Kate followed him down the corridor, glancing in rooms as she passed them. The candle stretched their shadows along rough walls to the ten-foot ceiling. Kate had never been in a monastery and was not quite sure what to expect: Gothic trappings, perhaps . . . dungeonlike cells, wooden bowls and utensils, perhaps a few wellused cato'ninetails for selfflagellation.
Get a grip, Kate, she thought. She wanted to go to sleep again.
The house was larger and cleaner than most homes she had seen in Romania, less cluttered, but it might have been the residence of a large farm family. The rooms were simple, but contained, comfortablelooking beds and dressers. Only the simple crucifixes on the walls of each bedroom suggested a monastery. The kitchen was more modern than most Romanian kitchens: no wooden bowls here, but lots of plastic plates and tumblers that reminded Kate of summer camp. The dining room had a battered and unadorned but undeniably elegant twenty-foot table that would have sold for several thousand dollars in an American antiques store. One of the rooms on the other side of the dining room had been turned into a modest chapel with a small altar and individual kneelers for twenty or so people. Kate's impression, even by candlelight, was of simplicity, cleanliness, and community.
“Have you spent time here?” whispered Kate. It was hard not to whisper in the silence.
“Occasionally. It was a good jumpingoff place when I was working with children in the mountain cities. Father Danielescu and the others here are good people.” O'Rourke opened another door.
“Ahhhh,” said Kate. The bath was large and deep and had tiled ledges on three sides. It was immaculately clean. Kate ran her hand along the tile and enamel of the tub itself, then frowned. “Where are the taps? How do you get water in this thing?”
O'Rourke set the candle on the ledge and walked over to the corner, where there was a counter with a farmhouse style pump over a huge galvanized tin tub sitting above what appeared to be a small propane stove with a single burner. “It takes a while,” said O'Rourke, “but it's the hottest water in Tirgoviste.” He began pumping.
For fifteen minutes they were busy filling, heating, carrying and dumping, but eventually the tub was filled. They paused then. Kate showed more embarrassment than O'Rourke. Is he still a priest? Am I ruining something important? Was that just an aberration in the loft? A sin to be confessed?
To hell with it, she thought and began unbuttoning her filthy blouse.
“I'll go check the doors and shutters,” said O'Rourke, pausing in the doorway. “You go ahead and take your time, I'll bathe next.”
Kate stood in her underwear and stared him in the eye. “Don't be silly. That would be a waste of time and hot water. Besides, I'll have my eyes closed when you get in. The tub's big enough. We won't even know the other is there.” She removed her bra and white cotton pants.
O'Rourke nodded and went down the dark hall.
Kate felt like crying when she lowered herself into the steaming water. It seemed there was no heating in the monastery other than fireplaces in the central rooms, the air temperature in the house equaled the lateautumn chill outside, and the bath literally steamed, raising a delicious fog that rolled over the edge of the tub, slid along the tiled ledges, and crept along the floor.
The water was hot. A lump of soap shaped like a small meteorite sat on the ledge; she lathered herself and let the soap create bubbles as she lay neck deep in the hot water, laid her head back, and closed her eyes.
She heard O'Rourke come in, squinted at him as he set down towels and a pile of folded clothes, and then closed her eyes while he stepped out of his own clothes and into the tub. He sat on the ledge for a minute, she heard the soft sound of plastic on the floor, and she realized he was taking off his prosthesis. Kate opened her eyes and looked at him.
“Now you've really seen me naked,” he said with no sign of embarrassment. He raised his good leg and his shortened left leg and gingerly settled in the steaming bath. “There is a heaven,” he whispered.
The water rose higher around Kate's chin, and she felt his thigh brush hers. There was room in this antediluvian hot tub for the two of them to sit side by side in opposite directions without crowding.
“I feel like we should be doing something,” whispered Kate. “Going after Joshua.” O'Rourke handed her a sponge and she squeezed water onto her face. “Something.”
“We don't know where they went,” he said softly.
Kate nodded, letting her arms and hands float. The heat made her breasts ache and reminded her of all the bruises she'd received and muscles she'd strained in the long nightmare crawl through the palace tunnel. “You had cities circled. Places you thought the ceremony might be held. Lucian thought that there would be four nights of ceremony. Did your priest friends know where the next two nights will be held?”
“No.” O'Rourke lathered his arms and shoulders. “There are dozens of cities and sites that were important to the historical Vlad Tepes and that might be part of any ritual centered on him. Brasov, Sibiu, Rimmu Vilcea, Risnov Citadel, Bran, Timisoara, Sighisoara, even Bucharest itself.”
“But you had several circled on the map,” said Kate. She had to sit up and sponge her chest and neck or fall asleep.
“My guess was Sighisoara, Brasov, Sibiu, and the so-called Castle Dracula,” he said. “They're extremely important places in the actual history of Vlad Tepes. But I don't know which places . . . or which night. “
Kate brushed soap out of her eyes. “There is a Castle Dracula? I thought the Romanian Office of National Tourism just invented that.”
“They take tourists to phony sites . . . like Bran Castle that had nothing to do with Vlad Tepes,” said O'Rourke. “Or they drive the few Dracula tourists way up to Borgo Pass and other places that Brain Stoker wrote about but that have no historical significance. But there is a Castle Dracula . . . or at least the ruins of it . . . on the Arges River, less than a hundred miles from here. “ He described it then, the heap of rocks high on a crag overlooking the remote Arges Valley.
“You've been there?” said Kate.
“No. The road is impassable much of the year, and the passable parts have been closed off most of this year. There's a 'hydroelectric plant up there beyond the castle in the Fagaras Mountains above the city of Curtea de Arges and the military is very vigilant about guarding that area. Also, Ceausescu had the site closed because there was some serious restoration going on at the ruins. They probably abandoned the project when Ceausescu died.”
Kate suddenly felt very awake. “Unless the restoration was a strigoi project.”
O'Rourke sat up so quickly that water sloshed. “For the ceremony . . .”
“Yes. But which night? And can we get there?”
“We can get close,” said O'Rourke. He reached to the towels on the ledge, dried his hands, and unfolded the map he had carried in from the motorcycle. “Either by heading south and by picking up Highway Seven to Pitesti, then up SevenC to Curtea de Arges . . . or the very long way northeast to Brasov, then way north to Sighisoara, then southwest to Sibiu and all the way down the Olt River Valley to Highway Seventythree C. That would be . . . I don't know . . . two hundred fifty to three hundred miles on some iffy roads.”
Kate shook her head. “Why would we go that way?”
O'Rourke set the map down and began soaping his beard thoughtfully. “The Jet Ranger left flying to the northwest. If that was its actual route, it might be headed toward any of a million places, but . . .” He paused to dip his face in then water and came up spluttering. “Sighisoara is that way. About a hundred and fifty miles from here.”