Mathers looked down at the pavement. “Crowley has betrayed me,” he said darkly.
“That’s exactly the kind of behavior I mean,” Stoker said. Alick Crowley, or “Aleister” as he now styled himself, had gained some notoriety in London circles before traveling out to Paris to join Mathers as a pupil.
Mathers said, “I sent an astral vampire to bring him down. He struck back at me with Beelzebub and an army of demons.”
To Stoker, it was as if the traffic around them slowed into silence and all of the color drained out of the world. He stopped, and Mathers stopped with him. Stoker turned to look more closely at the other man.
Mathers was manifestly serious in what he was saying. But his eyes were dark-ringed, small, sunk back in his head as if by madness or malnutrition. They glittered, but not in the manner of a man filled with energy. More in the way of a man adrift. They were the too-bright eyes of a helpless stranger, far out of reach.
“An astral vampire,” Stoker said.
“We battle with magic.”
And he clearly believed it, too. Stoker looked at him. Mathers was not exactly a close friend, but Stoker had known him well and for many years. His manner now was dogged, earnest, entirely sincere. It was a heartbreaking sight to behold.
Stoker said, “How do you imagine I can help you, Mathers?”
“Don’t do this,” Mathers warned. “Don’t pretend you don’t believe. I have read your book.” He reached inside the big coat and, from some capacious inner pocket, half produced a novel in yellow cloth binding so that just its corner showed. “They dismiss it as a shocker,” he said. “But I know how close it is to the truth.”
“Dracula is a fiction,” Stoker said.
“Every fiction has its original,” Mathers said, unwittingly echoing another novelist’s assertion in the British Museum’s reading room all those years before. “You tracked down the Wanderer. You found him. Don’t try to deny it.” He indicated the book. “This adventure you tell…it’s a shadow play of what you really saw. Where is he now?”
“Who?”
“The Wanderer. The real one. I have a proposition for him.”
“Don’t,” Stoker said. “Do not ask me this. Please.”
“I helped you once, Bram. Perhaps I even helped you more than you can know. Did you think your good fortunes were all your own?”
Strange that Mathers should speak of his good fortunes, when in Stoker’s own eyes so many of his hopes had fallen short of the mark. He’d thrown over his life for Irving, and imagined himself to be one of the great man’s closest confidants; and yet when Irving had sold out the Lyceum to the syndicate, he’d told Stoker nothing of it until after the deal was done. And the work in which he’d invested all of his hopes of a serious literary reputation—Mathers was right, they called it a shocker, well done of its kind but with little of lasting merit, while his publishers had given it their shoddiest binding and done almost nothing to promote it to the public.
Even Irving, whose opinion mattered more to him than anyone’s, thought it dreadful. If there was proof that Stoker’s life was not enhanced by any magic, then there it lay.
He said, “Life has treated me well enough. I might have appreciated better. But I’ve never wished for anything more than I’ve deserved.”
“Won’t you help me, Bram?” Mathers pleaded.
Stoker drew in a deep breath, let it out, and looked down.
Then he said, “Call by the stage door at eight, when the curtain’s gone up. I’ll have something for you then.”
He left Mathers in Leicester Square and walked back toward Drury Lane. He was fairly sure that he knew why Mathers wanted confirmation that there was a reality behind the Wanderer, and why he wanted to know where the current bearer of the title might be found. Mathers was a disappointed man, his life all but in ruins. He was unemployed, and probably unemployable. He and his wife had been living in near poverty in Paris. The organization that he’d helped to found had cast him out. His protégé was now his enemy. His reaction was the natural response of a desperate man: Only allow me the opportunity, and I will pay any price for the chance to turn my life around.
Any price. For in a position like his, it must seem that he had nothing at all to lose. What would it cost you to give up your soul, if your soul was a dead thing already?
Now Stoker was on Drury Lane, and across the road stood the Theatre Royal. It was no Lyceum, that was for sure. It had a big stage and good seating capacity, but on the outside its proportions were clumsy and lacking in symmetry or magnificence.
Back in that unfamiliar office, he returned his hat to the hook and settled again behind the desk. He’d have no time at home today. There was still much to do before the evening’s performance. Irving planned to lead with Dante on his eighth American tour, and he had asked Stoker to prepare abstracts from the better notices for cabling ahead.
But first, Stoker drew out a blank sheet of notepaper and took up his pen.
My dear friend, he wrote. If you would place so much faith in my word, be advised by me now. Forget these notions. Nothing you might find would be as you imagine. May your God go with you. Bram.
He put five pounds in with the letter, and sealed both into a new envelope. He wrote Mathers’ name on the front and took it down to the stage door, where he placed it in the care of the doorkeeper to await collection. He left instructions that Mathers was not to be admitted to the building, nor was Stoker to be sent for even if Mathers demanded it. If he should refuse to leave, the police were to be summoned.
It felt like a cowardly act. Whatever human flaws and frailties he might have possessed, cowardice had no part in Stoker’s nature. But he could see no other way. At best he’d have to play the unhelpful brute, the treacherous friend. At worst, he might give in and tell Mathers what he wanted to know.
