face him. The wind nipped but did not freeze, and so the two stood joyfully at the rail – remarking on this perspective or that as the more picturesque.
After some half–hour, when it was generally agreed that one view of the sea is fairly much like another, Henry took up the strain of the previous day’s conversation.
“I repent for my hasty words yesterday.”
“Do you, Mr Tilney?”
“Yes, indeed. I perceive now that I was grievously wrong.”
“And so you were, dearest. I have no fear of brambly miles – I have travelled very well alone, you know.”
He coloured at this, remembering his Father’s, General Tilney’s, own villainy in turning the then Miss Catherine Morland from his home. But rallying, he smiled and said, “Is that hint meant for me? I would by all means leave you to your new–found courage, if that is your heart’s desire...for you know I care for nothing else. Shall I throw myself into the sea for your comfort?”
“No! Nay!” our heroine cried, grabbing his arm as he placed his foot upon the ledge.
“I pray thee, fair damsel – do not arrest me. Thy beauty is too much to bear!”
“Oh, Henry!” she laughed, and pulled him to herself.
He immediately took her arm in his and proceeded to stroll the deck. And if there was a gleam of pride in his eye as he paraded his young wife – can we blame him?
“You must allow me to make amends for my terrible story,” he insisted after several minutes.
“You have already.”
“I have apologised, but I have not amended.”
“I fear your amendments, beloved.”
“As well you ought. But I have spent a long restless night – I only seemed asleep, my love – thinking of our mysterious stranger, and I have concluded that I painted him very ill.”
“What?” Catherine laughed. “Only ten children?”
“Such a fine family could never belong to one such as him, my dear.”
“Then he has no family?”
He bowed.
“No wife either?”
“What purpose can a wife serve in such a romance?”
“Ah ha! I have found you out now, sir! A wife has a great part in romance!”
“Only on the final page – or better, in an attic.”
“And his is quite mad above?”
“You forget: we determined that he had no wife.”
“May he yet?” Catherine asked, her voice rising to betray her mere nineteen years.
“I certainly would not hope so!” was our hero’s feeling response.
“How cruel!”
“Is it cruelty, madam, to guard you from this man?”
“I?”
“ – Nay, ‘tis duty.”
“Henry!”
“I dare say, if he is a decent chap, I may challenge him to a duel, what?”
“I shall take your flintlock from you!”
“Then may I have your Radcliffe?”
“Darling, you have surpassed her already.”
“Thus am I content.”
The remainder of their sea voyage passed with no prolonged reiteration of the matter. But Catherine’s suspicions had been piqued. What could Henry mean by teazing her so? The question, coupled with the romantic destination he himself had chosen and his means of convincing her to journey there, seemed to imply that a staged adventure would be their fate. No matter, she thought, although she had fallen prey once before to his gentle mockerys and had found herself cowering before linen, she would not do so again.
“I shall be perfectly sensible,” she said vehemently to herself that evening. Which, this statement being made the same evening as she first stepped foot in France, a nation not historically known for her discretion, may have given a more thoughtful heroine pause.
Yet all the same, that night Catherine dreamt once more of Tilneys and trapdoors.
Chapter III
Wherein our Adventurers Encounter the Foreign and Familiar.
Their first stop was the Paris of Napoleon during that brief Treaty of Amiens. There they viewed all the great monuments, from Versailles to the Place de la Bastille. Having arrived just before September, they missed the third exposition in the Louvre by a mere fortnight – which grieved Henry greatly once he learnt of it – and they missed Evalina’s authoress, Frances Burney, by eight months – which Catherine, being completely without prescience, grieved not at all. They did see the future Empress several times as they perused the more expensive shops on the more expensive boulevards – but since neither of them knew who she was, they thought little of her.
The edifice which excited the sensibilities of our heroine the most was the great Cathedral of Notre Dame. The day they journeyed there happened to be politely grey, throwing weird shadows over the towers and buttresses, making the gargoyles seem more ominous and the saints more æthereal. Catherine entered the hallowed place with large eyes and flushed cheeks, her fingers gripping her husband’s arm in awe and righteous fear. She could not look upward enough to the ancient windows and vaulted ceilings. Every side chapel was greeted with a stifled gasp – which gasps caused Henry to chuckle and Catherine to blush. Even in its semi-dilapidated state, with the shattered hall of Kings and occasional forgotten bale of hay, the Lady of Paris brooded with the mysteries of the ages.
It was, Catherine acknowledged guiltily to herself, everything she had dreamt Northanger Abbey would be. In that dim monument, she half expected to hear the distant weeping of an imprisoned Emily. And in her imagination, she nearly did.
