Waking the Ancients Read online

  It happened again. The briefest of movements, glimpsed for a split second. Nothing there now, but she was sure a shadow had flitted across the wall, exactly like upstairs. Stefan and Phil stood by the door, open to the street. Sounds of cars, buses, and the clang of a tram filtered in from outside, along with a chilly draft that reminded her that, spring might be here, but winter wasn’t quite ready to let go.

  “Let us know when you find that key,” Paula said to Stefan.

  “Certainly, Madame.” He gave her the briefest of nods. She could imagine him clicking his heels in true Teutonic fashion. It brought a smile to her lips and a giggle she fought to suppress.

  Phil took her arm as they strolled down the street to the tram stop. “What was all that about?”

  “What?”

  “You know perfectly well. That basement business.”

  “He’s hiding something. Surely you could see that.”

  Phil laughed. “Oh yeah, sure. Bodies in the basement.”

  “No, seriously. I didn’t like him. He was oily. Too ingratiating.”

  “Oh, he was all right. A bit over the top maybe.”

  “I can’t understand what the deal is. Why we’re evidently not supposed to go down to the basement. If there’s nothing there, why bother locking it?”

  “Maybe it’s unsafe or something. I mean, if it hasn’t been used in decades, all sorts of nasties could be lurking down there. Dry rot, worm-eaten timbers. Anything.”

  “Maybe.” They arrived at their stop. A tram rolled toward them. “That’s something I love about Vienna,” Paula said, as it pulled up and the doors slid open. “The public transport. Always a tram when you want one.”

  “Told you you’d love it here.” Phil followed her up the step.

  “I’ll love it even more when I’ve seen that basement,” she said, settling herself in a double seat. Phil sat next to her and she winked at him. “It’s going to be an exciting three years.”

  “Exciting in a good way, I hope.” Phil squeezed her hand.

  * * * *

  Phil slammed his hand down hard on the dining table. “I don’t see what the big deal is, Paula. You heard Stefan. He called the family and they’re adamant they don’t want anyone going down into that basement. Now let it go. Please.”

  Paula was tempted to protest. Ever since she was a child, she had been fascinated by old houses, especially the kitchens, with their gleaming copper pans and old-fashioned cooking ranges. Now that she had the potential to explore one in her own house, she couldn’t let the opportunity pass. Besides, the urge to pick up her brushes and paint again had been biting at her for ages. That old kitchen, untouched for decades, would provide the perfect subject.

  “I think it’s strange that they’d be so bothered. It makes me wonder what’s down there, that’s all.”

  “You read too many crime novels.”

  “I haven’t read one in years. Besides, I have Dr. Quintillus’s collection to get through.”

  Phil smiled. His anger was usually short lived, and today proved no exception. A quick flash and then over. He glanced at his watch. “Hell, I’m going to be late. I’ve got a meeting at ten.”

  He grabbed his suit jacket from where he had draped it over the chair, retrieved his briefcase and, after delivering a quick peck to Paula’s cheek, left. The rest of the day stretched out before Paula. No German lesson today. She should practice some vocabulary and grammar ahead of a short test, but that would keep for an hour or two. She had finally sorted out their possessions, which had crowded their small apartment in London, but were swallowed by the vastness of this house.

  Now it was time to explore the top floor.

  She mounted the stairs up to the first floor and then took the next flight up to the former servants’ quarters. Hardly a sound penetrated from outside, only the occasional car horn or police siren. Paula walked down the corridor. Her footsteps echoed on the bare boards. She opened one door after the other, each revealing an empty room. Evidently, redecoration had stopped at the floor below. It made sense, though. What would be the point if no one was going to live up here? Paula felt a pang of guilt. Such a waste of a big house. They could have lived in a much smaller apartment for the same money but, as Phil had reasoned, why miss out on such an amazing place? It had been ridiculously cheap by Viennese standards. By any standards, really. Presumably the von Dürnstein family didn’t need the money, but wanted the house to be lived in. They certainly signed the contract quickly enough.

