"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Hero turned her tearful face toward Ragoczy. "Comte, I am so, so sorry." She clutched her pillow and held it close to her, the bedclothes in disruption around him. "I want to. Really ... I wish I could ... I shouldn't ... I never intended ..." The light from the lamp made wavering shadows on her face as if taking the chill from the room into its heart, muffling its illusion of warmth in flickering shadows.
He laid his finger lightly against her lips. "No, Hero, it is I who should apologize to you. It is too soon still."
"It isn't," she said, shaking her head in self-condemnation. "Or it shouldn't be. I shouldn't make you ... You have been reasonable and patient and understanding. I couldn't ask for more kindness, not from anyone. I don't know why I should be this way, and to you, of all men." Had Fridhold lived, she would not have expected such sympathy from him as Ragoczy had given her. She touched his hand tentatively, then released it, as if even so little connection as this was unbearable.
"I am sorry that you have had to suffer your loss with so much worry." He thought of Ignatia, of Demetrice, of Acana Tupac, of Xenya, each with her own unquenchable grief, and he did his best to convey his concern. "You are trying to hold your sorrow at a distance while you wait to see your sons."
"I should be with them, no matter what my father-in-law permits; he could hardly turn me away if I should travel to Scharffensee. I should have insisted as soon as we returned from Amsterdam that we go there, but I didn't know the rains would come early, or-" A steely determination straightened her back and interrupted her weeping. "In the spring, I will not be put off: he will receive me whether he will or no. I will see my sons. It is my duty, and my right to be with my children." Then without warning a new bout of weeping came over her; she pummeled her fists into her pillow as if she wanted to strike her own body. "I don't know what's wrong with me."
"You are in mourning," said Ragoczy, making no effort to stop her.
"I should mourn. My daughter is dead," she exclaimed as she threw the pillow across the room. "She died without me to care for her."
"She did, and that is lamentable, but you could not have known she would die."
"Fridhold's father waited so long to tell me-too long. That is how the Graf has been since Fridhold died. He didn't want me to know about Annamaria. He doesn't want to tell me about any of them." She bit her lower lip.
"He is inclined to forget that you are part of your children's lives," said Ragoczy, striving to keep his remarks as neutral as possible, so that Hero would not feel she had to defend von Scharffensee for the sake of her children and her dead husband.
"Their lives and Annamaria's death," Hero interjected.
"He believes he knows best, as men of his station often do; it seems to me he is failing in his trust, largely because he deems that such a failure is impossible," Ragoczy remarked. "He fears you will influence your children-and he is correct: you will."
"My father-in-law doesn't care about them, not really. He thinks only to supervise them for my late husband." She began to weep in earnest, her expression filled with chagrin.
"He, too, lost a child," said Ragoczy.
"But Fridhold was grown, not eight years old." She trembled, her hands flexing, reaching for her arms.
"I doubt that matters," said Ragoczy.
"Whatever the case, it offered him no insight." She folded her arms, clutching at her upper arms with straining fingers. "If he has no compassion for me, well, that is his way. But he has none for my children, and that worries me."
"Understandably."
"He thinks of me as a rival," she said suddenly, "and he a jilted suitor. He blames me for the loss of Fridhold."
"So it would seem." Ragoczy was still appalled at the apparent unconcern von Scharffensee had shown toward Hero, and found this explanation as reasonable as any. "I wish I could ease your hurt."
"You mean you wish you could drink my blood, don't you?" she countered, and clapped both her hands over her mouth, turning stricken eyes upon him, offended by her own temerity.
"Yes," he said quietly and calmly. "I would like that; it would be nourishing and it would provide the intimacy for which we both long, if you are willing to allow me to touch you in more than your flesh."
"I shouldn't have said that," she whispered.
"Possibly not," he agreed without condemnation. "But there is truth in it."
She shook her head. "I didn't mean it, Comte. I didn't mean it."
"That may be, but you had to say something," he said as he took her hand in his, holding it palm up. "You said it to drive me away, for just now intimacy is more than you can bear."
"I ... I suppose so," she confessed, her eyes welling with tears. "But I don't want that, not really."
A thousand years ago he might have pressed the advantage in that admission, but he had learned not to use that leverage: what it gained in the moment, it lost over time. He sat on her bed while she wrestled with her emotions, then, as she looked at him directly, he said, "But you aren't ready to make love yet, either; to you it feels like a betrayal of your child. You thought you were ready, and you miss my companionship, but now that you make the attempt, you see the loss is still too overwhelming, too raw."
She nodded twice. "You do understand."
"In my way."
