Here in the gathering gloom before Halloween... This week's story, dear reader, takes us for another visit to the world of the Boyar's Curse, here via another excerpt from the second (upcoming) book in that series, Katerina's Curse. Step with me and let's see what lies beneath the stones of an old estate in the hills above an older city...
Let Them Seek - an excerpt from my upcoming novel Katerina's Curse by M. K. Dreysen
Where a Colonel in the French Army had checked into the hotel, a Baron's lackey checked out. "I will either return tonight, or otherwise inform you of my arrangements."
"Of course, Mister Belanger. We are happy to serve."
If he'd taken the job, Rik could take as well the advantage of the position. The estate, such as it was, lay just a few miles from town. He arranged a horse, rather than a carriage; the stables with rides for rent were an easy walk, at least, from the hotel. "Nothing fancy, please, I need a workhorse, not a show pony."
"Lizzie should do well for you, friend. She's a good worker."
And the mare was; old enough to have patience and young enough to have energy. She allowed Rik, especially after he slipped her a lump of sugar. He'd filled his pocket from the breakfast table.
Rik and Lizzie were at the estate, and he'd made the aquaintance of the groundskeeper, before much of the city had awoken. If his shadows from the night before were early risers, Rik felt no indication of it. This knowledge he horded. It may or may not make a difference, but he'd take any edge he could get.
The estate turned out to be modest. At least in terms of the house. "The family was never large," Ernst, the groundskeeper, told Rik. "Two, maybe three children at most."
And the general?
"The youngest grandson. There were three of that generation, the girls passed away before they could have children. He had joined with Napoleon, made his first visit as baron after Austerlitz."
Was it awkward, then, a baron from the wrong side?
"He smiled, whenever he visited. The folk here are pragmatic, Mister Belanger. The emperors make their wars, and we resign ourselves to the results. A baron with ties to Paris is, by many standards, less than difficult. Julie," and the groundskeeper waved to the north, assuming Rik knew of Julie, "The demesne he works is tied to Moscow. Catherine herself stayed there, many years ago now. At least we don't have to use a different alphabet when we write to Paris."
And the new baron, someone completely new, with no ties to the family?
"I will work the lands, keep all in good management. The world changes, Mister Belanger. I've sent my three little ones to Berlin, and Rome. They will find some new task, I think. Whether it had been the general, or this Baron Caillou, I believe that our little home will soon be sold. Until then, we work."
As promised, the interior of the house was as modest as the exterior. All in stone and wood, no more than one hundred years old, if that. "The family rebuilt after a fire in seventeen seventy-eight," Ernst told him.
There were windows and light, and furniture in the German style. Some of it carved fantastically, all of it walnut and oak and the other hard woods. The kitchen centered the house; a giant coal-burning stove centered the kitchen. Maddie, Ernst's wife and the only other person who lived on the estate permanently, tended all of these things together. "It's easy enough, I do the daily work with no trouble. Spring and fall, I hire whichever of the village children haven't been spoken for. Put them to work with broom and mop and buckets to clear the dust."
"The furniture?" Rik suggested.
"Oh, for God's sake no!" she laughed. "I wax and polish that myself, while they sweep and dust. These things are tough, but they'd wear out just as quick as anything if I made the mistake of turning teenagers loose on them."
The three of them enjoyed coffee around the iron beast; three ovens in the thing, but Maddie kept the coal fires small. "With just the two of us, and our rooms adjoin the barn. I keep it warm enough for coffee and tea during the day, and to make sure I don't freeze in the winter. Ernst eats lunch here with me."
"I don't want you to have to run the whole house just because I'm..." Rik began.
"No," Maddie interrupted. "It's good for me. The place doesn't have the life it did. The general last visited some two years ago, since then we've had no chance to make the house breathe, even a little. You stay here, burn coal in the fireplaces and light candles to read by, and bring warmth to the stones."
Rik smiled now, caught up in her joy. The two of them were, if he'd have guessed, perhaps fifty, if that. Old enough to have three children off to the universities, with the general's aid and blessing if Rik gauged the situation properly. Young enough that grandchildren had yet to arrive.
