Dracula's Child

by J. S. Barnes

  ‘Well, I suppose,’ remarked my saviour, ‘that after such an encounter the very least we’ve earned for ourselves is a drink. Shall we?’

  Without waiting for my answer or even looking back, he walked towards the entrance to The Gored Stag and stepped with unmistakable purpose inside. I followed, dutifully, in his wake.

  * * *

  So rackety a life as mine has necessitated the visiting of numerous unsavoury haunts and low meeting places. Almost since boyhood, I have been an habitué of deep and secret rooms, an aficionado of the hidden, the dishonourable and the louche. With such experiences at my back, the interior of The Gored Stag seemed at first to be a considerable disappointment.

  In spite of the florid protestations of our landlady, it appeared to be nothing more than a peasants’ tavern, patronised by farmers and labouring men. It was a little dirtier, perhaps, than its several cousins in the town but otherwise – with its rough trestle tables, its scents of sweat, warm ale and cooked meat, its sullen, spluttering fire and straw-strewn floor – it struck me as being wholly unremarkable. Furthermore, our arrival seemed to excite little interest from that proletarian throng, who barely glanced up from their flagons at the arrival in their midst of two fashionable strangers.

  The roil of conversation dipped in volume not at all and such curiosity as they possessed drifted almost immediately away. In other circumstances, on an evening less wreathed in portent, so marked a reaction might have struck me as peculiar. Tonight, however, I thought little of it, grateful simply for the rustic ordinariness of the place. There was a small table unoccupied by the door and it was into a chair beside this that I flung myself. Gabriel did the same. We exchanged glances which spoke chiefly, and, I think, creditably, of rueful amusement. We said nothing – no words were necessary – until a stout woman nearing old age approached us. She was dressed in black as though in mourning and she mopped her sweat-jewelled brow with perhaps the filthiest handkerchief I have ever beheld.

  She spoke no English but only her mother tongue. Through a system of mime and gesture, we were able to place a basic order: an ale for us both and a plate of what I think that she referred to as the speciality of the house. Once this performance was done, she managed a slatternly smile. As she turned to go, I caught something in her eyes and in the almost girlish set of her mouth which gave me to understand that she was nothing like so mature in years as I had first imagined. In actuality, she was very much younger even than my companion. How hard life is in this place. How pitiless. And how unstinting.

  As the excitement of the evening began to fade, and as even the memory of that rapacious beast started to drift into anecdote and reminiscence, we settled into something like calm. It was a lull which was not to last. As we sat, overlooked by our fellow drinkers, as we relished the cheap but honest beer that was brought to us and, upon its heels, the platters of meat, we spoke together of many things. I talked of the past – of the grand theatres of London, of roles that I had played and of those that I wished I had played, of scandal and rumour, of unwise liaisons and faded loves, and as we picked with increasing recklessness at our plates, as we ordered more strong drink and began to sink into our cups, Gabriel Shone spoke to me, not as I had spoken of history, but rather of all that he hoped was yet to come.

  ‘Since the death of my benefactor,’ he began, speaking the words with an absolute neutrality of tone which I knew to mask a very much more complicated web of emotion, ‘I have found myself in want of purpose. With very few financial limits I have travelled and explored, in part that I might yet discover some great goal or objective. Some just and noble design for my life.’ As we spoke there crept into his voice a speechifying – one might almost say a rhetorical – tone as of a nascent politician honing his craft upon some provincial stump.

  ‘I have seen much of the world,’ he went on. ‘More than I would ever have thought possible. From the fleshpots of Marrakesh to the salons of Paris, from the beauty of the Swiss valleys to the untarnished peace of the Italian lakes. Yet nothing in all these sights has ever satisfied the longings of my soul. I have been nowhere and seen nothing that several thousand rich men have not done before me. I want novelty, Maurice. Novelty and unseen things. True wildness! I want to saunter into forbidden territory and flout the rules of civilisation. I want to step away from the well-trodden path through the trees and plunge madly into the depths of the forest.’

