Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Hebrews 13:2
Something stirred in the shadows.
Sebastiano pulled his untidy black lucco closer around his shoulders. Mountain winds bit through the surcoat’s worn fabric and roughly mended holes, raising the hair on the back of his neck. He hastened his pace, warily searching the trees at the edge of the path. Autumn-dried leaves flashed crimson and auburn in the dying light, stirred by the wind — or something else. He swung his leather bag over his shoulder and broke into a trot, the bite wound on his bandaged arm throbbing with each step.
“Was ist los?” Jakob turned as Sebastiano caught up with him.
“I thought I saw something….” He caught himself speaking in his native Neapolitan. Pain was making him light-headed. He gathered his wits and switched to Tuscan. “I thought I saw something by the side of the road.” He turned to follow Jakob’s gaze, but there was nothing to see. The chill wind tossed dry leaves across their footprints.
Jakob spent another minute scanning the steep mountain trail and the trees around them, then shrugged.
“Is good,” the middle-aged man assured him in broken Tuscan. “We go now.” He turned and started walking again.
Sebastiano followed, glancing over his shoulder. They’d only walked another twenty minutes when white walls appeared above the dark branches that overhung the path. Jakob pointed, as though Sebastiano might somehow have missed them.
“Schloss Gestern. Yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” Sebastiano replied, relieved. He mustered his weak German. “Danke schön!”
“Yes, yes,” Jakob nodded. The trail widened to end abruptly at a large set of iron gates.
“Guten Abend, Jakob,” a pleasant voice called out. “Doch ich Ihnen helfen?”
The stranger stood behind the gates like an incarcerated angel, his golden hair reflecting the dying sun’s light. For a moment Sebastiano wondered how the man had known they were coming. But of course, he realized as he looked back up at the keep’s high walls, they probably saw us coming up the trail hours ago.
Jakob replied in German too fast for Sebastiano to even hope to understand. Instead, he dropped his leather bag into the dust and gazed at the young man with whom Jakob was conversing. His silks and velvets were richly slashed, and gold thread glittered in his cap, doublet and hose. Sebastiano swallowed, suddenly very aware of his own dusty and well-worn clothes. The stranger could have just stepped out of one of Fra Angelico’s paintings, with his fair skin and elegant poise. He was, Sebastiano thought with wonder, the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.
Exclaiming at something Jakob had said, the stranger drew a key from his ornately brocaded belt and unlocked the gate. Jakob gestured to Sebastiano as he continued speaking. The stranger frowned, replying. The older man shrugged.
“Jakob does tell me you carry a letter from Maestro Altelune,” the youth said, turning to Sebastiano. His Tuscan was curiously antiquated. “Be you, then, Sebastiano, the apprentice he has been expecting this winter?”
“Yes, that’s me,” Sebastiano replied, relieved. He fumbled one-handed inside his bag for the letter of invitation.
“Excellent, then; you be expected and much welcome,” the youth said courteously. He drew open the gates without waiting to see Sebastiano’s missive. “’Tis most fortunate that you have arrived before nightfall; the nights be bitter cold come even’.” He turned and said something in German to Jakob, who shook his head and turned back.
“Danke schön,” Sebastiano said softly, again, as his guide passed. The huntsman nodded, picking up his pace as he began the long walk back down the mountain trail.
“I be Araciel, apprentice to my lord and lady of Gestern Keep,” the youth introduced himself, walking forward to pick up Sebastiano’s dusty leather bag. “Pray, allow me to assist you.”
Sebastiano made a motion to take the bag, but Araciel turned away as if he didn’t notice. The young sculptor winced. His bag was dirty, and Araciel’s clothes and hands were immaculate.
“Um, you don’t have to carry my bag.” He smiled self-consciously. “I’ve been carrying it for months. A few extra minutes won’t make any difference.”
“And likewise a few minutes shall not weary my back overmuch,” Araciel said mildly, locking the gate. “Allow me to spare you this last effort; Jakob did tell me your arm has been injured.”
“It’s not so bad.” Embarrassed, Sebastiano trailed behind the youth as Araciel began walking toward the keep. “Um, are you a member of the family?”
Araciel laughed. “Naught but an apprentice like yourself, Sebastiano, though my craft be the pursuit of philosophy and science. Alas, I have neither the skill nor the imagination to follow an artist’s vocation.”
“I didn’t know Lord Gestern was a scholar.”
“Both he and his lady do correspond with many of the greatest minds in Christiandom. But you would not have heard of them, I think; we be a smallish group here, and the more so as winter approaches and our occasional visitors leave to seek warmer climes.”
“How many people are in the keep now?” Sebastiano asked, feeling apprehensive. He’d found the people of Domagno to be strange and unpredictable. Just as Domagno nestled in a precarious political position between the Venetian Republic and the Hapsburg Dominions, its citizens seemed caught between both countries and belonging to neither. Even their language struck him as an uncomfortable mixture of dialects, though — unfortunately for him — most heavily weighted toward German.
