He sneezed once more and sank back, grumbling. I left.

But then, at last, came the chance I’d been waiting for. They’d relented; or Frau Muller’s stony heart had softened to the extent of allowing that Charlotte might, at least, be fed in her imprisonment, and so Frau Wenzel had prepared a tray with a bowl of soup, some bread, and an apple, and I was to take it—not to the tower, indeed, but to Frau Muller herself, who was presently in the hall on some business and who would take it up to the prisoner. I took the tray and went up the stone steps from the kitchen, while Frau Wenzel clattered away behind me at some pots and pans. The passage to the hall led past Frau Muller’s parlor, and there, I knew, hung a full set of duplicate keys for all the rooms in the castle except the count’s study.

It only took a moment. I slipped into the room, set the tray on the table, turned to the great board behind the door and ran my eyes feverishly up and down until I saw the key; and then I put it into the bowl. Frau Wenzel’s soup was good and thick, thank goodness, and the key was completely hidden.

I picked up the tray again as the door opened, and in came Frau Muller. I stood, frozen. She said nothing, but her eyes glittered with a sly triumph. Without a word she took the tray from me and waited for me to leave the room. “Wait in the hall,” she said, with a nasty edge to her voice, and disappeared in the gloom of the stairway.

I stood by the hall fire, crushed with misery. I nearly wept; the only thing that stopped me was the thought of the pleasure she’d take in my tears. After what seemed an age her footsteps came down the stairs again and I turned to face her.

But before she could speak, the main door of the castle was flung open, and Count Karlstein himself, the cold air swirling around him like an army of Visigoths, stood there on the threshold. The wind flung up cinders and ash from the hearth and made the lamplight flare and sink, and even the heavy, sagging tapestries stirred uneasily out from the walls before the count slammed the door, shutting out the wind. Frau Muller was at his side, speaking swiftly, pointing at me. He looked up and his eyes seemed to flicker, like the mountains in summer when a storm’s about to break, with enormous undischarged anger.