The guard waited a few seconds before saying, "And your point is?..."
Surely this shouldn't be so complicated, the wizard thought. "The point is: If I'm the duke's guest, we shouldn't have to pay a toll."
"Yeah," the guard agreed in a mocking tone. "And dogs shouldn't get fleas, apples shouldn't have worms, and new shoes shouldn't pinch."
The wizard considered transforming himself into a bird that could fly over the water to the castle, but he didn't want to cause a scene because he didn't know if the duke wanted people knowing he had hired a wizard. Sometimes, when one works for royalty, one needs to be discreet. Besides, there was probably a three-silver-penny toll for using airspace.
The boatman was obviously waiting for the wizard to pay the toll, for which the wizard couldn't blame him; otherwise the man would lose half the fare he'd just earned.
The wizard took two coins from what the duke's messenger had paid for him to come, and handed them over to the guard.
The guard checked off something else on his sheet, then turned the cogwheel that raised the gate.
The gate rose, creaking and dripping.
Once they were through, the guard drew yet another mark on his sheet. "Proceed directly to the mooring area," he warned sternly. "There's a fine for loitering."
"Why is that not a surprise?" the boatman muttered as he pulled on the oars.
"Careful," the wizard whispered. "There's probably a sarcasm tax."
The boatman grunted but said no more as he rowed the few short strokes to the mooring.
The wizard climbed out of the boat—without getting any assistance from the castle guard who stood about three feet away and looked as though his entire job was to pretend to be a statue.
I'm not having a good feeling about this whole business, the wizard told himself. I should probably just turn around and go home right now—which would be considerably easier than getting here, because he could use his transporting spell. But he was still curious about the haunting, and he had been paid already. I'll give it a little longer, he told himself.
"State your business," said the castle guard who was impersonating a statue.
Since Snell's messenger had never referred to him by name, the wizard suspected Snell didn't know what his name was, so he simply said, "I am the wizard"—calculating there was no use being so discreet that the guard wouldn't let him in.
This guard had a list, too, and one of the entries must have read "The Wizard," for he made a check mark and said, "You may proceed inside. Someone will show you to Duke Snell's audience hall. Tips, by the way, are gratefully accepted."
"That's good to know," the wizard said.
As the wizard started up the stairs to the castle, he heard the water gate guard tell the boatman, "One-silver-penny toll for leaving the moat area." The wizard shook his head and entered the castle, suspecting that he and Snell were very unlikely to hit it off.
The wizard waited and waited and waited in the audience hall until he very seriously considered transporting himself out of there, ghost or not. He suspected he wouldn't get in to see the duke unless he bribed one of the guards, and he was determined not to do that. On his way home he could always drop in on the king, he thought, with the warning that Snell's castle might not be safe. He was distracted by wondering whether the gate guards would charge the king for passage, and while he was thinking about that, Snell finally sent for him.
The duke was a tall, good-looking man, with a quick smile. His sandy-colored hair tended to fall forward so that he had to repeatedly toss his head back to fling the hair out of his eyes. The wizard supposed that young women might find this charming. He found himself immediately annoyed with the man.
"Ah, Wizard!" Snell said. "Thank you for coming so quickly. I trust you found the trip easy."
The wizard smiled back at him. "Well, yes, until your castle guards started extorting money from me."
Snell gave a concerned frown. "The tolls?" he asked. "A necessary evil, I'm afraid. I have just inherited this duchy and need to raise money to support public works, such as schools and road improvement, which were sadly neglected by my predecessor."
The last time the wizard had visited the region of Northrup, he had not noticed anything wrong with the roads. And judging by what he saw of fine tapestries and gold and silver ornaments about the castle, the wizard suspected that the duke's philosophy might well be that improvement starts at home.
The duke was saying, "But you should not have been charged since I invited you. You must demand your fee back from the guards."
I? the wizard thought, suspecting how far that would get him—suspecting Snell knew how far that would get him. But he didn't say that; he asked, "So you are just recently made duke?"
Snell nodded.
"And now you are troubled by a ghost."
Again Snell nodded. "Despite the fact," the duke added, "that no one from the castle has died recently."
Though he suspected there was a more ordinary explanation than haunting for whatever was troubling the castle, the wizard asked, "Could the spirit be that of the previous duke?"
"It could," Snell agreed, "but I seriously doubt it because the man is not dead." Snell smiled at the wizard, and the wizard smiled back to indicate he found this clever, though in reality he thought the duke pompous and full of himself. "I did not inherit this castle," Snell clarified, "but was given it by Duke Lawrence as a reward for good service. He has other lands."
"How lucky for everyone." The wizard made a point of not asking what good deed or bravery the duke had done, which, he guessed, the duke expected him to be dying to hear about. "So who do you suspect the ghost is, and what might be its business?"
"No idea," Snell said. "That's why I hired you."
"What does this ghost do?"
"Oh, it moans a lot, and drips water in the passageways."
"Moans," the wizard repeated. "Water." The duke wasn't being very helpful. "Old houses make noises. And are you sure you don't simply have a leak?"
"Fairly sure," the duke said. "Come take a look at my former quarters."