Ernst, Rik had discovered, was resigned, if not quite cynical about the possibilities. How then Maddie?
She smiled, patted her husband's hand where it wrapped around his coffee cup. "Ernie worries. But we've done for our children what we could do. The general was kind. We'll be ok. Reynard will soon have his own practice, at worst he will have to put up with his parents living in his back room, and we've savings enough to insure that he will be able to do this."
Rik allowed Maddie to fuss over him as she showed him his rooms, not the master suites thank God but the second set of rooms. Similar to the hotel, but larger at least, and plumbed as well for running water. "Ernie's father put the plumbing in, and thank God for it. He empties the water during the winter, so that the pipes don't freeze and we save the money for coal where it isn't needed."
"Should I write a letter for the hotel?" Rik asked, after they'd returned to the kitchen. "I made sure to tell them I'd likely be staying..."
"But you weren't sure what you'd discover," Maddie finished for him. Giggling. "I don't blame you. There are places here, Julie does his best but the fool's by himself. And that old woman in Moscow refuses every request he's ever sent her for money. For repairs, for insuring his crops and gardens are maintained, for anything at all. She wants only the profits. When her children come to inherit, they'll be lucky to piss in the outhouses, if those haven't rotted to hell in the meantime." She giggled again. "Yes, please, write a note for the hotel. You join Ernie, he's dying to show you his gardens and his crops, and the animals as well. And I'll get your luggage here by nightfall."
"Do you need money?"
She blew her lips. "Like hell do I need money. We make our way here, Mister Belanger. And we send good money home when we do it. The Caillou man might sell us off, but it won't be for lack of profit. Now get out of my kitchen, and tell me when you get back how beautiful my pigs are."
Rik didn't have to struggle to complement her pigs. Or the rest of the farm, for that matter. Apple orchards, pigs and chickens and goats, with a cow and her calf lording over it all. "The fields are for rye?" he asked.
"Hay, rye, and we rotate as best we can with peas, cabbage, and turnips. We've thirty acres total, with the woodlot included, plus more in the commons if we need it." Ernst gestured across the low hill that backed the estate. "Across that one. I plant it mostly for habit."
"And to make sure they don't forget your share?"
"That, too."
The barns held tack for the dray horse. And a surprise or two. "That mower came from England, didn't it?"
"And there's a steam-power thresher in the village. The general sent them, and more besides. He didn't spend as much time as he would have liked, but he never forgot how hard it was to work these fields."
"How many hands do you hire?" Rik pressed. The estate wasn't large, by some standards. But thirty acres managed by one middle-aged man...
"Mostly trade in-kind. And the thresher belonging to the estate makes sure there's a lot of in-kind to work with."
Ernst had led them around to the woodlot, which was basically the rough ground and face of the hill. "I keep the pigs out of the apples until there're no groundfalls worth anything. Here, I let 'em root for the acorns and other mast." He pointed out the big oaks, the maples, the birch. The forest kings, hidden away in a pocket. "They anchor the wood. With the coal, now, we don't take anywhere near as many as they did in my grandfather's day."
"Do you send trees to the sawmill, then?"
"Three, this year. Two birch, and a maple. The three of them came down in a storm, so we took stumps and all. Otherwise, I just try to manage the smaller ones and the undergrowth."
The two of them walked between the shadows. Rik appreciated Ernst's management; there were paths between the forest kings, but only a few. The thicket growth was there, enough to mask the deer that had to be there.
And the red squirrels chattering over their heads. "Do you hunt them?"
Ernst shrugged. "I enjoy their gossip. There are enough deer to take one or two per year, but the woodland is really not that big."
"And it's isolated." The hill behind, and the commons on the other side, was surrounded by roads and fields, and the village on the other side of the commons. A pocket, indeed, and overall twenty acres across the hill itself.
Not large enough to hold the concentration of deer that the noble families would prefer. "Did the general participate in hunts?"
"Rarely. He preferred duck hunting, when he had the time. The deer lots here are all similar. Enough for a family, not enough for the sort of hunting parties the Black Forest hosts."
