On the Night of the Seventh Moon (31 page)

We ranged ourselves round the window and the display began.

It was taking place in the grounds of the ducal
Schloss
which was an excellent spot as it would be visible from almost every point. The children shrieked with excitement as the fireworks flashed across the sky and when the display was over there were groans of disappointment but Frau Graben hustled them all away and as she did so, she whispered to me: “Stay here. I'll join you later. There's something I want to show you.”

So I stayed and looking round the room remembered the unhappy woman who was alleged to have thrown herself from the window and haunted the room ever since. In candlelight it did seem eerie. I wondered how desolate one had to become before one took such a terrible step; I could imagine her feelings so acutely in those moments.

I felt a great desire to go to my comfortable room below; here I felt
so remote from the rest of the fortress although only the spiral staircase separated us.

I turned away from the window and sat at the table. Footsteps were mounting the spiral staircase—two sets of footsteps. My heart began to beat wildly. I wasn't sure why. I sensed that something tremendous was about to happen. Frau Graben was with the children—she could hardly have had time yet to see them in bed. There were just the two maids in the fortress. The steps were not light enough for those.

The door was thrown open. It
was
Frau Graben, beaming, her hair slightly ruffled, an unusual flush in her cheeks.

She said: “Here she is.”

And then I saw Maximilian.

I stood up, my hand touching the table for support. He came in; he stared at me unbelievingly. Then he said: “Lenchen! It can't be! Lenchen!”

I went forward; I was caught in his arms. I clung to him. I felt his lips on my brow and cheeks.

“Lenchen,” he repeated. “Lenchen . . . it can't be.”

I heard Frau Graben chuckle. “There. I brought her for you, couldn't have my Lightning fretting so I went and got her for you.”

Her laughter broke in on our wonder in each other and we were only vaguely aware of what she was saying. Then the door shut and we were alone.

I said: “I'm not dreaming, am I? I'm not dreaming.”

He had taken my face in his hands; his fingers caressed it as though he were tracing its contours.

“Where have you been, Lenchen . . . all this time?”

“I thought I should never see you again.”

“But you died . . . You were in the lodge . . .”

“The lodge had disappeared when I went back. Where had you gone? Why didn't you come for me?”

“I'm afraid you'll disappear in a moment. I've dreamed of you so often. And then I wake to find my arms empty and you gone. You were dead, they told me. You were in the lodge when it happened . . .”

I shook my head. All I wanted for the moment was to cling to him. Later we could talk.

“I can only think of one thing. You're here, with me.”

“We're together. You're alive . . . My darling Lenchen . . . alive and
here.
Never leave me again.”

“
I
. . . leave
you.
” I laughed. I hadn't laughed like that for years—abandoned, gay, in love with life.

And for the moment there was nothing for us both but the joy of this blissful reunion. We were together, his arms were about me, his kisses on my lips, our bodies calling for each other. A hundred memories were back with me—they had never really left me but before I had never dared look back at this perfect joy because to know that it had gone, to have that lingering doubt that it had ever existed, would have been unbearable.

But there was the mystery between us.

“Where have you been?” he was demanding.

“What happened on the Night of the Seventh Moon?” I had to know.

We sat side by side on the couch—before us was the open window; the smell of burning bonfires was on the air; we could hear the shouts of the people far away in the town.

I said: “We must start from the beginning. I must know everything. Can you imagine what it is like to believe there is a possibility that you have lost six days of your life and three of them the happiest you have ever known? Oh, Maximilian, what happened to us? Start at the beginning. We met in the mist. You took me to your hunting lodge and I stayed a night there and you tried to come to my room but the door was locked and Hildegarde was there to protect me. That was real enough, I know. It is the next part. My cousin Ilse and her husband Ernst came to Oxford and brought me back to the Lokenwald.”

“She was not your cousin, Lenchen. Ernst was in my service. He had been an ambassador to the court of Klarenbock, the home of the Princess.”

“She whom they say is your wife. How can she be?
I
am your wife.”

“My Lenchen,” he cried fervently, “you are my wife. You, and you only.”

“We were married, were we not? It's true. It must be true.”

He took my hands and looked at me earnestly. “Yes,” he said, “it's true. The people around me thought I was repeating the practices of my ancestors, which are sometimes carried out now, I fear. But it was not so in our case, Lenchen. We were truly married. You are indeed my wife. I am your husband.”

“I knew it was true. I would not believe otherwise. But tell me, my dearest husband. Tell me everything.”

“You came to the lodge and in the morning Hildegarde took you back to the
Damenstift
and that was the end of our little adventure—so I thought. It did not turn out as I intended for I saw that you were so young, a schoolgirl merely. It was not only Hildegarde who looked after you that night. But you had done something to me, aroused feelings I had not experienced before. And after you'd gone I continued to think of you and I wanted to see you again. Try to understand how things have been. Perhaps I have been over indulged, not refused often enough. You became an obsession with me. I thought of you constantly. I could not stop thinking of you. I talked of you to Ernst. As an older man of rich worldly experience he wagered that if my affair with you had progressed as so many had before, I should have forgotten it in a few weeks. So we planned to bring you out here that you and I might meet again.”

“And Ilse . . .”

“She had married Ernst when he was ambassador to Klarenbock. She is the sister of the Princess—but a natural sister so that marriage with our ambassador was a good one for her. Ernst was ill; he needed medical advice and the best to be found was in London. He wagered me that he and Ilse would bring you back. And so they went to Oxford; they told this story of the relationship between Ilse and your mother and they brought you out here.”

“A plot!” I cried.

He nodded. “A not very original one.”

“I did not see through it.”

