Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters [15]
We went out of the back entrance into the central court. The walls forming the other three sides of the court were a marvellous mixture of architectural styles – not surprising in a place that had had nine centuries in which to develop. The wing to my left was of the timber-and-stucco type, like many of the houses in town, but bigger and more elaborate. Scaffolding shielded its face, and there were pieces of lumber and miscellaneous tools scattered around – the renovations of which the girl had spoken, I gathered.
The right wing was a four-storey sixteenth-century construction, with richly carved window frames and an ornate Renaissance roofline But the wall straight ahead was old – old enough to have been standing long before Count Burckhardt’s time. Its great doorway had a massive stone lintel with a crumbling bas-relief in the shape of a shield bearing the Drachenstein device – a dragon crouched on a rock.
The courtyard was beautifully tended, and as pretty as a postcard. The grass was a rich, velvety green, and shrubs and flower beds were scattered about. A thick hedge hid the part of the court to my right. From behind its shelter came a murmur of voices. Other guests, I thought – and I wondered whether I knew any of them.
Her shoulders bent under the weight of my bags, the girl led me through the door into the Great Hall of the Schloss. It was two storeys high, roofed with enormous dark beams. Along one wall was a row of armour, with swords and spears and other deadly weapons hanging on the panelled wall above. A huge stone fireplace filled one corner of the room, which was unfurnished except for a carved chest, big enough to hold a body or three . . . I wondered why that particular idea had flipped into my mind. Suggestion, no doubt, from the arsenal on the wall.
We went up a flight of stairs to a gallery that ran around three sides of the hall. From this a door opened onto a corridor. On the stairs I tried to take one of the suitcases, and was promptly squelched; but I took no pleasure in the drag of the girl’s shoulders as she trudged ahead of me along the corridor into an intersecting passage. It was a relief when we finally reached the room she had selected for me.
The room was lit by a pair of tall windows that opened onto the west side of the castle grounds, a wilderness of tangled bushes and weeds. Also visible were the mouldering ruins of a structure older than the Schloss itself. It was, I decided, the original keep of the first castle ever built on the plateau; it had to be a thousand years old. I guess Americans are bemused by sheer age; the words dug into my mind and reverberated, awesomely. One thousand years . . . It looked its age. The top floor, or floors, were missing; the ruined walls were as jagged as rotten teeth. Beyond the keep, the ground dropped abruptly, in a series of steep steps, to a wooded and verdant valley half veiled by the mists of afternoon heat.
The view was the only good part of the room. Hilton would have turned faint. The brown stone walls were bare except for a few old paintings, which were so blackened by time that it was hard to see what they were meant to represent. The bed was modern; the pink spread and canopy were new, and their bright cheapness clashed badly with the dignified antiquity of the walls. An ugly green overstuffed chair and a cheap bedside table were also new. They were dwarfed by the dimensions of the room, which contained no other furniture except a flat kitchen-type table, a massive wardrobe which served as a closet, and a bureau with a load of chinaware. I viewed this last item morosely. I used to spend summers on a farm. I also noted, with a pessimistic eye, that the lamp on the bedside table was an oil lamp.
I turned to meet the eye of my guide. She had seen my negative reaction, and it pleased her; but she was rubbing her sore shoulders, and my sense of pity for small things – which