Lace and Blade 2

by Deborah J. Ross

  Miss Evelyn only speaks to insist we stop for a short time at every castle or ruin so that she may sketch it. The rest of us use the opportunity to walk about, and breathe air that is not enclos’d in a Carriage.

  Charles pines if Miss Crawfurd is not by. She is as bewitching as ever when she is among us, always ready with a fund of easy conversation and wit. She speaks constantly of the power of Youth and Beauty, as if there is nothing of importance in life but these. Am I rational to own to these Misgivings? Cassandra, I hardly know what I write; the candle is already guttering (I was in a reverie between every sentence) and the wolves howling abominably.

  The Crawfurds promise that they have saved the best for last—that we shall love Castle Dracula, and that its Count is so honored to receive us as guests, that he will meet us to conduct us the rest of the way.

  Wolves—there goes the candle, I can scarcely see to write.

  If I hear chains, or a shriek, I believe I will change my name to Clorinda.

  ~o0o~

  Jane had just written the above when the maid, a thin young girl, brought hot water. Jane thanked her in French as she handed her a vail.

  The girl’s mob cap trembled with her nervous effort, but she darted forward and thrust into Jane’s hand—a rosary! Then she darted out again, the remains of the water in her pitcher sloshing.

  Jane did not know whether to regard this scene as comical or pitiful. Hearing a commotion in the shared parlor, she went out, and found the Crawfurds and Charles.

  When she opened her hand to disclose the rosary—and a homely, rough thing it was, the beads carved from wood by no delicate hand, the crucifix also made of wood—Miss Crawfurd drew her skirts aside and made a noise of disgust. “Fling it out of the window!” she exclaimed.

  Dr. Crawfurd protested with a laugh. “My dear sister, it is merely a peasant icon, and a rough one at that.”

  Miss Crawfurd turned away in disgust. “I have a distaste for peasant superstitions.” She added with meaning, “And you know the Count has a worse.”

  The clergyman said, “Miss Austen, surely you do not intend to collect idolatrous objects. You know what the church leaders have to say upon the subject of false pieties.”

  Jane realized it was the first time he had made reference to Church teachings in all their travels, clergyman though he was. Everything else—literature, science, history and famous people, especially people of genius—had been canvassed, but nothing about religious principle.

  Here was part of the reason she could not consider him seriously as a mate. There was no time to consider this further, as a commotion in the outer room heralded an arrival.

  I promised to lay everything out as exactly as I can describe. I had thought on meeting him that Dr. Crawfurd the handsomest man of my acquaintance, but he was nothing compared to Count Dracula.

  He is tall, very fair. Light-colored eyes. I leave the excess to my fellow Authors, but when one is in his presence, one notices nothing else. In consequence, I scarcely questioned traveling at night. Nor did any of the others.

  We were bundled into very fine carriages, all warmed with bricks, and so we raced into the night, pursued by the cries of unseen Wolves.

  I do not remember the details of the journey. It might have taken all night; I just know that we arrived, weary and half-asleep, in a court lit by torchlight. In that uneven illumination, I gained the impression of great archways, perhaps in series. We drew up, the horses steaming, before a great door of ancient hard wood, studded all over with iron nails. This door was set in stone, conveying the impression of withstanding enormous force—whether of weather or other threats I could not say.

  “Come within,” the Count said.

  The door opened with a screech of metal joinings, and a great many servants in livery appeared, conducting us into light and warmth. My senses were alert now, aware of iron wheel chandeliers overhead, and behind the rattle of chains and the grating of bolts securing that massive door.

  The tired, bewildered guests were overwhelmed by the magnificence of the castle. The light within was quite bright, though not the familiar hue of beeswax candles, or oil lamps, much less the faint, noisome glow of tallow. From the chandeliers hung silver lanterns, each containing a flame of sorts, burning from a source mysterious to the Austens. (Miss Evelyn paid the lights no heed; her attention was all for the carved gargoyles over the archways, which she could already hear herself explaining to a rapt audience were surely Byzantine in origin.) The air smelled of old stone.

