Chapter 2

Stres issued an order that reached all the inns and some of the relays along the roads and waterways before the day was out. In it he asked that he be informed if anyone had seen a man and woman riding the same horse or two separate mounts, or travelling together by some other means, before midnight on 11 October. If so, he wanted to be informed which roads they had taken, whether they had stayed at an inn, whether they had ordered a meal for themselves or fodder for their horse or horses, and, if possible, what their relationship seemed to be. Finally, he also wanted to know whether anyone had seen a woman travelling alone.

"They can't escape us now," Stres said to his deputy when the chief courier reported that the circular containing the order had been sent to even the most remote outposts. "A man and a woman riding on the same horse. Now that was a sight you wouldn't forget, would you? For that matter, seeing them on two horses ought to have had more or less the same effect."

"That's right," his deputy said.

Stres stood up and began pacing back and forth between his desk and the window.

"We should certainly find some sign of them, unless they sailed in on a cloud."

His deputy looked up.

"But that's exactly what this whole affair seems to amount to: a journey in the clouds!"

"You still believe that?" Stres asked with a smile. "That's what everyone believes," his aide replied. "Other people can believe what they like, but we can't."

A gust of wind suddenly rattled the windows, and a few drops of rain splattered against them.

"Mid-autumn," Stres said thoughtfully. "I have always noticed that the strangest things always seem to happen in autumn."

The room grew silent. Stres propped his forehead with his right hand and stood for a moment watching the drizzling rain. But of course he could not stay like that for long. In the emptiness of his mind, a pressing question emerged and

persisted: Who could that unknown horseman have been? Within a few minutes, dozens of possibilities crossed his mind. Clearly, the man was aware, if not of every detail, at least of the depth of the tragedy that had befallen the Vranaj family. He knew of the death of the brothers, and of Kostandin's besa. And he knew the way from that central European region to Albania. But why? Stres almost shouted. Why had he done it? Had he hoped for some reward? Stres opened his mouth wide, feeling that the movement would banish his weariness. The notion that the motive had been some expected reward seemed crude, but not wholly out of the question. Everyone knew that, after the death of her sons, the Lady Mother had sent three letters to her daughter, one after the other, imploring her to come to her. Two of the messengers had turned back, claiming that it had been impossible to carry out their mission: the distance was too great, and the road passed through warring lands. In keeping with their agreement with her, they refunded the old woman half the stipulated fee. The third messenger had simply disappeared. Either he was dead or he had reached Doruntine but she had not believed him. More than two years had passed since then, and the possibility that he had brought her back so long after he set out was more than remote. Perhaps the mysterious traveller meant to extort some reward from Doruntine but had been unable to pass himself off to her as Kostandin. No, Stres thought, the reward theory doesn't stand up. But then why had the unknown man gone to Doruntine in the first place? Was it just a commonplace deception, an attempt to kidnap her and sell her into slavery in some godforsaken land? But that made no sense either, for he had in fact brought her back home. The idea that he had set out with the intention of kidnapping her and had changed his mind en route seemed highly implausible to Stres, who understood the psychology of highwaymen. Unless it was a family feud, some vendetta against her house or her husband's? But that seemed unlikely as well. Doruntine's family had been so cruelly stricken by fate that human violence could add nothing to its distress. Nevertheless, a careful consultation of the noble family's archives – the wills, acts of succession, old court cases – would be wise. Perhaps something could be found that would shed some light on these events. But what if it was only the trick of an adventurer who simply felt like galloping across the plains of Europe with a young woman of twenty-three in the saddle? Stres breathed a deep sigh. His mind's eye wandered back to the vast expanse he had seen on the one occasion he had crossed it, when his horse's hooves, as they pounded through puddles, had shattered the image of the sky, the clouds and the church steeples reflected in them, and the trampling of such things in the mud

