Regard not them that have familiar spirits,
neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them
Leviticus 19:31
The next few weeks settled into a routine; Basti helped Danti in the studio during the day, then sought out Araciel for long conversations and games of chess or cards in the sitting room during the evening. If the apprentice was still working, Basti read, painstakingly brushing up his weak German.
Johannes, Elisabeth, and Dietrich were polite, but he seldom saw them apart from mealtime. Alrune was often in the library, but the sharp-tongued dwarf still made Basti uncomfortable. Naich wandered here and there in the keep, often playing to himself, but he kept to himself and Basti found it difficult to bridge the gap of the man’s handicap. Albrecht was a pleasant, if dour, person to pass the time with, but he was usually busy in the kitchen. Still, in the end, Basti found himself joining the cook there most of the time, sitting by the fireplace sketching and wishing his arm were healed enough to start the heavy work with Danti.
“We need new plates,” Albrecht grumbled to his assistants, who were elbow-deep in pots and pans from the midday meal. “You boys break more dishes than you clean. It’s just as well you take the winter off when the snows start, or we’d have no porcelain at all by spring thaw!”
“The plates are not broken,” one of the boys amiably replied, in a heavily accented Tuscan. “Herr Danti, he takes them upstairs and they never return.” He grinned at Basti. “You must bring them back for us.”
“I’ll bring anything I find down before tonight’s meal,” Basti promised, stretching his legs out next to the warm fire and wiping charcoal-darkened fingers on a linen rag. He felt sleepy. He’d played chess with Araciel late the night before, and spent all morning rearranging Danti’s studio. Now all he wanted to do was curl up and fall asleep.
“Perhaps you…” Albrecht was interrupted by Araciel, who swept the door open.
“Donna Caterina and Master Dietrich be back! Naich did but sight them on the road. I be on my way up to tell my lord and lady.”
Albrecht grabbed a dishcloth to dry his hands and arms.
“It’s about time,” he muttered. “Right before the snows. She just made it.”
Basti sat up, running his fingers through his hair and feeling a little awkward. After a second of trying to neaten up his borrowed clothes, which were still too large for him, he gave up and followed Albrecht and the assistants outdoors to the courtyard gate.
Caterina rode in with six attendants and her brother, Dietrich. Basti tried in vain to straighten up his clothes again when he saw her, richly clad in a rich kirtle and fur-lined gown, a pearl cap over her braided and wound chestnut hair. She was lovely. Araciel hadn’t mentioned that!
As soon as the group entered the courtyard, the girl slid out of her saddle, not even waiting for anybody to catch her stirrup for her.
“Terribilis est locus iste. Hic domus Gestern est,” Alrune intoned, reaching up to take the mare’s reins.
“You must be Alrune,” she greeted him, unperturbed. He gave her a low bow and led the horse away.
Dietrich swung out of his own saddle, helping the three young servant-girls down as the male attendants dismounted and stretched.
“My lady, I’m glad you’re safe,” Albrecht said, bowing deeply. “The trip must have been awful, in this weather.” To Basti’s surprise, she laughed and hugged the cook, making a grin stretch over his narrow face. Behind them, Araciel and her parents strode out of the keep.
“So, Donna Caterina, what did you bring me from the big city?” Danti asked, exchanging affectionate kisses with the girl.
“I have saddlebags filled with gifts from Aunt Rosa,” she promised. “And she did remember to pack you some fresh colors.”
“Caterina,” the sculptor added quickly as he saw her parents approaching, “this is my new apprentice, Sebastiano da Napoli. Basti, this is Donna Caterina of Gestern Keep.”
“I’m honored to meet you,” Basti stammered, bowing as deeply as he could and trying not to blush under her gaze. She was just as pretty up close.
“Welcome, Sebastiano. I’m glad Danti has an apprentice at last.” Her smile was affectionate. “He needs someone to remind him to eat and sleep when he gets carried away on a project.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Basti said, sneaking a glance up at her. “That’ll be one of my most important duties.”
Danti cast him a sour look.
