Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Tell me there will be blood, Klaudi, Liebchen , dear. Please tell me there will be blood. Lots of blood. Ein wahres Blutbad. ’
Lorenz von Rabenstein pouted, his seraphic pointy features making him resemble a debauched fallen angel.
Claudia almost retched. Moritz wrapped an arm around her shoulders protectively.
‘There won’t be blood, brother!’ He hissed, his voice barely audible in bustling Via dei Condotti.
‘Which is why you have both brought your swords…’ Adela scoffed with an eye roll.
‘These are just part of our uniform,’ Lorenz drawled in the indolent, sing-song intonation that his mother-tongue gave to his English. ‘What would the Kaiser say if he saw us without them?’
‘I can’t believe we are already getting into trouble.’ Adela ignored him. ‘We haven’t been in Rome a whole day. It must be a new record.’
‘The Rabenstein curse strikes again!’ Lorenz rubbed his hands, incongruously delighted.
‘Shut up,’ Moritz grumbled.
‘What exactly are we going to do with St Cross anyway?’ Adela affectionately took Claudia’s other arm, making her slow down a little.
‘Oh, nothing much…’ Moritz replied. ‘ Wir sind diplomatisch unterwegs. ’ Moritz’s eye flashed with amusement.
‘Indeed. On a diplomatic mission to shred St Cross to bits ,’ Lorenz clarified.
‘Wonderful, I’m in!’ Adela grinned.
The three Rabenstein siblings turned to look at Claudia, all dead pale, ash-blond, eyes reddened and marked by deep shadows, grinning viciously. People in Rome said that guilt had driven the Rabensteins insane. That they had committed a sin, and they’d been cursed to thirst for blood until the end of their kin. And looking at them now, who could have disagreed?
And yet they had been a family to her all her life. Her real family. They had stood by her when her parents had wanted to disown her. They had nursed her back to health when Edward had almost killed her. And they were standing by her now, as they headed to St Cross’s palazzo .
‘I wish I could do this on my own,’ she said quietly, a cold dread slowly creeping to her throat as Edward’s palazzo came into sight.
‘Not a chance, Klaudi…You stand up for everyone…always…never denied us your friendship…despite everything…’
‘You looked after us when our brother died,’ Adela interjected sullenly. ‘And when mother...you know…’
‘Besides, we really just want to feast on St Cross’s flesh,’ Lorenz added. ‘Drink his blood. Spill it on the floor. Slather it on the marbles of his palazzo .’
Her stomach contracted. She stopped walking, bringing her hand to her throat.
‘Shut the fuck up…Lori, will you? All good…my friend…all good.’
‘Yes. All good.’ Adela gave her a warm embrace. ‘How about we kill St Cross real quick, then we go for lunch at the Austrian embassy? We can look for two strapping Polish hussars. Or two Hungarian dragoons. Or anyone wearing boots.’
‘Your ideas are always so thoroughly distasteful.’ Lorenz shuddered. He took Claudia’s hand in his ice-cold fingers. ‘I suggest instead that we make ourselves comfortable in my bed, Klaudi, and I’ll make you forget this ugly story. How does that sound, Liebchen , dear?’
‘Now that will make her throw up!’ Moritz grumbled.
Everyone laughed, Lorenz too. They knew how hard it was for her to meet St Cross, and they were all trying to help, each in their own slightly disturbing way.
‘Now won’t you look at that!’ Lorenz pointed at something in the distance. ‘Your lover is here, brother! Does he also have a bone to pick with St Cross?’ He unhurriedly adjusted his cravat and raked a hand through his hair. Adela checked herself in a shop window and smoothed her dress.
Her heart soared.
William was standing not too far from St Cross’s palazzo like a glowing sun, his eyes planted in hers. He raised his hand in salutation, but he did not move.
I am here for you , he was saying. But I know this moment is yours and yours alone.