Thus, when the great bells rang out the noon hour, joined by all the smaller bells of Paris that had survived the recent Terror, our heroine started and yelped aloud. Such an outburst, so wholly inappropriate in that holy place and yet so thoroughly Catherine, amused our hero to no end. Particularly when, a moment later, pungent incense wafted from the nave, a choir of voices rose in Latin hymn, and Catherine , overcome with emotion, fainted.
That she had wanted to faint her whole life, and that she had hoped – as all women secretly do – that there would be a handsome man nearby with quick reflexes, as there was, still could not excuse the absurdity of the location. Fortunately, that place being so large, Catherine’s momentary lapse was noted by none but Henry – who had also hoped one day to catch Catherine in his arms and thought it rather better than his dreams to do so in Notre Dame. One other observed the incident, a Dominican sister in prayer who, being French, rather thought that the English girl should have remained in her gentleman’s arms significantly longer.
Regardless, Catherine awoke some moments later to Henry’s cheerful laughter, which caused our heroine to blush and beg her groom to quit the place at once. Henry obliged, still chuckling to himself as they made their way past the transept. Our hero was justly chastened by his first viewing of the rose window, however – for while his wife’s habit was exclamation, his was silence – and so in quiet reverence he stood gazing for some fifteen minutes at that majesty, at the end of which Catherine laughed at him, wondering at the effect of beauty upon her husband.
“Should I be jealous?” she teazed, as they made their way back to the courtyard. “Or shall I have my likeness cast in glass to keep your affections?”
“Neither,” he answered with good humour. “My affections are eternally yours.”
“Until some beauty arrives.”
“What is some beauty when I have all beauty beside me? But I do wonder if it would be terribly inappropriate to remove that window to Woodston. But regard, love, how its frame is weakened. An hour with a lever might do the trick.”
“Shall you wear a cockade and cry revolution?” Catherine asked. “I cannot think it of you!”
“Can you not, Catherine?” Henry asked, affronted. “Can you not think of me atop a monument, waving a sword about and shouting, ‘Pour Liberté!’”
“Oh, certainly, Henry,” Catherine replied at once, “that’s all right. But as for the rest, for the...the deaths...th-the guillotine, I mean. No, Henry, I cannot think it of you. You rescue souls in another fashion, my love, and one I daresay far more sensible! As for the window,” she continued, “I’ll not have a thief for a husband!”
“No, but I shall have a thief for a wife – for you have quite stolen my heart, dearest Catherine.”
Thus much conversation brought them out to the courtyard where, much to Catherine’s delight, they were met by a real, live gypsy.
She was dressed significantly worse than the Woodston variety, being shockingly short on bangles and tassels, and whose dress was ornamented with nothing more exotic than grime. She dragged two similarly grubby children with her, one by the hand and the other by the ear, and harangued them noisily. The tongue was unknown to either Henry or Catherine, or the Dominican sister who had decided to continue her rosary outside in order to watch the amusing English couple. However, if the Romany woman’s words were unknown, her meaning was perfectly clear.
With a final shove, the woman sent the elder child careening into Henry’s side – now lighter by the weight of a purse. The child came away dancing and laughing to his mother, who gave him a sharp knock on the ear which sent him tumbling into another gentleman who neatly staved off the urchin with a well-placed cane. Thus the gypsy might have continued were not Henry in a heroic state of mind and decided to give chase.
Round and around they ran, and if the child was nimbler, then Henry was more determined. He cornered the boy at last at the edge of the Seine, interrupting an over-ardent Creole gentleman and an immediately grateful New England woman. Grabbing the struggling child by one ear, Henry shook him good-naturedly, dislodging coins of every country and denomination, several rings, a pearl necklace and – much to Henry’s excitement – a round of stained glass. The purse Henry gave to Catherine, the remainder of the treasure he gave to the Dominican sister, who was thoroughly enjoying herself, and the round of stained glass Catherine pried out of Henry’s grasp and also gave to the religious. As for the boy, Henry marched him up to the gypsy.
His mother, affronted by both the loss of her treasure as well as the return of her elder son, turned the whole of her anger on Henry, who replied in kind – attempting various sermons on the eighth commandment in English, French and Latin. Thus they may have continued for some time, for Catherine had observed that behind his genial demeanour Henry could be shockingly pigheaded, except that Catherine broke between them and shouted, “Enough!”
