Виктория Холт - On the Night of the Seventh Moon

He took a piece of my hair and wound it round his finger.

“Do you want them?” he said.

“Want them? They must belong to someone else.”

He laughed.

“Someone I knew kept them here,” he said.

“Because she came often?”

“It saved carrying them to and fro.”

“A friend of yours .. s’ ” A friend, yes. “

“A great friend?”

“I don’t have friends like that now.”

“You mean of course that she was your mistress.”

“My darling, that is over now. I have started a new life.”

“But why are her clothes here?”

“Because someone forgot to take them away.”

“I wish they had not been here. I shall be afraid to open cupboards for fear of what I shall find.”

“I was first Siegfried the hero,” he said.

“After that I was the mischievous Loke, followed by Odin, and now it seems I have become Bluebeard. I believe he had a wife who looked where it would have been better if she had not. I’ve always forgotten what happened to the meddlesome lady but I believe it was something regrettable from her point of view.”

“Are you telling me not to ask questions?”

“It is always better not to when you have a good idea that the answer is not very pleasant.”

“There have been many women, I believe. You waylaid them in the forest and brought them here.”

“That only happened once and I did not waylay. I found my own true love.”

“But many have come here.”

“It’s a convenient meeting-place.”

“And you have told them that you would love them for ever.”

“Without any real conviction.”

“And on this occasion?”

“With the utmost conviction because if it were not so I would be the most unhappy instead of the happiest man alive.”

“So there have been others, countless others.”

“There have been no others.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“You don’t let me finish. There have been no others like you. There will never be another like you. Women have been here, yes. Not one but several and it has been . agreeable. But there is only one Lenchen.”

“That is why you married me.”

He kissed me fervently.

“One day,” he said earnestly, ‘you will understand how much I love you.

“

“I know so little.”

“What do you need to know but that I love you?”

“In our everyday life there is more than that.”

“There is never more than that.”

“But I have to prepare myself for our life together. Am I really a countess now? It seems rather a grand thing to be.”

“We are a small country,” he said.

“Do not imagine that we compete with your great one’ ” But a count is a count and a countess a countess. “

“Some are great, others are small. Remember this is a country with many principalities and little dukedoms. Why, there are many people with high-sounding titles which don’t count for very much. There are some dukedoms which consist of the big house, and a village street or two and that is. the sole domain. In the not very distant days some of our estates were so small and so poor that if there were five or six brothers they would each have had only a pittance. They used to draw lots or rather straws. The father would hold the straws in his hand one was a short one, the others all of the same length. The son who drew the short one inherited everything.”

“Have you many brothers?”

“I am an only son.”

“Then they will be particularly eager for you to marry whom they choose for you.”

“They will in time be enchanted with my choice.”

“I wish I could be sure of it.”

“You have only to rely on me now and for ever.”

When I was about to ask more questions he kissed me again and again. I wondered whether it was to silence me. ‘

Three days had passed and the blissful existence continued. I had a strange feeling that I must cling to each moment, savour and treasure it so that I could re-live it in the years to come. Was it a premonition? Did I really have it? Or was it all part of a fantastic dream?

Those summer days were full of excitement and pleasure; the sun shone perpetually; we spent the afternoon in the forest and hardly ever saw anyone. Each evening we supped together and I wore the blue robe which he told me he had bought on impulse.

“To give to one of your friends whom you brought to the lodge?” I asked.

“I never gave it to anyone. It hung in the cupboard waiting for you.”

“You speak as though you knew you were going to find me in the mist.”

He leaned across the table then and said: “Doesn’`t everyone dream of the day the only one in the world will come?”

It was the sort of answer he could make so convincingly. He was indeed the perfect lover; he could capture the mood one needed at any particular time. At first he had been tender and gentle, almost as though he withheld a passion which he was aware might alarm me. My experiences in those three days and nights were many and varied and each was more revealing and exciting than what had gone before.

It was small wonder that I preferred to forget the realities of life.

Just for a while I wanted to live in this enchantment.

Early on the morning of the fourth day after my marriage we were awakened at dawn by the sounds of horses’ hoofs and voices below.

Maximilian went down and I lay listening, waiting for his return.

When he did come, I knew that something was wrong. I rose and he took my hands in his and kissed me.

“Bad news, Lenchen,” he said.

“I have to go to my father.”

“Is he ill?”

“He’s in trouble. I’ll have to leave in an hour at the latest.”

“Where?” I cried.

“Where shall you go?”

“Everything will be all right,” he said.

“There’s not time tor explanations now. I’ll have to get ready.”

I ran round getting his things together; I put the blue velvet robe over my nightdress, for I had begun to use it as a dressing-gown, and went to call Hildegarde.

She was preparing coffee and the smell of it filled the kitchen.

Maximilian, dressed and ready for a journey, was clearly very unhappy.

“It’s unbearable, Lenchen, to leave you like this during our honeymoon.”

“Can’t I come with you?”

He took my hands and gazed into my face.