“Why should you? It was made easy by the fact that your mother was born here. But that, I suppose, is the pivot on which everything turns. You had our forests and mountains in your blood. That I sensed from the moment we met. It drew us together. It was simple for Ilse to assume a relationship. She could talk of the home life she had alleged she shared with your mother. Homes of the sort from which your mother would have come are very much alike. That part was easy. So you came and then on the Night of the Seventh Moon . . .”

“You were there waiting when she brought me into the square and that was her cue to disappear?”

“I was there. My intention was to take you to the lodge and to stay there with you until such a time as one of us should wish to leave. I even had plans for keeping you there altogether. That was really how I hoped it would turn out.”

“But it was different.”

“Yes, it was different. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. As soon as I saw you again I knew how different. I didn't care for anything. I knew that whatever happened afterward we were meant for each other and that I would face anything rather than lose you. There would be immense difficulties, I knew, because of my position—but I didn't care. I could think of only one thing that mattered to me. I was going to make you my wife.”

“And you did! It's true that you did. They lied to me—Ilse, Ernst, and the doctor. They said . . . oh, it was shameful . . . that I was carried off into the forest by a criminal and that I returned to the house in such a state that they had to put me under sedation to save my reason.”

“But they knew what had happened.”

“Then why . . . oh why . . . ?”

“Because they feared the consequences of what I had done. But how could they? Like the rest of my staff they believed that our marriage was no true marriage. They did not believe it possibly could be. How could I, my father's heir, marry except for state reasons? But I could, Lenchen, and I did because I loved you so much that I could contemplate nothing else. I could not deceive you, my darling. How could I deceive my own
true love? I knew—and they knew—that my cousin had on one occasion deluded a girl into thinking that he was marrying her and that the man who performed the ceremony was no true priest, thus making that ceremony without meaning. A mock marriage. That was what they thought ours was. But I loved you, Lenchen. I couldn't do that.”

“I'm so happy,” I cried. “So happy!” Then: “Why didn't you tell me who you were?”

“I had to keep it secret, even from you, until I had made my arrangements. I alone must explain this to my father for I knew that there were going to be all kinds of difficulties. He had been urging me to marry for some time—for state reasons. It was not the moment to tell him that I had married without his consent and that of his council. There was too much trouble in the dukedom. My uncle Ludwig was seeking an opportunity to overthrow my father and could well seize on what he would call a
mésalliance
as a reason for deposing him and setting up my cousin as heir. I could not tell my father then . . . and when I could have done so, I believed you to be dead.”

“I must tell you what happened, because I can see that you have no idea. Ilse and Ernst came and took me away from the lodge after you had gone.”

“And told me that you were there when the place was blown up.”

“We must follow it bit by bit as it happened, for it all seems so incredible. After you went Ilse and Ernst took me back to the house they had rented in the town. The next morning I awoke in a dazed condition and they told me I had been unconscious for six days after I had been criminally assaulted in the forest.”

“Impossible!”

“This is what they told me. They had a doctor there. He said he had kept me under sedation to save my reason, and that the days which I believed I had spent with you had actually been passed in my bed.”

“But how could they hope that you would believe that?”

“I didn't but they had the doctor there. And when I went back to the lodge it was gone.”

“The lodge was blown up on the day I left. Hildegarde and Hans
had gone into the town for provisions. It happened while they were away. I believed it was a plot to kill me. There have been such plots before and my uncle Ludwig was at the bottom of them. It is not the first time that I and members of my family have escaped death by a very small margin. Ernst came to tell me that the lodge had been blown up and you were in it at the time.”

“I went there to look for it,” I said, “and found it was a shell. So it had only just been demolished. Oh you see how I have been deceived.”

“Poor, poor Lenchen. How you must have suffered. How we both have! There must have been times when you wished we had never met in the forest that day.”

“Oh no, no,” I said fiercely. “I never felt that. Not even in the most wretched and desperate moments.”

He took my hands and kissed them.

I went on: “So I stayed with them and they looked after me, and when the child was born . . .”

“The child!” he cried.

“Oh yes, we had a child. She died at birth. I think I was never so unhappy as when they told me. At least, I thought, I shall have her, and I thought I would take a post at the
Damenstift
and I planned our future together . . . hers and mine.”

“So we had a child,” he repeated. “Oh Lenchen, my poor sweet Lenchen. And Ilse and Ernst, why did they do this? Why should they have done this? I must discover what this means.”

“Where are they now?”

“Ernst is dead. He was ill, you know, very ill. Ilse went back to Klarenbock. I heard she married again. But why should they tell me you were dead? What motive was there in this? I shall find Ilse. I must have the truth from her. I will send someone to Klarenbock to bring her here. I want to know from her what this means.”

“She must have had a reason.”

“We'll find it,” he said.

Then he turned once more to me; he touched my hair and my face as though trying to convince himself that I was really there.

I was so happy to be with him, I could think of nothing beyond the glorious fact that we were together. I was bewildered—still groping in the dark but Maximilian was with me and that for the moment was enough. And I had learned the truth of what happened on the Night of the Seventh Moon; I had taken back those six days of my life; they belonged to me and I had been wantonly deceived.

What could have been the motive of Ilse, Ernst, and the doctor? Why should they have deceived me so utterly that they had almost made me doubt my own reason in order that events might appear in the light they wished them to.

Why?

But Maximilian was there, and as happened long ago, I could think of nothing else. So while the moon shone its light into the turret room I was happy as I had not been since the days of my honeymoon.

 

There was a light tap on the door and Frau Graben came in carrying a tray on which was a squat lighted candle, wine and glasses with a dish of her favorite spiced cakes.