Turning to her husband, she said, “You have your purse, Henry, if he hasn’t stolen it again.” A firm shake from Henry revealed that the boy had, and had taken Catherine’s bookmark as well. Once she had recovered these, our heroine in righteous indignation turned her fury upon the astonished gypsy. “And as for you! You are nothing like I imagined. Really! Have you no sense of professional dignity? Not one shawl? I am terribly, terribly disappointed!”
Then the strangest thing imaginable happened. The gypsy woman, looking for the first time directly at Catherine, fell to her knees, moaning and doing our heroine homage as though the new Mrs. Tilney were the Madonna. Catherine, finding this behaviour exotically acceptable, nodded as the woman continued to babble, dragging down her elder son with her and muttering something that sounded promisingly like “Fortune.”
“There!” Catherine cried, vastly pleased with herself. “I knew that all she required was a sensible talking-to. Very good! This is very good! Don’t you think she’s very good, Henry? Only, I don’t think we ought to ask our fortunes from her after all. We’d have to have her draw it for us, since we cannot understand her. Merci, madame, mais nous ne desirons pas une...oh, what’s the word for fortune, Henry? Une...fortune...I suppose she hears the word often enough. Non, pas de fortune pour nous. No, good Heavens, Henry! She’s kissing my shoes! Non, non, arrêtez-vous! Ne pas baisez pas de tout – ne pas! Pas des...kissing. What is that the right construction, Henry? Non! Allez-vous! Dear me, they’re amorous! Stop this at once! Here, here – a coin! Yes, very pretty English coin. And another? Yes, certainly I have another. And one for the boy as well. And another. And – Henry, have you a coin? Non, non! Pas de...shoes. Henry? Henry!”
Henry replied that if he had intended to pay them, he should have let the urchin keep his wallet.
Perceiving that her husband intended to be no help at all, Catherine did her best to extricate herself from the gypsy and her son. Which is to say that she did not do well at all and came out of the affair several pounds the lighter. The gypsy thus satisfied, she once again resumed her game of tossing the eldest child at likely victims – which now included the amorous Creole, much to the long-suffering New Englander’s delight.
“And what is your opinion of gypsies now?” Henry asked, offering his bride his arm as they quit that place.
“I think,” Catherine declared, holding tight her reticule to her breast, “that the reality is very much worse than the fiction dressed in poplins!”
“And do you prefer the poplins?”
“Oh! Immeasurably.”
“Then let us only deal with poplined villains. Nothing more, I swear, will go unplanned,” Henry concluded, to which Catherine very readily agreed!
Their stay in gay Paris ended a se’ennight after their arrival to the continent, on which night they attended l’Opéra’s performance of Gluck’s Orfée et Eurydice. Ever the scholar, Henry could not help commenting on the French disposition to translate every work to their native tongue, as well as the ridiculous supposition that the Greek underworld was peopled by the patches and pompadours of the previous century. Catherine – who had difficulty enough following the libretto – could only smile and sigh in long suffering.
Come the final intermezzo, Henry turned to her and asked, “Am I that tiresome, darling?”
“Not at all, my love,” said she. “It is only the strain of so much French – I’m afraid that my education lent itself to patriotism.”
“As well it should. Only imagine if you had read Voltaire and Rabelais!” Perceiving her wan smile, he hastened to add in the concerned tones of the newly married, “But perhaps you already long for England?”
As though that word had been a summons, there came from behind them a loud, cheerful voice calling, “England, eh? What? Gracious! Maggie, darling, stop chattering at the Marquise and come see what I’ve found!” And with that, in burst the most rosy, handsome, hullooing couple that had ever stepped out from a portrait.
Henry hardly had time to stand before his hand was firmly grasped by the gentleman who had spoken, and who continued to speak, saying, “Pleasure to meet you, quite a pleasure. Eh, Maggie?”
This last was directed at the lady, who laughed and stepped forward, embracing Catherine as if they were old acquaintances, and kissing her cheeks in the French custom. “Such a delight,” she effused, still holding Catherine’s hands. “One meets with so many foreigners when one is abroad!”
“D—nable number of foreigners, I dare say,” the gentleman agreed. “One longs to hear a scrap of sensible English now and again.”
“Forgive me,” Henry interrupted, reclaiming his lady, “have we met?”
“Oh, Lord! Quite went out of my mind – why I feel as though we’ve known each other for an age. But that’s what comes of good English stock. Robert Wiltford, Baron of Branning – ”
“And Brandenburg,” his wife cut in.
“And Brandenburg,” he agreed. “Horrible, drafty place. And this is my wife, Margaret, Lady Branning.”
“And Brandenburg. Although I really wish I weren’t!” Lady Branning (and Brandenburg) laughed. I have trouble enough with the servants I brought, let alone those at home. I hardly need another set!”
