“That’s how it must have happened,” Stres said. “Unless she’s lying.”
“‘Unless she is lying?’” his deputy parroted. “And who, sir, might she be?”
Stres didn’t answer. The sun at their back, though still a little hazy, now drew their shadows on the ground.
“She … Well, Doruntine herself, or else her mother. Or anybody: you, me … What’s so mysterious about that?” Stres exclaimed.
His deputy shrugged. Little by little the colour had returned to his cheeks.
“I will find that man,” Stres said suddenly, raising his voice. The words came harshly through his teeth, with a menacing ring, and his deputy, who had known Stres for years, felt that the passion his chief brought to the search for the unknown man went well beyond the duties of his office. As they walked away, the deputy allowed himself to glance now and again at his boss’s shadow. It revealed more of Stres’s disquiet than the man himself. It even seemed to him that one of the two halves of Stres’s twin characters was standing beside the other, to help him solve the mystery.
CHAPTER TWO
Stres issued an order that reached all the inns and some of the relays along the roads and waterways before the day was out. In it he asked that he be informed if anyone had seen a man and woman riding the same horse or two separate mounts, or travelling together by some other means, before midnight on 11 October. If so, he wanted to be informed which roads they had taken, whether they had stayed at an inn, whether they had ordered a meal for themselves or fodder for their horse or horses, and, if possible, what their relationship seemed to be. Finally, he also wanted to know whether anyone had seen a woman travelling alone.
“They can’t escape us now,” Stres said to his deputy when the chief courier reported that the circular containing the order had been sent to even the most remote outposts. “A man and a woman riding on the same horse. Now that was a sight you wouldn’t forget, would you? For that matter, seeing them on two horses ought to have had more or less the same effect.”
“That’s right,” his deputy said.
Stres stood up and began pacing back and forth between his desk and the window.
“We should certainly find some sign of them, unless they sailed in on a cloud.”
His deputy looked up.
“But that’s exactly what this whole affair seems to amount to: a journey in the clouds!”
“You still believe that?” Stres asked with a smile.
“That’s what everyone believes,” his aide replied.
“Other people can believe what they like, but we can’t.”
A gust of wind suddenly rattled the windows, and a few drops of rain splattered against them.
“Mid-autumn,” Stres said thoughtfully. “I have always noticed that the strangest things always seem to happen in autumn.”
The room grew silent. Stres propped his forehead with his right hand and stood for a moment watching the drizzling rain. But of course he could not stay like that for long. In the emptiness of his mind, a pressing question emerged and persisted: Who could that unknown horseman have been? Within a few minutes, dozens of possibilities crossed his mind. Clearly, the man was aware, if not of every detail, at least of the depth of the tragedy that had befallen the Vranaj family. He knew of the death of the brothers, and of Kostandin’s besa. And he knew the way from that central European region to Albania. But why? Stres almost shouted. Why had he done it? Had he hoped for some reward? Stres opened his mouth wide, feeling that the movement would banish his weariness. The notion that the motive had been some expected reward seemed crude, but not wholly out of the question. Everyone knew that, after the death of her sons, the Lady Mother had sent three letters to her daughter, one after the other, imploring her to come to her. Two of the messengers had turned back, claiming that it had been impossible to carry out their mission: the distance was too great, and the road passed through warring lands. In keeping with their agreement with her, they refunded the old woman half the stipulated fee. The third messenger had simply disappeared. Either he was dead or he had reached Doruntine but she had not believed him. More than two years had passed since then, and the possibility that he had brought her back so long after he set out was more than remote. Perhaps the mysterious traveller meant to extort some reward from Doruntine but had been unable to pass himself off to her as Kostandin. No, Stres thought, the reward theory doesn’t stand up. But then why had the unknown man gone to Doruntine in the first place? Was it just a commonplace deception, an attempt to kidnap her and sell her into slavery in some godforsaken land? But that made no sense either, for he had in fact brought her back home. The idea that he had set out with the intention of kidnapping her and had changed his mind en route seemed highly implausible to Stres, who understood the psychology of highwaymen. Unless it was a family feud, some vendetta against her house or her husband’s? But that seemed unlikely as well. Doruntine’s family had been so cruelly stricken by fate that human violence could add nothing to its distress. Nevertheless, a careful consultation of the noble family’s archives — the wills, acts of succession, old court cases — would be wise. Perhaps something could be found that would shed some light on these events. But what if it was only the trick of an adventurer who simply felt like galloping across the plains of Europe with a young woman of twenty-three in the saddle? Stres breathed a deep sigh. His mind’s eye wandered back to the vast expanse he had seen on the one occasion he had crossed it, when his horse’s hooves, as they pounded through puddles, had shattered the image of the sky, the clouds and the church steeples reflected in them, and the trampling of such things in the mud had struck him as so destructive, so apocalyptic that he had gone as far as to cry out to the Lord for forgiveness. A thousand and one thoughts tumbled through his mind, but he kept returning to the same basic question: Who was the night rider? Doruntine claimed she hadn’t seen him clearly at first; she thought he was Kostandin, but he was covered with dust and almost unrecognisable. He had never dismounted, had declined to meet anyone from his brother-in-law’s family (though they knew each other, for they had met at the wedding) and had wanted to travel only by night. So he was determined to keep himself hidden. Stres had forgotten to ask Doruntine whether she had ever caught a glimpse of the man’s face. It was essential that he ask her that question. In any event, it could not reasonably be doubted that the traveller had been careful to conceal his identity. It was insane to imagine that it could really have been Kostandin, although that was by no means the only issue at stake here. Obviously he wasn’t Kostandin, but by this time Stres was even beginning to doubt that the girl was Doruntine.
He pushed the table away violently, stood up and left in haste, striding across the field. The rain had stopped. Here and there the weeping trees were shaking off the last shining drops. Stres walked with his head down. He reached the door of the Vranaj house in less time than he thought possible, strode through the long corridor where he found even more women attending the afflicted mother and daughter, and entered the room where they both languished. From the door he saw Doruntine’s pale face and her staring eyes, now with blue-black crescents beneath them. How could he have doubted it? Of course it was her, with that look and those same features that her distant marriage hadn’t altered, except perhaps to sprinkle them with the dust of foreignness.