Sacrament

by Susan Squires

  "I did not have to wrest you at all," she waved a deprecating hand. "She wanted only to be rid of you." Sarah did not elaborate upon Corina's plans. She did not want to fuel the urge for revenge she felt lurking behind Davinoff's calm questioning. But he was before her.

  "She had not yet worked herself up to the obvious choice, I take it?" he asked, his deep voice icy. "I thought it might be possible, with my Companion dampened as it was by the drug."

  "You do not know she planned your death." Sarah sidestepped the question. "I offered to take you to an asylum on the Continent."

  "Where she thought I would die in withdrawal, no doubt."

  "I don't think she was thinking clearly at all. You must have frightened her." Sarah knew exactly how Davinoff might have frightened Corina.

  "And why did you not take me to an asylum?"

  "Have you ever seen one?" she asked. "I have. They are dreadful."

  "A hospital then."

  "They would not take so severe a case. Other men would have been dead on your dose."

  "So you took my case upon yourself. Your father raised a fool," he observed.

  "You're right." She sighed. "I certainly got more than I bargained for."

  Again the dark eyes flicked over her face. "You did rather well, actually."

  She stared at him only a moment before her gaze broke in confusion. "Look how late it is," she said suddenly. "You must be tired. You should retire." As he began to protest, she raised her voice. "I will brook no contradiction, sir, on matters of your health." She smiled. "Your courtesy would forbid argument in any case."

  Davinoff looked at her from under his lashes and made a small bow. He rose and extended his arm. The impropriety of being alone with a strange man who was escorting her to her bedroom struck her forcibly. But after all that had gone before, propriety seemed a small concern. So she went up the stairs to her bedroom on the arm of a very polite vampire.

  Chapter Fourteen

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  Sarah woke late the next morning after sleeping better than she had in some time. She hurried to dress, impatient to see if Davinoff was up. She regretted her instructions to Addie to pack only everyday clothes; the woman had followed directions too well. Sarah rejected out of hand her brown merino. Why did she keep such an old dress, whose color had never become her? She'd worn the cherry-striped lustring yesterday. Which left only the bottle-green walking dress.

  She paced to the window and threw back the draperies. Weak sunshine glistened over four inches of new snow. The front gardens were transformed with icy loveliness, a consolation for the loss of their fine greenery to winter. It had snowed just for Christmas.

  Brushing her hair vigorously, she tried not to feel wistful about it being Christmas Day. There would be no grand holiday dinner. Upon impulse, she refused to tie up her hair at all, but left it long and floating upon her shoulders. As though I were a girl, she told herself severely, and then dimpled at herself in the mirror. Never mind. Davinoff had seen her with her hair loose before, at Avebury. It certainly would not shock him, as it would have scandalized George. She smiled in anticipation as she opened the door to the hall.

  The first sign that Davinoff was about somewhere was that his trunk had been removed from the hall. She checked the library where a fire snapped in the grate, and the drawing room, dim with drawn curtains. There was no sign of him. As she stood in the dining room and wondered if he was upstairs, she heard movement in the kitchen. She opened the door to find Davinoff in his shirtsleeves, pouring steaming coffee into a cup. A fire roared in the fireplace. Upon the sideboard lay a plate of dried fruit and slabs of cheese.

  Sarah was astonished. "You seem quite at home, Mr. Davinoff," she stammered.

  He glanced over at her and raised one eyebrow. "I have endured times of poverty and times of war both. They engender interest in how one is to eat. Will you join me?"

  Sarah carried the tray and Davinoff the coffee. She laid out cups and plates from the great sideboard in the dining room.

  "Did you know," Davinoff asked, "that a cook from Napoleon's army has actually preserved food in champagne bottles? The food may still be eaten months after it is corked."

  "Truly? Just think of green vegetables in winter, and peaches all the year round, even if one is without a greenhouse." Sarah's mouth watered for green beans, or even spinach.

  "It will free armies from stripping the local lands and starving the peasants."

  "I'm sure you feel that war is inevitable. You need not even tell me so," Sarah observed, pouring out her coffee and selecting a lump of sugar.

