Episode 13 · Session XIII
They Will Attest
Upstairs at Wachterhaus: a husband ten years dead, a letter from the devil, the truth told at last, and the bones going home.
Every door upstairs costs us something. Behind the first lies a man who died ten years ago and looks as if he died this morning. A locked chest gives up a letter from the devil. The sons are lovely, dim and firm about one rule. And behind the moaning door, Ireena finally hears the truth, and gives us one back.
For once, we win. Then the bill arrives: most of a priest returned, our proof taken away, a festival moved up to tomorrow, and a whole town gathering in the rain to hear what we will say.
Stay past the credits.
The recap
Session 13 in about 2 minutes. The full record is in the field notes.
The door marked No admittance. Lady Wachter only was not even locked. Beneath a family portrait lay a man with coins on his eyes who had died ten years ago and looked as though he had died that morning: Gentle Repose, cast and cast again. There was one bed in the room, slept in on both sides. A chest in the closet put a poisoned needle into Lily and gave up coin, a druid's book none of us can read, and a letter from the devil to the lady of the house. No bones.
The sons were next door, helping a doctor. "Mama's room is verboten," Nikolai told us. Behind the moaning door we found Ireena, nursing a catatonic Stella and calling Lady Wachter a saint. So Drew took her aside and told her everything. "Why didn't you tell me before?" Drew didn't have a good answer. Ireena had a better one for us: Lady Wachter drew her hospital supplies from a secret room off the library.
Sirius opened Mama's door and pointed the brothers at the bed: "Is that Papa? Is that your father?" And behind the library, on a tarpaulin, plain as grass, lay the bones of St Andral. Then Lady Wachter came up her own stairs with Ernst, saw the open door and said, quietly, "The bones."
Sirius swept them into Drew's bag of holding, bellowed "Blasphemy, she stole the bones of St Andral!" for the whole house to hear, and went out of the window Drew had smashed. Osric climbed out of another, and Drew barricaded the door and jumped. Lily passed for a peasant child so well that Ernst shoved her aside on his way past ("Me baby. Just a baby"), and she and Muriel watched Karl turn on his mother ("Not now, Karl") before they slipped out after us.
At the church, roofless now, we rolled the altar aside and laid the bones back on the stone beneath it, and a wave of holy warmth went out through the ruin. "I'm not gonna say it's a bit late," said Lucian, "but thank you regardless." We had won one.
The bill came within the hour. Izek brought Fëanor back ("You can have most of him back") missing two days of memory, with nothing left of them but "a nice boy". Izek read the letter, thanked us for our help against the men in very obvious masks who had only pretended to be vampires, and took our one piece of proof to the Baron. The festival would be tomorrow, he said; Lady Wachter would hang on our testimony; Henrik was in the Reformation Center. Then the criers came round: "There are no vampires in Vallaki. There have never been vampires in Vallaki."
In the night Barovia paid us more attention, and we woke at level five. Muriel left at dawn: "Yesterday was too rich for my blood." And Sirius arrived at breakfast leading a gleaming celestial horse called Clancy, to the envy of a priest whose god once gave him a book token.
At midday, in torrential rain, the Baron named us his five fine examples of heroism, who would attest against Lady Wachter. From the lip of the fountain, Lady Wachter named us her witnesses against him, and against the son who broke her daughter. "They will attest. They will back me up."
We stopped there, as the whole soaked town turned to look at us.