  The last door Paula came to was at the far end of the corridor. She had to put her shoulder to it. A series of reluctant creaks echoed off the walls until it finally let her in.

  An old, worn rug lay haphazardly across bare floorboards. A neat, old-fashioned fireplace, containing a small quantity of ancient ashes, and a single bed covered in a dusty quilt were the only signs of former habitation. Paula wondered why she tiptoed into the room. Why not just stride in there?

  Because it doesn’t feel right.

  She made her way to the window and looked out over the street to the rear wall of the Schönbrunn Palace. The trees were newly green with their spring leaves. That would make a pleasant view for anyone waking up in this room.

  A faint whiff of lilies drifted by. Paula sniffed. She caught her breath. Footsteps. A floorboard creaked. She spun round. Held her breath. Listened.

  The door slowly closed, making whispering creaks as it moved. She watched, fascinated. How could it do that when it had been so stiff earlier? Maybe she was standing on an unstable floorboard. She moved to her right. Still, the door inched its slow way closed. Paula didn’t wait any longer. She crossed the small room in a second, yanked the door wide open, glanced each way down the empty corridor and sped off toward the stairs, her heart beating drumrolls.

  The door slammed as she made it to the bottom stair on the first floor. Breathing hard, she raced to the bedroom she shared with Phil. Once inside, she shut the door tightly and sank down onto the bed, clutching the duvet with shaking hands.

  She struggled to calm her breathing, forcing herself to take deep breaths while she wrestled with what had just happened.

  It’s an old house. Old houses creak. The floor’s probably uneven and the door swings shut naturally. As for the footsteps…maybe I imagined them.

  It all made perfect sense. If only Paula could accept it. If only she could stop shaking.

  She must calm down. She stood and made for the en suite. The soft light revealed her terrified, pale face. Paula ran cold water over her wrists and hands, and patted her cheeks. Drying herself with the towel, she switched off the light and turned back. She stopped. A shadow. That split-second smell of lilies. Gone almost before she could recognize it.

  Nothing moved. The only sound in the double-glazed room came from an ornate mantelpiece clock that gave a steady, gentle tick.

  Paula shook her head. Get a grip, woman. Those footsteps and that door upstairs had spooked her. Footsteps? There couldn’t have been any. Just old floorboards and house timbers settling. Her imagination had filled in the rest and, God knows, she’d never been short of that.

  Coffee. That would fix her. Fresh Viennese coffee. Strong, black, sweet. Perfect.

  She ground her coffee, loaded the coffee maker and the irresistible aroma soon filled the kitchen. While she waited, she inspected the door leading to the basement. With two padlocks and a mortice lock, there must be not one but three different keys. But Stefan had clearly stated that the family wasn’t prepared to let him have the key. Singular. Maybe she was reading too much into this, but she couldn’t shift the feeling that the estate agent hadn’t told them the whole truth. Had he even phoned the family?

  She took her coffee into the library and contemplated lighting the wood fire. The big room had a high ceiling, and the central heating only took the edge off the chill. Paula set her mug down and went
over to the fireplace. She and Phil had basked in the glow of the firelight a couple of chilly evenings ago and she had relaid the fire the following morning. She reached for the box of long matches that rested on the mantel, struck one, and in a few minutes was toasting her stockinged feet and sipping her coffee.

  The fresh pine smell of the logs warmed her, and the heat cocooned her so that her eyes grew heavy. Finishing her coffee, she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. As she drifted off to sleep, she heard the crackle, hiss, and spit of the logs, and felt soothed. Her earlier fears faded into the distance.

  She floated along a gentle river she could neither see nor feel. It lapped the banks on either side of her. They too were hidden in the inky blackness that surrounded her. Shadowy figures, indistinct and unfamiliar to her, drifted in and out of her vision. One loomed closer. The nearer it came, the more apprehensive she grew. She could make out that the shadow was male, growing ever more tangible the closer it got. It stared at her, its bearded face framed by long, dark hair. A stovepipe hat and long Edwardian-style coat completed the picture. So close now she could reach out and touch…what? A ghost?

