The Pierced Heart: A Novel

by Shepherd, Lynn

  He pauses, but the Baron will not take his bait.

  “Very well, I will continue, whether you wish to hear it or not. My uncle wrote to inform me that he had received a visit from Alexander Causton, during which he had spoken at length about his daughter’s state of health. And then I recalled what you told me, not ten yards from this very spot, of the years you spent studying the afflictions of the mind. Of somnambulism, and night terrors, and hysteria, and neurasthenia—all those disorders that have terrified mankind for so long, and given rise to so many barbaric superstitions, condemning the sufferers to incarceration as dangerous lunatics. And I wondered suddenly if that very word—lunatic—might be the key to it all. Because I remembered then a slip of paper I found in your apartment in the Albany, and a chart of obscure letters and numbers I could make no sense of, at the time. But now I began to speculate whether those numbers might refer to the phases of the moon—and whether that might be the answer. The answer I was seeking, and that you had already found.”

  He stops, but still the Baron is not to be drawn.

  “All the way across on the steamer, hour after hour, as I followed your trail, I followed your mind. And it came to me eventually, what must have happened. I think all those years of study led you to conclude that those age-old superstitions had at their heart a vital grain of truth. And it was then—at that very moment—that you first heard about Lucy Causton, and when you travelled to England to meet her, what you discovered came upon you with the force of a revelation. Not only were the symptoms of her mental condition particularly marked at the moment of full moon, but she suffered also from a severe form of chlorosis, moreover her menses coincided exactly with the lunar cycle, such that her blood ran unnaturally thin at the very moment when her affliction was most manifest. And as your theory took shape, you began to posit a direct relationship between thinness of the blood, and lunacy, and the influence of the moon. And you believed you had, at last, found the answer to all your years of searching. Why the symptoms of mental distress are always most pronounced when the moon is at the full; why those symptoms abate so noticeably if the sufferer is kept indoors, secluded from all exposure to its rays; and why—above all—those who are most prey to these conditions are young women, whose bodies ebb and flow to the same monthly cycle as the moon and the tides. Am I correct, thus far?”

  The Baron’s eyes narrow, but he says nothing. And if Charles’s tone has been coolly objective thus far, there is a treacherous silkiness to his voice now. “And then, of course, it all began to make sense to me. Why you purchased the scarificator only after you had met Lucy Causton. Why you sought out those girls in London, and bled them so brutally. Why they died, all of them, at full moon. And why you dismembered their bodies when you had finished with them. I never could understand why we found no trace of what you removed—rats and dogs might have accounted for the missing hearts, but the heads? Surely some vagrant or scavenger would have come upon those by now. But they were never there to be found, were they? You kept them—kept them and brought them back with you in those boxes the steward at the Albany saw loaded onto your carriage. Carefully preserved in ether so that you could dissect them here, at your leisure, and prepare your proof. Because that’s what you wanted with those girls, wasn’t it. Proof. Incontrovertible physical evidence to substantiate your theory. To force the establishment whose approval you so desperately crave, to take you seriously. To acknowledge you as a true scientist.”

  The Baron laughs sardonically. “This ludicrous diatribe proves one thing and one thing only, and that is the lamentable depths of your own ignorance. For all your claims to scientific understanding you are nothing but a dilettante—a rank amateur—”

  Charles comes closer now, step by slow menacing step. “I may be a mere amateur but I know that no scientific enquiry, however high-minded, however well intentioned, gives the man who undertakes it the right to use other human beings as you do—to behave as if they were some baser form of life without rights or lives of their own—to cut them open like animals on the vivisection table while the blood is still warm in their veins—”

  And now, finally, his fury fires fury in return.

  “I paid those damn whores and paid them well, and all of them—all of them, I tell you—left my apartment alive. They are still on the streets plying their squalid trade, for all that I, or you, or that uncouth policeman Wheeler know of the matter. Yes, I bled them, but it was in the interests of medicine—in the interests of science. But as to the rest of what you allege, Maddox, I deny absolutely doing any such thing—it would be the act of a madman—”

  He stops, for Charles is smiling now, in the coolly triumphant manner of a chess player who has just manoeuvred his opponent into a trap of his own making.

  “So you admit it. Those girls were in your apartment in the Albany. At last, we are making some progress. Let us assume, then, for a moment, that you are telling the truth. That when you were done with them, you let them go, even if in so weakened a state they could scarcely walk. Perhaps you could explain to me—as a mere amateur—what use such an experiment could possibly be. I can only assume you wished to see if it was possible to induce a hysterical episode—whether a thinness of the blood, artificially engendered, could make an otherwise healthy young woman susceptible to the influence of the moon. Leaving aside whether such a procedure is in any way justifiable, its scientific method is surely utterly flawed—you would have to observe them over weeks, months even, and with no knowledge of their previous state of health—what valid conclusions could you possibly draw in but a few hours—”

  “You know nothing about it,” snaps the Baron. “Nothing at all.”

