To my enduring and fondest friend, Bondamma Atta Olivia Clemens, at Villa San-Germanno at Lecco, on this, the 9th day of September, 1231,
My cherished Olivia,
Thank you for sending me your letter; I will bear in mind that you will be leaving Lago Comus shortly. When you have decided where you are going, I ask you to send me word. I will soon depart this wolf’s-lair of a city for Viendona, as they are calling Vindabona these days. It is in the County of Austria and has recently benefited from the increase in mining in Moravia and Bohemia, which intrigues me. I may go to my native earth for a while, as well; there have been rumors of increasing hostilities with Hungary. It would benefit me to protect the place I was born, though it was more than thirty centuries ago.
Rogerian is presently in Venezia where he is delivering some contracts to expand Eclipse Trading there. The Console has decided to tax me for every Venezian port-of-call we use as a condition of using their escort ships and their trade routes. I am willing to agree to their stipulations in part because it helps me to link Eclipse Trading in China with Eclipse Trading in the West. It is also a way to get around the demands of the Templars in the Holy Land who are busy shoring up their accounts at the expense of merchants. I am also planning to see what arrangements I can make with the Hanseatic League, for with as much upheaval as we see in trading, having more, not fewer, options will do much to make Eclipse Trading strong enough to remain in a good position no matter how chaotic some parts of the world become. Increasingly I value Eclipse Trading, which I began as a way to escape from foreign lands, and now have found a most successful enterprise. I am astonished to see myself endorsing trade in this way, but it is ever more useful and I would be a fool to eschew it.
You inquired about any attachments I have formed since my short-lived association with Bondame Margrethe de la Poele of Rutland: I must confess that there have been none. I have limited myself to visiting women in their sleep, and rousing dreams in them. It is not the same sort of nourishment as there can be with knowing partners, as you yourself have remarked, but it is enough to suffice my needs for now. I was pleased to hear that Ruporecht has been willing to stay with you past six encounters; he seems an excellent partner for you. Will you take him with you when you go to Brabant, or will you leave him in Lecco?
By the way, I had a letter from Bondame Margrethe about a year ago; she had been in London with her uncle, who introduced her to a merchant from Bruges, and who had asked for her hand in marriage, since he valued all she told him about Egypt and the places she had gone to and from with Sieur Horembaud’s company of night pilgrims. She said it was not a relationship of passion but one of liking and shared good opinions. He is a few years younger than she, but a mature man of good sense and respectable enough to win the approval of most of her family. She believes that is because she had no intention of marrying again, and the family did not want her to be a cost upon their purses. This way, she will be married, if somewhat below her station, to a man whose wealth exceeded almost all her kin. She said she regrets that we spent so little time in close association. She promised to love me always, which is meaningless, but still a great compliment. Yet I wish her happiness in her marriage: may she and her husband achieve their goals in business as well as in more domestic matters.
And yet, and yet, I find it within myself to want to see Gonder and Lalibela and other holy sites in Ethiopia, and I will try to find my way there before too many years go by. I hope I will not be compelled to travel up the Nile, but perhaps find a way in the routes along the Red Sea. But imagine it, Olivia: buildings as grand as the Lateran, Churches dug into the stony earth, and chapels more than a thousand years old dedicated to Jesus of Nazareth well before the wild men of Europe had embraced his teachings. I must save this for another decade, but I cannot turn my back on these remarkable places.
Rogerian, who brought her from Nubia to Alexandria, said that she saw the earth as static as the Roman Church does, and therefore finds it difficult to accept change of any kind. Rogerian is of the opinion that she would not have been willing to accept my true nature, had I revealed it to her, and because of her education, he may be right. The Roman Church promises stability and the Rule of Heaven on earth as if it could be possible. Much as it rankles with me, I am inclined to agree with him on that point. Still, I cannot help but be grateful to and fond of Margrethe: in Sieur Horembaud’s company, she was the only one whose curiosity about me did not include dread or challenge. She has seen beyond the strictures of her faith, which takes courage more than sense, no matter how prudent faith may be.
You tell me that you will want to buy some Barb mares from me; you may have them gratis if you will tell me where I am to bring them; give me one in four foals for my horse-farms and I will be more grateful than you can know. Lighter horses will help the armies in the West hold off the Mongols when Jenghiz Khan finishes ravaging Russia and what is left of the Khazar Empire. You and I will be able to supply them. Were it possible, I would drink to our success, but as you know, vampires cannot share blood with vampires since there is not enough life in it, and I do not drink wine.
With more than a millennium of devotion,
Rakoczy Sanct’Germain Franciscus
By Chelsea Quinn Yarbro from Tom Doherty Associates
Ariosto
Better in the Dark
Blood Games
Blood Roses
Borne in Blood
Burning Shadows
A Candle for d’Artagnan
Come Twilight
Commedia della Morte
Communion Blood
Crusader’s Torch
A Dangerous Climate
Dark of the Sun
Darker Jewels
An Embarrassment of Riches
A Feast in Exile
A Flame in Byzantium
Hotel Transylvania
Mansions of Darkness
Out of the House of Life
The Palace
Path of the Eclipse
Roman Dusk
States of Grace
Writ in Blood
About the Author
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is both a Grand Master and a Living Legend of Horror. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allan Poe awards. Her interests range from music—she composes and has studied seven different instruments, as well as voice—to history, from horseback riding to needlepoint. Her writing is similarly wide-ranging; under her own name and pseudonyms, she has written everything from Westerns to mysteries, from science fiction to nonfiction history.
Yarbro has written more than twenty-five novels starring her vampire hero, the Count Saint-Germain, including the seminal Hotel Transylvania (nominated for Vampire Novel of the Century by the Horror Writers Association), Commedia della Morte, An Embarrassment of Riches, and Borne in Blood. Each novel stands on its own and can be read independently.
She has received the Knightly Order of the Brasov Citadel from the Transylvanian Society of Dracula and was the novelist Guest of Honor at the First World Dracula Congress in Romania.
Yarbro has always lived in California and currently makes her home in the Berkeley area.
www.chelseaquinnyarbro.net
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
NIGHT PILGRIMS
Copyright © 2013 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
All rights reserved.
Cover photographs by Colin Anderson (woman) and Bill Bachmann (pyramids) / Getty Images
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn, 1942–
&nbs
p; Night pilgrims: A Saint-Germain novel / Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.—First edition.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-3400-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-0771-6 (e-book)
1. Saint-Germain, comte de, -1784—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. Egypt—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3575.A7N54 2013
813'.54—dc23
2013006327
e-ISBN 9781466807716
First Edition: July 2013
Night Pilgrims Page 45