“And so depressingly foreign, too,” her husband agreed. “Not a single Englishman among ‘em. Makes you despair of ever getting good service abroad.”
“Well,” the lady amended, “except for him.”
“Yes, yes. If you could call him English. Or servile.”
“English? I should hardly call him human!”
“But I daresay you’ve found the same difficulties with your servants, my dear,” Lady Branning continued, turning bright eyes upon our heroine who blushed and began to demure that she had brought no one – except that Henry saved her, saying:
“Noble company, indeed,” Henry replied, also bowing. “I’m afraid you shall find us quite common.”
“Oh – are you common?” Lady Branning exclaimed, her limpid eyes glowing. “Are you very common?”
“How common?” Lord Branning muttered.
“A pastor merely. Reverend Henry Tilney, and my wife, the reverenced Catherine Tilney.”
“How romantic! And your first time abroad, too, I dare say. How long will you stay?”
“Tomorrow, alas, we depart from this fair city.”
“Whither?”
“South.”
“South! Oh, Robert – do you think…?” Lord Branning replied that indeed he did. And then, with puffed chests and locked fingers, they turned to our couple and said – overlapping each other in their excitement – that they’d a castle in the Alps.
“Just a small thing really,” Lord Branning said, “but well enough for you two, I dare say. I inherited it from an uncle of mine – which is the cause of this venture to the ghastly continent – and I hardly know what to do with the thing.”
“Musty, quite musty,” Lady Branning affirmed. “And all those dreary tapestries. And the stairs, darling! One never knew what one might find!”
“Or whom.”
“Or whom....”
Clearing his throat, Lord Branning exclaimed, “Except that it was inherited, I might sell the thing off. But I’ve had half a mind to let it to the occasional English chap – matter of fact, I was just telling the Vicomte d’Etoillieux, that if I happened upon an English chap tonight, I’d let the thing to him – if he seemed a decent sort – or else, if all of Europe couldn’t provide me with one true blooded British man, I’d sell the thing right off. But d—n me if you didn’t come along! Come, come, lend me a scrap of paper – the back of one of your sermons will do, Tilney – and we’ll settle accounts this instant!”
Catherine was reluctant to accept the offer, remembering her previous incident with the gypsy and her subsequent vow to seek out the safe, known, and predictable. But then, she thought, Henry had made the same vow, and if he had made such a vow and still thought this course was no more dire than any stay in Northanger Abbey, then the adventure should be cheerily dull indeed! In fact, she considered, it was not unthinkable that Henry had arranged this newest enterprise from the very first – and therefore, she reasoned, it would be the height of ingratitude to object to the journey, having already embarked upon it. And, she concluded, if Henry had planned the whole thing, then it was very possible that her future might hold...secret passageways.
With thus much inducement, a paper was quickly produced – ripped from a blank page in Udolpho – and within a half an hour the whole was settled, with much adieuing on every side, in time for the final triumphant scene of L’Amour over le Mort. Even the erroneously joyful conclusion to the tragic Grecian myth could not diminish Henry’s good humour, and his comments were less acerbic than they might have been.
“Nachtstürm Castle,” he repeated, grinning boyishly. “What a perfectly dreadful name. Well, it mayn’t be the Apennines, but I hope it shall suffice?”
“Of course, my love. What fortunate coincidence!” Catherine agreed with a smile and a gentle touch. For she was assured now, as she had only suspected before, that there was nothing coincidental at all when Henry Tilney was concerned.
Chapter IV
Which Brings Us, By Means of the Mediterranean, to the Alps; In the Manner of a Travel Journal
There is little on this earth more beautiful than the Southern lands of Europe, when one is in want of Mountains. Who does not marvel at the dawn, when the dawn is viewed over the rolling hills in the provinces of Lyons? Who is not awed by the dusk that creeps over the lilac strewn terraces of Provençe? Who could not, upon first viewing the blue–green shimmer of the Riviera, cry with ineffable joy the existence of the True, the Good and the Beautiful? There is no such person.
In this land, so remote, so fantastic, even cynicism and unbelief must bow to impossible reality. In this land, where holy men have trod in meekness, recognising their humble nature to One greater than the mountains, the visitor must likewise meekly tread.
To the South, through lands of awesome majesty, the Tilneys travelled – savouring each vista, as one greets a strain of heartrending music. They visited the grounds of a Benedictine monastery, stopping simultaneously to listen as the Evening Prayer was raised in time with the bells. They wandered hand in hand through vineyards and copses – whose twisting paths were such that Henry was once obliged to carry his beloved in his arms. Their stay in Southern France was idyllic – providing Henry with beauty on every side, and Catherine with castles and abbeys enough for a lifetime.
