Angels of Istanbul, page 6
She could test the matter tomorrow, and she knew just the sceptic to take with her to be sure.
They had dealt with the paperwork in shirtsleeves, Frank summarizing his letters, Radu pacing and dictating, Frank writing. It took half the time it had once taken Radu alone—he was not a great hand at penmanship, and he struggled to concentrate on florid letters for long enough to glean their meaning under the petty phrases. Secretary had been an inspired lie.
Business concluded with breakfast, Frank left to visit Bogdan Ilionescu, who had offered to teach him more of what the Bucharest mages had learned. It left Radu alone, but for a footman in his alcove, doing his best to blend in with the rest of the furniture.
Radu went out to the balcony and looked over the garden to the small memorial chapel where his parents lay. It had now been a fortnight since he’d seen them, and he was beginning to be uneasy about that. They were monstrous and overbearing, and he knew they would kill him gladly once he had given them an heir. Still, he’d rarely passed a night before without speaking to one or the other, mostly both. He even worried that something might have happened to them.
Perhaps the soil in the chapel was too consecrated. Perhaps they had met with a priest or a holy man who had put an end to them. Or perhaps Bucharest had its own strigoi, older than they, who had put them down, as they did with any new bloodsuckers on their own territory. He should have checked before this. He would check, tonight.
Strange how you could think you hated someone all your life, and then when you were free of them, you could find yourself wanting them back.
When he returned to his study, the housekeeper had brought in a pot of coffee, and the footman had been exchanged for the Roma girl, Mirela, who made a ridiculous picture, standing to attention in her thick peasant clothes, and waved at him as though she knew it herself.
He had to laugh at the impudent gesture, because he found it strangely hopeful that her people had been slaves for centuries and nevertheless retained so much self-will, so little subservience. It should have been galling, but he liked it.
“Since apparently you could choose anything,” he asked, “is footman your best option?”
“It means I get to stand around all day being ornamental, and pocketing tips for opening doors.” She grinned. “It’s a good job. I’m fine with it if you are.”
He didn’t like being coatless in a room with her. She could not stand still in the alcove, but constantly undulated, bending her knees, swinging her hips. On others it might have seemed like fidgeting, on her it looked as if she was dancing to a drumbeat. Vivid and sensual and just a touch mocking. “What tribe are you from?”
“Badi.” She thought for a while and then conceded, “My lord.”
The Badi were entertainers, acrobats, sometimes—like the Lăutari—musicians and dancers. He should have guessed.
“What am I to do with you, Mirela of the Badi?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. Nothing.”
“You followed me all this way, and you have no plans at all?”
Her happy-go-lucky smile twisted into anger. “Your monsters demanded a girl from my village, and the villagers sent me. The whole village has run away now—afraid of what you might do when you found out you’d been sent a Roma girl in disguise. I’d like to go home, but my home isn’t there anymore. I want my family, but I don’t know where they are. And even if I was to find them, they’re so scared of your bloodsuckers, they’d only hand me back. While the strigoi live, I can’t have any of the things I want. So what am I supposed to do? You’re the lord, I’m the slave. You make the plans. You told me to wait and speak to you, so I’m here speaking to you. Now you tell me what to do next.”
He sat back at his desk, easing his hands out of fists under cover of the tabletop. She was fierce and frightened enough without knowing how much he wanted to smack her for speaking to him like that. And she was right. His parents’ plans for her had not included her surviving his rejection. She was a sacrificial victim who had got up again after the ceremony and said, Well, and what now?
He didn’t know either, but it was not his place to admit it. His place was to take responsibility, even for—perhaps especially for—his parents’ loose ends. “Then you may remain a footman for the present, and I will consider to what better use so talented a shape-shifter might be put for later. You will receive a footman’s salary. Where have you been sleeping?”
“In the hayloft of the stables . . . lord.”