had struck him as so destructive, so apocalyptic that he had gone as far as to cry out to the Lord for forgiveness. A thousand and one thoughts tumbled through his mind, but he kept returning to the same basic question: Who was the night rider? Doruntine claimed she hadn't seen him clearly at first; she thought he was Kostandin, but he was covered with dust and almost unrecognisable. He had never dismounted, had declined to meet anyone from his brother-in-law's family (though they knew each other, for they had met at the wedding) and had wanted to travel only by night. So he was determined to keep himself hidden. Stres had forgotten to ask Doruntine whether she had ever caught a glimpse of the man's face. It was essential that he ask her that question. In any event, it could not reasonably be doubted that the traveller had been careful to conceal his identity. It was insane to imagine that it could really have been Kostandin, although that was by no means the only issue at stake here. Obviously he wasn't Kostandin, but by this time Stres was even beginning to doubt that the girl was Doruntine.

He pushed the table away violently, stood up and left in haste, striding across the field. The rain had stopped. Here and there the weeping trees were shaking off the last shining drops. Stres walked with his head down. He reached the door of the Vranaj house in less time than he thought possible, strode through the long corridor where he found even more women attending the afflicted mother and daughter, and entered the room where they both languished. From the door he saw Doruntine's pale face and her staring eyes, now with blue-black crescents beneath them. How could he have doubted it? Of course it was her, with that look and those same features that her distant marriage hadn't altered, except perhaps to sprinkle them with the dust of foreignness.

"How do you feel?" he asked softly as he sat down beside her, already regretting the doubts he had harboured.

Doruntine's eyes were riveted on him. There was something unbearable about that ice-cold stare into the abyss, and Stres was the first to look away.

"I'm sorry to have to ask you this question," he said, "but it's very important. Please understand me, Doruntine, it's important for you, for your mother, for all of us. I want to ask you whether you ever saw the face of the man who brought you back."

Doruntine carried on staring at him.

"No," she finally answered, in a tiny voice.

Stres sensed a sudden rift in the delicate relations between them. He had a mad desire to seize her by the shoulders and shout, "Why aren't you telling me the truth? How could you have travelled for days and nights with a man you

believed was your brother without ever looking at his face? Didn't you want to see him again? To kiss him?"

"How can that be?" he asked instead.

"When he said that he was Kostandin and that he had come to get me I was so confused that a terrible dread seized me."

"You thought something bad had happened?" "Of course. The worst thing. Death."

"First that your mother was dead, then that it was one of your brothers?" "Yes, each of them in turn, including Kostandin."

"Is that why you asked him why he had mud in his hair and smelled of sodden earth?"

"Yes, of course."

Poor woman, thought Stres. He imagined the horror she must have felt if she thought, even for an instant, that she was riding with a dead man. For it seemed she must have spent a good part of the journey haunted by just that fear.

"There were times," she went on, "when I drove the idea from my mind. I told myself that it really was my brother, and that he was alive. But …"

She stopped.

"But …" Stres repeated. "What were you going to say?"

"Something stopped me from kissing him," she said, almost inaudibly. "I don't know what."

Stres stared at the curve of her eyelashes, which fell now to the ridge of her cheekbones.

"I wanted so much to take him in my arms, yet I never had the courage, not even once."

"Not even once," Stres repeated.

"I feel such terrible remorse about that, especially now that I know he is no longer of this world."

Her voice was more animated now, her breathing more rapid.

"If only I could make that journey again," she sighed, "if only I could see him just once more!"

She was absolutely convinced that she had travelled in the company of her dead brother. Stres wondered whether he ought to let her believe that or tell her his own suspicions.

"So, you never saw his face," he said. "Not even when you parted and he said, 'Go on ahead, I have something to do at the church'?"

"No, not even then," she said. "It was very dark and I couldn't see a thing.

And throughout the journey I was always behind him."

"But didn't you ever stop? Didn't you stop to rest anywhere?" She shook her head.

"I don't remember."

Stres waited until she was once again looking him straight in the eyes.