  “Welcome to my house,” said Count Dracula. “My people will make you comfortable. Your journey has been long. I am aware how far from the civilized world my land lies. We will all meet again after you have had your rest, and then I will conduct you over the castle, that you may explore, and sketch, to your heart’s content.” He gave Miss Evelyn a slight bow.

  Jane was led away by a girl not much older than the one who had given her the rosary, which lay in her pocket still, as she’d had no time to pack it before the sudden and surprising departure.

  Jane closed her hand around the comforting wood as she observed the lowered eyes and meek manner of the servants. Unlike the people they’d seen in villages and on the road, these servants did not wear religious emblems at all.

  On impulse she drew from her pocket the rosary. When the servant saw it, she stood still as stone, gazing with such desperation that Jane extended her hand. The girl reached tentatively, and then clutched the gift, her eyes closed, tears leaking from them. “Thank you, thank you. Now I may be free,” the girl whispered in broken French. And she flitted out before Jane could speak.

  ~o0o~

  I sit in this room with a single light, the bitter smell of iron-gall ink heavy in my nostrils; I will shortly get to why. I said I must lay it all out rationally, though what I am about to retail will make you think I am dreaming.

  Not that things seemed ill at first. I slept deeply on our arrival. Already my mind was turned about, as what seemed night was actually day, though we could not know it, as the shutters in our windows were nailed tight. We all slumbered the same number of hours, or perhaps we were wakened by some agency I did not detect, but we appeared in a refectory at about the same time, everyone looking weary still, except for Miss Crawfurd, who entered with a light, dancing step, smiling at us in triumph. It was she, and not the Count, who commanded the silent servants to bring the breakfast, which was well cooked and plentiful.

  The Count made his appearance when they had finished, and said that he would conduct them over his castle himself.

  Miss Evelyn had her sketchbook and crayons ready to hand, but the Count offered her arm to Jane.

  They traveled through several well-proportioned rooms, handsomely fitted up. The Count related the history of the castle, using the royal ‘we’ and speaking in the immediate, giving so vivid a description of attacks and battles engaged in by his Norse forefathers, whom he named the Szekelys, he conveyed an unpleasant sense of having witnessed these spectacles.

  Charles only half heard. He walked along on Maria’s arm, gazing at her in blissful admiration. Miss Evelyn paid scant attention: she was too busy storing up details of ancient artifacts, and trying to decide where to begin sketching first. Visions of a royal exhibition had begun to take shape in her mind.

  The Count gazed down into Jane’s observant eyes and talked about the purity of his northern racial blood, breeding leaders since before the time of the Romans. He looked for evidence of awe, but instead heard in her breathing and saw in the tilt of her button chin that she did not appreciate the details of impalements and beheadings any more than she was impressed by the necessity to cleanse the countryside of lesser races, which were identified by their swarthiness of skin and grossness of feature.

  By the time they had walked the length of three great rooms, the Count had shifted his discourse to the number of Royal Houses with connections to his, giving an account of royal gifts in evidence, from an ancient hunting tapestry to a pai
r of dueling sabers affixed to a wall above a carved and gilt escritoire.

  Miss Evelyn stayed behind to sketch that last while the others mounted the stone steps spiraling up a tower to reach the upper level. Jane, looking everywhere, noticed that the sound in a tower was odd: a whisper far below sounded like a rustle next to one’s ear. But then one stepped around a corner and the rushing of the wind outside snatched away all sound but its keening.

  Dr. Crawfurd’s voice speaking her name caught at her attention. “...with Jane? He promised that any poets or writers I brought would be mine.”

  Miss Crawfurd’s distinctive laugh echoed up. “Tais-toi, cher Eldon! Remember what you did to Johann Hölderin! To beguile the best blood is not enough to earn its mastery....”

  Then they were around the turn.

  The Count looked down at his prize genius. “Do you have a question, Miss Austen?” He smiled.

  Jane had learned to observe smiles. This one was complacent, the smile of expectation.

