Chandor Castle
“In 1821, there was a Magyar family living in the ancient Chandor Castle near the banks of the river Tisza, not far from the city of Szeged–which is some seven leagues around and has eighty thousand inhabitants. All Magyars are aristocrats, but these were princes of the house of Baszin, whose founder had befriended Matthias Corvinus, the Charlemagne of the Danube nations 9.
“Chrétien Baszin, Prince Jacobyi, possessed an immense fortune, evidence of which was met throughout the land; he had thousands of peasant serfs, including Serbs, Czechs, Croats and Walachians. His estate was as big as a province and extended as far as that isle of vineyards surrounded by a sea of maize where the Turkeve harvest the amber liquid of their royal vintages.
“The massive walls of Chandor Castle, situated on the edge of an oak-forest, overlooked the Tisza. Its four large thickset towers bulged at the top like the turbans of the Turks who had constructed them in olden times. From the tops of the towers one could see the minarets of Szeged in the distance, beyond the vast cornfields. Its pasturelands fed eight hundred horses and twice as many cattle: proud Hungarian beasts with pearly hides and widespread white horns. The prince was as generous as he was magnificent: fifty places were always set at the enormous square table that was placed every day when the bell sounded noon on a silver dais in a cedarwood-paved courtyard beneath the open sky.
“You, ladies and gentleman, are the happy citizens of the most civilized nation on the globe, but you probably do not have an accurate idea of the aristocratic life in certain other countries that you call barbarian. There, we did not have–I say we because I have spent many years with the prince in Chandor Castle–all the refinements of your spotless, white and dainty French dinner services, and perhaps we lacked the fine delicacies of the portable luxury, if I may call it that, that you carry in your luggage on your tours of Europe, but we lived in a grand and luxurious style nevertheless, among all the proud display of absolute power.
“It is for such as they, the last high barons, that the purest juice of your Bordeaux grapes in carefully extracted; it is for them that the most piquant spirit of your champagnes is trapped. The American Indians, it is said, sell their gold for small quantities of whisky; you sell your nectars for small quantities of gold, and it is, alas, only rarely that a French gullet is permitted a taste of those astonishing ambrosias. To taste your wines you must go to Russia or the far shore of the Danube. Chevet sends his fresh vegetables and preserves, Lesage his pastries; we have everything that you have–and we have, in addition, the noble game of wild boars and your champagne whisked in the crushed pulp of our water-melons.
“Thus far, there is no hint of menace in my tale; but the sky is blue above our heads and the moon is bright–nevertheless, the storm is there, and it will break soon enough. Prince Jacobyi did not know the extent of his fortune. Once a month his stewards brought him their accounts, which he accumulated, unread, in his library. Vast as it was, his library gradually became cluttered, its tiled floor hidden beneath untidy heaps of paper. Each month he signed, unread, a warrant addressed to his banker in Pest, in order to obtain money by means of a mortgage.
“ ‘Such as they would have to rob me prodigiously,’ he would say, ‘if they were ever to get to the bottom of my inheritance!’ And when he looked at his daughter Lenore, a sweet-natured golden-haired angel, he would exclaim: ‘I defy anyone to prevent this one from being the richest heiress for a hundred leagues around!’
“That was what he said, and truer words were never spoken by any man alive; but he had two stewards in his house and a banker in the city of Pest. As the proverb says, one steward is enough to devour an estate.
“Lenore was fourteen years old. It was already obvious that she was as beautiful as her mother, whose smiling portrait illuminated the house. Her life was solely devoted to learning; in those barbarian lands young women are highly and extensively educated. She had only one friend in the entire world: a girl of her own age–also a Magyar and an aristocrat, but poor–with whom she had been raised. Lenore had recently experienced the first tragedy of her life: Efflam, her companion, had left her to visit her father and mother, who lived near the border, not far from Belgrade.
“One evening, two Walachian gypsies arrived at the castle. They belonged to a wandering tribe that had camped in the banate of Timisoara on the other side of the Tisza. They had rowed across the river–which flows as fast as the Rhone and is three times as wide as the Seine, although it is only a tributary of the royal Danube. The night was just like this one, and I remember that the setting moon was continually appearing and disappearing behind black clouds so thick that its gleam could not tint their fringes with silver. The tortuous mirror of the waters of the Tisza were soon to be plunged into the profoundest obscurity. The storm was in the southeast, the direction from which the menacing clouds were moving. The two wretches asked for hospitality.
“Lenore had been sad since the departure of Efflam, and the prince–who adored her–said to her: ‘These people know how to juggle and do conjuring tricks. Would you like them to come in to entertain you?’
“Lenore shook her head languidly to signal her refusal–but when a servant said that the tribe had come from Belgrade, her eyes lit up.
“ ‘Bring them in,’ she instructed.
