She turned on her heel, approached Barbara and told her she was retreating for the day. She found Rune bent over a patient’s bed and pulled at his sleeve to get his attention. She led him outside, where the sun was sinking below the horizon. It had been a clear, sunny day, warmer than most in November.
“I think we should go to the hunting lodge,” she told him. “We did all we could here, and it’s time to move on. I’ll ask Peter’s boys to prepare the horses.”
“Now?” he asked, confused. “It’s getting late.”
“I think now is a time as good as any.”
She didn’t elaborate and didn’t mention the soldier and what he’d said to her. Seraphina felt in her gut that they needed to leave sooner rather than later, because the man was going to talk to others. Rune had repaired their medical lattices and created a cure for the bone fever, but she knew that once people saw themselves healthy and out of harm’s way, they returned to their old selves and to their old superstitions and prejudices.
It was a known fact. In desperation, people forgot what divided them. In comfort, they remembered.
Chapter Thirty
The mind could be tricked, but the heart always divined the truth.
The iron gate was open, hanging crooked on one hinge, and the family crest on the gate’s arch had been pried off, only the mounting bolts remaining. This was what Rune described to her as they approached on horseback. The cobblestone alley had disappeared under weeds and frost-blackened grass. A stone fountain stood in the center of the yard, its basin filled with stagnant water and fallen leaves and branches.
The hunting lodge had been built of pale stone with a slate roof that now showed patches of missing tiles.The building stood three stories tall, with tall windows on the first floor and smaller ones above.Shutters dangled from several windows, and two upstairs windows had been smashed.The east wing showed signs of fire damage, with soot stains darkening the stone. The whole structure had the look of a place that had been searched and stripped in haste.
Seraphina and Rune tied the horses to a tree in the yard and entered through the front door, Seraphina using her walking stick to push rubble and fallen objects out of her way.The entry hall opened onto a central corridor that ran the length of the house, with rooms branching off on either side.
“We should find the library,” she told Rune. “That’s where people usually keep their vaults and ledgers.”
She allowed him to take the lead, and as they went deeper into the mansion, he told her what he could see. They passed the dining room, where the long table was set with plates and glasses, as if the family had been interrupted mid-meal. There was rotten food on the plates, covered in black and green. It was impossible to say what their last meal had been.
After they passed a few more rooms, Rune identified the library.Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined three walls, but most of the books had been pulled down and thrown into heaps. Behind one shelf unit on the north wall, a hidden door stood open, revealing a vault carved into the stone. The iron door of the vault had been forced open, the lock mechanism destroyed, and the interior stripped clean. Not even a scrap of paper remained inside.
Rune told Seraphina all this, but she’d expected it, so she wasn’t dissuaded. She asked him to help her look inside the many compartments of the secretary desk that stood in a corner. They found stray books and pages, and a journal where the patriarch had noted dates and various things that had happened on those dates. Rune read some out to her.
“Took a twelve-point stag near the eastern ridge. Venison sent to the kitchens for Sunday dinner. Heinrich’s shot went wide; the boy needs more practice with the rifle.”
“Old Müller’s son came to ask about extending the lease on the south field; agreed to discuss terms after harvest.”
“Word from Munich grows more disturbing. Friedrich writes that the court has ordered families to surrender their relics for state custody. Several houses have been raided.”
Nothing about their own relics, though.
“The Harvester’s soldiers must have taken the ledger with them when they took the relics,” she said. “But if the Von Rothenfelds had an apex relic, it wouldn’t have been recorded in the family ledger. Let’s stop looking for papers and start looking for bones. A bone can be hidden anywhere. They turned the house upside down, so let’s look in the most obscure places that seem untouched. I’ll continue in the library, you go check the other rooms. And then we’ll move upstairs.”
“All right.”
Seraphina ran her fingers over every shelf and every nook and cranny, checking behind books, inside books, beneathdecorations and furniture, and under the rug as well. She knocked on walls and on the floor, looking for any hidden compartment. She could hear Rune moving from one room to another, doing the same. It was easier for him, but that didn’t mean she was going to sit around and wait for him to do all the work. Deciding there was no bone left in the library, she exited, running her fingers over the threshold as she did, then tracing the wall as she moved to the next room. Before she could reach it, she heard a piano playing.
It was Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Seraphina froze, shivers taking over her body. Her hands shook, her knees felt weak, and there was a burn in her stomach that threatened to climb into her throat and make her sick. Her heart thundered in her chest, and she pressed her hand to it, her fingernails digging into the three layers of clothes she was wearing.
She pressed her back to the wall and stayed there for a minute, listening to the song she’d listened to so many times before. Matteo used to play it. If she pushed all the happenings of the past two years in a corner of her mind, if she pulled a drawer inside her mind and hid them in there, then she could pretend that she was back at Krähenstein Academy and Matteo was in the music room, practicing on the piano after a long day of work and study.
Seraphina knew it wasn’t Matteo. It was Rune, and she needed to go to him and convince herself that this was not her mind playing tricks on her, that she was not hallucinating. Because... how could Rune sound exactly like Matteo? How could he play just like him,with the same delicate pressure on each chord,the same way of letting the bass notes linger, and even the same slip he always made near the end of the first section where his fingers caught on the ascending run? That was what made Seraphina release a sob – the mistake.
She pushed off the wall and walked to where the music was coming from. As she approached, her body vibrated with it, and the vibration caused an ache to settle under her skin. She felt as if she were fevered – hot, tender, shaking. She found the music room, and the relic showed her Rune’s shadow at the piano, his frame swaying slightly as he played. She was still once more, not knowing if she wanted to continue listening or ask him to stop. The notes tore into her soul, leaving deep gashes behind.
Rune sensed her presence, turned his head toward her, and his fingers faltered on the keyboard. Only for a moment, because then he started playing again, a melody she’d never heard before. It was haunting and desperate, as if written by a man who was lost, with no chance of ever finding his way. He hummed at first, then he started singing in his low, penetrating voice.
“I am a thing of ruin,
A blasphemy of flesh.
You are my place of worship.