“You shall number our tenth, and I fear that shall be the full complement of Gestern Keep this winter. The lord and lady keep no slaves and send the servants to their families come the winter.”
“But….” Surprised, Sebastiano looked up at the great keep that towered over him. “why? I mean, can the household run with only ten people in it?”
“We be self-sufficient, an’ the rooms do gather a bit more dust than be seemly.” Araciel laughed, a little ruefully. “You will think us quaint and backwards, I fear, with our humble rustic ways.”
Hardly humble, Sebastiano thought, glancing again at Araciel’s rich clothing. He bit back his next question. As an apprentice, he expected he’d end up doing a lot of the chores for his new master, and perhaps for the lord and lady, as well. He wondered whether he’d be doing them with Araciel. It was hard to imagine the fair youth wielding a broom or stirring a tub of laundry.
He closed his fists, frowning at the throb of pain in his wounded arm. He wasn’t afraid of hard work. And he wouldn’t let his wound keep him from impressing his new master.
“Please, if you don’t mind,” he ventured after a moment. “Who else lives here?”
“Signore Johannes and Signora Elisabeth be the masters of Gestern. Their daughter, Donna Caterina, be away visiting relatives. Their eldest son, Master Alfons, be at his studies in Vienna, whilst their younger, Master Dietrich, remains here to assist them in their studies. Serving the household be myself, the cook Albrecht, and his two aides, who will not stay the winter months. Also in the keep at present be your new master, Danti Altelune; the musician Hubert Naich, and a visiting scholar, Alrune Mandragora.”
“I don’t speak much German….” Sebastiano said, nervously.
“Most of us speak Tuscan and also Latin, have you any skill of it; but I would advise you to polish your command of German, as few of the villagers and hunters in these parts speak aught else.” Araciel opened the keep’s front door. Sebastiano paused, appreciatively running his hand over the dark wood. The carvings looked old — Teutonic symbols of luck and protection.
“Pray, step inside,” Araciel bade him. “I shall inform my lord and lady, and Master Altelune, that you be arrived.”
“Thank you.” Sebastiano tucked his cold hands into the sleeves of his ankle-length gown and looked around as Araciel walked off.
The keep was very different from the houses he’d grown up with in Naples. The entry hall was a broad, raftered space with shuttered glass windows. Tapestries adorned the paneled walls, and a lamp by the door was as yet unlit. Long shadows filled the room, the last rays of the sun filtering through the shutters’ slats. To Sebastiano, the hall felt dark, somber, and forbidding.
He shifted nervously in the growing darkness. His stomach ached; he hadn’t eaten anything since the roll and sausage Jakob had given him that morning. The handful of florins he’d carried from his cousin’s house in Firenze had lasted him to the town of Pacito, and then he’d had to sell his good wool cloak to buy food for his journey through the mountains. The journey had beggared him; not even the tiniest coin was left in his pack.
A yawn stretched his jaws. He sat down in a straight-backed wooden chair by the door, exhausted. As his travels had taken him further north, he’d begun to acclimate to the altitude, but his Neapolitan lungs still labored in these Tyrolean heights. He rubbed his bandaged arm, then pulled the folds of his trail-stained lucco closer around his thin shoulders.
Flickering light roused him from his half-sleep. Sebastiano blinked, his eyes focusing on a motley-clad dwarf lighting the lamp by the door from a long wax taper.
“And behold, he awakens in a strange land to strange faces,” the dwarf intoned, his dark eyes glittering in the unsteady light. “Best beware where you fall asleep, boy.”
“I … I’m Sebastiano da Napoli. I’m here to study with Maestro Altelune.” Sebastiano scrambled to his feet, reaching for the letter Araciel hadn’t taken.
“And here I thought you a beggar at the door – you’d fare better as a beggar, because then you could leave.” The dwarf’s laugh was mocking, but Sebastiano wasn’t sure the mockery was aimed at him. “We’ve had a dearth of mendicants lately; they seem to be out of fashion.”
“Who are you?” Sebastiano asked, wondering if he were still asleep. “Are you Lord Gestern?”
The stranger grinned like a gargoyle. Sebastiano tightened his grip on his letter.
“Me, a lord? Not at all. I am but a parasite on the lord’s ass, like yourself.” The dwarf held the taper under his chin and made a face. Sebastiano took a step backward, bumping into the keep’s door. Araciel hadn’t said anything about the lord and lady keeping a jester, so…
“Are you Master Altelune?” he asked, fearfully.
“No, I am.” Light flooded the room. The dwarf reluctantly stepped away, lowering his taper, as a dust-covered man in his late thirties stepped into the room with a lamp in one hand. “I’m Danti Altelune. And you’re Sebastiano. Welcome.”