"But didn't you wonder if he was hiding something from you?" Stres asked. "He didn't want to set foot on the ground, even when he came to get you; he never so much as turned his head during the whole journey; and judging by what you've told me, he wanted to travel only by night. Wasn't he hiding something?" "It did occur to me," she replied. "But since he was dead, it was only natural

for him to hide his face from me."

"Or maybe it wasn't Kostandin," he said suddenly. Doruntine looked at him a long while.

"It amounts to the same thing," she said calmly. "What do you mean, the same thing?"

"If he was not alive, then it's as if it wasn't him."

"That's not what I meant. Did it ever occur to you that this man may not have been your brother, alive or dead, but an impostor, a false Kostandin?"

Doruntine gestured no. "Never," she said.

"Never?" Stres repeated. "Try to remember."

"I might think so now," she said, "but that night I never had any such doubt, not for a moment."

"But now you might?"

As she stared deeply into his eyes once more, he tried to decide just what the main ingredient in her expression was: grief, terror, doubt, or some painful longing. All these were present, but there was more; there was still room for something more, some unknown feeling, or seemingly unknowable, perhaps because it was a combination of all the others.

"Maybe it wasn't him," Stres said again, moving his head closer to hers and looking into her eyes as though into the depths of a well. A wetness of tears rose up.

Stres tried to fathom an image in them. At times he thought that from deep down something like a ghost – the face of the night rider – would come into focus. But his impatient desire to grasp it was bound up with a no less acute feeling of fear.

"I don't know what to do," she said between sobs.

He let her cry in silence for a while, then took her hand, pressed it gently and, after glancing at her mother in the other bed, where she seemed to be asleep, left noiselessly.

Reports from innkeepers soon began to come in. From long experience Stres was sure that by the end of the week their numbers would double. That would be due not just to greater awareness among innkeepers, but because travellers, knowing they were under surveillance, in spite of themselves, would start behaving in an increasingly suspicious manner.

The reports referred to all manner of comings and goings, from the most mundane, such as those of the Saturdaners, the peasants who, unlike others, went to market on Saturdays, to the wobbly gait of the simple-minded, the only ones who could make Stres smile even when he was in a bad mood. Two or three of the reports sounded like descriptions of his own movements on his last trip back home. "On 7 October, in the evening, someone who was hard to make out in the half-light, was riding along on the Count's Road, about a mile from the Franciscan monastery. All that could be seen for sure was that he was holding some heavy burden in his arms, it could have been a person or a cross."

Stres shook his head. On the evening of 7 October, he had indeed crossed the Count's Bridge on horseback, about a mile from the Franciscan monastery. But he hadn't been clutching a living being or a cross. He scratched "No" across the top of each report. No, nowhere had anyone seen a man and woman riding on the same horse or on two horses, nor a woman travelling alone, either on horseback or in a carriage. Although no reports had yet arrived from the most distant inns, Stres was irritated. He had been sure that he would find some trace of them. Is it possible, he wondered, as he read the reports. Could it be that no human eye had spotted them? Was everyone asleep as they rode through the night? No, impossible, he told himself in an effort to boost his own morale. Tomorrow someone would surely come forward and say that he had seen them. If not tomorrow, then the next day. He was sure he would find some seeing eye.

In the meantime, acting on Stres's orders, his deputy was sifting carefully through the family archives, seeking some thread that might lead to the solution to the puzzle. At the end of his first day's work, his eyes swollen from going through a great pile of documents, he reported to his chief that the task was damnable and that he would have preferred to have been sent out on the road, from inn to inn, seeking the trail of the fugitives rather than torturing himself with those archives. The Vranaj were one of the oldest families in Albania and