“My lady!” Araciel swept past Basti and, knelt, kissing her hand. Basti stepped back, glancing over at Caterina’s attendants with a trace of curiosity. Dietrich seemed to be instructing them as they pulled bags from the saddles. As the young nobleman turned away, his eyes fell on Araciel and his sister and darkened with displeasure. “It be a pleasure to see thee again.”
“I’m glad to see you, too,” Caterina said, clasping Araciel’s hand. “Marie and Otto both send their best wishes.”
“I pray thou will soon tell me of them all,” Araciel said warmly. Caterina released him and turned to embrace her parents.
“Here, Araciel, take the horses,” Dietrich said sharply, gesturing to the apprentice. Araciel dragged his attention from the homecoming and bowed to the noble’s son.
“Yes, my lord,” he said, catching the reins Dietrich dropped and leading the nobleman’s horse away, collecting the other riders’ mounts as he went. Dietrich’s glare followed him as he headed for the stable.
Basti looked back at Caterina, who didn’t seem to have noticed any of the interplay between the two young men while she clung to her parents’ hands, and raised his eyebrows.
The group quickly hurried inside. Caterina’s escorts -– trusted servants of her aunt’s –- were welcomed and given warmed mulled wine to relax them. They would stay a few days before heading back.
For a while the family stayed in the dining room, drinking and engaging in animated conversation. Araciel rejoined them some time later, seating himself inconspicuously in a chair by the door. Basti sat in the kitchen with Albrecht and the two assistants, closing his eyes to listen over the clanking of pots and pans.
When he awoke, shadows stretched across the kitchen’s tiles and the smell of cooking filled the air. Albrecht nodded to him as he groaned.
“Supper within the hour,” the cook said.
“Where is everyone?”
“Around.” Albrecht waved a wooden spoon and shrugged. “I decided to let you nap. You’ve got to stop staying up late with Araciel. He may not need his sleep, but you do.”
Basti flushed and hurried out, shivering when he left the kitchen’s heat to enter the cooler halls of the keep. He hoped Donna Caterina and her family hadn’t noticed him, sleeping in the kitchen — what a great impression that would make, he growled at himself. Just like a peasant! Why didn’t Araciel wake me up?
After changing, he began to shutter his windows against the darkness when he saw a light flicker in the courtyard. Curious, he leaned forward to see better. A dark shape carried a lantern through the court toward the front gate.
“Hi,” a voice said, behind him. Basti started and turned.
Caterina stood in his doorway, looking at him curiously.
“My lady!” Basti blushed and bowed again. “I’m sorry. You surprised me.”
“Then I’m the one who should apologize.” Her gaze traveled past him. “Were you looking at something?”
Basti glanced back out the window. The light was gone.
“No. I mean, I thought there’s someone out there,” he said. “But he’s gone now.”
“It was probably someone going out to check the horses for the night.”
He stared at her, and she dropped her gaze first, wrapping her shawl more closely around her shoulders.
“I shouldn’t bother you,” she said. “I was just walking by when I saw the light from your room. How do you like it here?”
“Your father and mother are very generous to let me stay,” he said, repeating the response by rote.
“They said you were bitten by a wolf.”
“Yes.” His skin prickled, and he studied her face. “Alrune said it was a bad omen. And it might have something to do with the ghost. I saw him, my very first night here.”
Caterina gave him a long, measuring look.
“He likes to keep track of who’s staying in his house,” she said, somberly.
The chill her words caused him lasted throughout the evening, seeming to taint everything with their ominous air. As though in response to his mood, the conversation quickly took a macabre turn to monsters, and the difference between creatures known to natural philosophy to dwell in exotic lands to the south, like unicorns and the leviathan, and monsters that existed only in men’s overheated imaginations.
“For example,” Danti said, “there are no true monsters in my land.”
“But there are,” Basti protested, looking up from his plate spiced veal. “I read tracts. There were monsters in Bologna and Ravenna, not long ago at all.”