By now, the two men were chasing the sun back to its evening position on the other side of the house. A single-horse carriage made its way up the lane. "That'll be your luggage," Ernst suggested.
Rik nodded. At the start of the walk, he hadn't noticed that the house rested at the bottom of the estate. Here, walking back down, the slight strain on his leg muscles, and the view that the elevation gave him of the lane below, stirred memories. Of tactics, and keeping clear view of an enemy.
"Who's that I wonder, behind him?" Ernst asked. "There," and he pointed.
Rik held his hands over his face, to shade his eyes. That Ernst had seen the person standing at the end of the lane impressed him. "A young man..." Rik began. And then he felt, smelled, that sense of unreality he'd been so involved in the night before. "Ah," he said. He stopped himself before he went further, aware of his companion.
Ernst grunted. Instead of putting his hands over his eyes, he pulled the brim of his hat down further. "He doesn't look familiar, he's no local."
"Do I get to guess how you figure that?"
"City clothes," Ernst replied.
Rik let his hands drop. Knowing that, from here, he'd look natural watching the carriage continue its way to the house. But standing there longer would probably give the watching creature reason to be suspicious. "Let's continue our walk, Ernst. And, I guess I'll need to tell you something of what I saw last night." So he did that. Briefly.
Rik left out of his story the business with the master, and the meeting. Rik assumed that the estate manager would have a limit to his credulity.
And Rik had no intention of dragging Ernst or Maddie into whatever this was. But he had to warn them that the creature standing at the end of the lane was no friend.
Ernst didn't say anything. The carriage was there, and they concentrated on unloading the trunks. Rik paid the carriage driver, thanked him, and then the two of them finished bringing the trunks up to Rik's room.
Ernst put his trunk down and moved to the window. Maddie had pulled the shades back, and opened the glass to let the breeze do its work. "There he is," Ernst said. "Stay back, you'll still be able to watch him."
Rik moved up behind Ernst. The two of them stood there, until the carriage moved past the creature. The carriage didn't stop, it just slowed down long enough for the target of their interest to climb up beside the driver.
"I wonder if my hotel wasn't a mistake?" Rik suggested.
"The nationalists have many connections," Ernst said. "More likely he offered a bribe. Or the driver is part of their circle."
"I don't want you and Maddie in danger, Ernst."
Ernst snorted. "The nationalists are no threat to us." He continued when he saw Rik's skeptical face. "Oh, they don't want Germans here. They just want their own stories, language."
"History..."
Ernst shrugged. "You wondered why I'm so sure we'll need to sell. I think that, rather than fight with my neighbors, we'll leave. And let the world change as it will."
Rik didn't want to ask the question. He did it anyway. "Is there anything odd about that one, the other man?"
Ernst led the way down the stairs. "Perhaps he's been injured, did you notice his crooked back?"
And that was the end of it. If Ernst carried any uneasiness about the creature, as Rik perceived the man, Rik couldn't detect it.
Rik pondered this over dinner with the couple. He had seen, been party to, many unusual situations over the centuries. Not least his own introduction to those his daughter called the shadow children. Leftovers, memories of an older world. He'd come to trust his instincts, had Rik. He'd had to, all things considered.
And he'd come to know that very few people listened to their own, similar instincts. Rik didn't believe this part of his curse was a gift, along with time and strength and health. No, he'd learned rather that, if he had any advantage over others, it was that he'd had long, long quiet nights aplenty to learn his own mind. And to trust it when it warned him.
Or suggested a different tactic. "Maddie," he began as she closed up the kitchen. Ernst had left as soon as the plates were cleaned, to tend the animals.
She stopped him. "Ernst told me of the spy who followed your luggage. And that Ernie thinks him part of a nationalist ring being nosy."
"I worry there's more to it than that," Rik replied. And so he repeated his story of the evening before. Of the heavy, rank smell that had greeted him at the train station. Of the shadow that had investigated his room at the hotel.
And, unlike for Ernst, of the meeting in the lost alley, between the creatures who'd followed him and their master. "I believe that he summoned these spirits, Maddie, and bound them to a human form."
Rik waited then. She would ask...