“They were two brothers, the older still young, the younger very young indeed. They gave their names as Mikhael and Solim. Mikhael was the taller, and his features gave every evidence of his origin among those lost children of a forgotten civilization who are strangers in every nation of the world, having neither law nor God: the Egyptians of Scotland, the bohemians of France, the gitanos of Spain, the zingari of Italy. Solim, by contrast, had a pale fresh face, blue eyes and blond hair.
“The prince ordered them to entertain Lenore. Solim sang the strange melodies of the Moldavian lands, accompanying himself on his rounded guitar with two steel strings. Mikhael performed the dances of Yataghan, and both of them juggled with wine-glasses, bottles and knives.
“Lenore only yawned, and the prince made a gesture of dismissal.
“ ‘Hospodar 10,’ said Mikhael, instead of obeying, ‘wouldn’t your daughter like to hear a good story?’
“His impudent eyes were fixed upon Lenore, who blushed and seemed ill-at-ease. The prince knitted his brows and opened his mouth to call for his servants, but the gentle voice of Lenore stopped him.
“ ‘Father,’ she said, ‘I would like to know...’
“Mikhael immediately took a step towards the girl, threw his cap upon the floor and knelt upon it, while Solim remained standing in the middle of the room, his eyes lowered and his arms crossed upon his breast. Mikhael reached out, demanding Lenore’s hand, which she offered to him in spite of herself. He examined it minutely for a long time, speaking periodically in an unknown language. These words were addressed to Solim, who still stood motionless in the middle of the room; they seemed to make an extraordinary impression on him. His limbs trembled, the veins in his forehead swelled up, and the hair on his head shook. It was as if the pythoness of old were on her tripod.
“Mikhael had examined the hand, but it was Solim who played the oracle, saying: ‘Hospodar! Woe is mine, who must cry woe! I see through the night, in the distance, the vampire Ange whose eyes are upon your daughter...’
“The prince burst out laughing, while Lenore grew pale.
“ ‘Are there still vampires?’ cried the prince, who was still amused.
“Mikhael returned to stand beside his brother and put his hand over Solim’s mouth. The prince’s face clouded over. Thumping the table with his hand, he said: ‘For my part, I want to know! And remember that the Chief Magistrate of Szeged would not trouble himself at all about a couple of miscreants suspended from the trees in my park!’
“ ‘Lord,’ Mikhael replied slowly, ‘you have enough servants to guard your daughter, and you owe us some recompense for having warned you.’
“ ‘Who is this vampire Ange?’ asked Lenore, all a-tremble.
“Solim replied, while wiping the sweat from his brow: ‘It is the younger of the Ténèbre brothers.’
“ ‘And who are the Ténèbre brothers, knave?’ cried the prince.
“ ‘You have the right to abuse me, Lord,’ Mikhael replied, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘You are strong and I am weak. You also have the right to chase me out into the gathering storm and to have me beaten by your Slovaks, but I have no desire to tell you anything but the truth: the Ténèbre brothers are two of the dead.’
“Lenore huddled close to her father, while Solim repeated, as if he were an echo: ‘Two of the dead!’
“The prince took his daughter in his arms and said: ‘Explain yourselves.’
“ ‘Hospodar,’ Mikhael began, ‘are they not dead, and thoroughly dead, who have swayed in the wind for three days and three nights on the gallows? We wander ceaselessly, as you know, in search of the bread that never satisfies our accursed hunger. Between Itèbe and Semlin the gallows of Magnate Karolyi, the High Lieutenant of the Banate of Timisoara, is to be found 11. We passed close by it on the twenty-seventh of October of last year, three days before the feast of All Hallows. There were two men hanging there, one large and one small. We stripped them bare, and went on our way.
“‘On the first of November, as we returned towards Itèbe, heading for Belgrade, we found the two executed men again, still stripped bare, surrounded by a flock of crows. We made camp on the flat area between the gibbet and the Danube.
“ ‘At midnight, we were awakened by the sound of the crows, which were cawing plaintively. There was no moon, but there was another light, brighter and more vivid than moonlight. Where was it coming from? By means of that illumination we saw a huge cloud of fleeing crows. We saw, too, the gibbet, silhouetted in black against the strange aurora, with its two corpses slowly swinging.
“ ‘Two white horses with flowing manes ran right past us, bearing neither bridle nor saddle; they glided like arrows, but we heard not the slightest sound of their hoofbeats. They both halted beneath the gallows, one beneath the taller hanged man, the other beneath the shorter. We saw the four limbs of the executed men move, separating one from another.
“ ‘A sudden glare ripped through the cold November clouds like summer lightning; the two gallows-ropes broke at exactly the same moment and the two cadavers fell as one, legs apart, on to the two horses, which galloped away to the sound of a thunderclap...’
“ ‘See how feverishly my poor, dear Lenore is shivering,’ said the prince. ‘Take your tall stories to hell with you!’