“Why do you suppose the worst monsters always dwell in Italia?” Alrune asked, smirking.
“What did the tracts say, Sebastiano?” Signore Johannes asked, turning his attention to the conversation. Basti thought back on what he’d read.
“Well, my lord, the monster of Ravenna was born, uh, maybe eight years ago? They say it had wings and a horn, and one hairy leg with a devil’s hoof, and the other leg with an eye on its knee. There was an engraving. It was born to a nun and friar who broke their vows. And the monster of Bologna was born about six years ago. It had two faces, two mouths, three eyes and no nose at all. It had this thing on her head like a cock’s comb. I didn’t see an engraving of that one. It was born to a farmer.”
“Those aren’t monsters,” Danti scoffed. “They’re abberations of nature, like a six-legged calf or a two-headed snake.”
“I have heard of such poor children,” Araciel murmured. “Methinks they were much misused.”
“Monstrous children are less remarkable for themselves than for what they symbolize,” murmured Signora Elisabeth. “Whenever a monster is born, it’s blamed on a crime of the parents or the king.”
“Thus politicians would make monsters of us all.” Alrune seemed to be enjoying the topic.
“But they were real, my lady, not just symbols.” Basti looked at Danti. “And you can’t call them natural creatures, because they don’t come two by two and breed others like themselves.”
“Though the very worst monsters are the ones that look like normal men and women,” Alrune pointed out.
“Enough, Mandragora,” Araciel said, a trace of irritation in his normally unruffled manner. “Tell us what learned men know of monsters.”
“They know that the most evil monsters are always the fairest. Wasn’t Lucifer the most beautiful of angels before he fell?”
“Be quiet, you two.” Signore Johannes scowled.
“What about Verdello?” Danti broke in. “Remember, that ghost army that everyone was seeing fight in the fields of Verdello, just a couple of years ago? Someone told me it meant the Turks were going to attack. There’s symbolism for you, my lady.”
“Ghosts aren’t monsters,” Basti objected.
“Ghosts, monsters, whatever. My point is, the Turks haven’t attacked yet.”
“I understand Pope Leo wishes to declare a crusade to attack the Turks. Perhaps the haunting has something to do with his call to arms,” Signora Elisabeth suggested. Her husband laughed.
“We don’t need ghosts for that. The Pope’s just alarmed that the Turks are on the move again. That heathen, Selim, has become quite powerful. All the pope needs to call for a crusade is politics, not prophecy.”
“To what extent, then, should we pay attention to supernatural prophecies and omens, my lord?” Danti inquired, pouring himself more wine. “Are they warnings of things that are fated to come to pass, or can we change the future by acting on them?”
Signore Johannes leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtful as he ran a finger over his blond beard.
“God has sent us great omens of import, like the star over Bethlehem, and has left signs in the sky for us to decipher as we can. When we see something that doesn’t come to pass, the error is never in the sign, but in the interpreter. But recently there seem to have been a rash of prophets and sightings from which nothing ever seems to transpire. I can’t begin to name all of the prophets I’ve heard warning us with doggerel and histrionics that the Antichrist is coming, and the Day of Judgment.” Johannes shook his head. “A scholar’s job, I think, is to learn which miraculous events are real and which are fraudulent. As in alchemy, we must separate the dross from the gold.”
“The stars bespeak change, my lord,” Araciel said softly.
“But not to the point of Judgment Day,” Johannes chided. “We won’t see the heavens rolling up like a scroll anytime soon.”
“Luther’s been called the Antichrist, my lord,” Basti interjected, remembering a tavern argument and references to an itinerant hermit who had apparently been accusing the priest of a variety of evils. “And they say he in turn called the pope the antichrist.”
“Name-calling.” Johannes shrugged. “I expect all this excitement he’s causing will die out over the next few years, like every other clerical spat. The man’s been excommunicated. What more can he do now?”
A sharp gust of wind rattled the shutters.
“Ah, there’s our storm,” Albrecht said with dark satisfaction as he set a platter of fruit and sweet pastries on the table. The wind howled. All eyes turned toward the windows.