“The housekeeper will assign you a room of your own in the gatehouse.” He wrote a terse note to that effect. There would be gossip, of course—it was rank favouritism. But if Mirela continued in the guise of a young man, he could hardly put her among the female servants, and it was out of the question to put her among the men.
“You will accompany Mr. Carew whenever he attends Miss Sterescu’s salon, and improve your knowledge and use of your talent, and you will hold yourself in readiness to use that talent in any way that I command.”
“Yes, lord.” This smile’s sharp edges were smoothed a little. Her braced shoulders came down and lines of tension he had not realised were there eased around her mouth and brow. He had not truly done anything except confirm the status quo, but it was a relief to have that loose end tidied into a new place. It seemed it was a relief to her too.
“Go stand outside the door. I can’t have you fidgeting in here. It’s distracting.”
She grinned at him again, bright and cheerful as though he had actually done something good, before disappearing, and he walked back out onto the balcony to bask in the strengthening sun with a feeling of achievement.
Like most houses in Romania, this one had a closed, windowless ground floor of sturdy stone. The balcony stretched all around the second floor, forming a colonnade onto which chairs could be taken in the summer’s heat to catch the moving breeze. Radu stared down onto the river valley, where long reeds and sullen pools were the only evidence of a drying Dâmbovița. There was a blue haze under the distant trees and the lazy whine of mosquitos.
He walked meditatively around the house. Turning the corner gave a vista of more parklands, more sculpted gardens and formal flower beds, and a honey-coloured villa in the distance surrounded by beeches.
Plague. His thoughts returned to it whenever there was nothing to distract them. It was hard to enjoy such beautiful views and imagine death in the streets. He breathed in, trying to loosen the weight that always rested on his lungs. Bucharest had always had plague. Every city in the world had the plague.
He was jumping to conclusions by assuming this was his fault. It might prove to be illness, some act of God. Not something he had brought with him in the back of a wagon, hoping against hope that reason and self-restraint would guide them as it had in the mountains.
It might not be his fault.
Around another corner and he could see the footbridge that gave a shortcut across the river to anyone prepared to walk out of town. A woman under a parasol stood at the highest point of its slender arch. The pink silk gleam of the fabric was dimmed under a layer of black gauze, and her dress was like crow wings, even her lace black as ancient dust. As he watched, she resumed walking towards the house. He couldn’t see her face beneath the sunshade, but guessed well enough who would be walking towards him under a veil of heavy mourning, alone.
He ducked back into the house to put on a better coat, found a hat, and hurried to be in the hall when she knocked.
Radu was not sure what impulse had driven him to rattle down the stairs in time to intercept the housekeeper as she opened the door, but when he saw the stiff way she greeted Ecaterina, and with what reluctance she took the lady’s card, as if it might be bewitched, he was glad he had. He could substitute welcome for both of them. “Please. Come in. Georgiu will take your parasol.”
Thus instructed, the sour-faced woman couldn’t do anything else, and he rather enjoyed compounding her defeat with a quick command to bring lunch to the dining room. He gestured Catia to go in before him. “I was just about to eat. You will join me?”
She made a striking figure, with the long black veil covering her head and shoulders, proclaiming her grief while hiding her face. At his smile she took its front corners and folded it back over the line of combs that held it. She looked frankly appalling, her red eyes swollen and puffy, lines of anxiety and grief added to her already average complexion.
Offering food had rather exhausted what Radu knew about giving comfort in times of sorrow. She was no peasant to be consoled for a family member’s death with a gift of coins and a mass paid for at the local church. Leading her to the dining room, he pulled out a seat for her while servants laid another place on the board and poured them both wine. “I take it the wake didn’t go too badly? Unless you’re here to ask me to answer a challenge on behalf of your father?”
She sat as though she was containing several blades and the slightest movement would allow them to slit her open and burst out. “Fortunately not.”
And now he had run out of conversational topics that were not Tell me all your brother’s symptoms, and Tell me you cut his head off and stuffed his mouth with garlic when you buried him.
