“How clever,” I observed. “It would keep the child close to the mother and not interfere with her work. Like the Indians in America.”

“Have you been to America?” Florian asked.

“No. Indeed, apart from my time at school, this is my first sojourn out of Scotland, although I mean to travel more. I find I have a taste for it.”

“I do not know why there is travel,” he said, his expression one of genuine puzzlement. “To love one’s home, one could not leave it and be happy.”

“And do you love your home so much?” I asked, reaching for another crisp, sizzling sausage.

“I speak of Austria,” he said softly.

“Of course, how stupid of me. You were but a child when you left, yet still it must be home to you.”

“Many things may make a man’s home,” he told me, his face sober, even anguished. He paused for a moment as if gathering his emotions close, then continued, his mien lighter and more conversational. “I hate this place when we come, but I learn to love Transylvania. We have everything here, here there is mountains, sky, forests. And we have the best music.”

“You have never heard a bagpipe,” I put in teasingly, the remnants of my Scottish pride pricked only a little.

“But I have!” Florian protested. “We have here a bagpipe, and the flute, made from the shinbone of the sheep, with music so sweet, it would charm the leaves from trees.”

A spirited debate on the merits of Scottish versus Roumanian music followed, and I discovered through the innkeeper that Florian was rather famous in the district for the sweetness of his tenor voice besides his other musical accomplishments. The innkeeper’s wife and I prevailed upon him to sing for us, and the innkeeper fetched a sort of lute, pear-shaped and rather medieval-looking, to accompany him. The other patrons, whose conversations had never risen above guttural whispers, fell entirely silent and assumed expressions of mournful interest as he began to sing.

We settled in to listen to him, and I was entranced from the first note. He sang in Roumanian, and I longed to understand the words. The innkeeper’s wife leaned near to me, her lips close to my ear as she translated into German.

“He is singing the miorita, a sorrowful song of three shepherds. One learns that his two friends are planning to kill him. He does not resist, for it is his philosophy to accept death. Just before he dies, he asks them to carry a message to his mother, to tell her he has married a beautiful woman-Lady Death.”

I felt a frisson of emotion at her words, but she went on, murmuring softly as Florian sang the shepherd’s lament. “I have gone to marry a princess, my bride. Firs and maple trees were my guests; my priests were the mountains high; fiddlers, birds that fly; torchlight, stars on high.”

When he finished we applauded and the innkeeper’s wife daubed at her eyes with her apron. It was very like the songs of the Highlands, full of woe and lamentation, and I wondered if poverty and oppression were necessary to create such music.

He sang again, a more cheerful song about death dancing through a field of flowers-the souls of children who had died-and by the time he finished, I had had my fill of Roumanian music, no matter how beautiful the melodies.

He must have caught something of my mood, for he gave the lute back to the innkeeper and gestured for me to rise. “We will go now to reach the castle before dark,” he advised.

He settled the bill with the innkeeper and accepted the muted blessings he and his wife insisted upon giving. I did not know if this was a Roumanian custom or if we were particularly vulnerable as we were returning to the castle, but I was glad of the gesture. The rest of the company watched us in heavy silence, and for the first time, I felt the weight of it, an ominous thing. Not to speak in the presence of others struck me as the purest form of aversion, but even as we took our leave, I saw one or two of them cross themselves Orthodox-fashion and cast us pitying glances.

I raised the subject as soon as Florian and I gained the muddy road. “The local folk do not seem hospitable toward strangers,” I ventured.

“They hear what happens at the castle.”

“So soon?”

Florian shrugged. “Gossip travels on the wind. Of course they hear. But they will say little to castle people. They belong to the master. He makes life good or bad for them.”

“You mean the count?”

His mouth worked, but he said nothing.

“Florian, let us speak plainly. The count could make life better for his people, and they resent him because he has not?”

He gave a single short nod, but even as he acknowledged the truth of what I said, his words denied it. “It is for him to rule as he is pleased.”

“Rule? He is a nobleman, but he is no prince.”

“I say again, Transylvania is different place. The old ways are the only ways. The count rules. What he wants, he will do. The peasants are tired. They are hungry and poor. He can be helping them. He does little.”

I felt a swift stab of fear. “Might they rebel then, if they are angered enough by his neglect of them?”

He shrugged. “Count Bogdan was not good. They do nothing. They drink sorrow and wait for the better times. They are sad now because Count Andrei, he is not better.”

“He has only been here a few weeks,” I argued, wondering even as I said the words why I felt compelled to defend him. “There has scarce been time for him to make changes to improve their lot.”

Florian met my eyes then, and I was struck once more by the fathomless sorrow I saw there. “They know the strigoi walks here. It is an omen. Evil things will happen.” Florian looked at the sky, noting the angle of the sun. “We must go. It grows late.”

But however I pressed him, he sank once more into his solitude, and I took his arm in silence as we started up the mountain path. The dying afternoon was a beautiful one, with the great blaze of turning leaves flaming over the valley. Gold and scarlet grasshoppers leapt in the dying grasses whilst bronze beetles winged their way to sanctuary for the night. The sun warmed our faces and the crisp air was full of birdsong. It would have been perfect, but for the fact that the hand I held was not the count’s, I reflected ruefully.

Suddenly, a roll of thunder echoed over the mountaintops. A cluster of dark grey clouds had gathered in the east and was rolling slowly towards the mountain.

I must have started, for Florian hastened to reassure me. “Do not fear. We are safe yet. Thunder sounds from far away. But some say it is Scholomance,” he added. “Do you know the Scholomance?”

“It is a bit of folklore,” I said, casting my mind back to my grandfather’s library. “It is a very old superstition, is it not? I seem to remember a lake.”

Florian nodded. “In the mountains south of Hermannstadt, there is lake, deep and black. Here the Devil has school for teaching dark magic. There is taught secrets of nature, language of animals, magic spells. The Devil gives learning to ten pupils. When learning is finished, the Devil says to nine to go home. But the tenth must stay with the Devil. He must ride a dragon and he prepares thunderbolts for the Devil. He brews thunder in the black lake. When the weather is fine, his dragon sleeps under the black lake.”

He paused and stared upward at the high stones of the castle, the sharp pointed towers piercing the sky above. “Here the people say, one time in a hundred years a Dragulescu goes to the Scholomance to learn the Devil’s ways,” he finished bitterly.

I took a deep breath and wrapped my shawl more closely about my body. For some unaccountable reason, all the talk of the occult and curses had overcome me, and I felt bowed with foreboding. “I think I have heard quite enough about the Devil for one day.”

I started up the Devil’s Staircase and Florian followed. We did not speak again.