Wishing to deflect his compelling gaze, she pushed back from him, and to add to her remoteness, she asked, "How is that? How can someone as old as you say you are understand?"
He recognized her ploy as an attempt to distract him, but answered her, his voice low and steady. "It is nearly four thousand years since I came into my vampiric life; I have spent most of that time saying good-bye, and every one of those losses left its mark on my soul. I may not understand your personal grief, but sorrow and I are old companions." He touched her arm. "I will not force myself on you; that would blight our closeness. When only our skins touch, there is little to bind us together."
"But skin is the best we have," she said morosely.
"It has not been so before," he said, as gently as he could, his dark, penetrating eyes on her. "I am willing to wait."
"Until I am old and wrinkled? Until I have grandchildren?" She clamped her jaws closed, as if to keep from speaking at all.
"If that is required," he said. "Time is more inexorable for you than for me."
"Because I am alive," she said. "Because every day brings me closer to the grave."
"And because you are alive, you age," he said, unflustered. "Age takes a toll on the passions as much as the body."
She glared at him, daring to meet his compassionate gaze and to ignore what he revealed in his eyes. "That is intended to cheer me?"
"No; I thought it would reassure you, so you will understand-"
"That you are patient?" she challenged. "Or is it easier to wait for a willing woman than have to search out another one?"
He remained where he was, still as water, seeing her tempestuous emotion worry at her. "You must not despair, Hero. You are not condemned to a lifetime of dejection and loneliness, much as you are convinced it is so now. Loss is always with us, but so is restoration."
"No? Can you be sure of that?" She pulled her night-rail more tightly around her. "You have never lost a child."
"I know you cherished hopes for your daughter, and all of them are left in shambles." He stared at the far wall. "It is going to be a freezing night tonight."
"And you, with your cool skin, will you keep me warm? Or is it I who should keep you warm?" As she heard herself speak, she was almost overcome with mortification that she should be so unpardonably caustic. She tried to think of something that would lessen the excoriating impact of her remarks. "Comte, I apologize." That seemed wholly inadequate; she tried again. "I don't know what's come over me. I never intended ..."
"But you do, you know: you intend to cut yourself off from all pleasure and succor because you deem yourself to be undeserving of either." He said this softly but he held her attention. "You want to inflict pain on yourself."
She fixed her eyes on him as if mesmerized. "Why shouldn't I bear the anguish? I deserve it."
"Do you think so?" He shook his head slowly. "No, Hero, you need not flagellate yourself with whips or recriminations."
"You say that as if it were nothing but a change done as easily as I might change my clothes."
"I think such changes are very hard." He gave her a moment to speak; she remained silent. "But time will separate you from those you miss more than distance. Each day memory slips them farther away." His dark eyes were glowing, alive with the recollection of those he had lost.
She studied him as if searching for any trace of duplicity. Finally she clasped her hands in her lap and stared down at them. "Would you like me to leave?"
"Leave? No, certainly not," he said, aware that her despair was once again threatening to overcome her.
"Then what? You can't want to continue in this way, can you?"
"No, I would rather not have to carry on with so much unresolved heartbreak impinging upon us." He smoothed the revers of his dressing-gown. "But I see no reason to cut our dealings short in homage to your self-condemnation."
Her face went pale. "What do you mean?"
He rose from the bed and paced her bedchamber in a measured, deliberate tread. "If you believe you must immolate yourself on the altar of family sorrow, you show neither your sorrow nor your family much grace. I know you embrace your agony in order to keep your daughter with you, made real by the pain of her death. You are convinced that if you set the agony aside, you will lose the memory of your daughter. But that approach, if continued, will turn the memory of her into something always painful, and she deserves better than that, as do you. Let her go, Hero, let her go; for you cannot keep her with you, and let all your thoughts of her be joyous ones, as they can be, in time, if you do not cling to her death." He stopped moving and gave his whole attention to her; his voice became more musical and his demeanor was filled with commiseration. "If I were uncaring, perhaps I would not be moved by your affliction; but we have a Blood Bond that will continue until the True Death claims one of us. It grieves me to see you add to your anguish in this way. What you endure is hard enough without increasing the wretchedness you want to put behind you."
"Is that what I am doing?" She had no part of softness in her question. "You have decided how I am to remember my own child?"
"No, I am telling you how I have learned to deal with centuries of losses."
She looked past him at a picture of a narrow stretch of river over which a broken stone bridge rising out of the current stretched unsuccessfully toward high banks; at present it appeared to be a reflection of her state of mind. "When spring comes, he will try to put me off again, my father-in-law. He will send my boys away, or tell me it is inconvenient to visit, or plan another journey for them to take."
