For the moment, though, I am of no interest to him and our Lord fixes the Steward with a glare, ignoring mention of the guest, and jerks a thumb behind him as if to signify the rows of covered baskets in the hall.
“And what is all this, Oswain?”
“My Lord, there was a cave-in at the mine; three families lost sons and fathers. I have taken the liberty of having these supplies prepared to help tide the broods over until arrangements can be made for new husbands.” More than one woman has found herself widowed by the black rock of the mountain, then newly married a few days later to ensure no impoverished relicts mar our streets.
“You coddle them, Oswain! Surely they should be able to care for themselves without your constant attention?” The undertone is mean, petty, and I can see the Steward stiffen. His lips tighten, blanch.
“My Lord, I and my kind have kept your cattle alive, healthy and contented in the interests of keeping you and your Lady contented and healthy and … alive,” he stumbles, just a little, over that word. “Few things will disturb your pleasant existence more than an untended populous, but if you truly wish me to change how I discharge my duty then the choice is yours.”
The Steward’s tone is steely, and I hold my breath, fearful—I have become fond of him in these past months. He is stern but kind, and I have never seen him commit an act of cruelty. The moments stretch, scraping my nerves like a knife’s edge on ligaments. Then the Lord grins ruefully.
“Oswain, you have the right of it, old friend. But be careful you do not overstep.”
“I am ever mindful of your well-being, My Lord.” Oswain bows his head, relief palpable. I sense that the Lord, too, did not wish a confrontation—did not wish to push against a limit, a barrier that might crack and break too easily.
“Add some bottles of tokay from the cellar to the baskets, as many as we can spare. And to send the visitor to the library—there will be no formal meal tonight, so make sure he is fed in his room.”
Oswain raises an eyebrow. “My Lord?”
“Tonight, My Lady and I shall hunt,” he says, smiling and raising his hand to forestall the Steward’s protests. “Do not fear, Oswain, we will take the carriage and go beyond the boundaries of our demesne. None of your charges will be harmed.”
Oswain nods slowly. “Make sure you choose an isolated farm so no one might raise an alarm. Leave no trace of yourself or your … meal.”
“I recall how to hunt, Oswain, though it has been an age.” He drops his voice. “I fear for My Lady, Marcella. I hope this—excursion—will help to heal her. Perhaps we have been too long sedentary, too long content to be fed; we have forgotten how to take something of the prey into us.” His eyes glitter and for a moment he looks like a feral thing, dangerous, struggling against the bonds he’s put on himself. Then his face relaxes and the moment is passed.
But I cannot forget that expression, even when he smiles at me, seemingly once again the doting father who had indulged in mock argument with me, testing me and finding himself pleased. He turns his back and leaves.
After interminable seconds, Oswain stands and closes the door. I can see a fine beading of sweat on his bald pate.
“Why do you serve them?” I say, the words out before I can think better of it. For a moment I doubt he will answer.
“Because without them, there will be a vacuum and a vacuum must be filled. And we can never know that what might come along isn’t worse than this pair.” He hides his face in his hands. “I do what I can as did my father and his before him and his before him. This is a business upon which an entire city depends, and as long as we remain clever and careful, we will survive.”
“Why Dimity?” I ask. It’s been bothering me for so long now and he seems inclined to talk. “She doesn’t look like Our Lady.”
He shakes his head. “No. She looks a little like our Lord, though. But it was … I thought it might preserve a life. She would not interest Our Lady much, and consequently nor our Lord. She might have simply faded into the domestic staff or become a winepress … anything’s better than me having to deliver another hollow body to parents who had higher hopes for their child.”
I had not thought about it that way—I had not thought the choice of Dimity might be calculated. Steward Oswain is a good man doing his best under a mighty burden. I respect him and I pity him. Once I’d thought to take revenge on him, for it was he who chose my sisters. But now, having seen how he aches … I cannot raise my hand against him.
“What is wrong with Our Lady?” I ask.
He shrugs. “They are old, Adlisa. Nothing is meant to live that long. Perhaps it is simply death catching up with them.”