“If only that were possible!”

“Why not?”

He just shook his head and held me close to him.

“Stay here, my darling, until I come back. It will be the very first moment that is possible.”

“I shall be so unhappy without you.”

“As I shall be without you. Oh Lenchen, there are no regrets none at all. There never will be. I know it.”

Questions were on my lips.

“I know nothing. Where is your father?

Where are you going? How shall I be able to write to you? ” There was so much I wanted to know. But he was telling me how much he loved me, how important I was to him, how once we had met it was clear to him that the rest of our lives must be lived together.

He said, “My darling, I’ll be back with you very soon.”

“Where can I write you?”

“Don’t,” he said.

“I’ll come back. Just wait here for me to come.

That’s all, Lenchen. “

Then he was gone and I was alone.

How desolate the lodge seemed. It was quiet, almost eerie. I did not know how to pass the time. I went from room to room. There was the first one in which I had spent that uneasy night. I touched the door handle and thought of his standing outside, wanting me to have left it unlocked. Then I went to that other room in which were another woman’s clothes and wondered what she was like; and I thought of all the women whom he had loved or professed to love. They would be beautiful, gay, experienced and clever, probably; I was wildly jealous, and deeply aware of my own inadequacies. But I was the one whom he had married.

I would have to learn a great deal. Countess Lokenberg! Could that grand-sounding title really be mine? I turned the ring on my finger and thought of the paper which I kept carefully in my bag which said that on the 20th July of the year 1860 Helena Trant had married Maximilian, Count Lokenberg, and the witnesses to their union were Ernst and Ilse Gleiberg.

There was the day to be lived through. How desolate the house was; how lonely was I!

I went into the forest. I walked down to the grove of pine trees; I sat down under one of them and thought of all that had happened to me.

I wondered what the aunts would say when they heard that I had become the wife of a German count. What would the Grevilles say, and the Clees? It all seemed so fantastic when one considered those people. It was the sort of thing that could have happened only in an enchanted forest.

When I went back to the lodge to my surprise Ilse and Ernst had arrived.

“The Count called on us on his way,” they explained.

“He had suddenly made up his mind that he did not want you to stay at the lodge while he was away. He said it was too lonely. He wants you to come back to us. He’ll come straight to us on his return.”

I was only too pleased. I put my things together and in the late afternoon we left. It was a relief in a way to get away from the lodge in which I had known such happiness; it would be easier to wait in the company of Ilse.

It was dark when we reached the house.

Ilse said I must be tired out and she insisted on my going straight to bed.

She came to me with the inevitable hot milk.

I drank it and was very quickly in a deep slumber.

And when I awoke of course the forest idyll was over and the nightmare had begun.

When I awoke it appeared to be late afternoon. For a moment I could not think where I was; then I remembered that Ilse and Ernst had brought me from the lodge yesterday. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It said a quarter to five.

I raised myself and a pain shot through my head; I could not think what had happened to me. The walls of the room seemed to close in on me, my head was swimming, and I felt sick.

I’m ill, I thought. Worse still, my mind seemed confused. Only yesterday I had awakened glowing with good health with Maximilian beside me. I must have caught some sickness.

I tried to get up but I could not stand. I sank back into bed.

I called feebly: “Ilse!”

She came in, looking very worried.

“Ilse. What’s happened to me?”

She studied me intently.

“You don’t remember ?”

“But I was all right when we came back here last evening.”

She bit her lips and looked uncertain.

“My dear,” she said, ‘don’t worry, we’ll look after you. “

But . “

“You are feeling ill. Try to rest. Try to go back to sleep.”

“Rest! How can I? What’s happened? Why have you Suddenly become so mysterious?”

“It’s all right, Helena. You mustn’`t worry. You must try to sleep and forget.

“Forget! What do you mean? Forget? Forget what?”

Ilse said: Tm going to call Ernst. “

As she went to the door, a terrible feeling of foreboding came to me.

I thought: Maximilian is dead. Is that what they are trying to tell me?

Ernst came in, looking very grave. He took my wrist and| felt my pulse as though he were a doctor. He looked significantly at Ilse. ‘ “Are you trying to tell me that I’ve got some disease?” I”. demanded.

| “You had better tell her. Ilse,” he said. “You have been in bed since you came back on that night. It is six days since then.

“I’'ve been in bed for six days! Has anyone told Maximilian?”

Ilse put her hand on my forehead.

“Helena, you have been delirious. It was a terrible thing that happened to you. I blame myself. I should never have allowed you to go in the first place and then to lose you there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think it would be better if she knew the truth,” said Ernst.

“On the Night of the Seventh Moon,” said Ilse, ‘we went out. You remember that? “

“But of course.”

“You remember our being in the square and watching the revellers?”

I nodded.

“We were separated and I was frantic. I searched everywhere for you but I couldn’'t find you. I wandered round looking over the town for you and then I thought you might have come back to the house so I came back, but you weren’`t here. Ernst and I went out then looking for you.