"That he may, but it will not succeed." He sighed once. "You and I will yet visit Scharffensee, or whatever place he has taken your sons."
"You will do so much for me?" She sounded more tired than annoyed. "Why would you do this? I haven't done anything to merit your help."
"I do not bargain with those I love, particularly not about what you need." He went to put another small log on in the fireplace. "There is no reason to keep the room so icy. Let your body be warmed, by the fire if not by me. The frost on the windows warns you of a hard night."
"I should let it chill me; perhaps I will not be so distrait if I am cold enough." She leaned back against the satin-covered bolster, making a gesture of concession. "If you insist on heating the room, this is your chateau and I am your guest."
He watched as the log began to smoke as the low flames curled up around it. "I do not wish to impose upon you, but I would not want you to become ill."
"In imitation of my daughter?"
"It is one possibility, and one I have seen before." He touched his fingertips together.
"You mean I might sicken and die?" She laughed a bit wildly. "I would be with her and Fridhold then, wouldn't I? And my father-in-law would not have to deal with me."
"Possibly, but it would be a high price to pay for very little satisfaction." He drew up a chair to the side of her bed, and sat down, facing Hero across the silk of her comforter. "You may wish to make yourself free of the complications that have marked your life since your husband's death, but dying is not the way. You hope to be with your husband and daughter, but you forget your sons, who will need you as they grow older."
"They have their grandfather," she said.
"Who is what? sixty years old? How much longer will he live? And what will happen to your boys then? They have already lost their father and their sister. If they lose their mother as well, think of how abandoned they will be when their grandfather dies."
"He will provide for them."
"Money and lands, yes they are all very well, but that will not be what they seek most: context will be gone." He held Hero's gaze with his own. "It may be tempting to trust to the next world rather than this one, but-"
"How can you say that to me?" she demanded. "I have wanted to have my children with me, but my father-in-law has prevented it."
"Your father-in-law has laid down conditions he thinks are reasonable. You have to fulfill his conditions and he will have no cause to keep your children from you."
"The probate court awarded Fridhold's children to his father's care in lieu of Fridhold having made a Will, as they always do. He didn't know he would die so young, and the court upheld his father's claim without a hearing. How can I hope to gain the approval of the magistrates? The probate marshall makes that impossible." The way she asked made it clear that she had mulled over this question many times.
"You must have an acceptable residence, proper servants, and an income high enough to keep your children in a manner appropriate to their rank, or so the document you showed me stipulated. Have I erred in my summation?"
Hero shook her head. "Which my father-in-law knows is impossible. Were I in a position to live with my father, although he has some means, the court would not approve, nor would my father."
Ragoczy offered a one-sided smile. "That will change as soon as the castle above Zemmer is ready for its occupants. You said you liked it when we visited it on the Amsterdam trip. The Graf will not be able to object to your receiving your sons for a part of every year so long as you have land, a staff, and the income from the land to provide for your sons and yourself." He saw her take this in, astonishment mixed with dubiety as she grasped what he was telling her.
"You said I could live there, and my children, too," she said, picking her words with care. "I thought you intended to reside there, as well. That I would be your guest."
"No doubt I will visit, from time to time," he said. "But the castle should suit you and your sons most satisfactorily."
She blinked twice, not only in surprise but to keep from crying again. "You said nothing about making it mine."
"You will be my resident guardian of the estate, and as such you may live in it as your home for as long as it suits you."
"But it will be yours," she said, looking uncertain again.
"Yes. I will pay the staff and the maintenance, and I will deal with any taxes that may be imposed. You do not want to undertake such costs yourself, do you?" He saw understanding dawn in her eyes. "A widow owning an estate has little to protect her, but a widow managing an estate is not so vulnerable."
"I never thought about that," she said in a measured tone as she assessed what he had told her. "You're right, of course. No one should know that better than I."
"I will have Kreuzbach draw up a binding agreement that will satisfy any court that you have the security they demand for you to have at least partial domestic custody of your own children." He gave her time to sort this out. "They cannot expect you to have more than that to justify restoring your family to you."
"How do you propose to present this to the court?" She was becoming interested now, aware that he had the position and fortune to do exactly what he described.
"I thought I would present it to your father-in-law first," he said. "When we visit him."
"And he will deny you," she said with heavy conviction.
"Perhaps. But I can be persuasive. He will have to listen to me because we are of equal rank, if for no other reason."
Hero laughed harshly. "One nobleman to another, you mean."