That would be, in its strongest sense, unforgivable.
He went back to his borrowed office, where he turned his attention to American tour dates.
THIRTY-TWO
In his suite of rooms on a second-floor corner of Murphy’s Hotel, the young man known as Jules Patenotre was contemplating his shoes. He had them all out in a line, and was trying to decide which pair to wear today. All had been burnished until the leather shone. Not by his own hand, of course. Twice a week he had the houseboy come up and shine them while he watched. Watching the houseboy distracted his mind. Jules Patenotre’s mind had a tendency to race and, if he did not take care to guide it, to seek out unexpected torments with which to entertain him.
Hotel living suited him, though. His needs were taken care of at the ring of a bell, and he was relieved of any need to keep a personal staff. He’d occupied these rooms for more than two years, ever since the Jefferson fire had destroyed his lodgings—and all his old shoes—there. No one had died, but the place had been gutted. They were rebuilding the Jefferson now. If this place should happen to burn down, he might move back in there.
When a knock came at the door, he made a quick decision and stepped into a pair of English Oxfords. He left the rest for the maid to deal with. By now, he’d have expected the visitor to have entered on a passkey. They had not, which suggested that it was someone other than hotel staff. He was expecting no one. This was awkward—one of the drawbacks of having no valet or manservant to deal with intrusion. He went to open the door himself.
A man stood there in the hotel corridor, his hat in his hands. He had a Slavic look to him. His head was shaven close, the gray stubble showing.
“Well?” Jules said after waiting for a few moments. “You knocked at my door. Do you intend to speak?”
“Sir,” the man said, and seemed to stop there. Jules studied him for a moment, and then recognized him.
“You’re Mary D’Alroy’s man,” Jules prompted. “I saw you at the Academy of Music.”
“I am sent to inform you.”
Again, Jules waited. “Of what?” he said.
“Miss D’Alroy—”
&
nbsp; “Is a wonderful employer? That’s very loyal of you.”
He tried again. “Miss D’Alroy—”
“Has been discovered having carnal knowledge of an ape?” At that, Jules saw the man blush. “Forgive me,” he said. “Go on.”
“Miss D’Alroy told me to tell you. She offers that which you were seeking to collect.”
“Ah,” Jules said. He glanced to left and right, to see if they could be overheard. It would seem not. Without a hint of a smile and in a slightly lower voice he said, “And what must I do to collect it, then?”
“That I cannot say. But if you will follow me, I will take you to her.”
“Oh. A jaunt. Do I need to bring money? Or is Miss D’Alroy a philanthropist today?”
“Any gift you care to make would be welcome. But mainly you would be obliging the lady.”
“I’ll bring money, then. Just in case she likes her obligations in hard cash.”
The man dipped his head in a kind of subservient affirmation.
Jules found the pleasure of mockery growing very thin. The man was doing his best. Jules said, “You find this difficult, don’t you? Do you disapprove of your mistress?”
The man said nothing.
“We all have to do things we do not care for,” Jules said. “Sometimes due to circumstance. And sometimes when our nature demands it. But take heart from my example. If a shame remains a secret…then in what sense is it a shame? Wait there.” He pointed to a chair that stood with a side table and a jug of fresh flowers on the other side of the corridor. “Sit if you want to.”
The man was still standing when Jules emerged, fifteen minutes later, fully dressed and ready to go. As they descended the stairway to the foyer, Jules said, “Walk on ahead of me and wait for me outside. When you see me coming out of the hotel, set off and don’t look back. I’ll be there behind you.”
They arrived in the foyer as strangers. The silent one was on his way out of the main doors as Jules approached the counter.
The clerk said, “Good morning, Mister Patenotre.”
“Good morning, Charles,” Jules said. “I need my box.”
“Of course, sir.”
The clerk reached under the counter and brought out the security ledger for him to sign. Once that was done, he handed over a key on a large ring.
Jules took the key around to the strong room near the counter where the guest boxes were. It was small, but gave privacy to residents so they could access their valuables without having them on public display. In the room was a bank of metal doors, each with two locks. The guest’s key operated one of these but no thief could use it without also signing out the hotel’s master, which opened the other. Jules turned both keys, swung open the door, and pulled out the long, shallow tray behind it. The room was reckoned to be proof against fire, and Jules preferred it to any bank. A bank expected you to keep to its hours; he was happier in a place that respected his own.
As he counted out some bills, he found that his vision was blurring and his hands trembling slightly. He stopped, until this settled. It was only anticipation, he knew, but he was annoyed at himself. His body was a rebellious servant, and often it disgusted him.
He dropped the house key off at the desk and went out into the street. The man sent by Mary d’Alroy was standing some way along the street, by a store window under a striped canvas awning. He saw Jules nod to him as he was approaching. When he turned and moved off, Jules followed.
The man walked for more than a mile. The sidewalks were busy until they turned north of Broad Street, into the area where most of the saloons were. These streets were almost deserted. It was too early in the day for most Richmond men to be out drinking, while no decent Richmond lady would want to be seen around here at all. In their gored skirts and leg-of-mutton sleeves, with parasols to shade them from the sun and preserve their unpainted, pale-and-interesting complexions, Richmond women tended toward lives of classic southern propriety.
