The Demon Tower

By Virginia Coffman

They call her "The Demon Lera," a name her beauty belies: Straight black hair, full sensuous lips, long aristocratic body. Opaque golden eyes. She is Countess Silvana Lera, mistress of an island fortress home to:

Mrs. Stitch, the housekeeper, whose knowledge is worth more than her life.

Benedetto, wily half brother to the Countess, who has two passionate obsessions.

Zangari, the gypsy servant, whose eyes finally see one terror too many.

Marc Antoine, son of the countess, accused madman and killer who in death wears the most unexpected mask of all.

They are waiting for the honored guest, Melissa Summers, pretty, young, wealthy, vulnerable to love. HER WELCOME HAS BEEN PREPARED.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Candlewood Books
• Release date: Jul 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781937211356

Book preview

The Demon Tower

Written by Virginia Coffman

Candlewood Books

****

ISBN: 978-1-937211-35-6

Published by Candlewood Books at Smashwords

Copyright © 2012 by Candlewood Books, a division of Harding House Publishing Service, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

Chapter 1

Now that the stars were finally out after the early evening mist I could see a long way off to the north, where the known world ended for us girls at the École des Soeurs de Sainte Marie. For the tenth time in the hour since I had snuffed my candle at midnight, I had run to the window barefoot and in my nightgown. I was watching for the mail coach to rattle along the empty High Road, which ran past our select young ladies’ school and on to the great cities in the south of France. Except for our studies and our memories, we had little or no experience of the wonderful life that must surely begin just beyond the stretch of High Road visible to us.

My vigil will seem excessively odd until I explain that our school was at an awkward distance between several cities in south-central France; for that reason the twice-weekly mail coach passed us at the ungodly hour of one in the morning. Even if we did not know the world, we knew and understood one thing, and that was the value of our letters from home. When, like me, the students had no parents, there was still the monthly or quarterly letter of credit we waited for, all of it to be spent in the tiny wayside village south of the seventeenth-century manor house that was our school. Tonight it was my turn to wait up for the mail coach from Paris and the north. One of us always waited up and sneaked out to take the mail without the sisters’ knowledge. Otherwise, we would not be allowed to see it until after prayers and breakfast and our morning studies.

Behind me in the darkened room I heard a whisper that startled me until I recognized Sally Childer’s voice.

Melissa! Do you see it?

Not yet. It’s late. The rain must have held it up somewhere.

She began to jump up and down in her excitement. I make no doubt you’re waiting to hear from your precious countess. But I’ll wager you don’t.

I said nothing. My guardians had forbid me to correspond with my unknown cousin, the Countess Silvana Lera. Besides, she had not answered my one, rather timid letter.

It’s an age since I heard from Mama, Sally complained. These horrid wars all the time!

The school was often divided politically because so many of the girls’ parents had died on the guillotine during the Terror, and others had fathers or guardians now proudly wearing the uniform of the Emperor Napoleon’s very special troops in Spain. Every month or so brought us news of fresh victories over the Continental powers. How sorry the Austrians and the Prussians must be that they had provoked our French army. The Spaniards were quite horrid, however. They never seemed to understand when we had defeated them.

As for me, I dealt as little as possible with my guardians, my Aunt Una and Uncle Arthur, who lived in Switzerland, because despite all the assurances of the good sisters, I did not trust my guardians. I felt sure they only wanted the little fortune that Papa and Mother had left to me. They were cold, critical, indifferent to my every friendly overture, and sometimes seemed to me very like the wicked guardians in one of the English fairy tales.

But just suppose, in the mail tonight, there was something encouraging from my cousin, who lived in Italy. Perhaps there would be a hint that when I reached my eighteenth birthday next month, I need not go to Switzerland to live with Aunt Una! I wanted more out of the unknown future than the dull years ahead with Aunt Una. It all depended on my mysterious cousin, Silvana Lera.

There! It’s coming! Sally whispered, pointing to the north.

The rackety old pre-Revolution coach rolled into sight at the far end of the High Road, just as the road dropped down from a rise and started across the partially wooded countryside, around the manor house grounds. Presently the coach would rattle over the wooden bridge that spanned a small, vagrant stream, and there would be just time for me to throw on a dressing sacque, hurry out the servants’ door, and take the large packet of mail from the hands of the coachman—ever anxious to be on his way. The oldest girls at the school said that the sooner the coachman reached Toulouse or one of the other large cities, the sooner he might have his bottle of wine and his cassoulet of dried beans and sausage. That was why he hurried.