“Are there others of their kind?”
Again, a shrug. “Somewhere, I suppose, but I’ve not heard of any for the length of my life. My grandfather said the man who made them was not like them, not the same thing he turned them into. He—it—cursed them and stole their child. They’ve been changeless for so many centuries, but perhaps the curse is coming to its end and so are their lives?” Again he rubs his hands over his face, the sound of skin against stubble is loud. “They were never bad rulers, Adlisa—if you’ve spent your time wisely in the library you will know that. And as they are now, they are nowhere near as bad as they could be. Time has made them strange.”
Silence falls and reigns, broken only by the ticking of the timepiece on the desk, a thing with a bird that coos the hours. I think we will stay there forever if I do not speak. “Shall I have the baskets delivered?”
“No, I’ll organize that. You go and collect the guest and take him to the library. After that, I think you might be best keeping to your room tonight.”
I pass through the kitchen and, from the small wooden box I’ve concealed behind the sacks of potatoes, I take three bulbs. I crush them quickly against the bricks of the fireplace while no one’s looking and drop the garlic fragments into the thick, meaty pottage bubbling over the fire. The taste will be disguised by that of the leeks, chives and onions already in the mix. I scrub my hands carefully at the stone sink with lye soap, then splash some of the lemon juice wash Rikke keeps there for when she has been handling fish and needs to get rid of the smell.
The guest has been given a room three doors along from mine, an elaborate decor in greens and golds and bronze. When I knock, he is slow in answering, then makes me wait after I tell him why I am there—although he surely must know—but he takes his time putting on his seemingly brand new velvet frock coat with its intricate enamel buttons, teasing the lace cuffs of his shirt sleeves out so they might be seen and admired. He pushes at his hair, this way and that, in front of the large gaudy cloisonné mirror over the fireplace, vain as a woman, as if such fussing might help his cause.
He does not engage me in conversation, but I can feel his eyes boring into the back of me as I lead him along corridors, down staircases, through smaller rooms until at last we reach the library.
“Thank you, Adlisa,” says My Lord when I introduce his guest. He grabs my upper arm without seeming to offer me violence, and strokes my face and curls. It is not the act of a father, and it makes me afraid, as if I’m being pulled toward something I cannot escape, a whirlpool, a drowning wave. As his wife fades, he grows more predatory. As she gives in, he fights against whatever is happening. He lets me go as if dropping me from a height. “Off you go.”
“Pretty girl,” I hear the blond man say as I close the door. “Rather reminds me of my sister …”
I waited until I heard the carriage rattle away; the Lord and Lady would be gone for hours. I waited until the house had quietened as the staff took the rare opportunity to rest earlier in the evening than was their wont. When all is quiet, I slip from my room and tiptoe along the corridor, carefully past the guest’s room, then down one set of stairs and up another. Along a long landing; the door I’m seeking is at its end and I try the handle, find it unlocked, press my ear against the thick wood and listen intently, then push it open, quiet as can be.
There is a snuffle and a snort, a contented sleeper’s noise, from the large bed beneath the window. In the winter moonlight, the thin form of the Steward is curled about Rikke’s naked roundness. Not cousins, then. On the chest of drawers beside the door, right next to me, is the gleaming eye of the Steward’s Gaze, and beside it the great golden pile of the chatelaine and keys, carelessly discarded for the night when he keeps it so carefully during the daylight hours. The cold radiates off it as I clasp it tightly.
Oswain gives a tremendous snore, fit to wake the household. I freeze, will myself invisible, wait to see if he rouses himself. He subsides into shallow breaths and sighs, and I slip out. Bouncing with nerves on my bare tiptoes, holding the chatelaine with both hands so it does not jingle and give me away, I scurry along the thin hallway rugs laid end to end; they muffle the sounds of my passage. I am so keyed up, listening so hard to the silent house that I almost overshoot my destination.
I unlock the office, and step inside. The room is dark except for the weak embers of the banked fire, but these weeks as a daughter in a house which comes alive at night have made my eyes sensitive to the darkness, as if I’ve become a cat. There it is: the black door, the locked door, the door that leads down.
