Ravensclaw

by Maggie MacKeever

  She walked to the window. Dawn would soon break. Emily didn’t want to dwell on Ravensclaw and what he might have been doing in the hours since they’d left the Assembly Rooms.

  Didn’t want to dwell on it, but couldn’t help herself. Emily indulged in a string of oaths that would have distracted even her papa from his studies. Machka pricked one ear and buried her nose beneath her tail.

  Men! What blessed use were they? Vampir or not, in that regard Ravensclaw was very much a man. Emily no sooner suggested she was his ailalta than he decided to marry her off to someone else, because what other reason could he have had to noise her fortune about? And where had he come up with the figure of fifty thousand pounds? Emily picked up a pillow and threw it at the wall, then plopped down in a chair and glared at her open door. She was determined to waylay Val the moment he set foot upon the stair.

  Unaware of the freckled fury awaiting him — although he surely would have been, had he opened his mind to her, which he had no intention of doing, because he was very cross — Val walked through the late-night streets. First Emily had suggested she might be his ailalta, then she announced she meant to marry Michael Ross. Val didn’t know which displeased him more.

  Yes, he’d thought that she should marry. He’d even meant to provide her with a choice of suitors, not realizing, until he surveyed the prospects, that the field of eligibles was so thin. One of Emily’s new admirers was a close-fisted clunch, another a corny-faced cod’s head, a third a lascivious old goat. The unmarried gentlemen of Edinburgh might have been astonished to discover that Ravensclaw considered them all twiddle-poops, beau nastys, and jaw-me-deads. Val might have been amused to discover himself so high a stickler, had not his sense of humor abandoned him.

  The air was chill, not that the weather much concerned him. Val was largely impervious to extremes of heat and cold, the latter most common to this city, which lay a scant mile from the sea. On a rainy night like this, Edinburgh seemed a strange piling up of rocks, with roads rushing downhill like rivers, and buildings soaring up to the sky as if spit out by the old volcano on which the city had been built. He remembered when Heriot’s Hospital had been erected, the first stone laid for the North Bridge. When the Old Town had been a fashionable address, instead of the dangerous and overcrowded slum it was becoming. When the narrow passages between the tall medieval houses had doubled as sewers and cesspits, and it had been forbidden to empty waste into the street until the curfew bell rang at ten o’clock.

  Sometimes change was for the better. Val was unlikely to forget how Edinburgh had smelled. Auld Reekie the city had been, and to Val always would be. “The Athens of the North,” they called it now.

  As for progress, he conceded that gangs of apprentices, the youngest of them as little as twelve years old, no longer roamed the streets at night, to bludgeon and rob anyone unlucky enough to cross their path. Instead, factory boys had their earlobes nailed to a board if too many of the spikes they produced were bent, while in the Lothian mines young women hauled coal carts through the suffocating darkness using harnesses that twisted them into hunchbacks. Val hadn’t needed Emily to tell him of the plight of chimneysweeps. He could hardly be unaware of the vast injustices in the world, having had more than ample time to observe them all. However, he didn’t know what he might do about such things. It had not previously occurred to him that he should do something, his kind generally being exempt from any civic responsibility other than not draining away the life of one of mankind’s benefactors.

  He doubted Emily would agree. Which, since Val was at the moment in huge disagreement with Emily, suited him very well.

  What the devil had she been thinking, to betroth herself to Michael Ross? Oh, he knew what she’d been thinking, because he’d heard it clearly, and only remained uncertain whether ‘peawit’, ‘cabbagehead’, and ‘beetle-brain’ applied to her or to himself.

  Val opened his front door. Why was no one standing guard? His temper soured further when Emily popped up in the stairwell like a ghost. These days, Val was somewhat sensitive on the subject of ghosts. Surely he hadn’t spent good money on that shroud of a night-rail.

  She got in the first blow. “Pray tell me why in Hades you put it out that I’m an heiress, you— You toad!”

  Val found his own mood perversely improving: Emily was fit to murder him. He scooped her up and carried her, protesting, into her room; dropped her without ceremony into the middle of the bed. Machka opened one eye, blinked, and went back to sleep.