  "And you need not even tell me that you disagree."

  Sarah smiled. "Well, that's settled. Can we avoid arguing, at least for the morning?"

  "I should be the last to correct you in that case, Lady Clevancy. But I feel compelled to point out that it is afternoon."

  "So late!" Sarah exclaimed. "I had not meant to sleep the day away."

  "You must be feeling housebound. I should like to propose an expedition."

  "I am," Sarah admitted. "But… but I have not liked to display the fact that I am staying here." She hesitated to point up the impropriety of their situation.

  "Exactly so," Davinoff said. "But all the neighborhood will be at their Christmas wassail bowls and sitting down to goose and a plum pudding. Today of all days, a small expedition should be safe if we do not stray into the main thoroughfares."

  Sarah pressed her lips together, torn, but she capitulated with a rueful smile in the face of Davinoff's raised brow of entreaty. "I expect we are both housebound, Mr. Davinoff."

  Soon she found herself sitting up beside him in the gig, bundled in her muff and gloves and cape, he in Pembly's driving coat. The horse was snorting and anxious, and the snow on the road was fast melting in the wan sun. Sarah inhaled the brisk air deeply. It was good to be out.

  "Where are we bound?" she asked as the horse trotted smartly out into the tiny lane. She looked up and could see the darkness of his eyes enhanced by the floating lenses over his pupils.

  "Allow me to keep some secrets, Lady Clevancy."

  It soon became apparent, however, that they were bound for Thornbury Abbey. As the horse slowed up the hill to the promontory, Sarah got up the courage to ask Davinoff what the workmen had been doing there.

  "I am opening portions closed by falling earth." Davinoff looked down at her. "The repairs may be complete by now." He leapt to the ground and handed Sarah down. The wind off the Severn felt clean. The ancient ruined walls of the abbey were dusted with white, and snow nestled in small triangular heaps in the remaining corners. Leaving the horse to graze, Davinoff pressed into the abbey proper and made his way to the flat circle of stone now set flush into the ground once more. Sarah hung back as she realized that he proposed to take her into the crypts.

  "Do you dare to come with me?" Davinoff smiled wryly. "You will have a vampire at your side to protect you from the ghosts."

  Sarah laughed in spite of herself. "At least I won't be trespassing."

  "I have something to answer for in that respect as well," he said as he lifted one end of the stone and rolled it smoothly away. Sarah gasped. It should take several men, or at least a lever, to lift that stone. Her hands gripped each other convulsively inside her muff where Davinoff could not see them. Was he that strong? She pressed her fear down lest it shine out through her eyes.

  He lifted his hand. "Follow me." Then he stepped into the earth and began to disappear.

  Sarah paused but a moment. A tour of the abbey crypt with its owner was a far different prospect than creeping down into the unknown with Corina, she told herself firmly. Or perhaps it was not different. Perhaps it was only that she had changed. At any rate, she started down into the dark after Davinoff, pressing her hand to the clammy stone walls to steady herself. When she got to the bottom, he was already working at the flint to light the torch laid there. Once again the musty scent of dust and subtle decay assaulted her. She stared into the dark
ness and wondered if even Davinoff were proof against what might lurk there.

  Soon the torch smoked and flickered into life. He held it up and darkness fled around them. There were no signs of workmen, no lumber, no tools. Indeed, there were only marks in the dust of many feet to say that they had been there. "Where were the repairs made?" she whispered.

  Davinoff did not deign to whisper as he said, "On a lower level. Are you up to a walk?"

  "Of course," Sarah declared, swallowing. There was a level below even the crypts?

  Davinoff led the way through the rounded Romanesque arches. Sarah took several deep breaths when the ornately carved stone coffins, tumbled and half open, emerged into the light. Every abbey and cathedral in England had crypts just like this, she told herself.

  Her host marched on toward the corner of the crypt. There Sarah could see another yawning darkness, with another stairway winding down to what hellish place she could not think. Davinoff bent to light another torch laid at the stair, and handed it to her with a heartening smile.

  "I expect you would like to have one of your own. Are you ready to explore?"

  "Yes," Sarah whispered, incapable of reassurance or retort.

