Ravensclaw

by Maggie MacKeever

  Candles burned in ancient sconces set into the walls of the filthy cobwebbed room beyond, casting eerie light on the manacles hanging from the ceiling and the skeleton built upright into one of the stone walls, sights guaranteed to strike terror into the breast of any inebriate who ventured this far, as occasionally some sot did, after a night spent drinking Blue Ruin at one tavern or another, only to speedily return to the streets above with a garbled tale of unearthly screams and mysterious noises, ghostly specters of the plague victims who had been walled up here to die.

  In the middle of the chamber stood a table of the sort more commonly found in an anatomist’s chamber. Val wondered if Cezar would next acquire fragments of limbs, strew intestines about like discarded party streamers, artistically arrange a few gaping skulls.

  By the table, Cezar waited, a dramatic figure clad in black, silver hair loose around his shoulders, beautiful features grim in the flickering candlelight, Ever-watchful Andrei stood a few paces to his left.

  Val’s nostrils flared. The cloying smell of decaying flesh hung heavy in the air.

  He moved closer. Cezar stepped to one side. On the table lay a corpse, pale and pallid, slashed and stabbed. Female. Past her first youth, judging by her breasts. From the working classes, judging by the condition of her hands and feet. Her head had been lopped off below the chin, leaving a rough stump. “I found this on the back doorstep,” Cezar said. “A pretty present, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Or a pointed statement. It would seem that someone wishes us ill.”

  “Not ‘us’, necessarily, although I am not aware of having made any new enemies of late.” Cezar gestured. Andrei flung a blanket over the mutilated body. “The beheading suggests a vampire slayer. However, there remains the fact that she has been drained of blood.”

  “But not in the normal manner,” Val pointed out. “No teeth marks.”

  “There wouldn’t be, would there?” asked Cezar. “If the miscreant didn’t want to be found out. But that doesn’t explain the missing head.”

  “Or why it was left on our doorstep,” agreed Val. “If this was meant to be a message, it could have been made more clear.”

  “ ‘When opponents are at ease, agitate them’. Sun Tzu.” Andrei’s voice was hoarse, his throat damaged by the same weapon that had slashed his face.

  “I suspect,” mused Cezar, “that may be the point.”

  Val frowned. “You believe a vampir did this?” Though their kind were civilized on the surface only, and frequently fought among themselves, and jostled constantly for position in the hierarchy of the clan, only in case of extreme emergency did a member of the Edinburgh Breasla kill. This was wholly due to Cezar, who had held dominance for a long time. Use sense when indulging your nature; don’t flaunt what you are in public places; never overindulge or get careless; appreciate the gift of life; never let the Darkness enslave your will.

  Cezar stepped away from the table. “I’m not sure what I believe.” Andrei remained behind, standing guard. He was Cezar’s Locotenent, a onetime member of the Order of the Dragon, soldiers who had protected the lands of Eastern Europe from the Turks. Andrei, Cezar and Val all three had fought alongside Constantin Brâncoveanu, and seen him beheaded at Mogosoaia. Had been present at the Walachian Vespers, when Michael the Brave summoned his creditors to his palace and had them massacred. Would never forget St. Bartholomew’s Day 1459, when Vlad ordered thirty thousand of the merchants and boyars of Brasov impaled.

  La dracu! Val hated politics.

  Nevertheless, he owed Cezar his allegiance, and would do so even were Cezar not Stapan. They had roamed the forests of their youth together in search of food and shelter, on guard against the malicious fairies that were said to dwell in the reeds of marshy streams, and the werewolves that supposedly haunted the narrow mountain valleys, and the witches that flew over upland pastures on moonlit nights.

  Cezar raised an elegant hand. “It was unlucky to encounter a strange dog first thing in the morning. If someone passed a priest, or an elderly woman with an empty pail, he dared not speak to either of them or he’d have bad luck that day. What are you keeping from me, camarad?”

  Val strolled around the room, paused to survey the skeletal wall decoration. “The d’Auvergne athame has resurfaced. I wonder if it may have something to do with your uninvited guest.”

  “That accursed athame. You said it had been lost.”