  Emily struggled upright among her pillows. “I passed such a charming evening, thanks to you. Have you any idea what it’s like to be besieged by lovesick swains — sick of love for my pocketbook, that is! I am extremely angry with you. Perhaps I shall scream until I am purple in the face.”

  “I beg you will not.” Val seated himself on the bed’s edge, a prudent distance from her. “Think what Isidore would say.”

  Emily pushed up her glasses. “Isidore informed me earlier that those who eat cherries with great persons must expect to have their eyes squirted out with the stones. Why did you do it, Val?”

  He wasn’t certain. What had seemed a splendid notion at the time seemed remarkably wrong-headed now. “Perhaps I sought to see you comfortably bestowed?”

  “Perhaps you wished to entertain yourself.” Emily pointed an accusing finger at him. “I understand you, Ravensclaw.”

  Val wasn’t so lackwitted as to respond to that accusation. “Speaking of cork-brained behavior, you’re the one who’s on the verge of being leg-shackled to Michael Ross.”

  “That was because—” Emily broke off.

  “I know what it was because of,” retorted Val. “And it makes me fit to murder you. I told you already that Lisbet is of no consequence.”

  “Of no consequence, is she? So where did you spend the evening? Forget I asked you that, it’s none of my affair. I’m not going to marry Michael. But I wanted him to think I was. He is more likely to confide in me if he believes I’m to be his wife.”

  Cezar believed Emily was using Michael Ross as a diversionary tactic, a smoke screen of sorts. Val did not. If Emily couldn’t draw out the young man, Val would take steps of his own.

  She was regarding him suspiciously. “Did you flutter your lashes?” Val asked.

  “And simper like a ninny? He asked if I had something in my eye.” Ruefully, she smiled. “When I said I’d marry him, poor Michael was shocked.”

  Poor Michael, indeed. Within grasp of a tidy fortune, only to see it snatched away. And it would be snatched away. If Emily didn’t break off the betrothal, Val would do it for her.

  He marveled at himself. From whence had come this dog-in-the-manger attitude? This feeling of protective possessiveness? Val could not remember when he’d last felt this way. Not for Ana, certainly; and sometime during the countless years since then, he had ceased to care. One willing body had been much like another. While he had enjoyed them all, he had also known that any interaction must be temporary, because of what he was.

  Emily was broadening his horizons. Pillowy breasts and quivering thighs were all fine in their place, but eventually a man grew hungry for something different. Specifically, a stubborn, brown-eyed, redheaded termagent whom he couldn’t have. Whom he would have taken anyway, and the consequences be damned, if not for the interference of a certain ghost.

  Val supposed he should be grateful to Ana. He rose and moved toward the door.

  Emily looked very small perched in the middle of the bed. The sight of her would have tugged at his heartstrings, had he any, which he didn’t. At least, he wasn’t supposed to. “I apologize for my high-handedness. In the future, I promise not to act in your best interests without consulting you first.’’

  Emily flushed. “I daresay I should apologize also, for calling you a toad.”

  “Toad is the least of the things I have been called, elfling. Now I will bid you a good night.” He walked out of the room and softly closed the door.

  Emily lay
back beside Machka on the bed. She had been behaving badly, and enjoying every moment of it. Interesting, how it was so much more gratifying to misbehave than the opposite.

  Ravensclaw had been in her bedchamber. They had shared a bed. At least, they had both sat upon it. Sharing a bed with Ravensclaw had put her in a much better frame of mine.

  A toad, she’d called him. How ironic it all was. Aberrations had been lurking in the shadows ever since Adam’s first wife coupled with fallen angels near the Red Sea, yet humans refused to concede that supersensible beings might exist outside the pages of sensational fiction. Mankind was very good at believing what it wished.

  Herself, Emily chose to believe that Ravensclaw would in time come to realize that she was his ailalta. She was smiling as she fell asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Don’t play with the bear if you don’t want to be bit.