"And how do you come to believe this? What right do you have to such knowledge?"
"I've had occasion to learn, to my detriment." He'd never had reason to tell his story. Rik wasn't about to start now. "But I suspect that I'm not the only one here with such knowledge. Who are these creatures, Maddie? And why would they be so interested in me? Or the estate?"
"God help us if that's the case," Maddie said. She signed herself, then. And, instead of blowing out the last candle, sitting in a brass holder at the corner of the kitchen counter nearest the back door, she lifted it and led him to the kitchen table. "Here, there's tea enough for another cup."
Rik pulled two cups from the board next to the sink and joined her at the table. "Do you know their master, then?"
"Know?" she asked. Then shook her head to negate it. "Not him. Heard, suspected? That," and she sighed. Heavily. "Yes, I've heard rumors. Of a man who's dug himself through a mountain's worth of old libraries. Looking for lost knowledge, mysteries."
Rik remembered the walk down from the hill, then. Three, perhaps four small estates, such as the one Julie ran. All of them within easy gossip distance. Part of the village itself, the old bones of old kingdoms. At least one or two of them, likely, held libraries.
And within all of the reach of Bohemia? How many such homes, castles, forts tumbled-down to scant shade or shelter from snow and rain? Enough for the rumors to flow with the gossip. Maddie told him of these whispers. "Supposedly, the man is from Istanbul."
Constantinople, Rik's memory whispered. Memories threatened him. He'd let them wash over his mind, later when he could allow them to percolate. "He's hunting shadows."
"Just so."
"Apparently, he found some," Rik said.
Maddie pushed her finger through the still-soft wax where it puddled at the drip-pan of the candlestick. "If your suspicion is true, perhaps. Or perhaps he brought this particular knowledge with him, these shadows."
Rik took the advice seriously. In one sense, it didn't much matter when or how or where the summoner had learned this trick. Maddie was reminding him, however, that if Rik jumped to conclusions on this question, then he'd likely miss something important when it did matter. "And either he's jumped into the Czech movement..."
"Or he's using them as tools of convenience."
The two seekers after rumor sipped their tea in silence for a few minutes. The older of the two contemplated his new suspicions, and the wisdom of his companion. "My chief concern is your safety. Whether they're interested in me alone, or the estate itself."
Maddie didn't look at him. Instead, she gazed at the candle's flame.
Then, she set the tea cup down, in exchange for the candlestick. "Come, there's something you'll need to see."
She led him to the stairway. And around, to the door to the coat closet tucked beneath the stairs. When she opened this small room, he found what he'd expected at this time of year: A dusty little unused enclave, awaiting the fall weather change.
Maddie leaned in, then down. She fumbled with something, and then pulled a hook free, rotating it from beneath two floor boards. Rik saw this detail when she asked him to lift the stone beneath. "It's heavy enough I don't lift it by myself, if I don't need to."
He recognized this. Almost one hundred pounds, if he judged it right. Easy enough for him, the simple flagstone, but Maddie must have needed a prybar if she did this herself. "Who else knows of this?" Rik asked.
"Ernie. The general, God rest him. And now you. Go ahead, walk down. There's not enough room, otherwise." She handed him the candlestick. "You'll need this."
Which he was glad of. His night sight was good enough, but underground there wasn't the least starlight. The candle's flickering light showed him a well-built set of stairs, oak, simply but strongly built, falling away.
To a tiny room full of books and scrolls. Bare, without the shelves, Rik could have touched both walls simultaneously. With the shelves, he kept his elbows in. And his back stooped, the ceiling couldn't have been more than five feet in height. "Family records?" he asked.
Maddie sat down on the stairs. There was room for only the one. "Ledgers, journals. They survived the fire, apparently, so the family built this place to protect them."
She'd told him before that "The family" was a stretch. The general's great-grandmother had inherited because she'd been goddaughter to the last heir. And his family had inherited three or four generations before that for a similar reason. But "The family" remained, here. In ink and dust, crackling parchment and leather aged to fragility.
The stones of the ceiling and floor were his only view of the construction of the place. Close-set, precision-cut; the barest hint of mortar between joints barely a knife's blade in width. Hints of rust here and there. "It's caged in iron."