Best make ready, Melissa.

I nodded and reached for my wrapper. I was shivering, and I told myself it was because of the cold, damp, spring night. But there was something else. I was suddenly frightened and I didn’t know why.

It is true that I didn’t like to deceive the sisters in this way about the mail. We always left a goodly number of pieces with the seals unbroken, just to make it look right, but the whole business was unfortunate. Some of us would truly have preferred to receive our mail at the hands of our good-hearted Sister Sophia, who tended the gardens and led us in our walking and exercise periods. But that would mean the dismal wait of half a day, and most girls would simply perish if they had to be patient so long.

I wrapped myself in the all-enveloping robe that Aunt Una had provided, saying, It will keep you from the indecency of the present French mode, which, I regret to say, is almost transparent. I was glad of the robe’s decency now, as it did make me stop shaking. I heard the faint, distant rattle of the mail coach over the wood bridge, and hurried to the door.

Your feet! cried Sally, and I had to run back, step into my black morocco day slippers, and then rush out into the silent corridor, down the narrow servants’ stairs, and out through the stone-flagged kitchen, which still smelled pleasantly of last night’s roast lamb with herbs and onions. I was sorry to leave the kitchen with its dinner warmth swirling all around me from the two fireplaces whose coals still smoldered, though they had been dampened. The icy stillroom beyond prepared me for the out-of-doors, and I hurried out across the gravel path, which was interspersed with green shoots among the stones. My shoes pattered through little hollows where the light spring rain had gathered, and everywhere in this lovely, midnight world lay the scent of wet new flowers, the cups held stiffly upward to catch the dew.

I remembered that within a week I should be quitting this place, which had been my home for eight years. If only I need not go to live with Aunt Una! She was Father’s sister, and had never really cared for Mother. And I was considered to be very like Mother. Too exuberant by half! said Aunt Una. But my single, forbidden letter to Mother’s cousin Silvana had gone unanswered for so long, I scarcely had room for hope any more. It was even possible that my letter, written without the permission of Sister Maria Maddelena, and given into the coachman’s hands properly franced (stamped?), might not have reached my cousin in Italy. She might have moved from her villa.

Rubbing my hands together to warm my icy fingertips, I waited for the mail coach and wondered, not for the first time, why the Countess Lera was a forbidden subject. Even the sisters refused to discuss her with me. My school friends, of course, shared my fascination with the countess, but the grown-ups always exchanged significant looks and eyebrow raisings when I mentioned her name, and there was no getting anything coherent out of them. I recalled once when I, hearing only the name Silvana Lera, came into the room, the sisters looked very self-conscious and became silent at once.

Lucie Marmont, who had left school the year before when she had reached her eighteenth birthday, knew much more than we did about such things as lovers, mistresses, and illegitimate infants abandoned along the wayside; she had speculated that my cousin had a lover, and that this was her crime. It seemed a very flat solution to the mystery of the words I had overheard some of the Sisters use: The Demon Lera. After all, from what I have read about the Old Regime before the Revolution, every decent, self-respecting aristocrat had a lover!

The mail coach, tilting dangerously as it rounded a curve in the road, bounded upon me, the team all snorting and sweating, showing their formidable yellow teeth and curling their big nostrils. I always seem to have that effect upon horses. We share a mutual mistrust. The stout, mustachioed man on the box, a wounded veteran of the Emperor’s great campaigns at Arcola and Rivoli, waved his whip at me and grinned his big, friendly grin, a welcome sight in the darkness.

"Bon Soir, m’amselle! Behold the mails. Only a few pieces to be franced. All else were paid for by the senders. A mere five-livre piece will see us through."

I got out several coins and tried to make out their denominations by the flaring light of the lantern on the side of the coach. I could vaguely see faces peering out at me from the dirty coach windows, but I paid them no heed. I knew the sisters would disapprove of my observing these strange men or being noticed by them; so I carefully avoided them, hoping this would partially counteract my disobedience in the matter of the mail.

"Thank you, monsieur, I said to the coachman. A safe journey. You drive very fast. You could have an accident."

"And a safe journey to you, my pert mademoiselle."

