Chapter 123: He was slow, methodical and very, very thorough

I stood in front of a portrait of my mother. I knew it was her because I recognised some of the body language of it, in that it was extremely similar to how she had stood when Sam, Mark, Emma and I had stood in judgement of her.

She looked ashamed, her body language was hunched over, shoulders together with one arm coming across her midriff to hold onto the other one. Her head was bowed and she was looking out of frame to her left out of the corners of her eyes, as though she was watching someone carefully, or as if there was some kind of wild and untamed animal sat, glaring at her and she didn't know when it was going to leap up and rip her throat out. But at the same time, she knew that this was going to happen eventually, whether she was careful or not.

I guessed that she had been about fourteen when this painting had been commissioned. If it hadn't have been my mother in the frame then I would also have said that it was a beautiful painting. A real tour de force, one of the best examples of modern oil painting techniques that I have seen. If it had been hung in the galleries of Oxenfurt then the title would have been something like “A girl in fear.”

But it wasn't anonymous in that it wasn't some unknown person that it depicted. It didn't display some nameless person dreamed up out of the imaginings of a painters fevered brain. It was my mother. I guessed that the painting showed how she had looked at the age of fourteen. She was certainly young and lacked some of the self-assuredness that she had gained in later life, her figure was not yet fully developed and her hair was not quite as long.

There was an extra, insidious side to the painting as well.

There is another portrait of my mother that I have described before. It hangs in my father's chambers still as Emma has not yet taken the step of moving into the master bedroom of Castle Couthard and a lot of Father's belongings and character are still imprinted on the place. Over the hearth there is a large portrait of my mother. It depicts a young woman, maybe a couple of years older than the one that I was looking at.

In my father's painting, my mother looks happy, smiling and confident. She is sat for the portrait with several pots of flowers nearby that the artist has expanded to compliment the colours of mothers dress and ornaments, to properly “set off her complexion” as my artist friends would say.

She looks as though she has just been startled by a joke, her smile genuine and her eyes shining in amusement. Her hands are resting demurely in her lap as she sits for the portrait.

But here's the insidious part. Now that I have seen the original. It's plain to me that my father's version of the portrait was copied from this one.

I don't know how I know this but somehow....I just know.

I know very little about art, even less of that part of the art-form which is how to get a subject to sit still for long periods of time and display the required characteristics that people want for their portraits. I remember little things about art, small observations and comments, like the fact that you will very rarely find a picture of a pastoral scene where there isn't a farmer somewhere, toiling away whilst wearing a red shirt.

I know that a painting has to have a subject, something to draw the eye and that everything else serves that subject. Landscapes need to have a central animal or a landscape feature that catches the viewers eye.

I also remember certain tricks although I couldn't tell you where I obtained this information. I know that whenever you see a portrait of a person and he is fiddling with a ring then this serves two purposes. The man in question is displaying his signet ring and therefore displaying how powerful he is, how important he is. But it's also a way for the artist to convey a certain amount of energy. To suggest that the subject of the painting would rather be somewhere else, anywhere else, doing more important things than sitting for the production of a portrait.

I also know that the majority of a picture is completely made up in the artists head. I've seen paintings that depict loving couples where I know for a fact that the two people in question were forced together through a political marriage of convenience and famously hated each other. I've also seen portraits of men who are standing up, looking vigorous, active and powerful in their old age. Commanding the room with their stature and their presence. All this when I know for a FACT that those men were old, could barely walk due to the excessive gout and were also, corpulently fat and half blind from the pox.

Warrior Kings have been painted on rearing horses while in real life, they disliked riding and preferred to command their armies from the tent up on the hill.

This is pronounced in the case of portrait paintings. My understanding of the process in these large scale, detailed presentations, is that they sit with their subjects a couple of times. Nothing grand or lengthy and the artist might make a couple of sketches and take some notes on things that they have seen. About the way that the subject carried themselves and the proper placement of beauty marks and the like.

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I dreaded to think what the artist had seen when they had first sat down to paint my mother. How bad must she have been if, the best that the artist could draw forth from her was this image of fear and self-consciousness.

I wondered who the artist was and whether they were still alive.

I wondered at the skill of the man who had painted that other portrait. The one that still hangs in my father's room today. The one that I now know to be a “courting portrait” where pictures of prospective spouses are sent out to eligible bachelors in an effort to snare a suitor.

I wondered if Sam would let me burn this painting.

I found it upsetting in a deep and powerful way but at the same time, I found that I couldn't look away from it.