I have no reason to go there, merely curiosity as hot and intense as flame. A desire to see a place where my sisters might have met their fate, where I might yet meet mine. I take a taper from the top drawer of the great desk, hold it to the glowing coals and let the wick catch. It glimmers weakly.
Five paces and the key is sliding into the lock easily, then the Stygian wood is pushed back to reveal the night stair. There is no illumination here. The cold stone steps beneath my naked feet answer back a quiet shhh as I descend into the earth. The walls are pocked with burial niches, some with moldering bones huddling sadly in corners, others with intact skeletons lying fully prone and relaxed in death. When I reach the bottom, I blink and stare into the deeper darkness.
There are two empty biers made of marble. I step forward, tiptoeing although I know no one is here; I catch my foot on something frail and friable. There is the faintest crack. I look down and see I have stepped on a doll, swaddled in sepia cloth and wearing a lace bonnet of ancient style. I bend and sweep it up, hold it close to my frail taper, look into its face to find it is in fact a mummified baby, empty-eyed, hollow-cheeked, hungry-mouthed. Beneath the swaddling I can feel where I snapped one of its ribs. I look about for a place to hide it and notice at last the pile—mound—of more of the same, all dressed so sweetly in styles of different ages, all as dead as dust, all with that same expression.
I carefully bury the one I broke beneath its fellows and hope that My Lady does not go looking for it. A quick survey of the space yields nothing, and I am about to return to the Steward’s office when there is the sound of scuffing, of shoes hastily making contact with stone. I am frozen, unable to blow out the taper, to hide. What good would it do me?
“Adlisa?” It is Rikke’s voice, taut with fear. Rikke, who has been so kind. Rikke, who has kept my secret. Rikke, who asked if she might create a facsimile of my herbal so there might be more than one copy in the world. Gentle Rikke, who has followed me down into this hell. “Adlisa, what are you doing? Come, you must leave now. They have returned—I heard the carriage.”
We fly up the stairs. My hands shake too much and she must take the chatelaine from me and lock the black door, then the office too. She slips the heavy golden thing into the pocket of her brown woolen dressing-robe. We are waiting in the entrance hall when the main doors are thrown open and the Lord, Our Lady in his arms, charges in, both of them pale as the winter moon, but streaked with blood. The Lord’s gaze is wild, the Lady’s eyes are firmly closed.
“Drink this. Our Lady needs you,” I say to the plump winepress. She is still befuddled by slumber and does not question me, merely lifts the goblet I put in her hand, chugging down the red wine, not commenting on the taste. Ah, bless these gluttonous girls.
I don’t not let her dress, lest the Lord think I did not fetch her swiftly enough, and lead her to Our Lady’s chamber. As I walk, in my pocket I can feel the weight of the item I’ve kept hidden inside the fat mattress of my bed ever since I lent Rikke my herbal. It hits against my thigh with each step, not heavy but still solid. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
In the solar, Our Lady is draped across the chaise seemingly in a faint, but her eyelids flutter when she hears my voice. “My Lord, here is the girl.”
He, in all his blood-streaked glory, grabs the winepress’s forearm and drags her over to his wife. He forces her to her knees and presses her wrist to Our Lady’s mouth. The wine-girl yelps in surprise; this is the roughest handling she’s ever had. The first time she’s seen the Lord’s true nature, which he has subsumed for so many, many years. Our Lady grimaces and turns her face away, batting the air weakly with hands grown skeletal. The Lord, seeing this, raises the girl’s wrist to his own mouth and his teeth—those canines they’ve gone to such trouble to carefully cover, speaking with lips close together so only the barest tips can be seen—those teeth seem to lengthen, sharpen, and he tears at the girl’s flesh with them. He offers the limb once again to his wife and this time she opens her mouth, roused by the rich scent, latching on like a leech.
Her lids flutter up, eyes widen as she watches me. Her throat convulses with each gulp, each swallow, the marble flesh undulating painfully. I wonder if she knows what is happening.
