When the Empress appoints Irina's father as the new Governor of Transylvania, the young Duchess is swept away from her glamorous life at court in Vienna to the mysterious "land beyond the forest" where danger lurks and superstition reigns.
When a pe...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Hermannstadt, All Hallows Eve 1769
Irina groaned and rolled her eyes behind her black mask as the small rabble of musicians beside her (including an elderly violinist with an unfortunate flinch and a severe lack of rhythm) butchered yet another Bach concerto. With each double sharp and screech, she winced and wondered what sins she'd committed in her life to deserve being carted off to such a miserable backwater.
As expected, Hermannstadt was not Vienna. Surrounded by dense pine forests and tucked within a spine of snow-capped mountains, the town was more medieval than modern; crumbling defenses and towers that had once stood strong against the invading Turks, penned in a jumble of rustic, pastel buildings with sloping terracotta rooftops and steeples, and narrow windows in their eaves that looked like eyes peering out. The streets were a muddy warren within a hedge maze of stale, stone walls; passages and alleyways linked the spacious upper part of town with the poor and cramped lower parts, whilst gates and archways offered passage from one section to the next. As their carriage had passed through the main gate, Irina had felt almost as though she were entering a castle - destined to be forever locked in a tower.
She soon found that she may as well have been; the same freedoms she'd had in Vienna were all at once taken away. The Duke didn't like the idea of her venturing out alone in such an unfamiliar place – not yet, at least – and so Irina imprisoned herself in her own room. The Governor's Palace was in the upper part of the town – on the corner of the main square where a daily market was held – and although it was comfortable and spacious enough, it was hardly the palace it claimed to be. Irina spent her days reading her books and writing letters to old friends back in Vienna and to Amalia in Parma, complaining about the draughty, dull house, the lack of servants and how she desperately missed the opera. Apparently, Herr Gluck had composed an opera to celebrate Amalia's wedding and oh how she longed to hear it! "Tell me everything, sparing no details," she'd begged in writing.
She sat in the window - day in and day out - wrapped in the fur counterpane from her bed, quietly smoking tobacco with a book open in her lap and Folie at her feet. She looked up occasionally to peer out of the window at people arguing in the market below, and to gaze longingly at the forests and snow-capped Carpathians in the distance - puzzling over the silhouette of a mysterious old castle decaying in the foothills.
Irina saw very little of her father. He'd spend his mornings writing letters and the afternoons taking his carriage around town and the surrounding provinces to meet with local officials and nobles. When they met for dinner every evening, she resisted the urge to bombard him with questions, instead choosing to be sour with him and drag her fork about the plate in silence.
"I'd love let you out and explore, Liebling," her father apologised, "but, you see, there's been a string of women attacked on the streets here."