  “So I did. However, I admit to having been a trifle distracted at the time. It turns out the Dinwiddies have had the thing all along.”

  Cezar remained silent for a moment. He had an intimate acquaintance with the d’Auvergne athame. It had once been stuck in his back, which was how Val had come into possession of the thing. “Miss Dinwiddie intrigues me,” he said, at length.

  Val had expected that she might, which was why he hadn’t mentioned the athame sooner. “Miss Dinwiddie knows about us. Not us, specifically, or at least not you, but that our kind exists.”

  “She knows what you are? How?”

  “I admitted it.” Val derived a perverse pleasure from seeing his old friend rendered speechless. “There was no reason not to; I’m on her blasted list. Too, Lisbet had upset her, you see.”

  Cezar looked as if perhaps he saw too much. Before he could comment, Val added, “Miss Dinwiddie then informed me that she would be upset by whoever she pleased whenever she pleased and I was not to tell her what to do.”

  “Val—”

  “Emily would like to know how I became what I am. She doesn’t think it is because I led a wicked life. She doesn’t wish to infer that I did lead a wicked life, however. On the other hand, she doesn’t imagine that I died a virgin. I particularly liked the suggestion that a dog jumped over my corpse.”

  Cezar’s lips twitched. Even Andrei’s harsh features grew momentarily less grim. “What did you tell her?”

  “That I became what I am by choice.”

  “And then I hope you’re going to tell me that you rearranged her memories. After she gasped and shrieked. Or sank into a dead faint.”

  “Then she asked if I could drink from other vampires, or from animals, or if I must confine myself to human blood. How often I had to hunt. Where I preferred to bite someone.” Val smiled, remembering. “And if my eyes turned red. After which she apologized for being so pushing, but explained that I was her first supersensible creature and there were many things she wished to know.”

  Cezar’s faint amusement faded. “Has it occurred to you that you may be mistaken in Miss Dinwiddie?”

  “Constantly. To what do you refer?”

  “Professor Dinwiddie not only invented an amphibious horse-drawn vehicle and an automaton that could play a flute, he duplicated the Everlasting Light of Trithemius, and had remarkable success in extracting metals from fruit. Lead from bladderwrack, as I recall. Mercury from Irish moss. Folly, to underestimate his daughter. She may be playing a deep game.”

  As might Cezar himself. Val glanced at the anatomical table. “Miss Dinwiddie is more interested in natural marvels than in alchemy. She hopes to meet a water kelpie while she’s here in Edinburgh.” He paused before he added, “There are other items missing from the Society’s vaults.”

  “Miss Dinwiddie confided in you freely, knowing what you are.”

  “Emily is a very practical young woman. She needs my help.”

  The violet eyes narrowed. “Miss Dinwiddie claimed you are an old friend of the family. Does she know how truly she spoke?”

  “No. And I don’t intend to explain.”

  “What are you doing, Val?”

  “Protecting our interests.” Val met his Stapan’s gaze. “There is a possibility that she may be influencing my mind.”

  Cezar raised an eyebrow. “You are vampir. You should be influencing hers.”

  Val snorted. “Emily is not easily influenced. She can close her mind to me. If we’re touching, unless I deliberately block her, she can read my memories. I should be able to hear her thoughts
. She should not be able to hear mine.”

  “You like her,” Andrei observed.

  Val shrugged off the suggestion. “It is of little consequence whether I like her or no. Miss Dinwiddie is prone to rush in where angels dare not tread. Too, there is the matter of St. Cuthbert’s knucklebone.” He gestured toward the shrouded body. “What is to be done with this one? Who was she, do you know?”

  Cezar approached the table. “I do. She is one Madame Fanchon, whom you had recently at your house. I believe I will invest in one of those patented spring-closure coffins outfitted with cast-iron straps. I would not care for the anatomists to get hold of this particular corpse.”

  Such an event was all-too-likely, in the normal course of things. Resurrectionists haunted the city’s cemeteries, bent on providing surgeons and medical students fresh corpses to study and dissect by fair means and foul, thereby giving rise to public outrage, the Scots preferring their dear departed to arrive in heaven in an unkenand condition, as opposed to missing one or several body parts. Grieving families sometimes went so far as to pour vitriol and quicklime into the coffins of their loved ones to render the corpses unfit, which rather begged the question of arriving in heaven in one piece.