The castle was full of them. Portraits I mean. I also got the feeling that the position and location of the portrait and where it was hung denoted some kind of....pecking order. The most important men (obviously, in this castle, the women weren't important enough) were hung in the banqueting hall whereas the lesser people were hung in back corridors, in the drawing rooms and the private studies, in the armouries and what was laughably referred to as “The Library”

The Women were consigned to a separate room. The former lady of the castle and her immediate daughters were in a room that was literally referred to as “The Ladies room”. Sam had found a couple of old Castle Servants in some of the lower villages and had managed to convince them to come back and work for him. In this case they were acting as guides to tell the people going up to the castle where everything was and they were the ones that would tell us what all these rooms referred to. Apparently, this was the room where the ladies were expected to spend their days when the men folk hadn't given them anything to do. When there wasn't some kind of social event, or there weren't any chores to do.

There were more books in this room than the library.

I found it really odd. My father wasn't particularly a collector of art. We didn't have pictures covering the walls like they did here. What few pictures and tapestries there were, depicted the castle and it's immediate environments. He liked pictures of people at work, whether that was people, noble and commoner alike, working on the castle being built, farmers working in the fields or the industry of a forge, he seemed to like it. He also liked hunting scenes and pictures of horses being ridden. He wasn't really a man for battle scenes or martial displays. You wouldn't have found the famous “standing suits of armour,” in Castle Coulthard, nor will you find sword racks or other ways of displaying weaponry and tools of war.

He also had a habit of occasionally buying pictures that he simply “liked the look of” or reminded him of important events. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

On one of the rare occasions where the two of us had talked on the matter, he told me about one of the pictures that was hung in the corridors outside the family chapel. The picture is a fairly simple, still life that shows a basket of fruit. It's a very unusual painting in that it's unlike many of the other paintings that were around the place.

I should say that Mother's taste mostly seemed to follow father's in this regard. Now that I had seen her home castle and her families traditional take on the subject, I could kind of see why.

But I remember asking Father about the basket of fruit. He told me that it reminded me of the day of my baptism in Novigrad. He told me that we had gone to Novigrad for me to be baptised by the Hierarch. I was one of many noblemen's sons that was going to be baptised in the same go as it was a duty that the then Hierarch of Novigrad hated so he liked to get them done in batches. The then Hierarch (not to be confused with the Head of the church for our southern readers. That would be the Hierophant. The same word that druids use to describe the “Head druid”. Never let it be said that the cult of the Eternal Fire only stole elements of their religion from Kreve and Melitele) would often do these kinds of mass baptisms and it was one of the many ways that people could claim to be slightly better than the person next to them by saying that they were baptised by the Hierarch rather than by the local priest.

There was, at the time, a small art shop on the way from where our lodgings were at the time and the Cathedral. As we were walking past it, this picture just caught Father's eye. He thought nothing about it at the time and we simply carried on to the service. Later, it transpired that he was in Novigrad on other business and happened to be walking past the same shop when he had seen that same picture in the window and was suddenly reminded of that, rare, happy family occasion and had gone in to buy the picture.

Because it meant something to him. That was the kind of thing that father liked.

Not this sad procession of portraits that looked down on the people walking through the corridors, galleries and rooms.

These were the real ghosts of the castle. Not the lost spirits and the frightened, angry spectres that roamed the place. These were the real ghosts, standing on high and looking down on you. As though you were being judged or, in the case of those portraits like my mothers portrait. You were being asked for help. Begged for help.

I hated this place.

Sam had expressed a certain amount of indecision as to what he should do with it all. He was torn because, on the one hand, the castle was a symbol of the domination of the Kalayn family over this part of the world. A lot of awful, evil things had been done here and to keep it standing was a constant reminder to the world about what had happened. But on the other hand, as I should know, history is history and we need to remember it. We should take the lessons from it and move on.

I was also well aware that I was having a strong emotional reaction to it all. The atmosphere of the place wasn't helping.

When Lord Kalayn had left to go and see if he could prevent the execution of his son, he had ordered the castle closed. What that meant was that the drapes and shutters had been drawn and bolted against the potential attacks of outsiders. He seemed to live in fear of thieves and other things that would take advantage of the empty and unguarded state of the castle despite the fact that his wife would still have been in residence.

The poor woman had removed herself to the dower-house elsewhere in the province when she had learned of her husband's and son's death. Sam had found it but had kept finding reasons to not go to visit.

We were in our second day after our arrival in Kalayn lands and I still didn't really know how I felt about the entire thing.

In an almost mirrored scene to every other client meeting that I have ever sat in on with Kerrass. Sam sat us down, over a table with a jug of beer between us. He looked tired and a little lost.

