The Cruel Count (Bantam Series No. 28) Read online

  “No of course not,” Vesta said, “and at least it will be a roof over our heads.”

  She tried to smile as she spoke, but they had now drawn nearer to the Inn and at close quarters it looked even more dilapidated than it had at first. What was more, she had the suspicion that it was extremely dirty. The Count dismounted and because Vesta was staring at the building she was not quick enough to reach the ground before he lifted her from the saddle.

  “There will be stabling of a sort where I can put these animals,” he said.

  “I will come with you,” Vesta said quickly.

  She felt reluctant to enter the Inn alone and perhaps have to explain her presence.

  The Count had been right in supposing there would be “stabling of a sort.” There were just two rough byres, into which he put the horses and removed the saddles.

  There was water in a bucket in each byre and some rather mildewy-looking hay, which however the animals began to chew with apparent relish.

  “They are used to roughing it,” the Count said with a smile as he secured the byres by a wooden bar which was attached with a piece of rope. “But what about you?”

  “I dare say I shall manage as you will,” Vesta replied coldly.

  She felt he was hoping that she would be uncomfortable. She moved ahead of him with her head high and told herself that however rough the Inn might be she would not complain.

  They walked through the low door into a room which held a large fireplace in which a big log was smouldering.

  There were two large wooden settles on either side of the fire and a table at the other side of the room with four rickety wooden chairs. There were no other furnishings of any sort.

  A middle-aged woman appeared wearing native dress. She was dirty and untidy and very unlike the smiling attractive women Vesta had seen in Jeno.

  Her apron was badly in need of a wash, her dress was stained under the arms and her dark hair was straggling down her back.

  The Count greeted her, and she replied in a dialect that Vesta found impossible to understand.

  It appeared that the Count was familiar with it, because after a long exchange of words between them he said to Vesta with what she thought was a mocking glint in his eye:

  “Bad news, I am afraid. The woman says her husband is out hunting for meat and is not likely to return tonight. There is in fact nothing to eat in the house.”

  “Nothing?” Vesta asked and realised as she spoke that, if not excessively hungry, she was certainly ready for a meal.

  “The woman says there is nothing,” the Count repeated. “She keeps hens and she will kill and cook one for us to carry away tomorrow. But that will certainly take time.”

  “If she has hens,” Vesta suggested, “then she should have eggs.”

  “That is of course an idea.”

  The Count turned to the woman and Vesta knew by the way she nodded her head that she agreed there were eggs.

  “Listen, do not offend her,” Vesta said to the Count, “but ask her if she would mind if I cook the eggs. Explain to her that I have just come off a long voyage at sea and my stomach is very weak. I would not like to hurt her feelings, but I am sure I can cook better than she can.”

  “Would it matter if her feelings were hurt?” the Count asked.

  “Of course it would!” Vesta said sharply. “Tell her what I have said.”

  The Count obeyed her and the woman shrugged her shoulders as if it was a matter of indifference to her who did the cooking.

  She walked through a doorway, which Vesta was sure led to the kitchen. She had been right when she supposed it would be dirty.

  There was grease on all the tables, the place smelt, and the pots and pans hanging over the fire-place burnt black were indescribably filthy.

  Picking up a basket the woman passed on through a door which led outside the Inn, and Vesta knew she had gone in search of eggs.

  A moment later there was a loud squawking and clucking from a hen, and she guessed that the InnKeeper’s wife was catching it to kill for their meal tomorrow.

  She looked round the kitchen wondering where to start, and then finding a pan she followed the woman outside.

  There was no sign of her and Vesta thought she must have gone into the wood after the hen who was reluctant to be slaughtered.

  But as she had expected, only a little way from the Inn there was a small cascade of water coming down from the side of the mountain and running between the trees.

  This was obviously where the Inn-Keeper procured his water, but Vesta realised that, while she could lift a bucket onto the stones under the cascade, once it was full it would be too heavy for her to move.

  She went back to the front room where she discovered the Count taking logs from a big pile in the corner and putting them onto the fire.

  “I am afraid I need some help with a water-bucket,” she said.

  If she had not disliked him so much she would have been amused at the expression on his face.

  “A bucket?” he questioned.

  “I have to clean a pan before I can use it.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then he smiled.

  She realised it was the first time she had seen him smile in genuine amusement, and it suddenly transformed his features so that he no longer appeared so frightening.

  In the kitchen Vesta handed him a heavy wooden bucket. She was sure he had never lifted one before.

  At the back of the Inn there was a bleating nanny-goat tied to a post, a number of young chickens scratching among a debris of rotten vegetables, feathers, and unidentifiable objects which smelt.

  Someone, presumably the Inn-Keeper, had attempted half-heartedly to grow a few vegetables. They straggled forlornly among a multitude of sturdy and aggressive weeds.

  Nature had done its best to compensate for the ugliness of it all with a briar bush brilliant with pink blossom, and everywhere they could survive small flowers turned their yellow, blue and white faces towards the sun.

  Vesta led the way to the cascade.

