Startled, the mason leaped up and spun around, the anger in his face dying abruptly as he recognized the uniform and realized that he had been addressed in German. He gibbered something unintelligible—something in Romanian, no doubt, Woermann realized with annoyance that he'd have to either find an interpreter or learn some of the language if he was going to spend any time here.
"Speak German! What are you doing here?"
The man shook his head in a mixture of fear and indecision. He held up an index finger, a signal to wait, then shouted something that sounded like "Papa!"
There was a clatter above as an older man with a woolly caciula on his head pushed open the shutters of one of the tower windows and looked down. Woermann's grip tightened on the butt of his Luger as the two Romanians carried on a brief exchange. Then the older one called down in German:
"I'll be right down, sir."
Woermann nodded and relaxed. He went again to one of the crosses and examined it. Brass and nickel ... almost looked like gold and silver.
"There are sixteen thousand eight hundred and seven such crosses imbedded in the walls of this keep," said a voice behind him. The accent was thick, the words practiced.
Woermann turned. "You've counted them?" He judged the man to be in his mid-fifties. There was a strong family resemblance between him and the younger mason he had startled. Both were dressed in identical peasant shirts and breeches except for the older man's woolly hat. "Or is that just something you tell your tour customers?"
"I am Alexandra," he said stiffly, bowing slightly at the waist. "My sons and I work here. And we take no one on tours."
"That will change in a moment. But right now: I was led to believe the keep was unoccupied."
"It is when we go home at night. We live in the village."
"Where's the owner?"
Alexandra shrugged. "I have no idea."
"Who is he?"
Another shrug. "I don't know."
"Who pays you, then?" This was getting exasperating. Didn't this man know how to do anything other than shrug and say he didn't know?
"The innkeeper. Someone brings money to him twice a year, inspects the keep, makes notes, then leaves. The innkeeper pays us monthly."
"Who tells you what to do?" Woermann waited for another shrug but it did not come.
"No one." Alexandru stood straight and spoke with quiet dignity. "We do everything. Our instructions are to maintain the keep as new. That's all we need to know. Whatever needs doing, we do. My father spent his life doing it, and his father before him, and so on. My sons will continue after me."
"You spend your entire lives maintaining this building? I can't believe that!"
"It's bigger than it looks. The walls you see around you have rooms within them. There are corridors of rooms below us in the cellar and carved into the mountainside behind us. Always something to be done."
Woermann's gaze roamed up the sullen walls, half in shadow, and down to the courtyard again, also deep in shadow despite the fact that it was early afternoon. Who had built the keep? And who was paying to have it maintained in such perfect condition? It didn't make sense. He stared at the shadows and it occurred to him that had he been the keep's builder he would have placed it on the other side of the pass where there was a better southern and western exposure to the light and the warmth of the sun. As it was situated, night must always come early to the keep.
"Very well," he told Alexandru. "You may continue your maintenance tasks after we settle in. But you and your sons must check with the sentries when you enter and leave." He saw the older man shaking his head. "What's wrong?"
"You cannot stay here."
"And why not?"
"It is forbidden."
"Who forbids?"
Alexandra shrugged. "It's always been that way. We are to maintain the keep and see to it that no one trespasses."
"And of course, you're always successful." The old man's gravity amused him.
"No. Not always. There have been times when travelers have stayed against our wishes. We do not resist them—we have not been hired to fight. But they never stay more than one night. Most not even that long."
Woermann smiled. He had been waiting for this. A deserted castle, even a pocket-sized one such as this, had to be haunted. If nothing else, it would give the men something to talk about.
"What drives them away? Moaning? Chain-rattling spectres?"
"No... no ghosts here, sir."
"Deaths then? Gruesome murders? Suicides?" Woermann was enjoying himself. "We have more than our share of castles in Germany, and there's not a one that doesn't have some fireside scare story connected with it."
Alexandra shook his head. "No one's ever died here. Not that I know of."
"Then what? What drives trespassers out after only one night?"
"Dreams, sir. Bad dreams. And always the same, from what I can gather ... something about being trapped in a tiny room with no door and no windows and no lights ... utter darkness ... and cold ... very cold ... and something in the dark with you ... colder than the dark... and hungry."
Woermann felt a hint of a chill across his shoulders and down his back as he listened. It had been on his mind to ask Alexandra if he himself had ever spent a night in the keep, but the look in the Romanian's eyes as he spoke was answer enough. Yes, Alexandra had spent a night in the keep. But only once.
"I want you to wait here until my men are across the causeway," he said, shaking off the chill. "Then you can give me a tour."
Alexandra's face was a study in helpless frustration. "It is my duty, Herr Captain," he said with stern dignity, "to inform you that no lodgers are allowed here in the keep."
Woermann smiled, but with neither derision nor condescension. He understood duty and respected this man's sense of it.
"Your warning has been delivered. You are faced with the German Army, a force beyond your power to resist, and so you must step aside. Consider your duty faithfully discharged."
This said, Woermann turned and moved toward the gate.
He still had seen no birds. Did birds have dreams? Did they, too, nest here for one night and never return?
The command car and the three unloaded trucks were driven across the causeway and parked in the courtyard without incident. The men followed on foot, carrying their own gear, then returned to the other side of the gorge to begin bringing over the contents of the supply truck—food, generators, antitank weapons—by hand.
While Sergeant Oster took charge of the work details, Woermann followed Alexandra on a quick tour of the keep. The number of identical brass-and-nickel crosses inlaid at regular intervals in the stones of every corridor, every room, every wall, continued to amaze him. And the rooms... they seemed to be everywhere: within the walls girding the courtyard, under the courtyard, in the rear section, in the watchtower. Most of them were small; all were unfurnished.
"Forty-nine rooms in all, counting the suites in the tower," Alexandra said.
"An odd number, don't you think? Why not round it off to fifty?"
Alexandra shrugged. "Who is to say?"
Woermann ground his teeth. If he shrugs once more...
They walked along one of the rampart walls that ran out diagonally from the tower then angled straight back to the mountain. He noted that there were crosses imbedded in the breast-high parapet, too. A question rose in his mind: "I don't recall seeing any crosses in the outer aspect of the wall."
"There aren't any. Only on the inside. And look at the blocks here. See how perfectly they fit. Not a speck of mortar is used to hold them together. All the walls in the keep are constructed this way. It's a lost art."
Woermann didn't care about stone blocks. He indicated the rampart beneath their feet. "You say there are rooms below us here?"