The Pierced Heart: A Novel

The Pierced Heart: A Novel Read Free

Book: The Pierced Heart: A Novel Read Free
Author: Lynn Shepherd
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by the circular turrets of the gatehouse above. Here and there lamps are burning in the turret windows, but when they emerge on the other side of the archway Charles can see not one single light in all the castle’s smooth and closed façade.
    The archway opens onto a paved courtyard where the castle overlooks the river, dropping sheer below. The carriage comes to a stop by a hugeoak door studded with nails and surmounted by a weathered stone crest. A smaller door has been cut into the wood, which puts Charles suddenly in mind of the college gates he saw in Oxford, and as the coachman unstraps his bag and lifts it down, the inner door opens. Charles is not sure, at first, if he is in the presence of his host, but when the figure in the doorway clears his throat and welcomes him softly in excellent though heavily accented English, he is no longer in any doubt.
    With all that we will discover of this man—and all he will be to this story—we will pause, here, a moment and allow Charles’s first impressions to have full sway. So what is it he now sees, as the high clouds shred across the moon, and the wind echoes wildly about the high walls? A tall man, taller than Charles in fact, if he were not slightly stooped. A long dark coat of some heavy matte material that reflects no light. An antique lamp swinging from one hand, the wick cut low and the flame guttering. A high forehead and thin silver hair wisped about the ears. Yet these are but details. What draws and holds the gaze, is his face. The extraordinary pale eyes, heavy-lidded and ashen-lashed. The head too small—surely—for a man of such a height, and the bones of the skull painfully visible under skin stretched so white Charles wonders for a moment if the Baron is an albino. And when he holds out his hand the fingers Charles takes briefly in his own are as wan as a corpse an hour old.
    Charles bows. “Freiherr Von Reisenberg.”
    “I am pleased to welcome you to my home, Herr Maddox,” the Baron replies, his voice still low, as if he suffers from the night air. “I know you come here on a visit of business, but I hope, nonetheless, that you will lack nothing while you are with us, and that when you come to leave, you will take with you all that you come here to seek.”
    It is no doubt the result of learning the language in academic fashionand rarely speaking it, but the formality of the Baron’s speech has a curiously distancing effect, and as Charles follows him into the lofty stone-paved hall it is as if those few paces across the threshold have borne him centuries back. Here, as outside, no lights are burning, and in the weak glow of the silver lamp Charles wonders again, with a jerk of unease, if his eyes are once more deceiving him, for as the swing of the lantern throws shadows like blackened branches spiking across the walls it seems for all the world as if the great room has been built inside the forest that presses close upon the promontory on every side. And he is sure—
sure
this time—that he can see the glitter of animal eyes, and the shape of figures in the darkness, hunched and hooded—
    He checks his pace a moment, but the Baron does not turn or slow, and as he rounds a corner ahead and the dark pours back, Charles makes haste to catch him up. They follow a narrow passage to a flight of steps, then ascend a long spiral stair of worn and pitted stone, and Charles finds himself at last, breathless with the climb and more than a little unnerved, in a small, windowless octagonal room ringed by bookshelves and lit only by the fire in the grate. A door opposite stands open onto a bedroom where a great carved four-poster has been warmed and turned, and a bottle of Tokay wine and a plate of cold cuts and cheese is awaiting him.
    “I beg you to excuse me,” says the Baron, turning to face him. The flames cast a golden glow about his features, but the effect is oddly artificial—like a black-and-white film wrongly re-coloured.
    “I have myself

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