It was an odd wish, directed to me. I was not going on any journey, unless to Geneva, where my guardians had determined to live out the wars of what Uncle Arthur called the less civilized portions of the globe. But I took the will for the deed, and thanked him for his good wishes, however ill-expressed.

He raised the whip handle. I heard the lash flick above the heads of his team. Then he was off, tearing down the High Road toward the great dark—toward life and adventure, I thought.

Envying him and his passengers despite the gray, spectral appearance of their faces at this hour, I turned and walked back through the damp shrubs, carrying the precious packet of letters, all assorted sizes and shapes. I fingered them quickly, waving each folded and sealed page as I discovered the receiver’s name. I knew almost without looking up at the long, straight, elegant front of the Palladian house that the windows in the girls’ bedchambers were lined with hopeful faces.

A vagrant breeze blew through the woods and across the grassy shrubs that punctuated the school grounds. In that breeze was a sprinkle of water, probably just the mist shaken off the budding plants. I hurried to the kitchen yard and stepped inside. A bright little flicker of light dazzled my eyes after the gentle starlight, and I realized it was a candle, and that someone was holding it.

The someone was Sister Maria Maddelena, our present Sister Superior. Even at this hour she was fully clothed. She was taller than most of the girls, with her thin, sensitive face white as magnolias, and her fingers almost transparent against the thick, muffling black of her habit. I nearly fainted of shame. Somehow I had the sense to curtsey.

Sister Maria Maddelena said in that grave, emotionless voice of hers, The post, if you please, Mademoiselle Summers.

"Oui, ma Soeur." We had been taught to say that when on good terms with the Sisters, but I knew it was the wrong thing to say now. My cold, stiff fingers shook as I gave her the sheaf of letters, but I still longed to know if there was one letter for me. Why had I not riffled through them more rapidly? Just to be quite sure there was nothing, no letter or note, nothing that bound me to another human being beyond these good, chill sisters. . . .

While I shook with suspense, Sister Maria Maddelena set the candlestick on the stillroom shelf at her elbow, and with a graceful flip of her huge oversleeve, began slowly to read a superscription. Then, with infinite care, she placed the top letter behind the others and read the second, and eventually, after an eon, the third, and so on.

After a while I said timidly, I know I have done very wrong. I know I must be punished. But could you tell me if there is a letter for me from Italy?

She went on reading, and if I had not seen her deep-set, dark eyes with their blue shadows of fatigue, I should have imagined her made of stone. At last she completed her perusal of the letters, folded her arms, and withdrew the letters and her hands into her oversleeves.

Very good, Mademoiselle Summers. You may go to your bed now.

But—may I know . . . ?

Let that be your penance, Melissa. You may not know. Good night.

I curtsied again, scarcely able to believe that even the implacable Sister Maria Maddelena would play so cruel a trick. Before I could humiliate myself to no purpose by weeping or pleading, I rushed through the stillroom and the kitchen, and, no longer fearful of discovery, went on through the salons, the instruction rooms, and up the wide central staircase as noisily as I liked. But all the time I was wondering if I could possibly remember every separate letter in that packet, every different color or seal. Was there one from Italy, from Tuscany, or more directly, from Livorno?

It was no use. I could not remember. There were too many, and besides, why would they come from Italy? That would be the southern mail. What a fool I had been to risk so much, when there could not possibly be anything from my cousin!

I pushed through the group of inquisitive girls in the corridor upstairs, making quick gestures indicative of betrayal, sudden capture, and all the horrors of torture by the enemy. But the truth is, I was already thinking of the next mail from the south, which was due in two days and fortunately arrived sometime in the morning, after prayers.

Nothing more was said to me about having left my room after nine o’clock, or having taken in the post eight or nine hours before we would normally be allowed to see it, nor was I thanked for having saved the coachman the trouble of going to the terrace of the manor house and laying the letters in the covered silver box. But the next morning, after breakfast and prayers, I was told to remain in my room while the other girls reported to receive their mail. Since I now had no interest in the mail, I cared very little when Sally Childer rushed into the room and flung herself on her bed to read a long, apparently delightful letter from her mother. She looked up presently.

I’m sorry about your letter, Melissa. But you know Sister M.M. She couldn’t be moved if Vesuvius erupted.