  When they reached it, the Count saw she was carrying a blackened pan, a dirty cloth and a knife she had taken from the kitchen table.

  “Will you first fill the bucket and lift it clear of the cascade so that I can clean these?” she asked.

  He did as she requested, watching her with a twinkle in his dark eyes as she scraped the pan until at least some of the ingrained grease and dirt was removed.

  Her expression was serious as she concentrated on her work, and her long lashes were dark against her clear skin.

  The sunshine percolating through the trees made her hair shine with golden lights and a soft breeze moved little tendrils of it against her neck.

  She looked unreal, a nymph who might have strayed from the woods, a small goddess who had come down from Olympus to bemuse human beings.

  “Your name is unusual,” the Count remarked.

  “Vesta was the Roman goddess of the hearth,” Vesta replied.

  “And thus goddess of fire,” he added.

  She did not answer and he asked:

  “Is there any fire in your veins? Most English women are as cold as the snow on the mountains!”

  “How many English women do you know?” Vesta asked. “If we appear cold and reserved as a race, it is because we have self-control ... and pride.”

  “I was not talking about the English as a race,” the Count answered, “but of English women and yourself in particular.”

  “Why should you be interested in what I feel?”

  Vesta spoke truculently, her blue eyes wary as if she suspected he had some ulterior motive in speaking in such a manner.

  “Naturally I am interested in the wife of my reigning Prince,” the Count answered disarmingly.

  “Y ... yes ... of course,” Vesta answered.

  “And you have not answered my question. Is there any of your namesake’s fire in your make-up?”

  “I do not ... think ... I understand what ... you are
trying to say,” Vesta faltered.

  “I think you do,” he replied. “Do you yearn to love and be loved? Could a man make the breath come quicker between those two soft lips? Could your eyes become warm with desire?”

  For a moment Vesta could not believe she had heard him correctly. The colour rose in her cheeks as she said stiffly:

  “Your questions are quite unanswerable, Count, even if I accepted that you had the right to ask them.”

  The Count laughed softly.

  Putting down the pan, Vesta washed out the cloth, wringing it in her small hands until it was possible to use it to polish the pan.

  “Now, if you will be kind enough to refill the bucket!” she said coldly. “I would like to wash before I go to bed.”

  “Cleanliness being of course next to godliness,” he said mockingly.

  “And much more comfortable,” she retorted.

  “Of course, Ma’am,” he agreed.

  She was sure he was laughing at her efforts to provide them both with a meal.

  “You did not expect to have to cook and clean for your first dinner in Katona,” he said.

  She thought that perhaps he was trying to make their conversation more normal and bridge the awkwardness he had caused by his impertinent questions.

  “No indeed!” Vesta answered. “I imagined I should be entertained with much ceremony in magnificent surroundings!”

  “And you would have enjoyed that?”

  “It would be exciting to be ... important!”

  The Count raised his eyebrows, and Vesta said:

  “I have five sisters older than I am. I have always had to wear their outgrown gowns, sit in a carriage with my back to the horses and do all the jobs no-one else wishes to do!”

  The Count laughed.

  “So you thought being Royal would be all you had dreamt of in splendour, pomp and circumstance.”

  “In ... a ... way.”

  Vesta’s head was bent over the pan she was polishing.

  “When it happens you may be disappointed,” the Count warned.

  “Why should I?” Vesta enquired.

  “You may find the anticipation more exciting than the reality!”

  He paused before he continued:

  “We have a fairy story in Katona about a Princess who fell asleep for a hundred years to be awakened by a Prince with a kiss.”

  “That is the tale of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’,” Vesta exclaimed, “and it was written by a Frenchman.”

  She was pleased to show off her knowledge.

  “I often think,” the Count continued as if she had not spoken, “that the Princess might have disliked having to face the world again and regretted the loss of her dreams.”

  “But she fell in love with the Prince,” Vesta protested.

  “Is that the French version?” the Count enquired. “Perhaps the Katonian story has a different ending.”

  Vesta was still.

  “Perhaps the Prince ... did not ... wish to ... kiss ... her,” she said without thinking.

  Then the colour rose in her cheeks again and she asked herself how she could have been so indiscreet as to speak of anything so intimate to the Count.

  She half turned away from him, angry and embarrassed by her impulsiveness in speaking without thinking.

  She rinsed the cloth again and wrung it out almost fiercely.

  As if he sensed her tension and understood it, the Count asked lightly:

  “Can you really cook?”

  “You shall answer that question after dinner,” Vesta replied with an effort. “I must admit to preferring a better equipment for the task than this.”

  The Count lifted the heavy bucket which leaked with every step he took, and carried it back to the door of the Inn.

  Just as they reached it the woman appeared with a dead hen, head down, in her hand.

  She said something which sounded defiant, and the Count translated to Vesta.

  “Our hostess says she has killed an old hen. Not even for the Prince himself would she sacrifice one of her young ones.”

  “I am sure His Royal Highness would be most disappointed at such lack of patriotism!” Vesta smiled.