So spent they a happy overture in France. But every lover must come at last to Italy, whose warm clime invites kisses, and whose people look tenderly on the sacramental love. So to Italy Henry and Catherine went, sorry to leave the paradise they had found, but joyful to set eyes upon that place which gave romance its name. Along the coast they travelled, then inward to those ancient cities: Bologna, Milano, Pisa, Roma, Verona, Firenze, Venezia, and upward once again.
Each place had its wonders: the University, the twisted Leaning Tower, Juliet’s balcony, the melancholy song of the gondoliers. Rome was swathed in light, shining on the Spanish Steps, flooding through St. Peter’s, touching on the Forum’s ruined temples, and slanting through the walkways of the Colosseum. Florence was no less breath–taking, from the Ponte Vecchio to the Duomo, from Santa Croce to the stone garden of the Medici’s. The mountains of France were mirrored in the monuments of Italy: the one of granite, the other of marble, both leading the glance heavenward.
But neither could compare with the gargantuan natural edifice that was the mountain upon which Nachtstürm Castle rose. It was a mountain made of the darkness between two lightning bolts. It was made less of earth than Stygian frost. Whole towns fell away as they ascended, as though the ranks of black and frowning conifers waged war against the humans below. Even the path – rather narrow and rarely straight – seemed less made by centuries of pilgrim feet and more by the trace of some careless demon’s claw.
It was, in fact, perfect.
They took two days for the journey, and may have taken three except that upon learning after supper that they were perhaps only another hour or two from the castle, they decided to press on. Lanterns were lit, and they were off, as the harvest moon rose large and yellow on their right. Catherine soon fell asleep, lulled by the rocking motion of the carriage, and Henry too might have dozed lightly, except that it began to rain. ‘Twas no more than a patter, but the threat of thunder rumbled always just above them. Still they travelled, winding through the narrow pass, the driver’s heya and whip blending into the night. Then with a clatter and a thump, the carriage stopped – stuck in the mud. Henry glanced outside, his arms tightening instinctively around his beloved. But their guides, even with the help of Henry’s man, were unable to move the carriage forward, and the horses were frightened with the brewing storm. Henry must come out.
He kissed Catherine’s brow and laid her gently on the seat, before climbing out to aid the others. His greatcoat whipped about his face as he rounded to the back, relieving the driver who attended to the horses. The left wheel had stuck in a ditch and the whole carriage must be lifted and pushed if the wheel was not to break.
“Remove the luggage,” Henry instructed, doing so himself.
That accomplished they attempted again, with as little success. Boots slipping in the mud, fingers red and cracking, night blind, they shoved again and again to no avail.
“It’s nae coming out, sir,” his driver, Colin, said.
“Can we walk?”
“What! On a night like this! With tha missus? Begging tha pardon, but tha’d be dicked in th’nob to do so.”
Henry smiled grimly. “I see. And what do you suggest?”
“I’ve nowt to suggest, sir.”
“Thank God for Yorkshire,” Henry muttered. “Right then – on three...”
Four shoulders pressed against the carriage, ready to – in their ignorance – break the wheel in half, when a voice called out, “Prego! Entschuldigung!”
“Who’s there!” Henry cried, abandoning his post.
Four men held their breaths as a man stepped forth in a flash of lightning. He was fair complected, and dark of hair and brow and eye. No hat wore he, nor any coat – but the green vested costume of the Austrians. But though his garments were simple, he bore himself like a king.
“A friend,” said he, in perfect English.
“Coo,” Colin breathed. “I’ll be diggered.”
Henry’s own face had gone very white, and his eyes flickered several times to the carriage as though he could see through it and to his lady.
The gentleman approached, saw the dilemma, and at once instructed them all in the uses of the lever. Even with the aid of such a machine, their cheeks were flushed and their brows sweating by the time they freed the carriage and set it right. The stranger’s eyes were especially brightened by the exercise, and he turned with heightened good humour to his compatriots, shaking hands with each in turn. To Henry he gave a small bow, saying, “William Wiltford, Baron of…. At your service, sir!”
Henry repeated the honour, offering his own name. At this, the young man’s cheeks blushed and he bit his lip, dark eyes flitting agitatedly about. “You will pardon me, sir,” he said after a moment, “whither are you bound?” Henry provided the information – and curious about this stranger’s surname as the stranger was about Henry’s own. “Ah,” the stranger replied. “And your wife is with you?” Seeing Henry’s protective reaction, the stranger amended, saying, “I am indeed related to Lord Branning, Mr Tilney. He is my cousin. And I am his caretaker.”
