Glacier water laps against the sides of the ferryboat as Josh, Ella, and I cross between the train station and the glowing lights of Hallstatt village. Ella’s already asleep, resting against her dad’s shoulder, the masked rays of sunlight settling orange and pink over the snow-dusted mountains and clear lake.
Between the caffeine and mountain air, I’m wide awake, mesmerized by the gold that sparks like fireflies on the lake’s surface. Then I see it, on my left. Schloss Schwansee stands like a worn sentry on the bank, its rear guard a fortified rock wall that sweeps up like a wave about to tumble over the house, into the lake.
A spruce forest spreads out on both sides of the castle. The train station is on the west, and to the east, hidden behind a jetty of pines, is the town called Obertraun. The lake, Josh said, is five miles in length, plunging down into four hundred feet of hiding spaces—log piles, shifting sands, and a vat of mud.
He and his team already scanned the water in front of the castle with a remote-operated vehicle before they dove about fifty feet to hunt in the underwater ledges, but they never found any evidence of the rumored treasure.
His students have scattered now, off to explore Europe on their own. I’ve told him that I’ll be doing some personal research in Vienna while I’m here. Until Jonas Stadler returns his calls, Josh is planning to take Ella to explore the ice caves and snorkel in the water near shore.
When I glance at Josh again, he’s watching me. I turn back to the castle.
“It’s been standing there since the 1600s,” he says.
“Just think of the stories it could tell.” Like the book that once resided there.
“A salt administrator built the house. An eccentric man by the name of Christoph Eyssl von Eysselsberg.”
“How do you know this Christoph Eyssl was eccentric?” I ask.
Ella squirms, and Josh gently rubs her back until she’s resting again. “The man also built a mausoleum for himself in Hallstatt’s Catholic church. Then he mandated that his casket be transported back to the castle every fifty years.”
“Like he’s returning home?”
“Exactly.”
I rub my arms. “That is creepy!”
“The curator at the local museum said the last time his casket traveled across the lake was before the war. The spring of 1939.”
“War changes everything, I suppose.”
The castle seems to fold into the trees as we near the center of the lake. How many Austrian boys were schooled under Hitler’s regime at this place? And had the Nazis stored jewelry and other valuables here before they dumped them into the lake? Even with the help of sonar, the treasure could be lost in these deep waters and silt forever if someone like Annika or her descendants can’t point out where the fleeing Nazis threw it.
If Annika told Leo about the treasure, surely she would have told her children where the Nazis tried to hide it.
My mind wanders to Annika and Max. According to his daughter, Max left Austria before the Americans entered the arena of World War II. Did he know about the treasure? Perhaps that’s why he took Annika’s book to Idaho with him.
But if he knew about the treasure, why didn’t he tell his children?
“I found the deed of transfer from the Dornbach family to Hermann Stadler in 1955. It was transferred to Sigmund Stadler in 1962 and then to Jonas Stadler in 1992,” Josh says. “I haven’t found anything else about Annika.”
“Maybe there’s a death certificate for her in Salzburg.”
“Maybe,” he says. “I found her mother’s grave in the Hallstatt cemetery but not one for any other member of the Knopf family.”
The ferry nears Hallstatt, and the buildings seem to cling to the mountain behind them. The first road to this village, I read online, wasn’t built until 1890. For centuries, the access between many of the houses was by boat or what locals called the upper path, a small corridor that passed through the attics. Now I understand—the ancient buildings are so close to the water’s edge, they look like they are about to tumble into the lake.
When the boat docks, Josh reaches for the suitcases, and Ella snuggles close to me as I carry her across the cobblestone plaza to the peach-and-white guesthouse along the waterfront, a three-story inn planted right here for half a millennium.
The staircase inside winds three times before stopping at the top floor, and Josh opens two doors across the landing from each other, setting my suitcase inside the room on the left.
I slip into his and Ella’s room, carefully lowering Ella onto one of the twin beds. She wakes with a start, searching until she finds her dad behind me.
She smiles before closing her eyes again, and he takes her hand, prays a blessing over her, and I’m stunned at the sight of this strong man who would humble himself to pray for his child. When he finishes, he kisses his daughter’s forehead.
The two of us step out onto the narrow balcony that stretches across to my room on the other side, about twenty feet above the lake.
“Are you tired?” he asks.
“More like wired.”
He points toward a small round table in the center of the balcony, the tabletop a colorful mosaic made from pieces of broken tile. “You want to stay up for a bit?” I hear the trepidation in his voice, as if he’s asking me out on a dinner date.
I glance toward the dim lightbulb flickering over my sliding-glass door. Part of me longs to nest inside, but a bigger part of me wants to stay right here with him.
“For a bit,” I say.
“I’ll be right back,” he says before turning toward his room.
I lean against the wrought-iron railing and look down at the lights of town reflecting back as if the lake were a mirror. Across the water is Schloss Schwansee, but I can’t see it anymore. Darkness, it seems, has curtained it for the night.
Four hundred years of stories in that place, many of them lost in the unyielding hourglass of time. But somehow, I think, Josh and I will unearth the story of what happened there during the war.