had kept documents for two hundred, and sometimes three hundred, years. These were written in a variety of languages and alphabets, from Latin to Albanian, in characters ranging from Cyrillic to Gothic. There were old deeds, wills, legal judgments, notes on the chain of blood, as they called the family tree, that went back as far as the year 881, citations, decorations. The documents included correspondence about marriages. There were dozens of letters, and Stres's deputy set aside the ones dealing with Doruntine's marriage, intending to examine them at his leisure. Some of them had been drafted in Gothic characters, apparently in German, and sent to Bohemia. Others, and these seemed to him even more noteworthy, were copies of letters sent by the Lady Mother to her old friend Count Thopia, lord of the neighbouring principality, from whom, it seemed, she requested advice about various family matters. The Count's answers were in the archives too. In two or three letters over which Stres's aide cast a rapid eye, the Lady Mother had in fact confessed to the Count her reservations about Doruntine's marriage to a husband from so far away, soliciting his view on the matter. In one of them – it must have been among the most recent – she complained about her terrible loneliness, the words barely legible (one felt that it had been written in a shaky hand, at an advanced age). The brides of her sons had departed one by one, taking their children with them and leaving her alone in the world. They had promised to come back to visit her, but none had done so, and in some sense she felt she could hardly blame them. What young woman would want to return to a house that was more ruin than home and on which, it was said, the seal of death had been fixed?

Stres listened attentively to his deputy, although the latter had the impression that his chief's attention sometimes wandered.

"And here," Stres finally asked, "what are they saying here?" The deputy looked at him, puzzled.

"Here," Stres repeated. "Not in the archives, but here among the people, what are they saying about it?"

His deputy raised his arms helplessly. "Naturally everyone is talking about it."

Stres let a moment pass before adding, "Yes, of course. That goes without saying. It could hardly be otherwise."

He closed his desk drawer, pulled on his cloak and left, bidding his deputy a good night.

His path home took him past the gates and fences of the single-storey houses that had sprung up since the town, not long ago as small and quiet as the

surrounding villages, had become the county seat. The porches on which people whiled away the summer evenings were deserted now, and only a few chairs or hammocks had been left outside in the apparent hope of another mild day or two before the rigours of winter set in.

But though the porches were empty, young girls, sometimes in the company of a boy, could be seen whispering at the gates and along the fences. As Stres approached, they stopped their gossiping and watched him pass with curiosity. The events of the night of 11 October had stirred everyone's imagination, girls and young brides most of all. Stres guessed that each one must now be dreaming that someone – brother or distant friend, man or shadow – would some day cross an entire continent for her.

"So," his wife said to him when he got home, "have you finally found out who she came back with?"

Taking off his cloak, Stres glanced covertly at her, wondering whether there was not perhaps a touch of irony in her words. She was tall and fair, and she looked back at him with the hint of a smile, and in a fleeting instant it occurred to Stres that though he was by no means insensitive to his wife's charms, he could not imagine her riding behind him, clinging to him in the saddle. Doruntine, on the other hand, seemed to have been born to ride like that, hair streaming in the wind, arms wrapped around her horseman.

"No," he said drily. "You look tired."

"I am. Where are the children?" "Upstairs playing. Do you want to eat?"

He nodded yes and lowered himself, exhausted, into a chair covered with a shaggy woollen cloth. In the large fireplace tepid flames licked at two big oak logs but were unable to set them ablaze. Stres sat and watched his wife moving back and forth.

"As if all the other cases were not enough, now you have to search for some vagabond," she said through a clinking of dishes.

She made no direct reference to Doruntine, but somehow her hostility came through.

"Nothing I can do about it," said Stres. The clatter of dishes got louder.

"Anyway," his wife went on, "why is it so important to find out who that awful girl came home with?" This time the reproach was aimed in part at Stres.

"And what makes her so awful?" he said evenly.

"What, you don't think so? A girl who spends three years wallowing in her own happiness without so much as a thought for her poor mother stricken with the most dreadful grief? You don't think she's an ingrate?"

Stres listened, head down. "Maybe she didn't know about it."

"Oh, she didn't know? And how did she happen to remember so suddenly three years later?"

Stres shrugged. His wife's hostility to Doruntine was nothing new. She had shown it often enough; once they had even fought about it. It was two days after the wedding, and his wife had said, "How come you're sitting there sulking like that? Are all of you so sorry to see her go?" It was the first time she had ever made such a scene.