“This would be so much easier,” he had said, “if I had inherited a fully functioning and working realm. You know, a place where things were already ticking along nicely but that would be too easy wouldn't it?”

Kerrass and I smiled in sympathy.

“In short,” Sam went on, “The place is fucked. Nothing works. No taxes come in, we have no exports, nothing being imported. We are barely self sufficient and barely anything gets done. The roads are in a state, fences are falling down all over the place and I can't see any kinds of signs of modern industry. It's like these people are living a good, couple of hundred years in the past.

“But that's not the worst of it. The worst of it, by far, is the people here. I feel for them, I really do and I really want to help them but I can't help them if they don't tell me what the problem is. I can live without servants, I can live without luxuries although I won't lie, a hot bath and some properly cooked food is something that I'm really beginning to look forward to, but what I can't do, is make these people's lives better if they won't help me to do that.”

“What makes you think that there is a problem?” Kerrass asked, “more than what you already expected there to be I mean.”

Sam blew some breath out ins exasperation.

“Don't get me wrong,” Kerrass said. “You were already fighting an uphill challenge as it was. These people have been victimised by their masters for so long. You knew that it was going to be difficult to earn their trust.”

“And if that was the only problem here then I would agree.” He told us. “I knew that that was the case. I knew that the Kalayn family were not going to be loved by the common folk. I knew that they might even be hated but....this is different. I don't know why. They're not just afraid of me, but..... I don't know, this is going to sound weird.”

“Believe me, at this point, if you even manage to crack the top ten of weird things that I have seen or have been told by people that try to hire me, then you will be doing well.”

Sam nodded and took a deep drink from his ale.

“Then here it is.” He said. “It's not just that the people fear me, but they pity me too. They kind of look up at me and shake their heads sadly when they see me leaving. I swear I've heard some of them saying things like. “Shame really,” and “Pity....Seems like a good sort as far as Kalayn's go.”

“They recognise your family then.”

“Oh yes. One of the few people that came forward was a steward that had lived in the castle for a long time. He told me that he would have known me anyway if I hadn't announced myself and that was echoed by his mother when I met her. But it's not just that. It's this place....It feels like that place in stories where innocent travellers get caught up in the traps and schemes of dark creatures. I tell you this Kerrass, Frederick, I am a soldier and a knight. I have fought in wars and against men who should have beaten me but I am still here. I am afraid and I am not alone.”

Kerrass grunted before staring off into space.

“Look,” he said after a while. “I'm not saying that this is the case, but have you considered that you might just be overly affected by what has happened with you and your family over the last few months. You were there when we fought Laughing Jack. You've lost your sister as well. Have you thought that you might just need a break and that it's the fatigue and things that might be getting to you.”

“I have thought about that.”

Sam stared into space. “I know that it's not just the hire that brings you here. Clearing a castle out of ghosts is not exactly a large scale job and I imagine that you could be done with it in an afternoons work if you were so inclined.”

“Probably true.”

“You're here to see about Francesca and to see if there's anything here that could tell you how she was taken as well as who might have been responsible for it.”

“The thought had crossed our minds yes.”

Sam nodded. “I want those answers too. I need to know if there's anything here, but I also need to look after these people. I didn't want them, they sure as shit don't want me, but at the same time, they're mine now and I need to do something about this. If there is a problem here and it doesn't just exist in my own little brain. Then I won't be able to leave them to it until we get it sorted out. I won't desert them in the face of whatever it is that has got them so afraid.”

Kerrass nodded.

“There is something here.” He said after along while. “Something on the edge of thought, just crawling around at the edge of my vision and I don't know what it is. It's not Jack. Nothing like that but it is something. There is a strong magical aura here. A strong background....thing that I can't put my finger on.

“My medallion has been twitching since we crossed the border and came up through the trees. Not the same as it does in the presence of magic users, nor in the way that it does when it's near monsters. But enough to let me know that.....”

He shook his head.

“That's worrying.” He told us both. “The cult back near Oxenfurt were using rights that was channelling the magical fields in the local area. The rituals that they performed were powerful. We should all, every so often, remember to get down on our knees and pray to whatever powers we prefer, that there wasn't someone in that little group that was actually magically trained otherwise we would be in a lot more trouble right now. A lot more trouble.”

“So,” Sam seemed to shake himself away from the dire warnings that Kerrass seemed to talk about. “The job here is threefold. The first part of that is to clear out the castle. To lay to rest any spirits that are still up there and making the place look untidy. Second?”

“Second is to see if there are any remnants of the cult that Cousin Raynard was part of up here.” I said. “We know that his father is dead but we also think, from his account, that there might be some other people up here that are still following those traditions. Neighbours and other nobles for instance. We need to find them and destroy them. We need to make sure that the cult is properly torn out to the roots. Finally....”