Unfazed by her contempt, he said, "I can require his attention as you cannot." He moved closer to her, leaning forward in the chair.
She shook her head, then started to cry again. "I hate feeling so helpless," she exclaimed as she sobbed.
"That is why you may depend upon me. I know you are not helpless, just stymied." He would have liked to take her hand, but realized she would see the gesture as weakening her, so he only said, "You have not had an ally to turn to for many years."
"Are you trying to make up for that? Or are you trying to prove something to Madelaine de Montalia, and this is your opportunity to do so?" As soon as she said the name, she was sure she should not have, but she could not stop speaking. Letting go of her arms, she gathered her hands together. "I ... Comte ..."
"I have nothing to prove to Madelaine," he said softly. "Nor to you. You know what I am and how I live, and what I know because of it. Scratch and claw as you will, I know what you are because I know your blood, the truest part of your self. It will take more than harsh accusations to drive me away once we have touched."
She glowered at him. "Perhaps I have changed."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps some part of your character is newly come to light, but none of that can alter what I know of you." He made himself more comfortable. "You cannot reprove me with Madelaine's name, or that of anyone I have loved, not even your own." This, he knew, was not entirely accurate, for there was always Csimenae, who might still be hidden away in the fastness of the Pyrenees.
"Did you intend from the first that we should be lovers?" Her voice hardened.
"No, I did not," said Ragoczy. "Madelaine wrote to tell me that you had been treated badly by your family and needed an ally, something she could not do herself from the Ottoman Empire."
"So keeping me is a favor to her?" she asked, ending with a harsh laugh. "You indulge her through me."
"No; she sympathized with your predicament, as I know she told you before she proposed that she put me in contact with you." He set his concern aside and continued. "She provided our introduction. If she had not wanted us to meet, she chose a strange way to accomplish that goal."
"So she threw me to you?" Hero asked, aghast at herself for so callous a suggestion.
"No-and well you know it."
She wept more determinedly now, disgusted at all she had done and said since she summoned him to her chamber that evening. "Why am I behaving so ... so shabbily?" she asked of the bolster.
"It is the way in which you come to terms with your grief," said Ragoczy. "You lash out."
"But at you? At Madelaine de Montalia?"
"You would lash out at Annamaria, if you could, for leaving you, as Fridhold left you," said Ragoczy, so kindly and with such empathy that she stopped weeping to stare at him. "I felt the same consuming anger for nearly five centuries, and I made myself the thing I most despised. Gradually Egypt changed that, but it was not easily done."
Hero used the corner of her sheet to wipe her eyes dry. "Madame de Montalia-I didn't slight her, not truly."
"Of course not," said Ragoczy, and got up from the chair. "You will want to rest, to recover yourself." He went to the side of the bed and bent to kiss her forehead. "Sleep well. We will talk more in a day or two-when you are ready."
She took hold of the revers of his dressing-gown. "I apologize, Comte. From the bottom of my heart."
"You need not," he said, making no attempt to disengage her hands. "Think of all you have said tonight as lancing a boil. Once you let out the poison, you will be able to heal."
"A boil!" She stiffened. "My grief is nothing like that."
"It will not be any longer," he assured her, laying his hand lightly on her shoulder. "But you might have let it become one. As it is, you are going to improve through the winter, and that will make your meeting with your father-in-law less arduous than it would have been otherwise."
"And I am expected to be grateful for your actions?" Hero demanded, then grabbed his hand. "I didn't mean that. I don't know why I'm behaving so dreadfully. I wish I knew what makes me-"
He lifted her hand, opened it, and kissed the palm. "You know why you struggle-you've told me. It is hard for you to take this on, and I know you will need time to come to terms with your emotions." His dark eyes rested on her amber-brown ones. "You are a capable and intelligent woman, Hero, but at present you are locked in self-condemnation."
She nodded, her face somber as she listened. "Comte-"
"I know you want to gather your sons around you and give yourself to them and to enshrining the memory of Annamaria, but that is unlikely to happen." He waited while she considered this, then went on. "You are a most resourceful woman, and able to shoulder burdens many another would not. But that does not mean you must mourn for all of your family, or believe you have failed if their grief is not equal to your own."
"That was never a question," she protested.
"No?" He stroked her hair. "Dear Hero, you have taken on the unhappiness and sorrow of others since you were a child. Did you not deal with all the arrangements when your mother died, so that your father could heal himself through work?"
She looked perplexed. "That was what was needed."
"You took it on," he said, and let her pull him down beside her on the bed. "You never asked for so much as a single hour for yourself, did you?"
"I didn't need an hour to myself," she said, her voice brittle.