"She left her poor mother alone in her distress," she went on, "and then suddenly took it into her head to come back just to rob her of the little bit of life she had left. Poor woman! What a fate!"

"It's true," Stres said. "Such a desert—"

"Such hellish solitude, you mean," she broke in. "To see her daughters-in-law leave one after the other, most of them with small children in their arms, her house suddenly dark as a well. But her daughters-in-law, after all, were only on loan, and though they were wrong to abandon their mother-in-law in her time of trouble, who can cast a stone at them when the first to abandon the poor woman was her only daughter?"

Stres sat looking at the brass candelabra, astonishingly similar to the ones he had seen that memorable morning in the room where Doruntine and her mother lay in their sickbeds. He now realised that everyone, each in his own way, would take some stand in this affair, and that each person's attitude would have everything to do with their station in life, their luck in love or marriage, their looks, the measure of good or ill fortune that had been their lot, the events that had marked the course of their life, and their most secret feelings, those that people sometimes hide even from themselves. Yes, that would be the echo awakened in everyone by what had happened, and though they would believe they were passing judgement on someone else's tragedy, in reality, they would simply be giving expression to their own.

In the morning a messenger from the prince's chancellery delivered an envelope to Stres. Inside was a note stating that the prince, having been informed of the events of 11 October, ordered that no effort be spared in bringing the affair to

light so as to forestall what Stres himself feared, any uneasiness or misapprehension among the people.

The chancellery asked that Stres notify the prince the moment he felt that the matter had been resolved.

Hmm, Stres said to himself after reading the laconic note a second time. The moment he felt that the matter had been resolved. Easy enough to say. I'd like to see you in my shoes.

He had slept badly, and in the morning he again encountered the inexplicable hostility of his wife, who hadn't forgiven him for failing to endorse her judgement of Doruntine with sufficient ardour, though he had been careful not to contradict her. He had noticed that this sort of friction, though it did not lead to explosions, was in fact more pernicious than an open dispute, which was generally followed by reconciliation.

Stres was still holding the letter from the chancellery when his deputy came in to tell him that the cemetery watchman had something to report.

"The cemetery watchman?" Stres said in astonishment, eying his aide reproachfully. He was tempted to ask, "You're not still trying to convince me that someone has come back from the grave?" but just then, through the half- open door, he saw what appeared to be the watchman in question.

"Bring him in," Stres said coldly.

The watchman entered, bowing deferentially.

"Well?" said Stres looking up at the man, who stood rigid as a post. The watchman swallowed.

"I am the watchman at the church cemetery, Mister Stres, and I would like to tell you—"

"That the grave has been violated?" Stres interrupted. "I know all about it." The watchman was taken aback.

"I, I," he stammered, "I meant—"

"If it's about the gravestone being moved, I know all about it," Stres interrupted again, unable to hide his annoyance. "If you have something else to tell me, I'm listening."

Stres expected the watchman to say, "No, I have nothing to add," and had already leaned over his desk again when, to his great surprise, the man spoke.

"I have something else to tell you."

Stres raised his head and looked sternly at him, making it clear that this was neither the time nor the place for jokes.

"So you have something else to tell me?" he said in a sceptical tone. "Well,

let's hear it."

The watchman, still disconcerted by the coolness of his reception, watched Stres lift his hands from the papers spread out on his desk as if to say, "Well, you've taken me away from my work, are you satisfied? Now let's hear your little story."

"We are uneducated people, Mister Stres," the man said timidly. "Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, please excuse me, but I thought that, well, who knows—"

Suddenly Stres felt sorry for the man and said in a milder tone, "Speak. I'm listening."

What's the matter with me? he wondered. Why do I take out on others the irritation I feel over this business?

"Speak," he said again. "What is it you have to tell me?"

The watchman, somewhat reassured, took a deep breath and began. "Everyone claims that one of the Lady Mother's sons came back from the

grave," he said, staring straight at Stres. "You know more about all that than I do. Some people have even come over to the cemetery to see whether any stones have been moved, but that's another story. What I wanted to say is about something else—"

"Go on," said Stres.