  The figure smiled at her, but she could read no joy in that smile—only emptiness. Paula stared at the face. She was being drawn closer. Any second now, and she would be consumed.

  The figure spoke in her mind. You are mine. You have always been mine.

  Paula screamed herself awake.

  “Oh my God. What the hell…?” She grasped the arms of her chair and stood. She stared around the room, to the upper level and along the narrow walkway. She was alone. So why did she feel eyes watching her?

  The ceiling. That painting of Cleopatra. It seemed so alive. And there was something else. Something she hadn’t noticed before, although she had lost count of the number of times she had studied it over the past few days.

  In one corner of the painting, a female figure watched the proceedings. In profile, she bore a slight resemblance to Cleopatra. Maybe Klimt had used the same model for both roles. Perhaps he had meant her to resemble someone closely related to the queen. Paula focused her attention on the new subject. The figure was dressed in a deep red gown, made of material so fine it clung to every curve of her slim form. Her arms were bare and on the one fully visible, she wore an armlet of an entwined golden snake. Her left hand clutched at some reeds that were growing on the riverbank where she stood. Paula struggled to make out her expression from her profile, but the heavily kohl-rimmed eye and the set of her jaw gave Paula the impression of anger. Hatred, even. Threat. Paula shivered. Klimt managed to convey strong emotion so powerfully, and in this painting, with this minor figure, he had excelled himself. She couldn’t look at it anymore, and turned away.

  A memory stirred. She had studied ancient Egyptian history, but hadn’t taught it for years. Cleopatra. There had been a sister, or a half sister. Arsinoe. There had been no love lost and a lot of rivalry between the two. Cleopatra had rightly perceived her sister as a threat to her monarchy, and had her firstly banished to a temple in Ephesus, Turkey, and then murdered on its steps. Could Arsinoe be the minor figure in the painting?

  Somewhere in this vast library that had once belonged to an archaeologist—especially one with such a fascination with Egyptology—there would surely be at least one book on Egypt’s most famous queen. Paula began her search. She ran her finger along a shelf. Judging by the dust, no one had touched these books since their former owner. They were arranged by subject matter. Many in German, some in languages Paula could only guess at. Hungarian possibly, or one of the Balkan tongues. When she found the right section, book after book featured titles on Egypt. She searched among them, scanning the shelves until she located one in English. A Life of Cleopatra. She flipped the pages and found the index. There were half a dozen references to Arsinoe, and she sat down to read them.

  Five minutes later, she knew little more than she had at the beginning. Arsinoe was a footnote in history. A troublesome, power-hungry menace who was murdered, probably at the age of around twenty. Cleopatra could have reasonably pleaded self-defense, because all the references agreed Arsinoe had plans to shorten her sister’s life considerably. Paula replaced the book on the shelf and looked back at the painting.

  Cleopatra stared down at her, and Paula noticed the coldness of her eyes. The full, sensual lips and jet-black hair, her white, flowing dress and the glittering gold of her barge—a painting in which, every time you looked at it, you seemed to see something new. Like the ankh Cleopatra wore on the belt of her dress. Paula had never noticed that before. But now another thought troubled her.

  The image of the frightening man she had dreamed about flashed into her mind. She must get him down on paper while the details were still fresh. She opened the wide drawer in the desk and withdrew her sketching pad and pencils. She could picture him so vividly that within ten minutes, her drawing had already taken shape. A few minutes more and the sinister face looked back at her. Paula smiled at the irony of that. How could he stare?

  He had no eyes.

  The cheekbones were pronounced, his face bearded and his hair long, black and flowing. The two black holes where his eyes should have been dominated her drawing. Paula shivered and pushed the sketch pad aside.

  Thank God it was only a dream.