She nodded. "To hold the stones."
"To protect the books from prying senses."
She didn't deny it. Maddie simply let him explore the shelves.
The vast majority of the papers seemed just what she'd said. Ledgers, of barley oat and rye harvests. Pigs slaughtered, poor seasons for rain or too much snow. An old bible, a book of latin poetry.
The feeling snuck up on him, somewhere between the poetry and a hymnal. That tense brief contraction of the muscles at the base of his skull, wanting to pin his ears back. Something more hid here. He moved to the bottom shelf, in the back left corner.
"I wondered..." Maddie said.
How deeply I'd dig, Rik thought. Whatever the iron binding of the stones did to ground this collection, within the space his instincts were fully aware.
His hands found three books, two larger volumes and a smaller volume. Without looking, he'd have called the smaller one a testament, a pocket book of prayers perhaps. The kind he'd seen in Jerusalem, first, when he'd wandered among the pilgrims some six hundred years prior. Each carrying their faith, loose-held or tightly woven.
But this was something else entirely. "Goddamn that man," he whispered, when he got a look at the cover of the little book.
"What's that?" Maddie asked. Rik didn't answer. He was too busy chasing memories.
Before the Grimm brothers found their niche, before Andersen, a Russian monk had spent some few decades scouring these lands for stories. Of gnomes and trolls and old gods lost.
Rik flipped the pages, for a little story hidden in the middle of the three hundred pages. His story. "The Lost Boyar" Iosif Fedorivich had named Rik in those pages. Which Rik considered close enough to the truth; that's not what irritated him.
It was that Iosif had found so many pieces of the truth. Not the curse, and Rik thanked God for that part, at least. But Iosif had learned of the slaughter, and Rik's escape from it. "The Boyar went out from the burnt castle, and lost himself in the affairs of men and women of foreign lands."
Rome, Britain. Iceland. Then back east, and farther. To Asia, then down to Egypt and Africa. Back, some centuries later, through Jerusalem, where Rik had lost himself in the Crusades, a hermit, a healer patching together those poor souls, pilgrim or local, caught in the midst of the madness. "And I brought back a few baubles, stories..." Rik murmured. A diamond from Africa, a scroll from China. A tiny figure of the Buddha, from India, carved from jade.
Memories of his travels. Legends, when he'd parted with them some two hundred miles away from this cellar. For a beer and a request for stories.
Of such moments are fables woven, Rik reminded himself. The tale had grown in the telling, and Iosif had faithfully reproduced it inside his pages. What to do, Rik wondered.
He set the tiny fablerium aside in favor of the other books. An anatomy, because of course there would be such, in Arabic. "This is older than the family, by far," Rik pointed out.
And so too the final book. In Hebrew and Arabic both, this one. "This is the Shaprut Scholaria."
"You've seen it?" she said, shocked.
"No, but I've heard of it." Hasdai ibn Shaprut, patron, protector of a little group of scholars and scientists and minister to the Andalusian caliphs. Legend had it that Shaprut corresponded widely, to the Khazars, to Byzantium. Croatia. The Scholaria too had been rumoured, a collection of the best of the minds Shaprut had collected. Their thoughts on the caliphs, philosophy, science. The Qabbalah.
"One wonders just how the family came to be here."
Maddie nodded. "The hints are in the earliest journals. There are a few written in Hebrew. The very first. But within a decade, they'd switched over to German entirely."
"Baptism?"
She shrugged. "None of them discuss the why of it. It just happened. The pogrom in Prague, I'd guess."
Rik murmured a prayer for the lost. He'd been a world away, returned just a few years after that particular fever of the fourteenth century had passed. To a region learning to hide the scars. "And the gossip claims this man is hunting books?" he asked.
"Every library he can bribe his way into."
Rik paged through the Scholaria. "I've known a few who would do murder for books." He closed it, set it aside with the other two. "I suspect this man is one of them."
"And these books?" she asked.
Rik shook his head. "For these, if he's what you and I have reasons to suspect? For these books, he'll do far worse than murder."