"One Sunday, not last Sunday or the one before, but the one before that, the Lady Mother came to the cemetery, as is her custom, to light candles at the graves of each of her sons."

"Three Sundays ago?" Stres asked.

"Yes, Mister Stres. She lit one candle for each of the other graves, but two for Kostandin's. I was standing very near her at the time, and I heard what she said when she leaned towards the niche in the gravestone."

The watchman paused briefly again, his eyes still fixed on the captain. Three Sundays ago; in other words, Stres thought to himself, not knowing quite why he made the calculation, a little more than two weeks ago.

"I have heard the lamentations of many a mother," the watchman went on, "hers included. But never have I shuddered as I did at the words she spoke that day."

Stres, who had raised his hand to his chin, listened avidly.

"These were not the usual tears and lamentations," the watchman explained. "What she spoke was a curse."

"A curse?"

The watchman took another deep breath, making no attempt to conceal his satisfaction at having finally captured the captain's undivided attention.

"Yes, sir, a curse, and a frightful one."

"Go on," Stres said impatiently. "What kind of curse?"

"It is hard to remember the exact words, I was so shaken, but it went something like this: 'Kostandin, have you forgotten your promise to bring Doruntine back to me whenever I longed for her?' As you probably know, Mister Stres, I mean almost everybody does, Kostandin had given his mother his besa to—"

"I know, I know," said Stres. "Go on."

"Well, then she said: 'Now I am left alone in the world, for you have broken your promise. May the earth never receive you!' Those were her words, more or less."

The watchman had been observing Stres's face as he spoke, expecting the captain to be horrified by his terrible tale, but when he'd finished it seemed clear that Stres was thinking of other things. The watchman's self-assurance vanished. "I thought I ought to come and tell you, in case it was any use," he said. "I

hope I haven't disturbed you."

"No, not at all," Stres hastened to answer. "On the contrary, you did well to come. Thank you very much."

The watchman bowed respectfully and left, still wondering whether or not he had made a mistake in coming to tell his story.

Stres still seemed lost in thought. A moment later, he felt another presence in the room. He looked up and saw his deputy, but quickly dismissed him. How could we have been so stupid? he said to himself. Why in the world didn't we talk to the mother? Though he had gone twice to the house, he had questioned only Doruntine. The mother might well have her own version of events. It was an unpardonable oversight not to have spoken to her.

Stres looked up. His deputy stood before him, waiting. "We have committed an inexcusable blunder," Stres said.

"About the grave? To tell you the truth, I did think of it, but—"

"What are you babbling about?" Stres interrupted. "It has nothing to do with the grave and all these ghost stories. The moment the watchman told me of the old woman's curse, I said to myself, how can we account for our failure to talk to her? How could we have been such idiots?"

"That's a point," said the deputy guiltily. "You're right." Stres stood up abruptly.

"Let's go," he said. "We must make amends at once."

A moment later they were in the street. His deputy tried to match Stres's long strides.

"It's not only the curse," Stres said. "We have to find out what the mother thinks of the affair. She might be able to shed new light on the mystery."

"You're right," said the deputy, whose words, punctuated by his panting, seemed to float off with the wind and fog. "Something else struck me while I was reading those letters," he went on. "Certain things can be gleaned from them – but I won't be able to explain until later. I'm not quite sure of it yet, and since it's so out of the ordinary—"

"Oh?"

"Yes. Please don't ask me to say more about it just yet. I want to finish going through the correspondence. Then I'll give you my conclusions."

"For the time being, the main thing is to talk to the mother," Stres said. "Yes, of course."

"Especially in view of the curse the cemetery watchman told us about. I don't think he would have invented that."

"Certainly not. He's an honest, serious man. I know him well."