Now it was Henry’s turn to say, “Ah,” and to bow once more. “Were you bound for Nachtstürm, sir?” he inquired of the stranger.
“Yes. I often...I realise it is strange to walk about at night but I had...” The youth flushed again and bowed. “You will want to hasten to shelter, sir. I shall follow you on foot. It is my custom.”
“Well,” Henry said, “if it is custom!”
The servants had retrieved the luggage, making such a clatter as they whispered to one another about “Young Will” as they had taken to call him that Catherine had roused. Seeing they were stopped and that Henry was gone, she at first was disposed to cry out – but presently she heard her husband’s voice outside and so hastened to join him. She had not yet completed her descent before Henry espied her and rushed to her side, helping her from the carriage. Since the acquaintance with the stranger could hardly be avoided, our hero took it upon himself to introduce his wife to William.
That man’s eyes grew large, and he almost pulled back rather than bow as he first regarded Catherine. “Cos’è questa cosa?” he whispered, and then, “Fortuna!” His fingers moved restlessly by his side as though he should touch her, but feared to find she was a ghost. Turning suddenly to Henry, he said, “You will pardon me. I must go. I shall meet you presently. Old Edric will assist you at Nachtstürm. Forgive me.” And with that he hurried away with haunted eyes.
Catherine held her husband’s hand quite firmly, her own eyes as wide as William’s had been.
“Catherine,” Henry began, but she shook her head and laughed.
“It does not signify, Henry. I am not afraid. You cannot frighten me.”
“Frighten you!” Henry exclaimed, aiding her back into the carriage. “What do you mean!”
For answer, she kissed him, and settled against his chest for the final mile to Nachtstürm.
Chapter V
The Arrival.
What a mile was that, which led our heroes to Nachtstürm! A more miserable mile has never been travelled! What rain, what thunder, what lightning, what puddles! What jolts and bumps and shocks and swearing brought that lumbering carriage to its destination! What terror possessed her – what concern possessed him! With what trepidation did they alight; with what anxiety did they enter!
Nachtstürm was all its name implied, and worse – rising like some terrible, wingèd god from the twisted mountains; grey, dismal, massive – its corners a vigilant face staring like a stone Behemoth upon its black domain. The lanterns seemed like torches; the servants seemed like goblins. No moat, alas, did Nachtstürm provide, but a chasm between mountaintops, spanned by a natural bridge more perilous than could be hoped. The drawbridge of necessity dispensed with, a portcullis rising five times the height of man must make amends. And if an apple grove were clearly visible to the left, yet an imposing tower loomed on the right.
The spinster that greeted them, unfortunately, left much to be desired. Her hair was caught in many thick braids, true, and her skin bore signs of softening age and shifting beauty, and she even had grace enough to be dour when they arrived, but she was not – by any stretch of the imagination – dour and mute.
“Gruß Gött,” she intoned formally – in a voice more funereal than epithalamian, greeting them in the proper manner – which is to say, from the top of a winding staircase, and candle lit below. “Hereinkommen Sie.” When Catherine hesitated, she glanced sharply at them, looking twice at Catherine, saying, “Sind Sie Herr und Frau Heinrich Tilney, ja?”
Henry affirmed this.
“Hereinkommen, denn.”
With such a demand, apparent more from her raised eyebrow and disapproving lips than from her language, she continued to speak in such a manner – which was to say, not English – and from which they gleaned only this: her name was Helga.
She led them into the castle, instructing – at least, they supposed it was instruction – the servants to take the trunks and other travelling cases upstairs, while she brought them to another wing entirely. Catherine clung close to Henry – who was gallantly attempting to appear attentive to their morbid guide – staring with great joy at the ancient tapestries and sconces. The corridors were properly shrouded, affording the occasional broken mirror or tattered hanging. Through innumerable dark passages, past two courtyards and one garden, up five sets of stairs – several of which wound tightly – Fräulein Helga led them, directing them in the ways of Nachtstürm as they went. No Tudor Cotswold home, half-sunken and twisting, could compare to the labyrinthine passages of Nachtstürm.
A few words they picked out, “Herr Wilhelm” being foremost among them. Only once did she repeat that gentleman’s strange cry of “Fortuna,” the Romantic word stumbling stiffly off her tongue, and that when Catherine tarried a moment to glance down a hall that seemed more still and cold than the others and which reminded her – silly enough, she supposed – of Mrs. Tilney’s room in Northanger Abbey. “Donna…Fortuna,” the lady had said, sucking in her breath, then snapping, “Kommen Sie!”
