said.
  	"I wonder if you entirely understand what kind of woman Theda Bara portrays?" 
Zeffer replied.
  	Sandru raised a thicketed eyebrow. "I am not born yesterday, Mister Zeffer. The 
Bible has its share of these women, these vamps. They're whores, yes; women of Babylon? 
Men are drawn to them only to be destroyed by them?"
  	Zeffer laughed at the directness of Sandru's description. "I suppose that's about 
right," he said.
  	"And in real life?" Sandru said.
  	"In real life Theda Bara's name is Theodesia Goodman. She was born in Ohio."
  	"But is she a destroyer of men?"
  	"In real life? No, I doubt it. I'm sure she harms a few egos now and again, but 
that's about the worst of it."
  	Father Sandru looked mildly disappointed. "I shall tell the brothers what you 
told me," he said. "They'll be very interested. Well then...shall I take you inside?"
  
  	Matthias Zeffer was a cultured man. He had lived in Paris, Rome, London and 
briefly in Cairo in his forty-three years; and had promised himself that he would leave 
Los Angeles-where there was neither art nor the ambition to make art-as soon as the 
public tired of lionizing Katya, and she tired of rejecting his offer of marriage. They 
would wed, and come back to Europe; find a house with some real history on its bones, 
instead of the fake Spanish mansion her fortune had allowed her to have built in one of 
the Hollywood canyons.
  	Until then, he would have to find aesthetic comfort in the objets d'art he 
purchased on their trips abroad: the furniture, the tapestries, the statuary. They would 
suffice, until they could find a chateau in the Loire, or perhaps a Georgian house in 
London; somewhere the cheap theatrics of Hollywood wouldn't curdle his blood.
  	"You like Romania?" the Father asked as he unlocked the great oak door that lay 
at the bottom of the stairs.
  	"Yes, of course," Zeffer replied.
  	"Please do not feel you have to sin on my account," Sandru said, with a sideways 
glance.
  	"Sin?"
  	"Lying is a sin, Mister Zeffer. Perhaps it's just a little one, but it's a sin 
nevertheless."
  	Oh Lord, Zeffer thought; how far I've slipped from the simple proprieties! Back 
in Los Angeles he sinned as a matter of course; every day, every hour. The life he and 
Katya lived was built on a thousand stupid little lies.
  	But he wasn't in Hollywood now. So why lie? "You're right. I don't like this 
country very much at all. I'm here because Katya wanted to come. Her mother and 
father-I'm sorry, her stepfather-live in the village."
  	"Yes. This I know. The mother is not a good woman."
  	"You're her priest?"
  	"No. We brothers do not minister to the people. The Order of St. Teodor exists 
only to keep its eyes on the Fortress." He pushed the door open. A dank smell exuded from 
the darkness ahead of them.
  	"Excuse me for asking," Zeffer said. "But it was my understanding from yesterday 
that apart from you and your brothers, there's nobody here."
  	"Yes, this is true. Nobody here, except the brothers."
  	"So what are you keeping your eyes on?"
  	Sandru smiled thinly. "I will show you," he said. "As much as you wish to see."
  	He switched on a light, which illuminated ten yards of corridor. A large tapestry 
hung along the wall, the image upon it so grey with age and dust as to be virtually 
beyond interpretation.
  	The Father proceeded down the corridor, turning on another light as he did so. "I 
was hoping I might be able to persuade you to make a purchase," he said.
  	"Of what?" Zeffer said.
  	Zeffer wasn't encouraged by what he'd seen so far. A few of the pieces of 
furniture he'd spotted yesterday had a measure of rustic charm, but nothing he could 
imagine buying.
  	"I didn't realize you were selling the contents of the Fortress." Sandru made a 
little groan. "Ah...I'm afraid to say we must sell in order to eat. And that being the 
case, I would prefer that the finer things went to someone who will take care of them, 
such as yourself."
  	Sandru walked on ahead a little way, turning on a third light and then a fourth. 
This level of the Fortress, Zeffer was beginning to think, was bigger than the floor 
above. Corridors ran of in all directions.
  	"But before I begin to show you," Sandru said, "you must tell me-are you in a 
buying mood?"
  	Zeffer smiled. "Father, I'm an American. I'm always in a buying mood."
  
  	Sandru had given Katya and Zeffer a history of the Fortress the previous day; 
though as Zeffer remembered it there was much in the account that had sounded bogus. The 
Order of St. Teodor, Zeffer had decided, had something to hide. Sandru had talked about 
the Fortress as a place steeped in secrets; but nothing particularly bloody. There had 
been no battles fought there, he claimed, nor had its keep ever held prisoners, nor its 
courtyard witnessed atrocity or execution. Katya, in her usual forthright manner, had 
said that she didn't believe this to be true.
  	"When I was a little girl there were all kinds of stories about this place," she 
said. "I heard horrible things were done here. That it was human blood in the mortar 
between the stones. The blood of children."
  	"I'm sure you must have been mistaken," the Father had said.
  	"Absolutely not. The Devil's wife lived in this fortress. Lilith, they called 
her. And she sent the Duke away on a hunt. And he never came back."
  	Sandru laughed; and if it was a performance, then it was an exceptionally good 
one. "Who told you these tales?" he said.
  	"My mother."
  	"Ah," Sandru had shaken his head. "And I'm sure she wanted you in bed, hushed and 
asleep, before the Devils came to cut off your head." Katya had made no reply to this. 
"There are still such stories, told to children. Of course. Always stories. People invent 
tales. But believe me, this is not an unholy place. The brothers would not be here if it 
was."
  	Despite Sandru's plausibility, there'd still been something about all of this 
that had made Zeffer suspicious; and a little curious. Hence his return visit. If what 
the Father was saying was a lie (a sin, by his own definition), then what purpose was it 
serving? What was the man protecting? Certainly not a few rooms filled with filthy 
tapestries, or some crudely carved furniture. Was there something here in the Fortress 
that deserved a closer look? And if so, how did he get the Father to admit to it?
  	The best route, he'd already decided, was fiscal. If Sandru was to be persuaded 
to reveal his true treasures, it would be through the scent of hard cash in his nostrils.