He led the wizard into another room, a bedroom. The bed curtains had been yanked off their rings, the wall hangings had been slashed to shreds, and all the items that had previously sat on top of the chests and dressers had been hurled to the floor.
"Someone doesn't like you," the wizard observed. Of course, he didn't like the duke, either, but this looked like a situation that might be dangerous. "No idea who?" the wizard prompted.
"No idea," the duke echoed. "That's the second time you've asked. Do you want to hear the rest of it?"
"Oh, why not?" the wizard said, irritated at the way the duke seemed in love with his own voice. "Now that I've traveled all this way."
Snell didn't note or at least didn't comment on the wizard's surliness. "The rest of it," he said, "is that the window was barred and the door locked when this happened."
"Someone with a key, then," the wizard speculated, still looking for a reasonable explanation.
"And a tendency to be invisible," Snell said. "I was in the room at the time."
That got the wizard's attention. "Maybe you'd better start at the beginning."
With the look of a man who is vastly impressed with himself, Duke Snell said, "After I rescued Duke Lawrence's daughter Cordelia from a band of bandits in Standish Wood, the duke rewarded me with this land and gave me his daughter in marriage."
The wizard was not surprised that the duke had found a way to bring the conversation back to his own accomplishments.
"Soon after we were wed and moved into this castle, we began to hear moaning noises, at first very faint. But every night the sounds grew louder and they started earlier and lasted longer. Then we began finding water in the castle hallways and some of the rooms, at first just a small puddle here and there. But those grew, too, till there were huge wet tracks—most often, I must say, directly outside my bedroom door."
There were several questions th
at plagued the wizard. The one he settled on was, "Tracks? As in a man's footprints? Or a woman's? Could you tell if they were made by boots, or shoes, or bare feet?"
The duke was shaking his head. "Not footprints. More like a trail of water. As though the ghost is dragging something behind him, like a wide, sopping-wet blanket."
"Why would the ghost be dragging a blanket?" the wizard asked.
"I didn't say he is," the duke complained. "You're not listening properly. How can you solve this problem if you repeat questions and don't listen properly? I didn't say the ghost is dragging a wet blanket behind him—I said he's leaving a track like a dragged wet blanket. You need to improve your listening skills." Then he added, "Sometimes the walls are wet, too."
To prove he was listening, the wizard asked, "As though the ghost is slinging the wet blanket against the walls?"
"I don't think you're taking this very seriously," Snell said, a hint of whine coming into his voice. "What am I paying you all this money for if you're not going to take me seriously?"
The wizard was tempted to answer that you can't pay someone to take you seriously, and that—besides—the duke wasn't paying him all that much. Instead, he said, "Moans and then water. Go on."
Snell said, "Then things started breaking. My things. I mean, everything in the castle is mine—Duke Lawrence declared it so. But my personal things. Then that got worse and worse, too, until I sent for you. You see where it ended last night"—the duke waved his arm dramatically about the ruined room—"while I was waiting for you."
The wizard didn't say, "Don't blame me for living three days away." He said, "You said you saw this happen."
"I'd put wax in my ears to block the noise of the moaning," Snell explained, "or I'd never have been able to sleep. But I woke up when that huge stained-glass panel came crashing down onto the floor. Stained glass is expensive, you know."
"I can imagine." Snell was the type, the wizard thought, who wasn't satisfied with surrounding himself with expensive things—he wanted everyone to know he was surrounded by expensive things.
"I sat up in bed—and before you ask, no, I definitely wasn't dreaming. I was fully awake."
The wizard smiled innocently.
"And then I saw those things lift up from my nightstand, one by one, with no hand touching them. And then the nightstand tipped over. And then it burst apart, as though someone had smashed it with a gigantic hammer."
"A ghost hammer...," the wizard speculated doubtfully.
Snell sighed impatiently. "Or maybe the ghost just jumped on it with both feet."
"More likely," the wizard agreed. "Did your wife see all this, too?"
"Duchess Cordelia has returned to her parents' home for safety's sake," the duke said. "But this is not my imagination, if that's what you're hinting at."
"The thought never crossed my mind," the wizard lied. "Have you thought of returning to your parents' home?"
Duke Snell sniffed as though speaking of his parents reminded him of a bad odor. "My parents are woodcutters—simple people who live in a simple house."
The wizard guessed that meant no, Snell had not considered moving back in with them. He noticed that Snell said nothing about his in-laws inviting him to stay with them. "Still," he said, "if you left, then we could learn if the ghost would stay here or follow you."
"Why would it follow me?" Snell asked.
"Why would it ruin your things?" the wizard countered.
The duke made that bad-smell face again.
The wizard continued, "Either the ghost is haunting this castle, or it's haunting you. Ghosts usually remain near where they died, yet you said none of the castle inhabitants has died recently."
"Right so far," the duke said, sounding impatient. "As ... I ... said ... already."
"But sometimes ghosts haunt the person responsible for their death."
"I haven't killed anyone," Snell protested.
The wizard wanted to ask, "Are you sure you haven't bored anyone to death?" but instead asked, "What about the bandits you rescued your wife from?"