At last they came to what they supposed were to be their own rooms, for Fräulein Helga’s disapproving gaze and direct gesture could mean no less. The presence of their trunks and belongings also seemed to affirm their surmise. A moment’s glance was enough to comprehend the room’s general tenor. It was large and high ceilinged, with many cheerful red hangings, which – Catherine suspected – might look ominous once the multitude of hearty candles were extinguished. The furniture was made of an elegant cherry wood, comfortably upholstered in a similarly warm hue, and admirably situated for Henry’s unfortunate habit of leaving coats and stockings everywhere.
“Yes – the room would do very well,” Henry declared amiably to Fräulein Helga.
“I dare say it does well, love,” Catherine said, removing her pelisse. “I would expect no less from you!”
Henry gave her a puzzled glance, and then turned to Fräulein Helga, asking her in broken German when they might expect Old Edric or Mr Wiltford. She replied, “Bald,” and closed the doors with great ceremony.
There was very little to be done except to stare out at the flashing rain, rifle through their belongings, explore the suite – which was more extensive than their initial glance had led them to believe – and wonder aloud at the strangeness of Nachtstürm’s inhabitants. And if a few connubial kisses were exchanged, who was there to tell?
After some three–quarters of an hour, by which time Catherine and Henry had conveniently forgotten the outside world altogether, a sharp crack sounded at the door. Henry rose swiftly to open it, motioning Catherine to stay within. He need not have feared though, for the man at the door was none other than Colin who came “to tell thee that we’ve been put just down an round the corner, iffn tha’d need us.” Henry thanked his man and closed the door with great relief, leaning against the wood and smiling foolishly at Catherine. He had not time to bar the door as well, though, before another rap came, this one knobbly and rat–a–tat–tat. “Alt Edric,” was the answer to Henry’s, “Wer ist?”
Once more the doors opened to reveal not Fräulein Helga’s melancholy countenance, nor Colin’s rugged, good–humoured one, but a rather the hunched and bitter form of Old Edric himself, standing in all his ghostly splendour in the dark shadows of the corridor. He must once have been a tall man, but age had bent his shoulders as time had bent his soul. Still, he was large and strong for a man of sixty, and his clear, blue eye was as sharp as his tongue. His hair reflected the castle – sleek and grey, with hints of white about the temples. There was about him a sort of agelessness, like lichen or duff is ageless. And his voice was the voice of sifting dust that settles in the orifices and suffocates the listener.
“You will want to speak in your native tongue?” he asked, biting the edges of each word.
“Only if it would not over–inconvenience you,” Henry declared. “I know a smattering of Deutsche, just enough to torture your sensibilities and miscommunicate all I desire to say. Yes, English would be much preferred.”
“As you wish, Herr Tilney. In this place, this no–place of the Alps, one must know many languages – if one is to remain for any duration.” And here he gave Catherine the most troubled, hateful glance, which was immediately replaced with a conciliatory fawning which both heroes found more troublesome than this gentleman’s strange behaviour. He desired to know how long they were staying, he apologised for the seasonable weather – which he assured them would quickly turn to snow – and generally made such an awkward fuss over their comfort that they were most discomforted.
He walked around the room, pointing out the bell–pull and other such modern conveniences, and so doing walked very close to Catherine. Of the three they met, he alone did not say, “Fortuna,” but he did regard her closely with those blue, almost colourless hawk eyes. “Frau Tilney,” he said, an unusual smile overcoming his face. “You will like Nachtstürm most of all, I think.” She readily admitted to liking it very much already, which admission made Henry laugh fondly. “Ah,” Old Edric said quickly, “there is much history between you. And much you wish to discuss. I leave you – the hour grows late. Breakfast is at your convenience. Nachtstürm is...you may think of Nachtstürm as your home.”
And with that he might have closed the doors with even greater ceremony than Fräulein Helga, but for Catherine’s query when they might see Mr Wiltford. “I’m afraid we left him on the road – or he left us, in great agitation! If you think that it will snow tonight and he has not yet returned – !”
Old Edric’s lip curled, as though the idea of William lost in a snowstorm or buried beneath an avalanche pleased him mightily. Shrugging, he only said, “Herr Wilhelm knows these mountains well. You met him on the road, you say?”
“We did,” Henry affirmed. “And most strangely, too!”
“Ja,” Edric sighed, pulling at the few evening grizzles on his cheek. Almost, he looked kindly as he confided, “Herr Wilhelm is…troubled. He is haunted by the ghosts of those he knew, as all of his line are. He lost his father, oh most tragically, only six months ago.”