  But, Franny? Why Franny? Had he brought her into this?

  Whatever ‘this’ was?

  Cezar interrupted Val’s reflections. “One more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If Miss Dinwiddie has the d’Auvergne athame in her possession, she can do a great deal more than push you from her mind.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,

  the more you beat them the better they be.

  (Romanian proverb)

  As structures in Edinburgh’s Old Town climbed higher, their foundations sank deeper into the soft sandstone. The steep slopes on either side of the High Street had enabled builders to dig sideways into the ridge, building underground levels at depths not possible elsewhere. The foundations of the tenements resembled rabbit warrens, levels of cellars built one above the other, a cold, damp maze of tunnels and underground chambers teeming with beggars and criminals and other societal outcasts. Not to mention rats. Water for cooking and washing was carried by hand down the same winding tunnels into which the residents threw their household waste.

  Jamie was familiar with the Old Town, having been left as a babe on the doorstep of the Orphan’s Hospital in the shadow of Calton Hill. He didn’t think it proper he was guiding Miss Emily through these crowded streets. Not that anything about Ravensclaw’s household was proper. Jamie had squirmed down enough chimneys to realize that. “It’s no’ right,” he repeated. “A young lady like yersef shoulna be daverin’ aboot the Old Town alone.”

  Emily eyed him with exasperation. “So you have said, several times! Must I point out again that I am hardly alone? You are with me, and Drogo is with both of us, which is hardly a blessing, but he refused to be left behind. Moreover, we aren’t davering. You are going to show me where Michael went.”

  Jamie kicked at a piece of broken cobblestone. Drogo, tongue lolling, leaned against her thigh. “Och, weil. Nae need t’ be abstrakulous. I should hae gi’n him a cuddy lug.”

  Emily could only guess what a ‘cuddy lug’ might be. She caught her companion’s shoulder and gave him a good shake. “No you should not! Listen to me, Jamie. I told you Mr. Ross may have something of mine. In truth, he may have stolen several somethings. He is not the gentleman he seems.” She didn’t bother to explain that the pilfered items weren’t hers but belonged to the Society, and were meant in time to pass to her descendants, although Emily’s papa may have been a trifle optimistic on that score.

  Michael insisted they were betrothed. Did he justify his thefts as only taking what would eventually be his?

  Well, they weren’t betrothed, nor would they be, if Emily had anything to say about it, which she did and would.

  Jamie pulled away from her. “I wadna be surprised if ye’re no’ a wee bit daft! Come awa’ noo. ‘Afore Isidore finds out where I brought ye and gie me a skelpit dowp.”

  “I’ll give you a skelpit dowp, whatever that is, if you don’t stop scolding. For the last time, show me where Mr. Ross went.”

  The air was damp with a grey mist, the “haar” Jamie called it, that was blowing in from the Firth of Forth. Emily brushed rebellious tendrils of hair away from her face.

  Along the High Street Jamie led her, toward the Royal Exchange. Emily regretted she had no time to stop and warm herself in a coffee shop, listen to gossip and peruse the latest newspapers to learn what folly Prinny’s Tory ministers had most recently committed and discover who of interest had lately gotten married, disgraced themselves, or died. She and Drogo followed Jamie down a flight of sloping stairs, worn from centuries of traffic, into another steep and winding street. They rounded a corner into a close — ‘closes’, he informed her, having once been private property, narrow canyon-like alleyways with buildings on each side that were gated to the public and often named after someone who had resided there, as opposed to ‘wynds’, open thoroughfares usually wide enough for a horse and cart to navigate.

  Jamie pointed toward an archway. “He went in there.” Drogo growled deep in his throat.