Silence. She opened her mouth, closed it again. He sipped his wine, heard the front door open, and then quick footsteps coming towards them. Frank arrived, shrugging off his outer coat, with his hat in one hand and a great green tome in the other.
“Oh, I do apologise! I didn’t realize you had company.” He put the book on a sideboard, draped the coat over his chair, and sat, only then peering with obvious curiosity at Ecaterina’s wan face. “Miss Sterescu? Is that you?”
She laughed, a hollow glass sphere of sound. “It is. I will understand if you’d prefer me to leave.”
“Of course not!” Bless his gentle heart, but Frank sounded appalled by the idea. “My dear, you don’t mean people are blaming you, even now?”
“It’s only now that they’ve found out,” She shifted a little to allow the servants to place a light lunch of salads, cheeses, cured meats, and breads on the table. “But the truth is I never did it deliberately. I can see why it might trouble someone if I had woken one day and decided to fool the world, but it wasn’t like that. The glamour developed as I grew; I didn’t know I’d done it until everyone started treating me differently. Nor did I choose to stop it. That too happened involuntarily. With Stefan’s death, something within me decided it wanted to be ugly for a while.”
“You are far from that, I assure you.” Frank ducked his head, as if embarrassed by his own chivalry. Radu and Ecaterina smiled at one another, agreeing to be charmed.
“I don’t care, really.” Ecaterina pulled a bread roll apart on her plate, but did not eat. “Except insofar as it reflects badly on my father. If anything, it may attract more women to our magic circle. Even the ungifted can help with research and reading, if they’re willing. And I . . . It was amusing to have so many admirers, to always be the first to dance. But I think I’d rather have suitors who were interested in me for myself. Not simply bewitched. And failing that, there’s always someone who will marry me for my money.”
“So if there is no challenge, and you are not in distress because of your transformation, why did you come?”
“Not that you’re not welcome.” Frank gave him a stern look, as if he was being unfeeling, but Radu had not meant it badly. He was simply being practical.
“But I would not expect to see you in public so soon after the funeral.”
Ecaterina added mititei to her plate of torn bread pieces and began to cut them up small, to a scent of pork and anise and paprika. “You are fresh from the country, and however sceptical, I hope you will not laugh at me when I mention the strigoi.”
Being prepared didn’t soften the blow. Indeed perhaps it allowed him to feel the impact fully. It still may not be related, said the lying voice of his cowardice, but he ignored that in favour of watching Frank’s healthy colour turn grey.
Frank set down his knife, pushed away his plate.
Radu carried on eating; this was not a problem that could be solved by going hungry. “I will not laugh. I had meant to ask if the old, protective customs are kept up in burials in Bucharest, but I thought it tactless, under the circumstances.”
“I wish you had!” She flung herself out of her seat, retreated to the mantelpiece where she was not quite tall enough to see herself in the mirror. The room was an old one and the fireplace as tall as she, almost as wide as a whole wall, with black chains pendant from blackened bricks, and hearth irons bent and thin with use.
“I saw Stefan last night in the garden, in the company of a nobleman I do not know. I recognized that his face was that of my brother, but his spirit was . . . inhuman, a demon, staring up at my window.”
Frank shoved the knuckle of his finger in his mouth and bit it, trembling. His horrified gaze fixed on Radu’s face like that of a dog whose paw had been trodden. The thin blade of Radu’s guilt was driven out of him almost entirely by anger. Don’t look at me like that. You are more to blame than I.
“I am not a priest,” he said carefully. “I am not sure what I can do.”
“You can come with me to his grave. To watch.” The black veil flicked like smoke behind her as she turned and fixed him with a glare. “I can’t tell you how many envious women and rejected men there are in the court who might have gone to a witch to put the evil eye on me. I might be seeing things because someone is trying to drive me mad. But you see through magic as if it wasn’t there. If you see my brother rising from the grave, it will be because he is. After that . . .” She sagged against the wall, slurring with tiredness. “After that I’ll know what to do.”