“Solim lowered his arms, murmuring: ‘My brother Mikhael has told the truth.’
“And Lenore, whose pretty white teeth were chattering, said: ‘They are amusing me, Father–let them go on.’
“ ‘At Itèbe,’ Mikhael continued, ‘we asked the names of the two criminals, and were told that they were the Ténèbre brothers: Ténèbre the bandit and Ténèbre the vampire. Now, in the middle of the Great Hungarian Plain there are two graves that you can see for yourselves, one large and one small. Each is covered by a black stone, both of which carry inscriptions in the French language: on the larger one. Jean Ténèbre, Chevalier; on the smaller, Ange Ténèbre, Prêtre. Educated men say that they are the tombs of two French noblemen who came with many others to help the voivode John Hunyadi 12 defend Christendom against the Turks four hundred years ago. Men who are not educated affirm that for four centuries there has lain beneath these marble slabs an oupire and a vampire: one an eater of human flesh, the other a drinker of human blood.
“ ‘Hospodar, one thing is certain! On many occasions, during the four hundred years, those graves have opened, to the terror and the horror of the surrounding country. Sometimes, two corpses were found beneath the stones, one tall and one short, which gave every indication of recent death: eyes open and shining, blood liquid in the veins, tongues moist and lips red. At other times, the open graves displayed nothing but their emptiness: two black cavities from which the odor of death emerged. It is certain, moreover, that many attempts have been made to destroy these graves: the marble slabs have been broken, the rubble dispersed, the ground leveled–and invariably, when some time has passed, the two black stones resurface beneath the grass or the corn, intact once again, bearing the same funerary inscriptions.
“ ‘Lastly, it is certain–as the registers of the courts testify–that within the last twenty years alone, the brothers Ténèbre have been hanged in a dozen different places in Hungary, and seven times impaled in Turkish territory.
“ ‘But supernatural occurrences make little impact, unless they happened in the recent past. It is a story of the recent past that I want to tell you now. After having wandered for six months in the Turkish lands and traversed part of Serbia, our tribe returned towards Belgrade and camped once again on the banks of the Danube, below Semendria 13.
“ ‘At midnight, those of our kin who were keeping watch perceived two lights moving slowly downstream on the surface of the river. They went to investigate, and found two leather bags, one large and one small, drifting in the current, each one bearing a lamp and a placard headed The Pasha’s Justice. The placard attached to the larger bag also bore the name Jean Ténèbre; that of the smaller, the name Ange Ténèbre.
“ ‘These two cadavers had been set afloat because the treasury of Belgrade had been looted three days previously and the daughter of the learned treasurer had been found dead in her bed, as white as an alabaster statue. We heard of the theft and the murder later–but when our sentinel came to wake us, we saw a long black boat that drifted by itself in the current with no one to steer it. The black boat came abreast of the two dying lights and, a moment later, had turned against the current as swiftly as a bird in flight, and was steered upriver by two men, one tall and one short.
“ ‘We arrived on the following day–the day beginning this very week–at the gates of the town of Petrovaradin in Slavonia...’
“ ‘Where my dear Efflam is, father,’ murmured Lenore, offering her face to her father’s kiss.
“ ‘It was morning,’ Mikhael continued. “We pitched our tents in the place reserved for our tribes, under the ramparts of the town between the cemetery and the black ditch watered by the river Drave, into which the bodies of dead animals and executed criminals are carelessly thrown. We thought that there must be a festival in the town, because a great throng of peasants was pressing at the gates. When we were allowed to enter,we found that the festival was a public execution by the sword. On the scaffold, we saw two condemned men, one tall and one short. And two names were on everyone’s lips: the brothers Ténèbre! Hospodar, the heads fell: I saw it with my own eyes...’
“ ‘The heads fell,’ Solim repeated, ‘and they rolled across the planks of the scaffold.’
“ ‘And we returned to the camp,’ continued Mikhael, ‘behind the cart which carried the executioner’s work. The two heads and the two bodies were thrown into the ditch in front of us while, on the far side of our tents, a poor child of fifteen years was carried to the cemetery.’
“ ‘Her name! The name of the dead girl!’ cried Lenore, as if she had been seized by a heart-rending presentiment.
“ ‘Efflam,’ replied Mikhael.
“ ‘Efflam!’ repeated Solim, with lowered eyes and flared nostrils.
“Lenore put both hands to her breast and collapsed, deprived of her senses, into her father’s arms...”
Baron von Altenheimer paused at this point, and Monsignor Benedict took the opportunity to say, in a very soft voice: “I admire the memory of my dear brother the privy councilor. While he was speaking, it seemed to me that he could still hear that rogue the Chevalier Ténèbre–for no one here can have failed to divine that Mikhael, the pretended gypsy, Mikhael the Romany, was none other than the elder of the brothers Ténèbre.”