  The woman passed by them into the kitchen.

  “You would be more comfortable sitting in front of the fire, Count,” Vesta suggested. “If I have any further need of your services I will ask for your help.”

  “You are very gracious,” he said sarcastically, but he walked obediently into the other room.

  Besides the dead hen, the woman had brought in a number of eggs. Some of them looked dirty and old, and Vesta was wise enough to crack them separately finding, as she had anticipated, that some were bad and extremely smelly.

  Presently the Count heard laughter coming from the kitchen, and when Vesta suddenly appeared he said before she could speak:

  “Something seems to be amusing you.”

  “Our hostess thinks it very funny when I find a bad egg and hold my nose!” she said. “We are getting on extremely well in sign language.”

  She held out her hand towards him.

  “I want to be quite sure which of these mushrooms which I have found just outside the Inn are edible. I have the feeling that the red ones, although I am not certain, are poisonous.”

  “They are indeed!” The Count said. “They are Aminita Muscaria. They grow in pine forests, and even if they did not kill us we should certainly spend a very uncomfortable night.”

  “That is what I thought,” Vesta answered. “And these?”

  She held out two other mushrooms that were yellow with brown spots on them.

  “Those are Suillus Elegans,” the Count said, “and are used a great deal in Katona. In fact they are quite delicious if well cooked.”

  “That is a challenge!” Vesta retorted and went back into the kitchen.

  It was nearly an hour later before she appeared with a dish in her hands and two plates. She put them down on the table and ran back to the kitchen to fetch two forks.

  “I have cleaned them,” she said reassuringly.

  She divided the omelette with a spoon and put the larger piece on a plate for the Count

  “Eat it quickly,” she said, “while it is hot.”

  Her face was flushed from the fire and her fair hair was curling round her forehead. She looked young and very lovely. The Count regarded her for a long moment before he seated himself and put his fork into the omelette.

  One mouthful told him that it was in fact delicious. Very light and golden brown on the outside, it contained the mushrooms sliced thin and cooked in goat’s milk before they had been folded into the eggs.

  “I congratulate you!” the Count exclaimed. “I had no idea you were so talented.”

  “Mama always said we must never ask a servant to do anything we could not do as well ourselves. And actually I enjoy cooking.”

  “I cannot imagine the Chef in the Palace will welcome you into his kitchen,” the Count said.

  “There may still be opportunities for me to show my skill,” Vesta answered.

  She was thinking as she spoke of the riding expeditions which she had planned that she and the Prince would take together. Then she remembered with something like a little stab in her heart, that he would probably not wish to go with her.

  She finished her portion of the omelette and taking the empty dish and her plate went back into the kitchen.

  When she returned she carried another dish and two warm plates.

  “More food?” the Count questioned in surprise.

  He had found in a cupboard some bottles of the rough wine which was the habitual drink of the peasants of Katona. He had opened one and now he poured out a glass for Vesta and one for himself.

  “I am afraid the menu is somewhat limited,” Vesta smiled, her dimples showing at either side of her mouth, “and I am not certain how your black bread will react to such an English dish as this, but you can try it for yourself.”

  She put the dish down on
the table. It smelt pleasantly of cheese and the Count helped himself.

  Vesta had found in the dirty kitchen not only the black bread which she had expected, but a lump of goat’s cheese which the Inn-Keeper’s wife had obviously made some time ago.

  It was very hard, but slicing it finely, adding a few onions which were growing outside and a little goat’s milk, she managed to produce a pale imitation of an English toasted cheese.

  She looked at the Count anxiously as he tried the first mouthful.

  “Very good!” he said. “I hope one day you will ask me to dinner—when you are doing the cooking!”

  “I do not think goat’s cheese toasts very well,” Vesta said critically. “At the same time as I am hungry I must admit I am enjoying it.”

  “And so am I,” the Count said in all sincerity, “and I congratulate you, Ma’am. Few women, let alone a Princess, could have produced such an excellent meal at such short notice and with so few ingredients.”

  Vesta smiled at him and for the first time forgot her hatred.

  “It is kind of you to be so complimentary,” she said. “I must say if we die of food poisoning it will not be my fault. I cannot bear to think what the average guest at this Inn has to put up with.”

  “The people of Katona are very clean as a rule,” the Count answered, “but this is such an isolated place that they have few travellers and their usual customers only come in for a drink. In fact this woman’s husband earns most of his money in the woods and the Inn is only a side line.”

  “I am sure not many people would wish to eat here,” Vesta said.

  “Not unless you were doing the cooking,” the Count answered.

  “I wondered what I would do if no-one came for me and I had to stay on at Jeno after my money ran out,” Vesta said. “I thought I might have to work in the orange-groves to pay for my keep, but now I realise I could have obtained a job as a cook. I would like to try to make the egg and lemon sauce that I had on my fish at luncheon.”

  “I can see you are very practical,” the Count remarked.

  Vesta smiled.

  “I wish that were true! Mama is always scolding me for having my head in the clouds.”

  “And what do you think about when it is up there?” the Count enquired.