Having finished dinner, they made plans. Frank ordered a large mortar and pestle sent up from the kitchens, and was grinding cloves of garlic and salt in it, making a paste with fish oil. The stench made Radu’s eyes water.
“Mirela told me they can tell a human is near by the smell,” Frank said. “So I’d feel better if we put some of this on. If it’s plague, it won’t do any harm, but if it is the strigoi it may disguise what we are, or at least make us unpalatable.”
“My own brother would not—” Ecaterina bit her lip. Radu understood the impulse to defend her dead all too well and hoped devoutly that she was right. But he wouldn’t bet his life on it. If Stefan had been turned, it was far more likely that all she was to him now was meat.
He scooped up two fingers of the stinking paste, holding back his own protest. My parents would not allow a fledgling of theirs to harm me. Did he know that? Best not to test it, perhaps.
He and Frank had changed into dark clothes, the better not to be spotted by Bucharest’s high society while lurking around the graveyard in the dark. And Ecaterina had insisted on going in the dark, rather than risk being spotted walking together at twilight. He supposed she was entitled to be shy of company at the moment, but he disapproved.
He spread the paste on face and hands; his nose burned and then went numb. After a little while the mind shut down the smell and it became tolerable, but it was another good reason to hope they would run into no acquaintances.
“Are there weapons that will kill them?” Frank asked. “Should I bring a gun?”
“Decapitation will slow them down.” Radu tossed him a sword he had brought from the armoury. “Do you know how to use it?”
Frank drew, tested the fit of the handguard, the weight and balance of the curved blade. “Yes, this is fine. Similar to the blades I used for fencing practice. And I have my trick with summoning sunlight. They’ve run from that in the past.”
Radu buckled on his own sword, considered the possibility of wooden stakes, looking up at the slim, veiled figure of his guest. “Would you feel able to walk away if someone was driving a lump of wood through your brother’s body?”
He felt Frank scowl at him, as though he’d said something callous, and huffed in black humour as a reply. This was him being thoughtful.
Ecaterina stiffened, clasping her hands together tightly in front of her. “I hope so. I am not generally subject to sentiment. I don’t know that I’d be able to do it myself, but I think I’d be able to allow you.”
“Very well.” The kitchen had also provided a dozen sticks of firewood whittled to sharp points. “The plan is to hide by his grave, strike his head off as soon as we have the chance, and use the pause while he’s trying to recover from that to stake him. After which, I suggest the body be burned.”
Ecaterina swallowed hard, a little green around the edges, and Frank gave him that disapproving frown again. “Are you sure you want to be there? We know him enough to recognise him. You don’t need to put yourself through this. We can deal with it and then report back to you tomorrow.”
She set her stubborn jaw. “He’s my brother. I have to be sure.” Radu wasn’t sure how the glamour could have been an improvement on her naked bravery. This was what an admirable woman truly looked like.
“But—” Frank began, and that was going too far. There was sympathy and then there was disrespect.
“Enough.” Radu handed the stakes and a mallet to Ecaterina to carry—he and Frank would need their hands free—and ushered her out into the dark. “She’s right.”
They walked across the footbridge in silence, passed shuttered shops and quiet houses, the many cheerful colours of their plasterwork muted in the dark. Upper stories leaned over the rough pavement and dusty dirt of the street, turning paths into tunnels. Strings of drying washing and window boxes of trailing plants hung down in cascades of darkness, the buildings standing too close to one another to see the stars.
From one of the upper windows came quiet, inconsolable weeping. Across the city, in the stillness of the night, someone screamed like the yowling of a fox.
It had been hot during the day. The night was cold. When they came out of the narrow streets into the graveyard, its enclosing wall was creaking as the bricks cooled. The carved monuments and the stone angels whispered as they settled.