On the face of it, at least.
They turned into a street where every building had been boarded and marked for demolition. One of the railroad companies buying up the land, at a guess. They’d already built a new terminus on Main Street, and the development wasn’t going to stop there. These were mostly low-rise warehouse and office buildings but across the end of the street, its box office gutted and its marquee stripped to the bones, there stood the dead shell of a variety theater.
They entered it down a rubbish-strewn alleyway to the side, and the shaven-headed man secured the door after them. As far as Jules could see, the interior had been stripped of most of its fittings and anything else of value, but was dry and intact. At the back of the empty auditorium, they ascended to a suite of offices above the foyer. Here there was a wide lounge with an empty fireplace. As they entered it, a woman—Mary D’Alroy’s other servant—rose to her feet. A moment later, Mary D’Alroy herself appeared in one of the doorways.
She was dressed in a plain off-white linen shift. Her hair was up and her arms were uncovered. She looked as if she ought to be barefoot on a riverbank somewhere, rather than walking the board floors of this ruin in the middle of a great southern city.
“You’d better come in,” she said, and turned away. He followed her into the room.
“Close the door,” she said.
He did as instructed, looking all around. There was a smell of old dust and horsehair. Light came from a skylight above, and through gaps in the thick boards that had been nailed across the windows. There was a mattress over in the corner, raised up a few inches from the floor on a wooden pallet. Alongside that were a chair, a table that didn’t match the chair, and a water jug and basin on the table.
Knowing a squat when he saw one, Jules said, “I see now why you keep your address private.”
The woman who called herself Mary D’Alroy ignored the comment. She said, “Before we begin, there’s something you have to do for me.”
Her tone began to stir something in him.
“Command me,” he said.
“Before we begin,” she corrected him. “Pen and paper. Over there on the table.”
He moved to the table and saw that she’d laid out some sheets of good writing paper and a self-filling pen.
She said, “You keep a suite of rooms at Murphy’s. I imagine your standing with them must be good.”
“You want a letter of recommendation.”
“I want to move to somewhere better than this. But hotel managers are a suspicious crew.”
“Miss D’Alroy, you could charm a dog off of a butcher’s wagon. I can’t imagine the manager who’d turn you away.”
“Write me the letter,” she said. “Then we can discuss what you’re here for.”
He drew up the chair, sat himself down, picked up the pen, and then thought for a few moments before starting to write. After dating the note, he wrote quickly and without hesitation. When it was done, he picked up the paper and read it aloud.
“To whom it may concern. Please extend every courtesy to Miss Mary D’Alroy during her time of residence. She is a personal friend of the Patenotre family, formerly of Iberville, Louisiana.”
“Signed?”
“If you’re happy with the wording.” He added his signature in full. Then she took it from him and read it for herself.
“This is very impressive,” she said. “And I have to say I’m honored. The entire Patenotre family?”
He made a wide gesture. “You’re looking at them,” he said.
“No other relatives survive?”
“Once upon a time we were one of the biggest plantation families on the Mississippi. Two hundred slaves and three thousand acres. After the war—slaves all freed, the crops on fire, and just widders and children left to watch ’em burn. I’m the last of the line. Well, I had two choices. I could spend my days in debt like my daddy, trying to hold together something that won’t be held. Or I could do what I did. Which was to sell off whatever I could, borrow against the rest, and start sp
ending the last of the fortune. When it’s gone it’s gone, and so are we all.”
“That’s a sad story.”
“You should hear it with a violin.”
He was still on the chair and she was standing close beside him. As she leaned over to slide the letter under a green book, she brushed against his shoulder. There was no mistaking that she was naked under the shift. In an instant, it was as if every fine hair on his skin was alive and bristling with static.
She said, “It must be very hard to carry the disappointments of all those generations on one set of shoulders. Stand up.” He stood, the chair scraping back on the boards. “Does it help if you harm yourself?”
“It calms me down,” he admitted.
“Let me see.”
He hesitated for a moment. Then he took off his jacket and vest, and put both on the chair behind him. He pulled the links from his cuffs and the stud from his collar and unbuttoned his shirt. He dropped the suspenders that held up his pants and then pulled shirt and singlet together over his head.
He stood with his hands down by his sides, not meeting her eyes, knowing that she was studying him, sensing her gaze like the track of a burning glass across his skin. She was looking at his scars. Some of them were fresh, and not yet healed.
“I got more than this down below,” he said.
“Show me.”
“Please,” he said. “Lock the door first.”
There was no key, but the door had a bolt. By the time that she’d crossed the room, slid the bolt, and turned around to face him again, he was stripped to the skin from his head to his socks.
“Are you cold?” she said.
“No,” he said. He was shivering, but he was not cold.
She came back and walked all the way around him, giving him a close inspection. It was almost as if she was taking an inventory of every mark and scar, noting every object, sharp and otherwise, that he’d managed to shove under his skin and which remained lodged there. He was no Adonis, but he was hard-muscled and thin. She couldn’t miss the physical evidence of his anticipation.
The Kingdom of Bones Page 22
