“Yes, of course,” Zeffer replied.
“Please do not feel you have to sin on my account,” Sandru said, with a sideways glance.
“Sin?”
“Lying is a sin, Mister Zeffer. Perhaps it’s just a little one, but it’s a sin nevertheless.”
Oh Lord, Zeffer thought; how far I’ve slipped from the simple proprieties! Back in Los Angeles he sinned as a matter of course; every day, every hour. The life he and Katya lived was built on a thousand stupid little lies.
But he wasn’t in Hollywood now. So why lie? “You’re right. I don’t like this country very much at all. I’m here because Katya wanted to come. Her mother and father — I’m sorry, her stepfather — live in the village.”
“Yes. This I know. The mother is not a good woman.”
“You’re her priest?”
“No. We brothers do not minister to the people. The Order of St. Teodor exists only to keep its eyes on the Fortress.” He pushed the door open. A dank smell exuded from the darkness ahead of them.
“Excuse me for asking,” Zeffer said. “But it was my understanding from yesterday that apart from you and your brothers, there’s nobody here.”
“Yes, this is true. Nobody here, except the brothers.”
“So what are you keeping your eyes on?”
Sandru smiled thinly. “I will show you,” he said. “As much as you wish to see.”
He switched on a light, which illuminated ten yards of corridor. A large tapestry hung along the wall, the image upon it so grey with age and dust as to be virtually beyond interpretation.
The Father proceeded down the corridor, turning on another light as he did so. “I was hoping I might be able to persuade you to make a purchase,” he said.
“Of what?” Zeffer said.
Zeffer wasn’t encouraged by what he’d seen so far. A few of the pieces of furniture he’d spotted yesterday had a measure of rustic charm, but nothing he could imagine buying.
“I didn’t realize you were selling the contents of the Fortress.”
Sandru made a little groan. “Ah … I’m afraid to say we must sell in order to eat. And that being the case, I would prefer that the finer things went to someone who will take care of them, such as yourself.”
Sandru walked on ahead a little way, turning on a third light and then a fourth. This level of the Fortress, Zeffer was beginning to think, was bigger than the floor above. Corridors ran of in all directions.
“But before I begin to show you,” Sandru said, “you must tell me — are you in a buying mood?”
Zeffer smiled. “Father, I’m an American. I’m always in a buying mood.”
Sandru had given Katya and Zeffer a history of the Fortress the previous day; though as Zeffer remembered it there was much in the account that had sounded bogus. The Order of St. Teodor, Zeffer had decided, had something to hide. Sandru had talked about the Fortress as a place steeped in secrets; but nothing particularly bloody. There had been no battles fought there, he claimed, nor had its keep ever held prisoners, nor its courtyard witnessed atrocity or execution. Katya, in her usual forthright manner, had said that she didn’t believe this to be true.
“When I was a little girl there were all kinds of stories about this place,” she said. “I heard horrible things were done here. That it was human blood in the mortar between the stones. The blood of children.”
“I’m sure you must have been mistaken,” the Father had said.
“Absolutely not. The Devil’s wife lived in this fortress. Lilith, they called her. And she sent the Duke away on a hunt. And he never came back.”
Sandru laughed; and if it was a performance, then it was an exceptionally good one. “Who told you these tales?” he said.
“My mother.”
“Ah,” Sandru had shaken his head. “And I’m sure she wanted you in bed, hushed and asleep, before the Devils came to cut off your head.” Katya had made no reply to this. “There are still such stories, told to children. Of course. Always stories. People invent tales. But believe me, this is not an unholy place. The brothers would not be here if it was.”