  “Thank you, no,” she said. She was small and round-cheeked, and the Austen manners were always good, for she had been raised by enlightened and rational people. Self-control was of paramount importance to the Austens. To people for whom it was not of paramount importance, the Austens could be misunderstood.

  At the tour’s end, most of the company dispersed to rest again. Jane returned to her bed chamber, but she found it so cold and uncongenial, with its nailed shutters warding the light, she left it again.

  Remembering the many conversations about the Count and his library, she sought that room in hopes of finding something to read in order to distract herself from inchoate worries.

  The library was a long gallery of a chamber, with bookshelves extending up the walls so high that the mouldering volumes at the top were in reach only of a ladder. A fire roared in a fireplace wide and deep enough to hold entire trunks of trees. The tables were enormous, probably hewn from the trees too large to put into the fireplace.

  Miss Evelyn sat at a corner of one table, within the warmth and light from the fire, finishing her gargoyles. The room was otherwise empty, so Jane perused the lettering on the spines of the shelved books. Many were in Latin, or in unfamiliar alphabets, so she turned over some of the titles lying on the table. These were recent, some works from the Encyclopedists, and several medical texts, most of them in Latin. Topmost was William Harvey’s work on the circulation of blood.

  Next to it lay a pamphlet upon the same subject, printed in French, with a great many underlinings, and notes in Greek and Latin. Jane remembered the odd words about blood she had overheard in the tower, and turned over the pages. The theory stated that blood injected into someone else’s veins would carry to the receiver the qualities of the donor. Therefore, the blood of a king would convey the royal heritage, and likewise, the blood of a genius would, upon circulating through the recipient, carry the qualities of genius. The question only remained, how much blood must pass into the recipient until the effect would become noticeable?

  There was a note below, in a strong handwriting: You must take it all to gain the effect entire.

  Jane stared down at those words, remembering all the conversations about genius, blood, electricity and galvanic sparks. Her sense of formless worry had sharpened into a distinct apprehension of threat when the Count spoke from the other side of the library. “Do you understand now, Miss Austen?”

  Jane looked up. “Understand what, pray?”

  “Come, come. You are perceptive and intelligent. My acolytes claim genius on your part, a claim I am prepared to accept. Maria is as discriminating as she is ambitious.”

  ‘Maria?’ Jane wondered if Miss Crawfurd and the Count had come to an understanding, of which her poor brother was unaware. She glanced at Miss Evelyn, but she had fallen into reverie, her gaze turned toward the fire, and her hand dropped loose upon her sketch.

  Jane turned back to the Count. “I perceive in this text a theory about blood circulation. I know from family experience that medical practice dictates the letting of blood, that impurities may be driven out. I have not learned of better blood being successfully put into a person’s veins.”

  Laughter met her words. Jane whirled around, considerably startled. It was not the affected titter of girls new to company, or the quiet laughter of well-bred people, but a tinkling sound, like the play of silver hammers on glass. She found so inhuman a sound issuing from human mouths to be unsettling.

  Miss Crawfurd stood just inside the doorway, smiling in triumph, her blue eyes so wide they reflected the burning lights overhead. Jane looked past her to several young women. These advanced with graceful, drifting steps to stand beside the Count. Jane gazed at their parted red lips that revealed prominent white teeth, with lengthened canines of a type never filed by dentist’s hand. She would never call those teeth natural, yet they appeared to be Nature’s make.

  “Blood can be taken, Miss Austen,” Miss Crawfurd said. Her teeth were normal, but her smile was avid, her voice low and breathless. “It can be taken by those who have the will and the power to reign, ever young.”

  “Even so old a race as mine can learn modern ways,” the Count said, laying one hand on the pamphlet, the other hand indicating his companions.

  Jane’s gaze lifted to his face. Her pupils contracted when she noticed for the first time his strong white teeth, the canines wolf-long. “No more the indiscriminate feeding. We begin a new experiment, not just with the better blood of people of good family, such as your purblind friend here.”