“If we do find any remnants of this cult, we need to find out whether they were responsible, to any degree, for the disappearance of Francesca.” Sammy finished.

“Ok.” Kerrass smiled. “That's not a short order there. Lot going on. How do you want to set about doing this?”

“You're asking us that?” I laughed. “You're the one with the theories and the expertise.”

“I meant,” he gave me a withering look. “What order. The ghosts or the cult first?”

“I think the ghosts need to be done first.” Sam said. “Tempting though it is to just turn two Inquisitors and a Knight Father of Kreve loose on the populace, I think it needs a softer touch. So if you could start here, Master Witcher?” he smiled as he said that last.

Kerrass nodded. “I had already decided to go up tomorrow and have a look around by myself. I don't think, unless we're very lucky, that we're going to find anything about the cult up at the castle. The former Lord Kalayn must have known that the noose was closing in around him and wouldn't have wanted to risk it by leaving anything out in the open.”

“No, but he might have left clues. That's what Father Hacha's for.”

“I had wondered.”

“What can we be doing in the meantime?” I asked Kerrass.

Kerrass took a deep breath.

“We need more information.”

“But the people aren't talking.”

“I suspect that that's what Father Danzig can do for you. Or that other Inquisitor, you know, whatsisname. The one that isn't Father Hacha. Send those two down and out and see if they can scare something up. We need local stories, folk lore, rumours.....That kind of thing.”

“Will that work?”

“It's a start.”

Sam nodded and we began.

I slept badly that night and woke up feeling more exhausted than I had when I first went to bed. I dreamed that I was on an island in the middle of a lake. The water was moving gently, lapping at the edges of the island but it seemed strange and insubstantial. I could hear the sounds of thunder in the distance but I remember that I wasn't alone on the island. I heard harp music playing but it was discordant and there other sounds too. Like people yelling at each other.

I was scared, desperate and so badly wanted to get away but what I wanted to get away from? I couldn't tell you.

I shivered as I woke up. The air was much cooler up here. We were heading into summer now but although the days were getting hotter, the evenings were cool and fresh. I remember thinking that if it wasn't for all of the other factors that made this place a problem....then I could live here.

Of course, that was a day before I visited the castle.

When Kerrass had allowed us to come up to the castle, it was a day later. It had been quickly established that the main body of the castle was safe. No ghosts or spirits in there that needed to be appeased. Father Hacha was rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of going through the place with a fine toothed comb to see if he could find any evidence of heresy. I wasn't convinced that he was going to find anything as I was pretty sure that any proof or correspondence would be hidden elsewhere. It would take a very particular kind of heretic to hold their dark and sinister meetings in the library, or the dining room where the heretic would also have to entertain tax collectors.

In short, I didn't expect us to find any sinister robes with arcane runes and blood spatter up the front behind the evening best in the back of the masters wardrobe.

So I was given permission to wander the place on the understanding that I would need to keep my spear with me and that said spear would be coated with spectre oil in case of attack.

I was accompanied by a servant. An old woman who had been in the castle since she was a young girl and simply couldn't imagine another life. It was plain to see that she expected to be taken off and burned at any moment now that the church really had arrived but Father Dempsey had already questioned her and was of the opinion that she was as much a victim of the rest of the family as anyone else. He had spent a bunch of time listening to her confession before deciding that her penance would be to act as a guide for us. To show us where the places were and to tell us what she had seen.

She had already done a lot of the “telling” part of her penance with Father Dempsey and her testimony had already been noted down and set aside before Kerrass and I had arrived.

She told us that there had been other servants but that many of them had fled in fear when they had heard of the death of Lord Kalayn. They too had guessed what the results would be and had taken the necessary steps. Sam, much to the dismay of both Father Dempsey and Father Hacha, had tried to tell anyone who would listen that he would guarantee the safety of anyone that came forward. Especially if they could provide us with any information that we might need to contribute towards the investigation.

He had not succeeded.

The only person that had remained was Old mother Anne who, even she, had had to retreat to making a home in the gatehouse to avoid the Ghosts and spirits in the castle itself. Real or imagined.

It was true that the place was oppressive. Like the weather which was damp and came with a chill wind off the mountains, but it felt as though it pushed down on you. Like a library where the Librarian resents the presence of any visitors and thinks that books should be left on the shelves where they belong.

Anne led me through the various rooms of the castle. I asked to see my mother's old room but I was disappointed. It had long since been converted into some kind of guest room and there was no trace of my mother there.