  This pretty soliloquy was approaching its end when I came to sense in the hostelry a palpable alteration in its temper – a sort of gathering hush, a shrinking back as if some unhappy accommodation were being made.

  A shadow fell upon our table, just as my companion had ended his speech. We looked up as one, expecting the return of our barmaid or the arrival of some emboldened churl.

  The vision that greeted us was altogether unexpected, a sight more befitting the odd carousel of a dream than the patient linearity of real life. The arrival was a stranger, a woman, but as far removed from our hostess as is the most exquisite lily from the lowliest hedge-nettle. She cannot have been more than three-and-twenty. Tall and slender, she had eyes of blue, long raven-dark hair and a remarkable physique, visible even beneath her huntress’ garb.

  She carried herself with grace and hauteur but in her motion one could perceive the lithe elegance of a cat. Her presence was galvanic, as if she had stepped from a florid mural of times past and walked, with all the richness of history, into the drabness of the present. She gave a close-lipped smile in greeting. She exuded sensuality and eroticism of the most flagrant kind, an aura of carnality, the power of which even I – whose tastes have been forever Grecian – could sense quite clearly. Her influence upon the majority of gentlemen would, I imagine, be entirely irresistible, analogous to the effect of the ripest provision of nectar upon the innocent honeybee.

  With this in mind it struck me as peculiar that not one of those moribund revellers could bring themselves to look upon her. Instead, they bent further upon their libations, cast their gaze upon the ground or fixed their eyes upon some median point in the air.

  So marked an antipathy to this vision seemed to me to stand in opposition to all the reproductive laws which have ensured the continuance of our species. When she spoke it was in very good, if thickly accented and antique English.

  ‘You will be forgiving me, gentlemen, for my intruding upon you, but my senses are acute and I could not help but overhear your words.’

  I thought that her hearing must indeed be quite superb if she were able to make out our sentences amid the hubbub. Gabriel seemed immediately charmed, sensing in the stranger someone possessed of a magnetism still greater than his own.

  ‘Madam, you are most welcome. My name is Gabriel Shone and this is my associate, the actor Mr Maurice Hallam. Will you not join us?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the lady, ‘but I cannot tarry and I do not sup. I am pleased to be making the acquaintance of you both. My name is Ileana.’

  We both murmured some polite platitudes about our being gratified to meet her.

  ‘You said,’ Gabriel went on, ‘that you had overheard our discourse? May I take it, then, that something of what we said attracted your attention?’

  She bowed her dark head in what seemed to me to be mock-supplication, a parody of solicitous modesty. ‘You are correct. For I heard you speak of the longings of your soul. Of your craving for the forbidden and the dark. Of your desiring to see the secret places of the world.’

  ‘That is so. But what is it to you?’

  ‘I am being occasionally employed,’ said the woman, ‘as a guide. As a leader for those curious persons who wish to be venturing into the forests and the mountains and to what lies beyond. It seems to me that if you long for the fulfilment of your desires you will need such a one as me to be showing you the way.’

  Gabriel and I traded glances. Whereas I was all scepticism and uncertainty, his mind evidently seethed with possibilities.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  S
he smiled her predatory smile. ‘There is a place, several days from here – ancient, terrible and unvisited. Long ago, it was owned by a great nobleman of our people. A bloody ruler who inspired both fear and loyalty. He lived far beyond his allotted time and there grew up about him many strange stories. Even now it is said that the structure – ruined and overrun – hides within its crumbling walls a great and wondrous secret.’

  ‘And what is that?’ I interjected, with a single eyebrow raised.

  ‘Eternal life,’ said she, speaking with a fantastical coldness.

  Gabriel looked enthralled. ‘What is the name of the place?’ Hunger pulsated in every syllable.

  She turned her deep blue eyes upon us both and breathed two words: ‘Castle Dracula.’

  And so, in this uncanny fashion, is our new course set.