"Yes, especially because of that curse," Stres repeated. "For if we accept the fact that she uttered that curse, then there is no longer any reason to believe that when Doruntine said, from outside the house, 'Mother, open the door, I've come back with Kostandin' (assuming she really spoke those words), the mother believed what she said. Do you follow me?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

"The trouble is, there's another element here," Stres went on without slowing his pace. "Did the mother rejoice to see that her son had obeyed her and had risen from the grave or was she sorry to have disturbed the dead? Or is it possible that neither of these suppositions is correct, that there was something even darker and more troubling?"

"That's what I think," said the deputy.

"That's what I think too," added Stres. "The fact that the old mother suffered so severe a shock suggests that she had just learned of a terrible tragedy."

"Yes, just so," said the aide. "That tallies with the suspicion I mentioned a moment ago …"

"Otherwise there's no explanation for the mother's collapse. Doruntine's is understandable, for now she learns of the death of her nine brothers. The mother's, on the other hand, is harder to understand. Wait a minute, what's going

on here?"

Stres stopped short.

"What's going on?" he repeated. "I think I hear shouts—"

They weren't far from the Vranaj residence and they peered at the old house. "I think I do too," said the aide.

"Oh my God," said Stres, "I hope the old woman's not dead! What a ghastly mistake we've made!"

He set off again, walking faster. He splashed through the puddles and the mud, trampling rotting leaves.

"What madness!" he muttered, "what madness!"

"Maybe it's not her," said the deputy. "It could be Doruntine."

"What?" Stres cried, and his aide realised that the very idea of the young woman's death was unthinkable to his chief.

They covered the remaining distance to the Vranaj house without a word. On both sides of the road tall poplars dismally shook off the last of their leaves. Now they could clearly make out the wailing of women.

"She's dead," said Stres. "No doubt about it." "Yes, the courtyard is thick with people."

"What's happened?" Stres asked the first person they met.

"At the Vranaj's!" the woman said. "Both are dead, mother and daughter." "It can't be!"

She shrugged and walked away.

"I can't believe it," Stres muttered again, slowing his pace. His mouth was dry and tasted terribly bitter.

The gates of the house yawned wide. Stres and his deputy found themselves in the courtyard surrounded by a small throng of townspeople milling about aimlessly. Stres asked someone else and got the same answer: both of them were dead. From inside came the wailing of the mourners. Both of them, Stres repeated to himself, stunned.

He felt himself being jostled on all sides. He no longer had the slightest desire to pursue the inquiry further, or even to try to think clearly about it. In truth, the idea that it might be Doruntine who was dead had assailed him several times along the road, but he had rejected it each time. He simply could not believe that both no longer lived. At times, even though the idea horrified him, it was Doruntine's death that had seemed to him most likely, for in riding with a dead man, which was what she herself believed she had done, she had already moved, to some degree, into the realm of death.

"How did it happen?" he asked no one in particular in that whirlwind of shoulders and voices. "How did they die?"

The answer came from two or three voices at once. "The daughter died first, then the mother." "Doruntine died first?"

"Yes, Captain. And for the aged mother, it's plain that there was nothing left but to close the circle of death."

"What a tragedy! What a tragedy!" someone near them said. "All the Vranaj are gone, gone for ever!"

Stres caught sight of his deputy, swept along, like himself, in the crowd. Now the mystery is complete, he thought. Mother and daughter have carried their secret to the grave. He thought of the nine tombs in the churchyard and almost shouted out loud: "You have left me on my own!" They had gone, abandoning him to this horror.

The crowd was in turmoil, diabolically agitated. The captain felt so stressed that he thought his head would burst. He wondered where the greater danger lay – in this swirling crowd or inside himself.

"The Vranaj are no more!" a voice said.

He raised his head to see who had uttered those words, but his eyes, instead of seeking out someone in the small crowd, rose unconsciously to the eaves of the house, as though the voice had come from there. For some moments he did not have the strength to tear his eyes away. Blackened and twisted by storms, jutting out from the walls, the beams of the wide porches expressed better than anything else the dark fate of the lineage that had lived under that roof.