“What happened?” Catherine asked eagerly.
Edric, who by this point had reentered the room and wandered almost immediately to the fireplace where he now stood silhouetted like the Lord of Embers, answered her, “Most tragic. It is not a tale for the faint of heart. I would not trouble you, your first night here at Nachtstürm. You must tell your wife, Herr Tilney, that not all stories should be heard.”
“I may tell her that,” Henry conceded, “but I doubt she will heed me. She loves every sort of horror and we have come expressly for that purpose.”
“Very well,” Edric replied with not so much a bow as a shift in weight. Catherine drew close to Henry on the ottoman and the ageing servant began:
“The late baron, my master, the cousin of – ” and here he sniffed, “Lord Branning….”
“And Brandenburg,” Catherine supplied.
Edric stopped in the act of stirring the fire, raised a brow and muttered, “So. Was a man of many troubles. Plagued, or so he said, by the ghost of all his ancestors. Many times I saw him sitting here, just where you are now – for this was his room, before….” He waved his hand and continued. “Often I would hear him converse with the air: now speaking with his father, long-since deceased; now calling for his wife – a woman of his invention, for he never married; and most often arguing with his brother who went down as a youth to Nachtväl…and never returned.”
“Nachtväl?” Catherine asked.
“The town we passed through, love,” Henry supplied.
“Ja, so,” Edric said, hands clasped behind his back and gimlet eyes fixed steadily on the waning flames as though surveying the village even now. “There is a sort of sickness in the Väl. There gypsies from the southern towns run free and it is said that they will steal the very soul of man. I have heard of children who have lost their shadows to the gypsies’ nimble hands. Of wives who have lost their tears like diamonds from their eyes. And of men who have lost their hearts and so have lost their minds. You have seen a gypsy take a coin from you? Imagine if she took a kiss. A coin you may regain; it was never yours. But to lose yourself for the sake of their bright scarves – well. It is better not to go to Nachtväl.”
“But the old Baron’s brother did? William’s uncle.”
Edric sneered and said, “His uncle by blood, perhaps, but not by birth. Wilhelm is no Wiltford.”
“But you said Will’s father, the Baron…” Catherine essayed.
“That boy is no son of Brandenburg!” Edric cried, turning to her. “You will remember this, please!”
Henry admitted that they could hardly forget, and somewhat satisfied, Edric returned to his story. “My master spoke with the ghost of his brother most of all, and when he did the Baron would grow most abusive, beating his chest and wringing his hands and calling me every sort of name – calling me the devil himself.
“Once, he even tried to kill me. Here,” touching the place above his heart. “He burnt through me with his fire. But it is no matter. He was not well. I nursed him as best I could, when the fits were not upon him, until the day that…that child arrived, one year ago. You said you met Herr Wilhelm on the road, did you not, Herr Tilney? Did you not wonder, then, at his behaviour? I should think he looked most strangely at your wife.
“He arrived, as I say, one year ago. Very wild. On a night much like this. And he claimed to be the Baron’s son. But as I said, my master never married. Oh, he had taken women to his bed, and some may have borne his children – who can say? And the woman who had driven my master mad – another of those southern folk, a gypsy, as you can guess – had indeed been delivered of a boy. But they did not live long. I would not tell you of their fate, this late and with a view overlooking where – well, where she threw herself and the boy over the cliff’s edge, there beyond the graveyard. He was only seven. A bastard child, and a troublesome, as these half-blood children often are, but my master felt the loss most deeply. No, Frau Tilney, it is better not to look, unless you should run mad too and throw yourself from this window.”
Catherine regained her seat, although she dearly longed to glance out and see if perhaps some ghost floated above the distant chasm. “Why did she do such a thing?” she asked.
Edric sniffed. “Who can say? Perhaps she was ambitious. Perhaps she argued with the Baron when he would not marry her and so broke his heart instead. I cannot say. She left us one more mystery: for while her body was found, the child’s was not.”
“Then William may be the Baron’s natural son after all!” Henry said.
“It may be so. The Baron certainly thought it so, when this ‘Wilhelm’ arrived, drenched and shivering, lips blue from the cold and said he was the Baron’s son, alive and well and able to be touched…. Well, you can imagine how my maddened master took him in his arms. But I? I was not fooled – no. Where was the ancestral locket that his harlot mother bore and which had not been found with her body? Why did this so-called heir of Brandenburg speak Italian better than his native tongue? Why, in fact, did he speak your tongue as well as Church Latin? No, I do not trust this boy.