  * * *

  It is late now, very late, and we have returned to the hotel, abiding by our hostess’ dictate that we be back by midnight. Once we had made an arrangement to meet Ileana (her surname remains unknown) at the hour of dawn tomorrow, the young woman bade us farewell and took her leave of the drinking establishment, to the palpable relief of the revellers. After her departure we felt altogether less welcome. We finished our ales swiftly and came here to our beds.

  Gabriel is consumed by a puppyish brand of radicalism, seeing in our forthcoming expedition the chance to give the kind of thumb-bite to conventionality for which he has long been searching. I am considerably more wary, seeing too many oddities in the scenario and too many suggestive ellipses in the woman’s reasoning to feel anything other than acute trepidation. However, I have pledged myself to remain by Gabriel’s side – a decision made not purely, I think, from carnal curiosity but from something else, something akin to a desire to protect him.

  I shall go with him tomorrow and meet with Ileana, and together we shall travel beyond the town, into the forest and ascend the mountains, there to behold for ourselves this mystical castle, this rumour-shrouded ancestral seat. Everything that is within me cries out that it is folly, yet all the same I shall walk with Gabriel without hesitation or question. For that is the nature, is it not, of love?

  I have written for too long and I am tired. To bed now and to sleep. Pray God that I do not dream of the wolf, of his deep and blazing eyes.

  NOTE LEFT ON THE PERSONAL WRITING DESK OF ARNOLD SALTER*

  11 November

  Dear Mrs Everson,

  I suppose it must be you who finds this message. No doubt its contents will cause you some distress. For this – sincere apologies.

  At least I have chosen to do the deed far from home. I know how you hate surprises and unexpected mess. Besides, you have always been a loyal servant to me. I would never want to burden you with the discovery of my corpse.

  I hope you are not too shocked by all this, Mrs E. Two years now I have been without my Mary and deuced hard years they have been.

  There is no love in my life. My career is behind me. I have grown old and weary. I scarcely recognise this country as the England of my youth. The present generation have none of our resourcefulness and fire, and the nation is sliding into slothfulness, incompetence and disarray.

  I want you to know that my decision was not taken lightly. By the time you read this I shall be at the bottom of the Thames, sleeping soundly, my pockets filled with stones.

  In the top drawer of this desk you will find an envelope, which contains instructions for the disbursement of my estate. Please place this in the hands of my solicitor. Beneath that, you will find a particular sum of money in cash. This is for you with grateful thanks for all your service. I hope it will let you consider retirement at last.

  With thanks,

  Arnold Salter

  * Deputy editor of The Pall Mall Gazette 1888–1901.

  FROM THE DIARY OF ARNOLD SALTER

  12 November. Now here is a surprise. I am starting a diary.

  D—n me and d—n my eyes, but this is an unexpected thing. Mostly (and not to put too fine a point on it) because I fully expected by now to be dead.

  I had my final resting place all mapped out. It was to be a spot on the Embankment from where I could take a single forceful leap into the Thames. I even believed myself to have written my own last words by way of a note to the stalwart Mrs Everson.

  I have to say it was with relief that I set down those last sentences and laid my pen aside. But here I am in the light of next morning, writing on the first page of a fresh journal and about to begin what looks like a new chapter in my life.

  I should explain.

  Having put my affairs in order, I took myself down to the Embankment, stopping now and again as I walked to pick up any stone I happened to see on the ground. I selected only the smoothest. In spite of the solemnity of my expedition I made a bit of a game of it: careful each time to pick the best flints and pebbles, weighing each addition carefully in my hand before tucking it away in a jacket pocket. In this simple diversion I took an almost childish pleasure.

  But then how rare it is nowadays, I thought, to see real children abroad and so easily diverted, let innocently loose upon the streets. We live in a sad and cynical world that has come to mistrust such harmless pastimes.