Snell shook his head. "I didn't kill any of them. They ran off into the woods."
"Lucky Cordelia," the wizard said. "Lucky you. Lucky bandits."
"And I didn't know any of them," Snell added, though it had never occurred to the wizard to ask. "They wore masks when they captured Cordelia, and they kept her blindfolded in their camp so she couldn't identify any of them."
"And you happened upon their woodland camp," the wizard said, "woodcutter's son that you are. But you never saw their faces, either."
"That is correct," Snell said.
The wizard suspected that a man of Snell's ambition would never have been satisfied with the life of a woodcutter. He might, in fact, have been one of the bandits himself, and might have convinced or paid his companions to run away so that he could appear as a hero to the rescued young woman and her family. But the wizard had no proof of this, and—besides—that didn't explain the ghost.
"If you won't go to your parents or to your wife's parents," the wizard said, "is there somewhere else you can spend the night?"
"This is most irksome," the duke complained. He paused, looking at the room in ruins about him. "I suppose I could make arrangements to stay at my hunting lodge."
Despite his casual words, he was on the road within the hour.
The wizard had lost the greater part of the day traveling, and it was already time for supper. He ate with the castle inhabitants in the Great Hall (for a silver penny) and spoke to the servants, whose stories matched Duke Snell's: They, too, had heard moans that grew louder with each passing night, and had found the hallways slick with wet.
"Which hallways?" he asked the servants as they cleaned up after the meal.
Mostly the ones between the entryway and Duke Snell's private rooms, they all agreed.
"Interesting," the wizard said. "What kind of moans?"
The servants looked from him to one another. One tried to imitate the sound—a loud, mournful warble at which some of the others nodded or said, "Yes," or, "More or less," or, "Not exactly."
"Inhuman moans," another of them finally said, and that was something to which all nodded in agreement.
"Moans to make the hair on your head stand up and walk right off," added the servant who was sweeping the floor. He was bald, which might have meant he should be taken seriously. Or not.
The wizard asked, "Who was the last person to die here?"
The servants laid down dishes, platters, washrags, and brooms, put their heads together, and tried to work this out. The mother of one of the baker's assistants, they finally came up with: an elderly woman who had died in her sleep during the week between Christmas and New Year's—months before Snell ever made his timely appearance in the bandits' camp.
An unlikely candidate, the wizard thought. Usually people who died of old age did not become night-roaming ghosts. Ghosts were most often the victims of sudden, violent death. And why would a spirit have lingered on earth almost eight months before making its presence known, and then take out its frustrations on Snell's possessions?
And what about the water?
"Do you know of any recent drownings?" the wizard asked.
The servants were getting fidgety and restless because he was keeping them from their work, and a few went back to the kitchen while he was busy with the others. No, the remaining servants told him. Maybe at one of the little towns that bordered the river, but no one from the castle. They didn't travel up and down the river much, letting people come to them, instead. And no one swam in the area because of the moat monster.
The wizard hadn't realized there was a moat monster, or he'd have been nervous on the boat that afternoon. "Could the monster have eaten someone?" the wizard asked.
The servants' looks indicated they found this unlikely.
"No one's missing," one pointed out.
"You don't see too much of the creature," another said. "/ haven't seen him in weeks."
>
"He's shy," yet another put in. The rest of the servants nodded.
"We rarely see him."
"Just, once in a while, the top of his head as he peeks out of the water, or the hump of his back or tail."
"He's a faithful, gentle beast, and wouldn't eat anyone."
The wizard, who'd had encounters with dogs whose owners insisted they were friendly, kept his doubts to himself.
The evening got darker and quieter, and the wizard went to the bedroom the duke had vacated to spend the night there, to avoid the silver-penny lodging fee and to see if the ghost would turn up even with the duke away.
Either that, the wizard thought, or the ghost had followed Snell to the hunting lodge, which would prove something, though the wizard was not sure exactly what. If that had happened, the duke was certain to be mightily annoyed—which was a thought that cheered the wizard considerably as he settled down in the duke's large comfortable chair to wait.
The wizard had fallen asleep when he was awakened by a low, sad moaning—something close to, but not exactly like, what the servant had demonstrated for him. The sound seemed to come from outside, but when the wizard unshut-tered the window, all he saw was the moon reflected in the water of the still moat, and the surrounding woods on the far shore.
But even as the wizard saw there was nothing to see, the moaning moved—so that now it came from beneath the castle, echoing hollowly off the cold stones.
The wizard stayed where he was, and sure enough the sound came toward him: working its way from the first-floor entry, through the Great Hall, up the stairs, coming closer and closer, down the far hallway till it came around the corner and down the final hall to the duke's personal rooms.
The wizard could hear the moaning, loud enough to vibrate his bones, just on the other side of the bedroom door.
He considered opening the door, but according to the duke, that shouldn't be necessary.
In another moment a damp spot appeared on the door, and on the floor in front of it—a big spot. A huge spot. A spot too massive to be made by a ghost that was the size of any man. Some unseen thing—something the size of a small house—was standing there, dripping: The wizard could see the drops of water once they were shed, starting from a height disconcertingly close to the fifteen-foot-high ceiling.