The Lord, now certain she is drinking, strides around the room.
“The hunt did not go well?” I ask quietly and he hisses at me.
“No! Fool child, it did not. We found a farm, but there were too many—we did not know. Once I could have counted the heartbeats in this entire city, but now … they came from nowhere and we … we have grown sluggish and lazy, feeding on these thin-veined, fat-arsed bitches.” His movements are jerky, graceless; his control is slipping. He paces past the drowsing winepress and offers her ample backside a kick, then changes direction. He has been less affected than his wife; perhaps his vessels have drunk less deeply or eaten less heartily of what I’ve prepared for them, or perhaps he is simply stronger. But now his face is thinner and his eyes stare, protrude just a little, the skin around his throat looser, perhaps. “We will feed on you all—it will make her well. You see? You see how she is after feeding on one of them? Before they woke and turned on us, before one of them fetched her a blow to her poor head. You see?”
At this we both turn and look at Our Lady.
The winepress lies on the floor, insensible; her wrist, beribboned in red, drops slowly to the carpet as its captor looses it. Marcella, her mouth a ravening hole, has tried hard, so terribly hard to get all the sustenance she needs, but the blood of the wine-girls has been tainted for weeks now with garlic and belladonna, just small amounts in their own food and wine. It makes them terrible sleepy—although it does protect them against colds—and it’s been building up slowly in them and then in My Lord and Lady—whose bodily functions no longer function, have neither excreted nor sweated nor vomited the poison out. The extra dose I put in the girl’s wine before bringing her here finally had the desired effect.
I’ve watched as My Lady’s grown weaker, more tired. I’ve stroked her lovely hair as she’s clung to me like a child to a doll. I’ve whispered promises that she would grow well again soon and be strong. I’ve told her she would find peace. A thin shiver of guilt ripples through me until I think of all those tiny babies down in the undercroft, all those dried-up little creatures deprived of life and all their chances.
And now … and now, My Lady Mother lies there, replete, finished. Before our very eyes, her skin wrinkles like lace left too close to a fire. Her locks turn white faster than I can think, then drop away from the skull that is shrinking as its true age catches up with it. The body beneath her glorious burgundy evening gown diminishes, leave the dress too large, a hulking shell for a withering creature. The pale eyes glaze over, then shrink
to tiny marbles, then disappear completely, and then … and then, she is nothing but brittle bones, then dust on a velvet couch, an empty dress, and discarded tresses shining like forgotten gold in the lambent light of the candles.
The Lord rushes toward the remains of his wife, stops, spreads his hands wide, but does not touch her—there is nothing, really, to touch. His howl is like that of a wolf, only worse, darker, deeper, blacker.
I step back, although I know I should use this moment when his attention is turned away from me. But I am so afraid, so afraid that my heart is a leaden thing in my chest; so afraid that it seems to have ceased to beat; so afraid that I fumble when I draw the wooden dagger from my pocket and drop it on the carpet between us.
It is so slim and simple, nothing to excite the interest, not especially beautifully or elegantly made, but it is compact enough to lie hidden in the spine of my herbal, its blade is honed to a fine sharp edge, and it is carved of hawthorn, one of the last of its kind, and, now, it seems so small and inadequate. But I cannot falter, I cannot fail. If I do not remove this creature then our whole city will suffer; all lives will change, and not for the better.
I fall over myself to get to it, scrambling on hands and knees, my fingers touching, clutching the haft, just as the Lord wheels around and sees me. In the shortest of moments, he knows, he understands that somehow this has all been me, the viper in the nest of vipers. His expression is a swirling vortex of shock, bitter amusement, rage, and hatred. He moves, fast, so fast, his right hand closing in on itself, all the nails becoming talons and gathered together like a spearhead. He draws his arm back and then drives the point through my chest and into my heart. All I have time to do is to bring my dagger, my tiny dagger up and across to slice through the skin and flesh of his throat. The cut itself cannot be mortal, but the substance of the knife—ah, now therein lies cessation.
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 67