  Weighed down, I arrived at the spot I had chosen. It was as secluded as I had hoped, with few pedestrians, poor light, and railings which had been partly torn away. I dare say there was even a jauntiness to my step as I approached the place where I had intended to abandon myself to the mercies of the river.

  I halted, glanced about me, climbed onto the ledge and looked down at the surging water of the Thames. In the distance, I saw a tug towing a string of barges. And at the sight I felt a peacefulness, knowing I was shortly to be set free of all of the cares of this world.

  For a moment, I thought about the past and how things used to be. I thought of the happiness which has been taken from me. I felt no particular doubt, or anything in that line. In fact, a brief survey of my present existence served only to persuade me that I should jump right away and be done with the business.

  I was about to do just that when I heard from somewhere close at hand five unexpected words, delivered in a cool, patrician drawl.

  ‘I say, sir, excuse me?’

  On the very edge of leaping, I had first to correct my balance before, arms flapping like a d—n chicken, I was able to turn around with even the slightest dignity.

  A stranger stood a short distance away, looking up at me. A lean and weathered man with great, arched eyebrows, he was dressed in a frock coat that had not been fashionable since the early ’80s.

  At his side was an elderly Irish wolfhound. It growled with disapproval.

  In spite of the circumstances, I did my best to be sociable. ‘Yes? How can I help you?’

  ‘On the contrary, my dear Mr Salter, I think that it is you who will be able to assist me. Or, at least, that we may yet in several ways help one another.’

  ‘Do I know you, sir?’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge, Mr Salter, we’ve never met before tonight. But I fancy that it is possible you know me by reputation. You may have heard my name a time or two in the course of your brilliant career. I am Lord Tanglemere.’

  Now, this rang a distant bell. A member of the Upper House. A politician but a decent enough representative of his class, honest and of the old school. What he could want with me, I had no idea. ‘What is it? I was about to… Well. Let’s say: I’m busy.’

  ‘Mr Salter. I think we are all very well aware what it is that you are contemplating. Nonetheless, I should like to beg your attention for a moment so that I might be permitted to propose an alternative.’

  Tanglemere crouched down and rubbed the back of his dog’s head with affection.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It has of late come to my attention that this once mighty nation of ours is falling into a most regrettable state of disrepair. The grass grows long, Mr Salter, and the barbarians surge at our gates. We all of us need to return
to a stronger time. We must restore ourselves by any means within our power.’

  ‘I don’t disagree,’ I said as a seagull swooped noisily by.

  ‘And, as it happens, I know of an ideal mechanism by which it might be achieved. I can see how this necessary restitution might be wrought. Though I shall need your assistance in order to achieve it.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You.’

  I looked down again at the murky water.

  Behind me, I heard the dog yelp.

  ‘But… my decision…’

  ‘Can be overturned,’ Tanglemere murmured. ‘Your country, Mr Salter, has need of you. You still have duties, sir, and obligations to this great land which sired you.’

  ‘But I…’ I heard the chuckle of the river, calling me to it. A breeze pushed, casually but with some persistence, on the small of my back.

  ‘You must, Mr Salter. After all…’ Lord Tanglemere stepped closer. ‘Would not your Mary have expected you to do your duty?’

  ‘How do you—’ I began, then stopped and nodded firmly. ‘Yes, my lord. She would.’

  ‘Well, then. You are needed, Mr Salter. We have much work still to do if we are to save this country from wrack and from ruin. If we are to save her from men who apologise too often for being as we naturally are. From those who would weaken our nation with limp and impractical softness in the name of their so-called modernity.’

  At his words, I stepped back with some determination from the brink. ‘My lord,’ I said with unexpected eagerness. ‘I agree upon every point. How often have I looked around me and thought the state of this nation comparable to the last days of Rome. But how will this great task be brought about?’

  Tanglemere seemed pleased. I felt a pinch of happiness.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Salter. Have you ever heard of that remarkable – and, I’ve always believed, rather overlooked – public body that is known as the Council of Athelstan?’