“Your mules are lazy. We need a whip.”
“If we go any faster,” she said, “the wheel might come off.”
I debated running ahead and pounding on the castle gate. We approached a steep road. The castle towered on a crag of this stony hill. The castle was dark. It seemed like a strange growth, a lump of tall fungus with thistles for spires.
“It looks deserted,” I said.
“The castle always looks that way from the outside,” Ofelia said nervously.
Lights should have shined from it, if even from a watch fire in the courtyard. I twisted back. There was light here and there in the countryside. It must have come from hamlets or cottages or even from night travelers. One patch of shimmering light came from a pond that reflected the stars. Fortunately, the eerie howls had ceased some time ago.
“It seems too deserted for Tuscany,” I said.
“The castle?” Ofelia asked.
“No. The countryside.”
“Oh. The Great Mortality did that.”
“Tell me about it.”
Ofelia shrugged moodily. “People say it began in Perugia.”
“What?” I grabbed her arm.
She shrank back. “Please, signor, I mean no harm. It’s the truth.”
I released Ofelia. “Tell me more.”
She watched me cautiously and slid farther away on the buckboard. “It’s a terrible disease,” she said in a small voice. “Horrible lumps grow under the armpits and groin, and often the skin turns black as charcoal. The plague has slain peasants and princes alike. Entire villages have perished. No town or city is immune. They say millions have died from it.”
Millions? That was too incredible to believe. At the recent battle of Crecy, English bowmen had slaughtered nearly thirteen thousand French knights and men-at-arms. It was a battle and slaughter beyond compare. Yet thirteen thousand was as nothing when measured against a million. And Ofelia had said millions.
“It’s impossible you haven’t heard about the Great Mortality,” she said.
If millions had died, she was right. How long had I lain in the swamp? The question was beginning to terrify me.
The mules breathed heavily as they clopped up the steep road. Our speed lessened and the wagon-creaks became ponderous.
I wondered why Ofelia lied. Millions dying from plague would be a hellish nightmare. And yet, a nightmare had vomited mannish hounds and riders with pubescent snouts. That Ofelia carted these dead to a dark castle smacked of nightmare. To what sinister usage did a priestess of the Moon put these corpses?
I studied the nearing castle. Bare rocks jutted around it. The other hills, at least the ones we’d traveled, had been lush with grass, weeds, vines, brush and trees. What should make this hill so different? The answer was obviously the castle. I envisioned servants pouring oil on the hillside and smoke-chugging fire scouring all greenery. Over time, rains would wash away the dirt until only grim rock remained. The boulder-strewn hill seemed dead. The approaching castle seemed empty-or haunted.
“It’s different in the moonlight,” Ofelia said. “It glows with an unearthly light then. Unfortunately, then it’s dangerous to set foot on the hill. My mules won’t. No one dares go near the castle at such times.”
She shook the reins to encourage her panting beasts.
The castle’s structure seemed…alien to Tuscany. A mad artist might have rendered such a thing in a painting to imply a nightmare struggling for reality. I would not have wanted to see it glow with the moon’s light. It troubled me that this castle possibly held my memories. That implied I belonged to the same nightmare that had spawned it.
“Who built the castle?” I asked.
Ofelia glanced at me sidelong and shrugged in an evasive manner.
“What have you heard?” I asked, trying to keep the alarm out of my voice.
Ofelia muttered to herself and clucked her tongue for the mules to pull harder.
The road steepened and the evil castle loomed above. I felt watching eyes. Yet I could spy no one on the battlements, and the structure lacked windows. The walls were like lava, not hewn stone held by mortar. That seemed unnatural, as if the earth had vomited it up.
“Who built it?” I demanded. “Or is ‘built’ the wrong word?”
Ofelia looked at me with alarm.
“Who raised it?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked in a high tone.
I wrenched the reins out her hands and made ready to halt the mules.
“No!” she cried. “Keep moving. If we stop here, we’ll never make it up the steep road.”
“Who raised the castle?” I asked.
Ofelia licked her lips. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’ll decide that. Talk.”
“Give me the reins,” she pleaded. “You’re making the mules nervous.”
I tossed her the reins.
Ofelia urged the mules on. The mules pulled and their heads bobbed up and down. Ofelia glanced at me.
I scowled, impatient.
She began to talk, slowly at first: “It happened after the first outbreak of plague. It was a Demon Moon, they say. …A lady appeared on the hill that night. This hill. She wore silks like a Saracen, sheer so men could see her thighs and her milky breasts. She was beautiful. A knight who had practiced a forbidden spell took his squire and page and rode up the hill for a midnight rendezvous. Only the page survived the meeting, and he babbled a mad story. The knight shouted his delight upon seeing the lady. She spread her arms and called to him. He rushed to her. They kissed, and he fell in a swoon. Next, she beckoned the lusty squire and he too fell after their embrace. When she crooked a bejeweled finger at the page, he fled. He was not yet of age and thus resisted her bewitching charms.”
“What does that have to do with the castle?” I asked.
“That’s just it,” Ofelia said. “The hill was bare that night. But after the death of knight and squire, the first foundations arose.”
“You said they swooned, not died.”
A foolish shepherd heard strange sounds the next night and crept up the hill from bush to bush.”
“Look around you,” I said. “Where do you see a bush?”
“As the castle grew,” Ofelia said, “the vegetation sickened and died. People began to call it the castle’s blight.”
“What do you mean ‘grew’?”
“Look at the walls and you’ll know what I mean,” she said.
I’d already noted them. “You said the shepherd was foolish. How so?”
“He heard the knight sob for mercy on an ebon altar. There were beautiful things dancing around the bound knight. Each cut him and sipped his blood. The shepherd fled and babbled a tale of sorcery and living rock that entombed the damned. The shepherd lived in terror of the moon afterward. He sold his flock to buy candles. He burned them all night in his locked hut. He sold everything he had for more and more candles. Finally, he ran out of goods or coin and shivered before a knight’s fire in a castle’s common room. They say he begged them to keep the fire stoked all night. But who ever heard of that. In the morning, the shepherd was gone, although the cloak he’d slept on remained in the corner where he’d curled up with the hounds.”
“What do people say happened?” I asked.
“It’s what the shepherd said about the candles.” Ofelia grinned, maybe noting my unease. “He burned them because in the dark he saw the lady’s smiling face. Her features were of unearthly beauty. He said she summoned him to appear before her in the castle.”
“That castle?” I asked.
“It grows,” Ofelia said, “and the blight widens with each addition.”
“And yet you bring them more corpses,” I said.
Ofelia nodded slowly. “The priestess pays in honest silver. For the first time in my life, I’m rich.”
I eyed the nearing structure. The sense of being watched intensified, and I felt hunger. I felt as if the castle was a living thing like a wolf or lion starved for meat. Did Ofelia feed it with her corpses?
I glanced back at the dead, looked from face to face. Each was male.