“Maestro!” Sebastiano bowed, relieved. “Thank you very much for inviting me here, Master. It will be an honor to have the opportunity to learn from you!”
Danti smiled slightly through a short beard. “Well, you’re a polite enough young man.”
Sebastiano pressed his letter into his new master’s hand.
“No, Master, I mean it. I’ve wanted to work with you ever since I saw the Orpheus you carved for the Luciani family. The marble — the way you made it glow with life —and the detail…!”
“Well, yes, that was one of my better works.” Danti looked up from the muchhandled invitation he had sent to Firenze. The sculptor’s Veneziano accent was welcome to Sebastiano’s ears after a month of German gutturals. “But I’m not one of your studio instructors, you know. I don’t have a dozen commissions for you to work on with me.”
“I’ll be happy to work on anything I can, Master.”
“Good, good.” Danti fell silent, inspecting him. “What happened to your arm?”
Sebastian winced. “I was attacked by a wolf,” he said, with a sideways glance up to gauge his new master’s expression. “But the priest in Gestern told me I should heal up fine in a month or so, and I promise it won’t keep me from working hard. I’m a very good worker, Master.”
“Jakob did say a wolf did attack him but hours outside the village, the eve before last.” Araciel stepped through the door. A lamp glowed in his hand, too.
“That close?” Danti looked at Araciel a long moment, then turned back to Sebastiano. “Are you sure it wasn’t just a wild dog? They’re more likely than wolves to attack humans.”
Sebastian’s heart hammered as he remembered the attack — remembered being rushed by a bristling mass of dark fur and sharp teeth, being surrounded by the dank, feral stench of the wilderness. “I don’t think it was a dog, sir.”
“Well, what –”
“Mayhaps this be a tale best told over dinner,” Araciel interrupted. “My lord and lady will wish to hear of it.”
“Mm. You’re probably right.” The sculptor turned back to Sebastiano. “But you talked to Father Völker? He said you’d be all right?”
“Yes, Master.” The priest had spoken Roman, which had been a relief to Sebastiano. “Except for the bites on my arm, I wasn’t too badly hurt. I was lucky — Jakob and his son heard me and they chased the wolf off.” Remembering the attack made him feel a little sick. He hoped Master Altelune would believe that he was well enough to work. If the sculptor sent him away, he didn’t know what he’d do. He couldn’t possibly afford to travel back to Napoli.
Danti glanced at Araciel again, then shook his head.
“Well, have Albrecht look at the wound,” the sculptor advised. “He’s not a trained physic, but he knows what he’s doing.”
“An’ it please thee, Danti, I would take thy apprentice to his room. My lord and lady be anxious to meet you at dinner, Sebastiano, which be within the hour. Allow me to escort you to your room, that you may wash before the meal.”
“Thanks. I’d like that.” He looked around for his bag and realized that Araciel must have taken it earlier. He turned and glanced at his new master. “If I may, maestro?”
“We’ll talk after dinner.” Danti said, absently folding Sebastiano’s letter of introduction as he left.
Sebastiano looked around. At some point during the conversation, the dwarf had vanished.
“Araciel?” he asked as he followed the fair youth through the shadowy hall.
“Yes, Sebastiano?”
“Please, call me Basti. All my friends do.” Sebastiano hesitated. He’d heard that northerners were standoffish, but …. “I mean, I hope you will be a friend.”
“I thank thee, and I do hope the same.”
“I was wondering … who was the other man in the room? The dwarf?”
“That be Master Alrune.” Araciel led him up a tower-flight of stairs. The tiny light from his lamp barely managed to drive off the shadows; the tower was pitch black, its narrow windows showing nothing but night sky. Basti shivered, feeling cold.
“Despite his height and garb,” Araciel continued thoughtfully, “he be no fool, though his humor be of a cutting nature.”
“The way he spoke, he seemed … I don’t know.” Basti hesitated. “Angry at me.”
“I fear his amusement oft be taken at the expense of others’ peace of mind.” Araciel opened the door to the third floor and led Sebastiano into the cold hallway. Tall, shuttered windows along the south wall must, Sebastiano thought, overlook the keep’s inner courtyard when open. The opposite wall was lined with doors; the rooms, he guessed, overlooking the forest. The hall was floored in wood, and dark tapestries hung over the bare stone walls. Araciel stopped in the middle of the hallway, lamplight glimmering from gold threads in his doublet.
“This be the north hall, called Gryphon Hall. See there the stained-glass window that does give this hall its name? I recommend it to your study on the morrow; it be a skillful work. Behind us be the lord and lady’s laboratory. Please refrain from entering it in haste, for oftimes an interruption be disastrous to their work. This be my room, beside the laboratory. In the south hall be my lord and lady’s chambers, and the rooms of their children. And this,” he led Sebastiano to the end of the hall, “be thine own room.” He opened the door.