  Davinoff held out his hand and took hers before he turned to descend into the depths. He could snap the bones in her hand with a single squeeze, no doubt, but his clasp was gentle, his hand warm and dry. It had the usual tingling effect on her, signaling the dangerous attraction that he exerted on her, even here. They wound down into the earth for what seemed like forever. The stairs were cut into solid rock. Alongside the steps was a ramp. Ropes dangled from pulleys anchored into the stone walls. Sarah could not guess where they might be going.

  At last, Davinoff seemed to rise in front of her. They had reached the bottom.

  "Now, we shall see if my friend Razcocy has done his work." His words echoed eerily as he gestured toward a narrow tunnel in front of them. They had to walk single file. The torch lit up the blond wood of new lumber braces wedged in against stones and earth.

  Sarah found her tongue in the face of this most ordinary evidence of human effort. "Do you think the tunnel might collapse?"

  "Oh, I should think not. Razcocy has worked the mines most of his life. He knows how to keep a tunnel open." Davinoff's deep voice echoed off the stone.

  They worked their way along the shaft for some distance. Sarah tried to imagine where they were in relation to the outside world. The weight of earth above them pressed on her. The narrow pool of their light moving slowly along the tunnel left a fearful darkness closing in constantly behind them. Sarah could not help but glance around. She hoped Davinoff could take care of whatever might come at them from behind. : An ancient wooden door blocked their path, braced with metal straps. Razcocy and his crew had buttressed the tunnel in front of the entrance. A huge metal lock secured the door to a frame cut into the stone. A sigh of relief escaped from Davinoff as she came up beside him.

  "The door is still intact," he said. He produced a huge metal key from his waistcoat pocket and started forward. Abruptly he stopped and turned to Sarah. "Now you will see that it is I who have been trespassing, ever since Charles granted your ancestors the land at Clershing."

  With that mysterious statement, he bent over the rusty lock and inserted the key. He worked over it for some moments, and when it would not yield to his machinations, he reached out one white hand and grasped the lock in his fist. With a twisting wrench that provoked a groan of effort, Davinoff wrested the lock from its metal strap with a squeal of rending iron. Sarah bit a trembling lip as he tossed it, clanking, to the stone floor and pulled at the heavy door. A puff of dust smoked into the passage. Davinoff strode into the darkness beyond.

  Sarah trailed after him. The first moment of wonder as the torch illuminated the marvelous room would stay with her forever. Its ceiling was lost in flickering darkness above them. Plaster crumbled from walls and pillars that disappeared into the gloom. The air was cool and dry with time. One corner, where a stairway wound upward, had collapsed, burying the upper steps in earth. Peeking through a layer of dust, tiny mosaic tiles in the floor peered up at her in patterns barely discernable, of grape leaves and geometric borders. In dim corners, statues of fine marble still bore traces of their original delicate paint. Sealed boxes and crates tumbled over each other. Paintings, shrouded and wrapped, were stacked against the walls. The foaming contents of one trunk had spilled onto the floor and gleamed gold under their dusty coats.

  Sarah froze and scanned the room until her eyes returned to Davinoff. He was smiling at her. "Welcome to my home, Lady Clevancy." He looked around. "At least one room of it."

  "Where is this?" Sarah asked in a choked whisper, though she knew already the answer.

  "We are in a room of the villa you want so much to excavate."

  "This is why you wanted my land?" she asked, brows drawn together.

  Davinoff nodded. "I have been keeping some of my little souvenirs here for a long time, as well as certain other places. I was away when Charles split the parcel and deeded the portion with the villa to your family. But I had the abbey, so I built the tunnel down through the bluff and up into my cache. It still seemed as safe as any place. But the tunnel collapsed. I was in the midst of repairing it when I heard you meant to excavate. Thus my attempt to buy your property. You see, I have been trespassing for a very long time." Davinoff looked for her reaction.

  "This was your house?" Sarah repeated, sounding idiotic, even to herself.

  Davinoff nodded.

  Sarah remembered his words in the darkened cellar at the Dower House. "The parasite rebuilds endlessly rather than move on to a new host." She bit her lip and looked at his countenance flickering in the light of the torches. "How old are you?" she whispered fiercely.

