The road began to climb more steeply, and the coach slowed until it was almost at a halt. Elizabeth suggested they get out and walk in order to help the horses, but Darcy would not hear of it.
‘The horses are well conditioned. They have pulled heavier loads up steeper slopes than this,’ he said.
‘But there is no need for them to do so here. It will not hurt us to walk. Besides, I would like to take some exercise and feel the wind in my face,’ she protested.
‘At another time I would be happy to indulge you,’ he replied, placing a restraining hand on hers as she moved to open the door, ‘but we are not in England now.’
She was about to ask him what he meant when she glanced out of the window and saw that two red orbs, which she had taken for berries, suddenly blinked and moved, and she realised with a shock that they were eyes. She looked to right and left and saw that there were more eyes all round them.
‘Are there wolves here?’ she asked apprehensively.
‘Wolves—and worse,’ he added under his breath.
She sat back in her seat, chastened. Wolves, bears perhaps… She was a long way from Hertfordshire. She was glad of the coach and the safety it offered. It was sturdily built and would withstand an attack by wolves or any other animals which might be lurking close by. She was glad too of the outriders and the pistols they carried—a warning to predators with two legs and a protection against those with four.
She endeavoured to take an interest in the scenery again, but it had lost some of its glamour for, underneath the beauty, danger lurked.
As the coach climbed further the sky began to darken, as if to match her thoughts, turning from blue to indigo. Clouds blew up rapidly and it looked as though it would rain.
‘We are going to have a storm,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Are there any inns nearby where we can stop until it passes?’
‘No, there is nothing for miles, but no matter; in another half hour, or hour at most, we should be there.’
There was a distant rumble and the threatened storm began to make itself felt. The sky was suddenly lit from behind, glowing with a lurid brightness before quickly darkening again. Inside the coach, it was becoming hard to see, and matters were made worse when the trees began to thicken as the road went into a forest of dense trees. They cast long shadows, and Elizabeth could barely make out her husband’s features, although he was sitting only a few feet away from her.
They emerged at last, but it was scarcely any brighter beyond the trees for the sky was now almost black. Another rumble, closer this time, tore the silence and a few minutes later the rain began to pour. The thunder grew louder as the storm broke overhead, and the sky was rent apart by a jagged spike of lightning which ran down to the ground in a network of brilliant veins. The horses neighed wildly, rearing up and flailing their hooves in the air. The carriage rocked from side to side as the coachman tried to hold them, and Elizabeth took hold of the carriage strap which hung from the ceiling. She clung on as she was bounced and jolted this way and that. She managed to keep her seat until the horses at last quieted, but she did not let go, knowing that another flash of lightning would scare the horses again.
‘How much farther?’ she asked.
‘It is not far now,’ said Darcy, holding onto the strap which hung on his side of the carriage.
Another flash of lightning lit the sky and revealed an eerie shape on the horizon, a silhouette of spires and turrets that rose from a rocky pinnacle—a castle, but not like those in England, whose solid bulk sat heavily on the ground. It was a confection, a fragile thing, tall and thin and spindly. And then the sky darkened and it was lost to view.
The rain was coming down in earnest, drumming on the roof of the coach, and Elizabeth was glad when the gatehouse came in sight. The coachman held the horses and guided them over the last stretch of road. There was a pause at the gatehouse, and through the wind and the rain, Elizabeth heard a shouted exchange between the coachman and the gatekeeper. Then the windlass creaked and the drawbridge was lowered, its chains clanking in the rain-sodden air before it settled with a dull thud on the reverberating ground.
The coach traversed the drawbridge and Elizabeth glimpsed a steep drop on either side, and then they were through, into the courtyard. Armed men in billowing cloaks with hats pulled down over their eyes were patrolling with large hounds, more wolf than dog, and their free hands rested on their sword hilts.
‘There is no need to be afraid,’ said Darcy as Elizabeth shrank back against her seat. ‘This is a wild country and my uncle employs soldiers to protect him from roaming bands of villains.’
‘He employs mercenaries, do you mean?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘If you will. Armed men, at any rate, who are in his employ.’
Elizabeth heard the drawbridge being raised behind them, and as it clanked shut on its great chains, she knew a moment of panic, thinking wildly, We’re shut in.
Darcy touched her hand in silent support and the gesture calmed her, and the sight of liveried footmen emerging from the castle dispelled much of her fear. Darcy stepped out of the coach as the footmen unloaded it, and he handed Elizabeth out. The butler appeared, a man past youth but not yet old, with bright eyes that missed nothing as they ran with recognition over Darcy and then ran more watchfully over Elizabeth. He greeted them with a few barely comprehensible words in garbled and heavily accented English, then bowed them towards the steps that led up to the massive oak door. Darcy returned his greeting and then stood aside to allow Elizabeth to precede him through the door.
As she stepped over the threshold, there was a grating sound and one of the axes which was displayed above the door, just inside the hall, came loose of its fastenings and fell to the floor. It missed Darcy by inches and Elizabeth by more than a foot. There was an initial moment of shock, but then they quickly recovered their composure. Not so the butler, however, who cried out in a strange language and rolled his eyes in fear.
It was not an auspicious beginning to their visit. Nor was the walk across the vast, echoing hall, with its dark stone walls and its draught-blown torches and its gloomy wall hangings. But once they were shown into the drawing room things improved. The room was warm with the heat of a log fire, which crackled in an enormous stone fireplace. The carpet was old but not threadbare, and the furniture, though dark and heavy, was of a good quality. Sitting in a chair with his legs stretched out to the fire was a man whom Elizabeth took to be the Count.
The butler announced the Darcys in a foreign tongue and the Count rose, surprised, his look of astonishment quickly giving way to one of welcome. He was somewhat strange of appearance, being unusually tall and very angular, with a finely-boned face, long, delicate fingers, and features which gave him a perpetual look of haughtiness, yet his manner when he greeted Darcy was friendly.
Elizabeth let her eyes roam over the Count’s clothes, which were reassuring in their familiarity, for they were the kind worn by country gentlemen in England. He wore a shabby but well-cut coat of russet broadcloth with a ruffled shirt, which had once been white but was now grey with many washings, beneath which he wore russet knee breeches and darned stockings. His black shoes were polished, but they too were shabby. The only thing she could not have seen on some of her more countrified neighbours was his powdered wig, which would have marked him out as old-fashioned, eccentric even, in Hertfordshire.