Sebastiano’s eyes widened as he stepped inside. He’d never imagined having a room nearly as large as their central room at home. When he’d lived with his parents, he’d shared a bed with three older brothers. His sister had been given her own cot. But this….
“Am I sharing it with Master Altelune?” he asked. “Or any other apprentices?”
“No, Basti. There be no shortage of space in Gestern Keep. But you must tend to your room yourself, as we have no help.”
“I won’t mind.” Sebastiano moved across the room, drawn to the large window. In the moon’s light, he could see that his window overlooked the outer courtyard and the forest and mountains beyond. Night winds rattled the glass panes. He turned. An ornately carved bed, armoire and desk dominated the chamber. His leather bag had been laid on the bed’s down comforter.
“Thou will need warm clothes for the winter here.” Shadows puddled around his feet as Araciel shifted the lamp. “Methinks thou be of a size as my lady’s nephew, Otto, who did leave several garments here from his summer’s visit. I shall speak to my lady about it, to see if you may have them.”
“Thank you,” Sebastiano said, turning back from the window. “You’ve been very helpful. I don’t know what to say.”
“Say naught; I be told I do talk enough for two.” A smile twitched on the older apprentice’s lips. “Come, now, I shall show thee the rest of this floor, then leave thee to prepare for dinner.”
They wandered through the floor, Araciel pointing out rooms and telling him a little about each. Just as he’d alluded earlier, most of the rooms were abandoned, closed up by the lord and lady until needed. Even those rooms ostensibly still in use, such as the eastern galleries, had enough dust and cobwebs in them to qualify as abandoned. Sebastiano ran a finger over one of the bronzes, then brushed the grit on his lucco. I’ll clean them, he decided as they walked through the shadowed chambers. That way I can earn my keep and study them at the same time. Some of them have to be Master Altelune’s.
Besides, he wanted to learn his way around the keep as soon as he could. The thought of all the empty rooms around him made him uneasy. The hair on the back of his neck prickled at the thought of the distance between his room and everyone else’s, and his imagination kept conjuring wolves in the shadows.
He stuck close to Araciel’s halo of lamplight.
After they’d completed the circuit, walking quickly and quietly past the lord’s and lady’s laboratory door, Araciel handed him the lamp.
“An’ thou wish, I shall return to escort thee to dinner.”
“Yes, please!” Basti said fervently. “I’m afraid of getting lost!”
“Soon you shall be as familiar with the keep as with your own home, I be sure,” Araciel said, making a graceful bow as he left. Basti watched him vanish into the hallway’s shadows, baffled. Nobody had ever bowed to him before.
He’s as strange in his own way as that dwarf, Basti thought, turning. He closed the bedroom door and set the lamp on a small table. He’d suspect the other apprentice of making fun of him, had the rest of Araciel’s behavior not been so patient and helpful.
He sat on the edge of the huge bed and rubbed his aching arm. So much space. So much silence. So much darkness.
This isn’t what I expected. He could sense the homesickness hovering near, waiting to be recognized and welcomed in, and he resolutely thrust it away. It’s good, though. Master Altelune seems pleasant enough. Distant, but not unfriendly.
His eyes felt heavy, but if he closed them, he was afraid he’d fall asleep. He stood again. An urn and basin had been filled and placed near the armoire. He rinsed the road dust from his face and hands, waking up a little from the touch of the cold water. I wonder where the well is? He supposed he’d have to carry his own water up the stairs and through the halls if he wanted it in his room for washing.
No servants except a cook and an apprentice. That’s … strange. Were the lord and lady too poor or too tight to afford a proper household staff? Or perhaps they were cruel, so that nobody wanted to work for them. Although in that case, Sebastiano thought, he’d expect their apprentice to be ill-tempered. Well, at least I’ll have plenty of opportunities to make myself useful. They won’t send me home if they see that I’m a hard worker, even with a bad arm.
He changed into his one good, if somewhat wrinkled, giaquetta. The big oak armoire almost seemed emptier after he hung up his few clothes. He hesitated, then pulled on his worn lucco again. It wasn’t any worse than the rest of his much-worn and -mended garments, and the room was too cold for him to leave it behind.
A Murano-glass mirror hung inside the armoire door. Basti looked into it with curiosity, unaccustomed to the luxury. The solemn, dark-eyed boy who looked back at him was too skinny; he’d lost weight on the journey. His patched clothes hung loosely on him, and his black hair had grown over his eyes and down to his shoulders.
No wonder Danti looked dubious, he thought, gazing at his hollow cheeks and shadowed eyes. He didn’t look like much of a sculptor right now; not at all like Danti, who had the broad chest and well-developed shoulders and arms of man who’d worked stone for years.
He hoped his new master wasn’t regretting the invitation, now.