“For once, I think you’re right,” Danti agreed. “There’s that feel in the air.”
“Once?” Albrecht turned a baleful eye on the sculptor.
“Do we have everything we need set aside for the winter?” Signora Elisabeth inquired. Distracted, the cook nodded.
“We’ve plenty of food and beverage, my lady,” Albrecht replied. “I’ve laid in a supply to last us through the worst of winters.”
“That be well,” Araciel said softly. “For the stars predict this winter shall be difficult.”
“What do you mean?” Caterina inquired.
“Are you sure?” Danti asked.
“Are the winters that bad?” Basti shivered with trepidation. The spooky feeling he’d had earlier wasn’t helped by the thought of being trapped in the keep all winter.
“Don’t be concerned, Sebastiano,” Signora Elisabeth said kindly. “This keep has stood against the winter for two hundred years and more.”
It’s not the winter I’m worried about, he thought. It’s being in here with the Erl King.
After dinner, as Basti walked out of the dining hall, he felt a gentle hand drop to his shoulder.
“Thou do seem disturbed,” Araciel said softly. “Be there aught I can do?”
Basti turned and gave Araciel a searching look. The youth’s blue eyes met his steadily. “What do you mean about the winter being difficult?”
Araciel sighed. “I confess to misgivings o’er the haunting of the keep, and my lord and lady do feel the same. We seek a means to drive him and his away.”
“How? You said the High Mass didn’t work.” Basti scowled. “Or maybe Father Völker just isn’t holy enough. I mean, if he’s a Luther sympathizer. Maybe you should get another priest, from Pacito or someplace.”
“Nay, Basti, be not so quick to condemn Father Völker. Thou must have faith in those around thee as well as in He Who doth guard us all.”
Basti shrugged, uncomfortably. “I haven’t had a lot of luck with priests.”
“Then put thy faith in God.”
Basti nodded, although Araciel’s attitude made him uneasy. As far as he was concerned, God was best kept in church on Sundays and holy days. The apprentice seemed to read his thoughts.
“We should talk more of this, anon, Basti, but now I must go. Good even’.”
“Good night,” Basti said. He watched Araciel leave, then turned and pushed his way into the north hall.
The hall had been turned into an indoor garden. Araciel had shown it to him during his first week at the keep. The plants were mostly cooking herbs for Albrecht, or medicinal and occult herbs the lord and lady used in their experiments. Now, in winter, the air was dry and cold, and much of the foliage brown and faded. Basti crumbled leaves in his fingers, wondering what the hall looked like in the spring, when everything was green and in bloom.
Araciel puzzled him. Sometimes Araciel acted a lot older than he looked. He never said much about his past. Basti had asked, but his questions had always been … not ignored, but somehow, unnoticed. And it was strange how neither Alrune nor Dietrich seemed to get along with him. Although in Dietrich’s case…. Basti smiled to himself. It was pretty obvious from the way Araciel looked at Caterina what was annoying Dietrich.
He stepped around a freestanding shelf of herbs and stopped, listening to the echoes of his steps on the tiled floor fade away. Outside, the moon was half-hidden by the curled and dried leaves of the plants in the windows. Basti had left the light of the doorways from the east hall, and now he stood in darkness. The air was cold.
Let’s see, he thought. Araciel looks about twenty now. He said he’d joined the keep … when? From the way he’d spoken that second day, it sounded like he’d been with the lord and lady since before their first son was born. That would have been twenty-one years ago.
Basti stopped again, frowning. Impossible. That meant that if Araciel had joined Gestern Keep when he was, oh, Basti’s age, he’d be in his fifties now.
He must have misunderstood. But Araciel had definitely been at the keep before Caterina was born, because that’s when he said he’d hired Albrecht. So he’d been with them for at least sixteen years.
And if he were in his twenties now, that would mean he’d joined the keep when he was – what? Four?