  He studied her. "I grew up in the Carpathians during the first years of the Roman Empire. For many years I considered myself a Roman."

  Sarah's mind lurched from one thought to another. Two centuries before Christ or three? Twenty-one hundred years? "Why did you bring me here?" she blurted. Had he wanted to frighten her? If so, he had certainly succeeded. But his next words brought her back to earth.

  "Isn't it Christmas Day?" he asked softly. "It is a poor guest who does not bring a gift." He placed his torch in a holder and moved to loom above her. Looking down, he touched her arm. "I wanted to show you things I know only you will appreciate. I wanted to show you your villa through my eyes, as my home."

  He smiled as she searched his face in wonder. "First, let us see how my souvenirs have fared since my last visit." He took Sarah's torch from her and lighted several others in their holders around the room, until the contents leapt into flickering focus.

  He started with the paintings leaning against the left wall. He threw back the shrouds to reveal dark oils in their gilded frames. Sarah looked over his shoulder. The red-haired nudes upon the riverbank in the first proclaimed a Titian. He placed it carefully aside. There was a Van Eyck that Sarah did not know, and a Botticelli, with his chubby pastel angels. Then he reached to the side and brought it up. It was small, its ornate gilt frame perhaps eighteen inches square and darkened at the edges with age. The young woman's face that glowed out of the center was ineffably sad with a knowledge and acceptance shining out of her eyes that made her sister with the mysterious smile seem shallow by comparison. Sarah found herself crying.

  "He painted a companion piece?" she choked.

  "He gave me my choice," Davinoff said, remembering. "I chose the melancholy version."

  Sarah gazed upon the painting for several minutes, transfixed.

  "I have something else here from Leonardo, somewhere," Davinoff said, looking around. Finally he moved to a crate in the center of the room, and plucked up a small wire model that looked very like a dragonfly. "His flying machine. He made it in the fourteen-nineties sometime, as I recall. I asked to have it as a keepsake."

  Sarah touched the delicate wire wings. "Did he fly, then?"

 
; "He could have done so. But he did not. It would have offended the Church," Davinoff called back. He was levering open a carefully sealed crate with a crowbar. He knelt and drew out several books. "This is a newer box," he said. "Ah." He pulled up one volume and held it to the light. "Milton. My prize for patronage was a first edition of Paradise Lost." Davinoff sat upon a crate and began thumbing through the volume. "Poor John. It galled him to accept support from one with morals such as mine." Davinoff looked up at Sarah. "He thought he made me a retort by modeling his villain after me. But I thought his Satan quite more interesting than God."

  Sarah could not help smiling. "You were Satan?"

  "Lady Clevancy, I have always been Satan," Davinoff observed.

  Sarah looked around the room to see small jade statuettes and dusty piles of manuscripts. A fat wooden figure of a horse, perhaps three feet high and once enameled, a miracle of horseness, stood next to the overflowing golden trunk. She wandered over, and picked up a goblet, inlaid with winking stones, and a heavy gold chain, set with what looked like sapphires. "Where did you get this treasure? Were you a pirate?"

  "That particular bit is Saracen gold from the first Crusade," Davinoff said, looking up from where he was opening another box. "Ah, this will interest you."

  Sarah went to his side, kicking up small swirls of dust as she passed across the mosaic floor. He leaned over a box with books and scrolls that looked extremely old.

  "The Canterbury Tales, one of my favorites," he said, opening the heavy leather cover to show the illuminated manuscript within.

  "Chaucer?" Sarah asked, incredulous. "The illumination is beautiful."

  "In here somewhere are the Lindesfarne Gospels. You will find their illumination much finer." He rummaged in the marvelous crate and passed a larger volume to her.

  Sarah's wonder grew as she fondled copies of the Kamandaki, an Indian manual of government published in the year 750, and the Kokinshu, an official anthology of Japanese history from 905. The Book of Fixed Stars by the Arab Al Sufi was there, and the first results from Mr. Guttenberg's printing press. The treasures tumbling out of the crates made Sarah's head spin.