CHAPTER EIGHT“My God, what a miserable, Gothic pile!”
The thought came unbidden out of the daze of pain and weariness as the coach thundered through the huge, iron gates. It was my first view of Szelényi Castle, and I was seeing it in the dark of a new moon. The children had been asleep on either side of me for some time, and even Zsuzsa’s head was nodding; my own head throbbed alarmingly, so I was in no condition to appreciate properly the splendour of the black, imposing castle on the hill, towering and stark against the night sky.
The journey had been a nightmare in almost every way, for the roads outside Buda-Pest are more dreadful than you can imagine, and they grow gradually worse the further away you go. Jolting and bumping our muddy way eastward, I had developed an almost permane