It doesn’t in the least matter, I said loftily, careful not to look up from the first volume of Mr. Lewis’s The Monk, which I was reading out of spite because the girl who had loaned it to me promised that the sisters disliked it intensely. The novel was said to be terrifying, but seemed to me rather a silly bit of fustian. No priests of my acquaintance had ever behaved so preposterously, and I saw no reason to suppose a monk would be less sensible.

Really? You don’t care? asked Sally in a knowing way. All the same, I thought it the outside of enough when they wouldn’t let you have that Italian letter.

Poor Monk fell out of my lap and onto the carpet as I jumped up. Did you see it? Tell me! She grinned. It was sent on to Sainte Marie Menehould School in Clarges. They discovered the mistake and sent it down to our school at last. Only—they won’t give it to you.

Don’t torture me. Have they opened the letter? Do they know who sent it? I’m in dreadful trouble if they do. I’m not supposed to write to the countess, you know.

To punish me for having first ignored her hints, Sally went on reading her own mail, chuckling over some witty or otherwise pleasurable sentences. I saw that one letter, probably from a relation, was not only written full on the page but the lines were crossed with writing, so that, in essentials, she had two letters in one from this correspondent. I had long ago learned not to be jealous of the loved ones these other girls had, and to console myself very handily with the fact that I received a greater quarterly sum of money than they. But, truth to tell, it wasn’t quite the same thing, and I knew it.

Surely the sisters would not withhold my letter too long. They were rigidly fair. That was my great complaint against them. I am not, by nature, rigidly fair. I have my passionate likes and dislikes, and am much more easily swayed by the charm, the fascination, of a subject or person than by their coldly innate worth.

I took excessive care not to let Sally guess how much it meant to me to lose the letter from Italy. I was not even sure the letter came from my cousin Silvana, but I behaved in exemplary fashion for the rest of that day, hoping against hope that my industrious qualities would have some effect upon the sisters. But by late that evening, after dinner and evening prayer service, nothing had yet happened to indicate that any instructions out of the ordinary had been given, and I went to bed in despair. I would leave the school within a fortnight with the rating of satisfactory, which was neither excessively good nor poor, and sent, with the escort of one of the innocent, inexperienced sisters, to Geneva. After that, my fortune and my person would fall into the power of Aunt Una and Uncle Arthur.

Meanwhile, I thought, as I considered and rejected alternate possibilities, I had no chance of escape from this frightfully dull fate beyond that provided by the withheld or destroyed letter, which probably was from my only other living relation, the mysterious Countess Lera. I lay awake for many hours that night, hoping against hope that someone would present me with a fair and at least slightly plausible alternative.

Far past midnight, with most of the students long since asleep, I was awakened by one of the sisters. I got up, careful to move quietly, for Sally, who shared my room, was fast asleep, and followed Sister Sophia’s ample form through the room and along the corridor to the grand staircase.

Sister Maria Maddelena was seated in her study, looking both fragile and majestic under the faint glow of the brace of candles that surrounded her desk.

Sister, leave our unregenerate Melissa, and do not return until you are summoned.

Sister Sophia’s large, cheerful face fell into heavy melancholy as she regarded me, but I nodded, understanding only too well. At the school someone was forever apologizing for me, and I could not forget how much confusion I had caused poor Sister Sophia.

Now, my little sister, said Sister Maria Maddelena, are you aware that your guardians, that good Monsieur and Madame Summers, have asked me that you should not correspond with the—er—relation of your late mother—God rest her soul—the Comtesse Silvana Lera?

I began to shiver. Surely she must be about to tell me of the suppressed letter from the countess.

"Oui, ma Soeur."

"And have you not given your word that it shall be as Madame your aunt requests?"

I hesitated; I did not mind committing some mischievous act that annoyed the sisters; but I had never lied to anyone I cared for, and in spite of my actions, I cared very much for the good opinion of Sister Maria Maddelena.

N-no, Sister Maria Maddelena. I never gave my word . . . about that. About the Countess Lera.

Really, child?

No, Sister. If you please, I swear to you, I was only asked not to correspond with her. But I was never asked for my word. I—

It is no good to play with words. You have written to your cousin in Italy, and she has replied. This is against all our orders from your guardians. And now, from Geneva, comes the order once again to forbid such correspondence.

I was bewildered. After all, I had only received the