"No; you needed days and weeks to restore your frame of mind," he said, continuing before she could argue the point. "Your father approved of what you did, and that, you decided, was all you required. But that was not true then any more than it is true now."
"Someone had to help my father. He had work that had to be done, and he was filled with sadness for my mother. They had been married sixteen years." Her sigh quivered.
"And you did well by her memory," said Ragoczy, "little though you may think so."
Hero leaned against his arm. "I could have done so much more," she whispered. "I should have done more-then and now."
"No one but you thinks the less of you for what you have done." He could not see her face, but the tension in her body revealed much to him.
"I haven't thanked you for putting the household into half-mourning. That was very kind of you." She moved so she could look directly at him. "Don't despise me for my weaknesses, Comte, I beg you."
"How could I despise you." He took her face in his hands. "I love you; you are willing to be loved, at least most of the time, and that banishes all contempt."
She moved toward the kiss he offered, and this time she did not feel that the pleasure that sparked within her was perfidious, aspersing her child's memory. There was solace in his hands and anodyne in his presence: why had she not noticed before? Why had she refused him when he could provide consolation? In spite of all she had said, he had remained steadfast. She wrapped her arms around him, and indulged herself in his kisses. As she felt her unexpected passion well, she broke away from him long enough to ask, "You will stay with me, won't you?" She very nearly held her breath waiting for his answer.
His promise was like the low strings on the guitar which he played so well, and his ardor all she could wish for. "As long as you like," he told her.
Text of a letter from Augustus Kleinerhoff in Sacre-Sang, to Egmond Talbot Lindenblatt, Magistrate, in Yvoire, Switzerland; dictated to the clerk of the court in Yvoire and carried by him from Sacre-Sang to Yvoire.
To the most excellent Magistrate, Egmond T. Lindenblatt, sitting in Yvoire, the greetings of head-man of Sacre-Sang, Augustus Kleinerhoff, on this, the 20thday of November, 1817,
My dear Magistrate,
In regard to your inquiries concerning the various incursions experienced in and around this village, it is my duty to report to you that we here have established a patrol made up of local men and their guard-dogs, the better to deal with the highwaymen and thieves who have taken to preying upon travelers and villagers alike. We have sentries in the village square every hour of the day and night, in groups of three men and a dog, so that if any miscreants are discovered, the alarm may be given without exposing the sentries to danger. This is just a first step, but it does initiate our determination to end the reign of lawlessness that has marked our region for the last year.
With two hard winters behind us, we are beginning to hope for a bountiful spring and harvest this year, and therefore it is essential, in my opinion, that we prepare to defend our fields, our farms, our roads, and our markets from those who would plunder them. I have ordered that all farmers keep at least two guard-dogs on their properties, on long chains so that they will not run wild and damage crops and livestock themselves. Most of the farmers of Sacre-Sang are willing to try this in the hope that the worst depredations will be averted.
It is generally agreed that the culprits are a company of former soldiers who have turned to outlawry now that the army life is no longer possible for them. This is the most likely explanation for the problems we endure. Some believe that this company is in the pay of one or more of the major land-holders in the area, and they point from one noble to another. Baron d'Eaueternel is one who is mentioned in this regard because he supported Napoleon but escaped being punished for the support he provided, and Comte Franciscus because he is a foreigner. Neither man has been proven to have any association with these thieves, but the rumors continue.
I am persuaded that putting guards on the roads in small companies might lessen the amount of trouble the thieves can cause. We know from tales told by travelers that ours is not the only region so afflicted, and that the miscreants are often former soldiers. Perhaps, if there were a concerted effort throughout the country to apprehend these men and set them to some useful occupation, not only to provide them the means of earning a living within the law, but to require a level of restitution from those given a living, then much might be gained for all of us. We could even employ them as guards against other bandits.
I have been told that many former soldiers have gone to the New World, which has more than enough room for them, and ready employment. I would be willing to support a program that would send any captured outlaw to the Americas, with the provision that he not return to Europe for at least a decade. This solution would have the additional advantage of dispersing Napoleon's soldiers so that there can be no repeat of his Hundred Days if he ever returns to France. Without an army, he is just another fallen tyrant. How unfair that his men must suffer because of their loyalty to him, but that is the fate for those who fight on the losing side.
Thank you for providing your clerk to me, for he writes far more facilely than I do, and can turn my awkward scrawl into elegant and eloquent periods. If you require anything more of me, you have only to ask, and I will make every effort to accommodate you.
Yours to command,
Augustus Kleinerhoff
head-man of Sacre-Sang