  The mantel clock chimed twelve. Time to make a sandwich for lunch, then tackle those verbs and practice pronunciation. Frau Schmidt had the ability to make her exclusively adult pupils feel six years old again—especially if they hadn’t done their homework. Besides, Paula would be here alone for some weeks. Phil was being sent to New York to cover for a colleague and sort out some problems. If she could speak the language better, she could feel more a part of this elegant cultural city that was now—for a time at least—her home.

  * * * *

  “I knew you’d have to go to New York at some stage, maybe toward the end of this year, but I never thought you’d have to go so quickly.” Paula took a sip of Burgenland red wine but barely registered it.

  The fire crackled in the living room. Phil wandered over, her sketch pad in his hand. “They’re in a mess over there. It’s what I’m paid to sort out.” He pointed at her latest drawing. “He’s a bit evil-looking. Anyone you know?”

  “A stupid nightmare I had. It was so vivid I wanted to get it down on paper. I thought I might use it somehow, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Why not? It’s a very unusual image.”

  “Not my usual style, though. He looks like something out of a horror film.”

  “So? You don’t always have to paint landscapes and interiors. Branch out a bit. You’re in Vienna now. Home of Gustav Klimt and the Secessionists. Follow their example and break the mold.”

  Paula smiled. Phil sat beside her and put the sketch pad on her knee. Paula glimpsed the face and placed the pad face down on the settee next to her.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go so soon. I know it’s not for a week or two, but we’ve only just arrived here.”

  Phil slipped his hand into hers. “I know it’s not ideal, but they’re really struggling, with two staff away on long-term sick and a third going on maternity leave. It’s only for three weeks or so. Give you a chance to get to know Vienna, and no distractions from your German lessons.”

  Paula pinched his nose. “Funny guy. Well, think of me all alone in this great big house with only the ghosts for company.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Just an expression. I hope. Anyway, the cleaner is starting in a couple of weeks so I’ll have someone to talk to.”

  “Anna. She’s Spanish, isn’t she?”

  “Italian. Anna Manchetti. She comes from Tuscany, not far from Florence, and she’s studying English at the university here. She seems levelheaded and conscientious. We should get on well.”

  Phil stroked her hand, a look of concern in his eyes. “You’ll be all right, won�
�t you? Here on your own?”

  “Of course I will. I’m a big girl, and this house will keep me busy. I haven’t finished getting it how I want it yet. I need more pictures for the walls. I’ll have plenty to do while you’re away.”

  “Well, if you need me, I’ll be on the other end of a phone and we’ll Skype every evening—evening my time, that is. It’ll be after midnight for you.”

  Paula smiled. “I always was a night owl.” Being alone in a house had never bothered her. Before she and Phil got together, she used to live on her own in a sizable flat in a large converted house built in the seventeenth century. Plenty of fodder for ghost stories there. So why should the prospect of being on her own here for a few weeks trouble her? Yet, butterflies dive-bombed inside her stomach, and she wished with all her heart Phil wasn’t going away.

  * * * *

  Paula woke early. The first rays of sunlight penetrated the clouds, promising a warm spring day. She showered, washed her hair, and dressed in jeans and a plain T-shirt, then donned flat strappy sandals and padded quietly out of the bedroom where Phil continued to sleep.

  Out in the garden, she inhaled the scent of fresh, dewy grass. Dew lay on the lawn, and in the flower borders, red and gold tulips intertwined with daffodils and harebells. Birds sang from the tree branches and Paula hugged herself and smiled. She and Phil had landed a wonderful assignment here. Okay, so she couldn’t get into the basement—yet. But this place inspired her. As she had said to Phil, she had plenty to keep her occupied.

  The sun glinted off something shiny and metallic lying in a flower bed.

  Paula stepped over to it, bent down and picked it up. An old-fashioned cigarette lighter. Silver, by the weight of it. She turned it over in her hand and found two elaborately engraved initials. E.Q.

  “Emeryk Quintillus,” she whispered.

  A breeze as soft as a sigh stroked her hair. But not a leaf stirred.

  She slid the lighter into the pocket of her jeans and strolled back in through the kitchen door, deep in thought.