‘Here’s the news.’ She barely heard Lorenz addressing her. ‘Since you last visited Rome, Moritz has finally moved on from your youthful tryst—’
‘I haven’t!’ Moritz blurted out. ‘I mean— I have —but—not in the way…he is about to describe…’
‘—and from all the subsequent times you landed in each other’s beds, which Adela and I absolutely did not notice—’
‘That’s quite enough, Lori!’ She complained.
‘So, cruelly betrayed by womankind, our chaste Moritz decided to interrupt the celibacy you forced him into by looking elsewhere. And I mean, as elsewhere as he possibly could. He found some solace in the no doubt expensive bedsheets of Mr William Campbell, antiquarian, man about town.’ Lorenz eyed him up. ‘Can you believe Campbell rejected me ? And yet he sleeps with this… thing .’
‘Sounds like there’s an awful lot of people who don’t want to sleep with you in Rome,’ Adela jabbed him. ‘Have you ever wonder why?’
‘Are we seriously…talking about...er…s-sex…right now , with the task that awaits us? God, what is wrong…with everyone? There must be something in the water…in this filthy city…’
‘S-sex, as you put it, is an important part of life.’ Adela shrugged. ‘You should try it sometimes.’
Moritz scoffed, and they halted in front of St Cross’s palazzo .
‘So…here’s the plan…Klaudi does the talking…everyone else shuts the hell up…especially you, Lori. Agreed?’
‘ Jawohl, my captain.’ Lorenz rolled his eyes.
But Claudia was no longer listening. Her breaths were coming hard and fast, her stomach was contorting. The edges of her vision flickered and blurred. Through her tears, she caught sight of William dying to walk to them. Moritz gestured at him to wait and took Claudia’s hand in his.
‘Klaudi…my friend…we are all here for you…Let’s be free of St Cross once and for all. There is a new life…for you…after this. You have my word…but we need to talk to him one last time. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Gehen wir. ’
She nodded at William, and they walked in.
Claudia saw herself as a child again. Running through that same portal, the four Rabenstein children at her heels, laughing —there always used to be so much laughter back then. They would climb up the large staircase, stumbling, calling for Edward, until they’d find him in the library. He would always sit on the red marble floor, legs crossed, surrounded by piles of books. All dark hair and freckles and serious black eyes. Edward didn’t like playing rough with the boys. In fact, he did not like playing at all. When Moritz played the piano, he would go all quiet and remote, as though his friend’s music was a land peaceful and distant that he would never get to see. He would rest his head on Claudia’s shoulder, then, and she’d keep him close. As though her hugs could protect him from whatever was devouring him from within. Then Adela would run her fingers through his silky black hair, cooing at him, her accent a little less English every passing summer.
God, you’re pretty, English boy, promise me you’ll marry me one day?
‘How are you?’ Claudia whispered softly to Adela.
‘This is not about me.’ Adela’s voice trembled.
Claudia felt for her fingers in the dark corridor, and they held hands tightly.
‘It’s so different.’ Adela wiped her tears away, making a show of looking around. ‘It’s so…empty. Like a cavern.’
A cavern, yes. The tall, imposing walls had been stripped bare. There was not a painting left. The smooth surfaces of the few pieces of furniture left bore the round shades of objects that were no longer there. They encountered a servant. He looked at them with utmost indifference, as though the world had ended long ago, and they were not his problem anymore. He disappeared.
‘This house has seen so much suffering…’ Moritz trailed his hand along a wall, shuddering. ‘I can hear it screaming at me…from the walls…’
They crossed dark corridor after dark corridor, deserted salon after deserted salon. Dust puffed up under their steps, choking them, blinding them, until they no longer knew where they were, and they were trapped in a nightmare without a beginning or an end.
‘ Gott im Himmel… ’ Lorenz gasped, sweating. ‘I can’t—I don’t think I can—’
‘You don’t need to do this, Lori, dear.’ Claudia wrapped her arm around his slight shoulders.
‘I do. And not just for you.’
They walked on, and still they saw no living soul in that enormous monument to dust.
They all shuddered when the notes of a piano echoed through a door.
Muffled voices came from within the room. Adela swallowed.
‘Edward. He’s in here.’