Free Iron Butterflies by Andre Norton

favorite. He was an Italian, a worker in gold—not even of noble birth. It was he who fashioned that birthday scene. They say that he was so handsome that common women thought him an angel come out of heaven. But it was also true he did not want the Electress's favor, he had a wife which he loved. Then that wife died.
    “Perhaps losing her sent him mad, or else, as it was afterward hinted, the Electress had him fed a potion which was to bring him to her bed, but which, instead, disordered his wits. For when the Elector returned from his campaign, this man sought him out and told his story. At first Konrad-Axel deemed him only a madman and would have had him shot for besmirching the name of his lady. But others, having gathered courage, added to the goldsmith's story. He died, yes, but his story did not die.
    “The Elector moved quickly. His men, soldiers loyal to him, not corrupted by the fears of the court, took prisoner all the Electress's creatures in a single night and put them to the question. Under such torture they broke and spoke of murder and evil, though the hexenmeister was defiant to the last and died cursing Konrad-Axel when they burned him for the warlock he proudly said he was.
    “Ludovika, screaming, was dragged from her apartments in the palace. She could not be put to death, though she was certainly a murderess many times over. But her birth was too high, she had kinsmen the Elector could not stand against should they choose to defend her. Thus he passed a sentence of death-in-life on her. They took her to the fortress castle of Wallenstein andtherein she disappeared from the world. Outside the walls below one tower they built a scaffold as a warning that she was dead for her crimes as far as the world was concerned.”
    I shivered. It was a story which held a kind of horror and the Gräfin repeated it in a voice lacking her usual affections, rather as if she were reciting something she had memorized from some roll written long ago.
    “But why did the Elector keep that scene, reminding himself and all who saw it? I should have thought he would have had it destroyed!”
    “Not so! He very much wanted that the memory of her would be kept ever before himself and his people as a warning. It was to him a pledge of justice that not even one who was royal was above punishment. His marriage with Ludovika was dissolved. He married again—he must have an heir. But when his new wife came to him he kept the birthday scene on a table in her chamber, so she must look upon it daily. However, she was of another nature and such a lesson was not needed, for she was a Wratenburg of a most pious line. In her time all the pleasures of the court disappeared and they say that all who were in the palace went to church once a day and kept Lent at the table near all year round.”
    “So now the scene is part of the treasure—”
    The Gräfin did not make any comment. I wondered if a part of the tale she had just told had not carried an implication which might be striking home concerning her own conduct. If she was, as I had come to suspect, unduly interested in the Baron, then perhaps the example of the fate of the murderous and adultrous Electress might well mean something more than an unpleasant story.
    “They say she still walks—”
    Her words broke through my train of thought— For a moment I did not catch their meaning. Then—a ghost! Surely in this enlightened age one did not believe in haunting! Such ideas could only be found in novels— say one of Mrs. Radcliffe's, with the bleeding nuns,secret passages, and skull-headed tormentors of beautiful and luckless heroines.
    The Gräfin looked down at her hands and those were clasped so tightly that the kid of her gloves stretched dangerously taut across the knuckles.
    “What did she feel?” My companion's voice was barely above a whisper, yet the words reached me over the clamor in the streets. “What did she think? Shut up there—in the dark and the cold?” The