I looked into the other bedrooms. Father Hacha was in the master bedroom with a scribe. He was carefully and meticulously searching the room, speaking his observations aloud to the scribe who dutifully noted them down. I had not gotten over my initial dislike of the man but I will admit to being impressed with his diligence and work ethic. I had expected him to throw himself into things, tearing rooms and furniture apart like the proverbial bull in a pottery shop. Instead, he reminded me more of a man performing an autopsy. He removed things in slow measured steps, not moving on to the next problem until the previous thing had been dealt with. I stood there and watched him for a while, him oblivious to my presence.

As I watched he was working through a drinks cabinet. There were a series of bottles that he was removing from the cupboard.

He would take one out, read the label aloud before carefully, peeling the label off. Then he would examine the seal and comment on the state of it, as to whether it was open or not, if it was open, how regularly did it look as though it had been used. Then he would examine the state of the glass, the colour of it, any bubbles in the glass, was there a manufacturers mark? And so on.

The bottle would then be placed into a straw lined crate. I had expected him to open the bottles, to have a look, sniff or even a taste but I would later find out that Father Hacha was also a bit of a chemist and would take the liquids off to experiment on later to see what they contained.

He was slow, methodical and very, very thorough.

I moved on.

As I said, the library wasn't really a library as the collection of books and scrolls there was laughable. In my travels, I can honestly say that I've seen more books on the shelves of farmers and villagers. It might be true that the farmers were just keeping the books for something to wipe their arse with but even so. Instead, the walls were lined with hunting trophies. So many little glass eyes stared down at me from the walls that, even more so than with the other portraits, I felt as though I was being watched.

That was where the portrait of the former Count Kalayn was. Standing proudly, playing with his riding crop. He looked every inch the noble man, tall, slim, lean and well dressed. He looked as though he was staring off into the distance while in the background of the painting, you could see horses being ridden across fields and jumping over hedges. I spent a bit more time looking at this painting, looking for some kind of family resemblance to my mother, seeing as how this man must have been her brother.

I was, by no means, entirely objective in this regard but I could see no similarities other than, maybe, the hair colour. It is true that this was a more modern portrait. It's also true that it'[s entirely possible, even likely that the artist would have adjusted the appearance of the man standing in the painting to better suit his customers requirements and ego. But I was looking at a handsome man. Energetic, strong and upright of posture. The picture suggested a strength of character and a desire for greatness. It was a lot like the kind of picture that would, occasionally, be painted of my father.

Father didn't go into portraits very much. Each of his children had had a portrait done at the age of fourteen in order to be sent to prospective suitors and I also know that he had a portrait done of himself and any child that was living at home, once every five years or so. You can find them around the castle if you know where to look. The only main ones are the portraits of mother and Father that hang above the hearth in the drawing room and another one of Father in his ceremonial armour which hangs in the great hall above my fathers seat where he sat on those occasions where he had to keep court.

The great hall only gets used rarely as Father used to like people to come and talk to him regardless of whether or not he was “holding court” or not. His only requirement was that he should not be interrupted while he was eating, nor while he was sleeping. According to castle legend, if news was brought to the castle that was urgent, the sort of thing where father needed to be woken up for the purposes of dealing with the news, then first the news needs to be run past Father's squire. Then and only then, if the squire agrees, is the news taken to wake father up.

Also according to legend, the only times this has EVER been the case, was at the birth of any one of his children, in which case he was already awake waiting for news, and then again when we received word that Nilfgaard had crossed the Yaruga for the third time.

Every other time, the squire had listened to the news carefully before telling the messenger that the message could wait until morning and not once, not once did father ever punish one of his scribes for getting it wrong.

I was being reminded of my father keenly here, wandering around the hallways, looking at the faces of relatives that I had barely even heard of, let alone met and interacted with. I was struggling to keep my objectivity and was fighting off an instinctive dislike to everyone that I saw looking down at me from the huge canvasses.

This wasn't helped by the fact that yesterday, while Kerrass was having his scouting expedition into the castle Sam and I had ridden off with Knight Father Danzig and his men, to go and see Aunt Kalayn.

Ok. Again, I need to explain a couple of things for our more Southern readership. On a castle's estate, when the Lord of the estate dies and is survived by the lady of the estate, the lady is required to step aside for the wife of whoever is taking over so that the new lady can put her own stamp on things and isn't overshadowed by the presence of the older, more experienced and well known lady. There seems to be some kind of assumption that the older lady might want to still be in charge and boss everyone around but I'm not going to get involved in that debate.

Nor am I going to get involved in the debate of the correctness, or the incorrectness of the practice.

But anyway.