  Emily hesitated. The entry looked ominous. But so had Corby Castle, and she’d marched right up to the front door. Emily didn’t plan to accost Michael at his front door, of course, merely to pick the lock and have a quick look around. He shouldn’t be home at this hour. But if he was—

  She’d cross that bridge when she came to it. Emily had sat back and done nothing for far too long. If only she had taken inventory earlier, and opened that lead-lined chest, instead of seeking to soothe the warring factions of the Society while attempting at the same time to deal with her own feelings of inadequacy and loss—

  But she had, and here she was. Resolutely, she took a forward step.

  Or attempted to. Still growling, Drogo blocked her path. “I dinna think,” protested Jamie, “that ye should go in there.”

  “Stop it, the both of you. Oh, do get out of my way!” Emily glared at Drogo, who didn’t budge an inch. Then she scowled at Jamie. “Why are you staring at me as if I’d grown a second head?”

  Jamie pointed. “Behind ye, miss!”

  Emily spun around. Three hulking brutes loitered at the mouth of the close. No sooner had she spied them than they abandoned all pretense of idleness and advanced on her. Rather, two advanced. The third jerked like a puppet when he walked, his pale face twitching uncontrollably. In one hand he clutched a sack.

  Emily might have run, but Drogo was tangled in her skirts. She raised her umbrella and prepared to defend herself.

  The men were already upon them. Emily speared the instep of one assailant, whacked another in the shin, had picked up her skirts to flee when the twitching man yanked the umbrella from her hand and tossed a sack over her head.

  Jamie, being of shorter stature and fewer inhibitions, had aimed directly for the nearest crotch. A moment of contact, an agonized bellow, and then he was batted into a towering pile of refuse. Drogo took to his heels.

  ‘Twas a right bourach. Jamie flailed about in the slippery, stinking rubbish. Emily kicked and flung her arms about inside her prison, which smelled most unpleasantly of spoiled fish. “Bloody, blooming, blasted—”

  Her captor punched the sack, hard. The blow knocked the breath out of her, and Emily went limp. She would have a sore belly tomorrow. Providing that she saw tomorrow. Why had these ruffians set on her? Were they resurrection men in search of a fresh body to steal and sell? An extremely fresh body, considering that she was still very much alive.

  Why would they be interested in a little bit of nothing like herself? There was hardly enough meat on Emily’s bones to exercise a surgeon’s scalpel. Maybe her bones themselves were of more value. Maybe her skeleton would have a place of honor in some anatomist’s dissecting room.

  Emily didn’t want to be diss
ected. Concentrate! she told herself. Her abductors were arguing. She heard the word “feartie” mentioned, and more clearly, “sweerbreeks.”

  Oxter and Mowdiewarp, as they called each other, were the more vocal of the three. Emily was relieved to learn that these were not resurrection men, merely ruffians for hire; and it was just as well their employer didn’t want the lass dead instead of tossed over Twitcher’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, because none of them had the stomach for such work.

  Unnoticed by the others, Jamie squirmed out from beneath the pile of rubbish. He couldna lounge there lak a doolally, greetin’ over the puir mawkit condition of his nice new clothes, now slechered in nasty substances he didna want to know the nature of. He must gather his wits about him so that he could follow when the bajins took Miss Emily away.

  As it turned out, they took her nowhere. Drogo reappeared at the far end of the close. The wolf was not alone. Ravensclaw moved with startling speed to smash one man against the wall of a building. He flung another onto a rooftop. Twitcher took one look at the newcomer and promptly dropped his burden in the dirt. Ravensclaw caught him by the throat and lifted him off the ground.

  Twitcher kicked and gurgled and struggled to escape that killing grip, those compelling eyes, those long, pointed, razor-sharp fangs.

  His captor spoke in a deep compelling voice. “None of this happened. You and your companions spent the past two hours getting drunk as David’s sow in that tavern on the corner. If you go near this young woman again, I will tear out your liver and wrap your intestines around your neck. Do you understand?”

  Twitcher shuddered. “Aye.” Ravensclaw let him drop to the ground. The man scrambled unsteadily to his feet and staggered down the narrow street.

  Jamie emerged from the pile of rubble. “Och, those are some grand teeth ye hae! I expected ye wid bite that bajin’s heid in twa. Be Miss Emily a’richt? Daft isna the half of it. She be a proper dare-the-de’il.”