The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

the vineyards abruptly stopped and the road dead-ended at a bridge spanning a wide creek. A cloud momentarily shadowed the moon so it was hard to discern the outline of the rugged and very high stone wall that seemed to provide an impasse on the opposite bank.

Wolfgang stopped the car just before the bridge and got out. I thought perhaps I should do likewise. But suddenly a blaze of floodlights switched on outside, drenching the landscape in golden light like an outdoor theater set. I stared in awed disbelief at the view through the windshield.

What I’d taken for a high pasture wall was instead the crenellated rampart of an ancient Austrian Burg, a fortresslike stonework, and what I’d believed to be a creek was really a half-filled moat, its mossy granite walls sloping down into the water. High wooden gates were embedded in the rampart. These stood open so I could see the illuminated interior within: a broad, grassy courtyard, an ancient oak tree spreading its branches above the sweep of lawn, and beyond it the circular stone form of a true medieval castle.

Wolfgang returned to the car without a word, put it in low gear, and slowly drove over the drawbridge and through the open gates. He parked on the grass beneath the oak, just beside an old stone well. He switched off the ignition and looked at me almost shyly.

“Your house?” I said, amazed.

“How do you say it—a man’s house is his castle?” he asked. “But in my case, what was left to me was an attractive pile of rocks that nearly a thousand years ago formed a castle here above what would one day be the town of Krems. I’ve spent ten years, and most of my leisure time and income, I admit, finding experts to assist me in trying to restore it. Except for those few—and Bettina, who thinks I am crazy to be doing this—you are the only one I’ve brought here. Tell me, do you like it?”

“It’s incredible!” I said.

I got out of the car for a better look. Wolfgang joined me as I walked around the courtyard studying each detail. It was true that ruined castles dotted nearly every hill throughout Germany and Austria; they were so lovely and seemed to have such terrific views, I’d often wondered why no one bothered to restore them. Now I appreciated what effort must have gone into this one. Even the stones of the ramparts were clearly hewn, laid, and mortared by hand. When Wolfgang unlocked the doors of the castle, let me inside, and flicked on the lights, I was even more astounded.

We stood on the slate-paved floor of a large, circular tower; the ceiling soared what must have been sixty feet above us, with a complex domed skylight like a kaleidoscope at the top through which I could see the night sky. The interior was illuminated by a scattering of embedded lights that twinkled, starlike, from niches set in the stone walls. A metal scaffolding rose like an abstract sculpture from the floor to the top of the tower, supporting from beneath assorted structures in various shapes that looked like treehouses jutting at random angles from the outer stone wall. Each “house” was enclosed by a curved wall of hand-polished wood in warm, graduated shades. And each had a Plexiglas section of wall, a floor-to-ceiling picture window, facing the central open space and curving up partially across the ceiling like a skylight, to let in light from above. It took a moment before I saw that these chambers were connected by a suspended spiral of wooden steps that ran along the circular perimeter of the outer wall. The result was absolutely breathtaking.

“It reminds me of those underground cities Dacian spoke of,” I told Wolfgang. “Like a magical cavern hidden within a mountain.”

“And yet by day, it is completely filled with light,” he said. “In those medieval-style window openings, machicolations, and fenestrations, I’ve installed glass and added skylights everywhere—as you’ll see. When we have breakfast here tomorrow morning, sunlight will flood the place—”

“We’re staying here tonight?” I tried to suppress the flutters this idea caused.

“I was certain you would be too exhausted to go back to your uncle Lafcadio’s tonight as you’d planned,” he told me. “And my house is so near the monastery where we’re going tomorrow morning—”

“It’s fine,” I told him. “If it won’t be too much trouble.”

“It’s all arranged,” he assured me. “We’ll have a light supper at a little inn just below that belongs to the vineyard. It overlooks the river. But first, I’d like to show you the rest of the castle—that is, if you’d like.”

“I’d be delighted,” I told him. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

The slate-tiled ground floor of the tower was about forty-five feet in diameter. At the center was a seating area for meals, a low oak table surrounded by softly upholstered chairs. Beyond this, opposite the entry where we stood, was the kitchen, set apart by yards of open shelving filled with glasses, dishes, and spices. Along the kitchen wall were work surfaces of thick wood, interrupted only by a large hearth-type oven with a stone flue built into the outer wall, as one might expect in a castle. The stairs that rose along the nearby tower wall led to the first tier, the library.

Though somewhat larger than the higher chambers, the library fanned out in a semicircle also supported by scaffolding and pinned into the tower wall for stability. Most of the stone wall here was taken up by a large fireplace already piled with wood and kindling. Wolfgang knelt on one knee before it, pulled open the flue, and with a long straw lit the fire.

Before the hearth was a sofa of glove leather piled deep with pillows, and a boomerang-shaped coffee table stacked with heavy books. The expanse of floor space was strewn with thick Turkish carpets in pale colors. And though there were no actual bookcases, the high Biedermeier desk