  (Romanian proverb)

  Princes Street — named for the sons of King George III after His Majesty objected to christening it after the patron saint of the city, on the grounds that St. Giles was not only patron saint of lepers but also the name of a notorious London slum — divided the Old Town from the New. Wealthy residents lived here, on the one side of the street where building was permitted: they could afford to insure nothing spoiled their panoramic view. Cezar Korzha was among those residents, his home a surprisingly plain house of three stories and a basement with a small garden behind — plain, that was, save for the conservation where he experimented with exotic plants. Stables and a coach-house were entered from a mews lane at the rear, Rose Lane to be precise, the haunt of prostitutes, and what better place for blood-drinkers to quench their thirst?

  Cezar Korzha, whose current enthusiasm was cycads, an ancient group of plants that were growing when dinosaurs ruled the planet. He also had a curiosity about Gesneriaceae and Zingiberaceae. Even now he sat with his nose deep in The Botanical Register: or, Ornamental flower-garden and shrubbery, consisting of coloured figures of plants and shrubs, cultivated in British gardens; accompanied by their history, best method of treatment in cultivation, propagation, etc., a golf club propped against his chair.

  As always, Andrei Torok was with him. Andrei’s company was hardly more stimulating, his main interest being warfare, specifically the battle strategies of ancient China: ‘Hide the Dagger Behind a Smile’, ‘Lure Your Enemy Onto the Roof, Then Take Away the Ladder’, and ‘Tie Silk Blossoms to the Dead Tree.’

  And then there was Ravensclaw, whose passion was for pleasure, and who—

  What? He didn’t know.

  The slender man knew none of these things, these people, and yet he did.

  He stared at Cezar Korzha’s house.

  Headless bodies. Corpses drained of blood.

  The first had been a warning, the second a promise of things to come.

  The third would test even the Stapan’s power.

  How long had he lingered in the shadows? The slender man had no recollection of his arrival here.

  He had forgotten many things. Others, he wished he might. The stink of blood. The impact of axe against bone.

  Beyond the filled-in Nor’ Loch towered the tenements of the Old Town. On the west, Castle Hill sloped down toward Holyrood on the east.

  As long ago as 850 B.C., a hill-fort settlement had stood where Edinburgh Castle rose now.

  His vision blurred. He blinked. He feared to close his eyes for long lest he’d not be able to open them again.

  Unbidden words and images beat at his brain.

  Edinburgh. Castles and ghosts.

  He inhaled. Smells seemed sharper to him. Edinburgh stank of the smoke and soot of countless coal fires.

  Another scent flooded his nostrils, mysterious and dark. Bergamot, sandalwood, musk. A hint of burning amber.

  The athame in its sheathe stirred.

  In some dim recess of his mind he was aware of the need for food and water. The things that sustained mortal man.

  He no longer knew if he was mortal. If, indeed, he was a man.

  Sometimes, though there was no one present, he heard a woman’s screams.

  Sometimes he felt like screaming himself.

  They might scream until hell froze over, and it would make no difference.

  He dug his fingernails into his rotting flesh.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  A word and a stone let go cannot be called back.

  (Romanian proverb)

  When it came to bridge-building Edinburgh had no equal, which was perhaps not surprising since there was a mountain in the middle of the city, causing unexpected alternations of heights and depths.

  Bridges blended into existing streets. The gaps they spanned had been filled in, developed, and built up, buildings constructed above and on either side until the mighty structures were almost concealed. The arched, bricked-in vaults were a warren of nooks, crannies, and tunnels used for wine storage, leather works, and a multitude of small businesses; and used as well as living quarters for the city’s unwanted and unseen poor. Also stored there were cadavers resurrected from fresh graves or plucked from the streets and sold to Edinburgh’s Medical School.

  Drogo whined, sensing his master’s mood. Val touched the wolf’s sleek head. Dog, he reminded himself. Rare Carpathian copoi. Believe that and I’ll sell you a fine barren moor. It was due to the ungrateful Miss Dinwiddie that they were out so early, Val’s dark spectacles set firmly on his nose. If sunlight posed his flesh no danger after so long a time, it still caused discomfort to his eyes. After several hundred more years had passed, provided he survived them, he might be able to put the spectacles aside.