  His hand indicated Miss Evelyn with negligent dismissal—and she did not move, did not seem to hear.

  “What I desired my young friends to bring me is the blood of genius and innovation. You, Miss Austen, are possessed of creative genius. But never think that we take without trade, for we respect genius. You may become one of us, which will furnish you with many lifetimes of these other fools, the longer to exhibit your talents.”

  “Lifetimes?” Jane repeated, her heartbeat quite wild.

  To the Count and his companions, her fear was evident, but also the longing which the idea of lifetimes for writing engendered.

  “Your culture’s assumption that humans are just below angels is a comforting but erroneous assumption. The Vampire is above human in all ways: strength, vitality, and intelligence. There is only one circumstance which we do not share with the thoughtless animal breeding of the generality of humanity: we are not born as vampires, we are made.”

  “Vampires?” Jane had never before spoken the word. She had read enough tales to understand what was meant. It would be easy to dismiss the evidence of her eyes as the fervid imaginings of authors penning horror tales, but she knew that the stuff of novels derives out of the truth of experience.

  The Count made a gesture that took in his castle. “The superstitious fools regard the transference as magic, but we are the possessors of galvanic impulses ill-understood by you with short and blinkered lives. My lanterns, burning without apparent source, are the easiest understood manifestations.” He indicated the steady illumination of those iron wheel chandeliers overhead.

  Jane folded her hands tightly against her. Even in the face of the irrational, she would remain rational, and polite. “May I put to you a question?”

  “Please.” He smiled with those terrible white teeth. “I have been reading from your work while you were slumbering. The creator of Lady Susan, which is so witty an exegesis upon the groundless moralities and pieties of your culture, will surely come to a swift comprehension of my offer.”

  Jane did not explain that Lady Susan was a cautionary tale, and unsuccessful at that: all its soi-disant wit and cleverness came to nothing when Henry went ahead and married his cousin Eliza de Feuillide. The failure of her message was as great a reproach as the Crawfurds and the Count’s conviction that its sardonic ironies represented her own views.

  She had already made her decision about the eventual publication of Lady Susan—which would not happen.
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  If she survived this rencontre.

  She asked politely, “It is on the blood of humans that you feed, is it not?”

  “Entirely.” Miss Crawfurd laughed gently as she came forward. “I have begun my transformation; you can see yourself the effect.” She raised her arms and twirled around. “Do you think I was born to this beauty? I assure you, I was not. And you will be the same.”

  “Do people consent to surrender their blood?”

  “If they are wise.”

  “Are those who refuse harmed?”

  Maria gave her elaborately careless shrug. “Why worry about peasants or fools? There are enough of them in the world.”

  The Count said, “The effect is the same whether we take it or it is let by sword or other means as practiced by humanity upon itself every day: if enough is lost, the donor dies.”

  Miss Crawfurd tossed back her golden curls. “What are a few peasants more or less? They breed like rats. I greatly favor this experiment with better blood.”

  The Count’s pale eyes flashed wide. Jane knew she was fully awake, and yet between one heartbeat and the next he was next to her. “You must make your choice, Miss Austen. Become one of us, or your corpse will be buried, unmourned, outside the castle grounds, and your writings forgotten. Because I assure you, if we permit this fool to live—” he indicated Miss Evelyn, “—and we probably will, as the English are notoriously inquisitive when too many of them vanish, she will never remember her visit here.”

  Miss Evelyn neither stirred nor spoke.

  “My brother?” Jane asked.

  “He will be our first consort,” Miss Crawfurd said, smiling as she indicated the Count’s young ladies. “He is entertaining enough for a little while. Who knows? In a few years, he might even become interesting, and make vampire consorts of his own.”

  The Count’s long teeth were more terrible a threat than mere words. “Or, if you consent to join us, you may write a letter home, informing your family that you have found love here, and chose to remain behind. Your brother will be released to carry your missive home, with Miss Evelyn. You and my young friends, the Crawfurds, will join my children of the night, and live for ever.”