Walking again, Basti chewed on his bottom lip as he calculated. Okay, what if Araciel looked a lot younger than he was? Maybe he was thirty. He could have joined the keep at fourteen. But if he was thirty, and if he’d been around since Caterina had just been a baby … that was kind of creepy. Because Araciel was definitely attracted to Caterina now.
A sound ahead of him interrupted his train of thought. Basti saw a flicker of light through the plants.
“Hello?” he asked, stepping closer.
Donna Caterina looked up.
She was standing next to a marble statue of a syrinx-playing faun that was undoubtedly Danti’s handiwork. In one hand she held a ceramic pitcher, from which she was watering a pot of mixed herbs. A small lamp with a low flame sat on the statue’s pedestal.
“Hello, Sebastiano,” she said, setting the pitcher down. Pearls glowed gently in the rich embroidery along her bodice and the front of her skirt. “Why are you walking in the dark?”
“I’m sorry,” Basti said quickly. “I hope I didn’t startle you. I was just thinking, and I lost track of where I was.”
“Oh.” Caterina gazed at him with a curiously grave expression. “You should be careful about that. It’s easy to get lost in the keep.”
Basti nodded. A silence began to stretch awkwardly between them. Was he supposed to talk to the young lady of the house? Would it be rude to address her? Would it be rude not to?
“Uh … how was your visit with your family?”
Caterina shrugged slightly.
“Aunt Rosa’s a nice woman, and I like visiting my cousins Marie and Otto.” She looked around, as if to make certain nobody else was around, and then lowered her voice. “But I didn’t like being put on display in front of all those eligible bachelors. I hate the idea of getting married and leaving the keep.”
“Couldn’t your husband move here?”
“Oh, I don’t think that would happen. Unless he were a scholar.” The lamp flame flickered and she started. “The oil’s getting low. We’d better leave before we’re both caught in the darkness.”
Basti picked up the lamp for her, and they began walking down the hall again.
“Donna Caterina, I was wondering – how old is Araciel?”
She gave him a curious look, wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The cold was growing sharper.
“I’m not really sure. In his twenties, I guess. Maybe his thirties, although that seems a little old.”
“He said he here before you were born.”
Caterina looked thoughtful.
“He’s always been here, as long as I can remember. But I don’t think he’s very much older than I am. He just acts older than he looks. Mother and Father treat him like a son.”
“Is he?” Basti inquired, and then winced. “I mean, is he related to the family?” He gave her a nervous look, hoping he hadn’t offended her. If Araciel were the lord’s bastard, it might explain a lot. But that would be a better question to ask Danti or Albrecht, not Caterina!
“No, he’s no relation.”
He fell silent. He’d like to ask if she liked the apprentice, but that would definitely be going too far. No, it was time to change the subject.
“You told me … you said that the ghost likes to keep track of who’s staying in his house,” Basti ventured. “Can you tell me more about the ghost?”
“Do you believe in him?”
“Yes. I saw him. And everyone else here believes in him, so….”
“The villagers call him the Erl King.” Caterina’s dark eyes looked distant. “They think he’s more than just a ghost. Sometimes we see him around here, but he’s never talked to anyone before.”
“Can your — can the lord and lady do some kind of charm or spell to keep them away?”
Caterina frowned.
“Father and Mother are alchemists and scholars, not sorcerers,” she said firmly. She opened the door to the lit hall and took the lamp from him. “They don’t practice black magic.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that,” Basti said hastily. “But there are alchemists like Savonarola and Pico della Mirandola — they do good magic, don’t they?”
She glanced back at him and her expression softened slightly.
“I don’t know what they really practice. They claim to speak only to consecrated spirits, but magic is dangerous, Sebastiano. You wouldn’t want to rely on it.”
“I wouldn’t,” he assured her, relieved that she wasn’t offended. He hadn’t meant to be rude. He’d heard of plenty of strega in Napoli, and of course everyone knew of Virgil, Napoli’s founder, whose magic was responsible for the brazen horse heads at the Nolan gate and the enchanted egg under Castel dell’Ovo.
“Good.” She blew the lamp out. “We work very hard to avoid evil here.”