  Several hundred more years. Val felt like crushing the spectacles in his bare hands. Several hundred years ago he had married Ana, in a ceremony that began when his spokesman, Cezar, had gone to her family’s home to woo her with the tale of a young emperor and a flower which couldn’t bear fruit until it was planted in the proper soil. Then Val had been obliged to solve a series of riddles to prove his cleverness. Following that were three days of ceremonies, ending with a dance of masks. Ana had worn a traditional costume and flowers in her hair.

  Val wondered how Andrei would react to the discovery that Ana had returned to them, and why, and what use Cezar might make of a ghost. Val had delayed telling them, perhaps in an attempt to protect Ana, and more likely himself.

  Time had passed more quickly than he could have imagined. Several hundred years from now, when he could venture into the sunlight without dark glasses, Emily would have long since shuffled off this mortal coil. Would have gone the way of all flesh. Would be dead as mutton, and Val very much feared he would still be missing her. Would Emily haunt him then, as Ana was doing now? Demand he make her corporeal so she could tup someone, but not him, because he was vampir?

  Vampir. Condemned to lifetimes of loneliness. Yearning to live and love like an ordinary man. Feeling bloody mortal. How damnably trite of him.

  Had any of Ravensclaw’s acquaintance been out and about so early (which was unlikely), and had they encountered him in this particular part of the Old Town (which was even more unlikely), they would have deduced from his expression that he was appalled to find himself so far from his bed. Drogo knew better. He pressed closer, and whined again.

  “You’re right.” Val rubbed the wolf’s ears. “I’m as addle-brained as those three oafs we sent to the docks.” Because Emily had been worried about her inept assailants, he’d volunteered them for a sealing expedition sailing from the Port of Leith, thereby hopefully removing them from underfoot without doing lasting harm. Val didn’t delude himself that Emily would be grateful. She would probably demand he rescue the seals.

  The addition of a sticky-fingered chimneysweep to his retinue had been sufficient. Val refused to introduce any marine life with webbed flippers into his household.

  These ruminations took him past the Lawnmarket, along a passage between two houses, into a dark courtyard surrounded by ancient high buildin
gs, down a short flight of stone steps that ended at two doors. Drogo leaned his weight against the left. The door swung open. Val stepped inside. It occurred to him that he was acting in Emily’s best interests without consulting her, again.

  This place was not unfamiliar to him, though he did not know the little man who bustled out of a back room. “Mr. Abercrombie, I presume. I see you have not changed the decor. Hello, Styx.” The raven flew down from its perch to alight on his shoulder and mutter in his ear. Mr. Abercrombie’s wandering eye moved from Val to the raven and then to Drogo, who had padded forward to rest his damp nose against the little man’s thigh. Mr. Abercrombie squeaked, “And may I know who you are, sir?”

  Val took off his dark glasses. “I am Ravensclaw.”

  Mr. Abercrombie smoothed a hand over his balding pate and professed his desire to be of service. Would the gentleman be interested in a crescent-shaped charm made from a boar’s tusk, or a chicken’s wishing bone? A cure for the ague? He had recently acquired an especially fine batch of bull’s-horn plantain. Maybe, some alchemical supplies?

  “Thank you, no,” Val interrupted. “A young woman came here recently. Red-haired. Freckled. Inquisitive.”

  “Aye. I recognize her, er, companion.” The shopkeeper looked startled, as if he’d meant to say something else.

  “You will tell me what you told her.”

  Looking even more bewildered, Mr. Abercrombie obeyed. Val was briefly distracted by the notion of Emily in conjunction with a Love Drawing Oil. “The young woman was well protected,” the shopkeeper added. “Might you know where she found that pendant, sir?”

  “What pendant is that?”

  “Ah. Yes, indeed. As you say. Perhaps I might interest you in a recipe for Raven’s Feather Ink?”

  “You may not.” Val lifted the indignant raven back up on its perch; moved around the cluttered shop, inspecting the jumble of books and bottles, the muddle of merchandise in the cabinets and on the shelves. “Tell me what you know about Michael Ross.”