  Charles smiles again. “That may indeed be true. But there are other things I do know. I spoke of my uncle’s message, but I did not tell you all it contained. He told me—and I am sure you will correct me if I am wrong—that Causton first came upon your name in the pages of a journal. A journal which gave an account of other experiments you had undertaken; experiments of quite a different order, and quite a different purpose.”

  “That is entirely irrelevant,” says the Baron, but he has turned away now and will not meet Charles’s eye.

  “On the contrary, it could not be more relevant. Because it explains something that has puzzled me ever since that night you had me attacked—”

  The Baron turns on him. “Attacked? What kind of a man do you take me for?”

  But Charles will not be distracted. “I have only fitful memories of that night. And for a long time I distrusted even those, fearing my own mind had deceived me, but there was one thing I could trust, and that was my own handwriting. I wrote something in my notebook before it happened—three initials, and a number, that was all. It could have meant anything, or nothing. But as soon as I saw the word journal in that wire from my uncle, it all came back to me. It was something I’d seen here, something I read here. In that room upstairs. In the Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for 1847.”

  He turns to replace the piece of ore carefully in its case and then faces the Baron once more. “I cursed the delay at Paris, but it gave me time—time to go to the Bibliothèque Nationale and find that article again. You think you’ve found it, don’t you? The secret that eluded the alchemists. The occult energy that animates the universe. The Holy Grail of all science for over a thousand years. And it is your work that will reveal it, your name that future generations will revere. Yours is the one great unifying theory that explains everything—not just the madness of lunacy, but all those other things you talked of—the aurora borealis, the ancient temples of standing stone, the ghostly apparitions seen at graves. That’s why you were so interested in the Forman papers in the Ashmole bequest, and that’s why you experimented on those girls. Because you want to know why Lucy Causton can perceive that energy—make that darkness visible—while others can see nothing but the night. You wanted to find out what it is that makes her so special—whether it’s the thinness of her blood that so sharpen
s her perceptions, or some other quality that only ‘sensitives’ like her possess. She isn’t the only one, is she? There have been others with her precious gift. That young Dutch woman whose mangled body was found under your walls, that girl I heard with you here in the castle—the girl you denied was ever here. This science you practice is as much a Moloch as the vilest superstition, and I will not allow Miss Causton to be the fodder for it.”

  They stare at each other, all pretence at an end. Charles can see the blood pulsing under the Baron’s eyes, and the clench of the thin cadaverous fists.

  “You are not the first,” the older man spits, a line of saliva hanging from his sallow teeth, “to come here flinging wild and unfounded allegations in my face. Others have stood where you are now and accused me of even more evil crimes. But whatever you or others believe, I am not a fiend. My work strives for the good of mankind, and no such advance has ever come without a price.”

  “Whether that is true or not, you have no right to force others to pay that price—others who do not even know what you are asking of them. That last young woman—the one you mutilated in the Vine Street morgue—she had a child. A child no-one has since been able to find.”

  The Baron makes a dismissive gesture. “That brat, if she lives, will become nothing better than the trash her mother was. And I say again, I have mutilated no-one, and as for contemplating such an act in the precincts of a police-station—” He smiles a thin smile. “I may be many things, Mr Maddox, but I am not a fool.”

  There must be something in Charles’s face, for the balance between them seems suddenly to shift.

  And it is the Baron’s turn, now, to advance in menace. “You will leave my house, Mr Maddox, and you will not return. My work, and those who assist me in it, are none of your concern. You will not be warned again. You, of all people, know of what I am capable, if I believe myself threatened.”

  “I will go to the authorities—I will tell them what you are doing here—”

  The Baron laughs. “And you think they would believe you? They would think it the ravings of a lunatic. And then they would consult their records and see that you have only recently been released from the Melk asylum. Indeed, they might consider it their duty to have you returned there—that the madhouse is the only fit place for one so prey to dangerous delusions. Are you prepared to take such an enormous risk?”

  “I will not leave without Miss Causton. I will not leave her here to die.”

  “I have more of a care for that young woman than you can ever know.” The Baron is so close now that Charles can smell his breath. “She has a rare gift—an extraordinary talent. I will see no harm comes to her, you may be sure of that. And you may tell her father so. Not that he merits such consideration—he is nothing but a jumped-up charlatan who uses her for his own ends.”

  “You can stand there and say that, when you are doing the same, and worse—when you have used her in the foulest possible way—”

  And then there is a knock at the door and the tension that has been winding tighter and tighter between them snaps like a severed spring.

  “Freiherr—”

  It is the man in spectacles, and he is insistent. The Baron throws Charles a venomous look and strides to the door. After he and the servant have conferred in lowered voices, he gestures back towards Charles as he leaves, saying, loudly and in English, “See that he is escorted off the premises. And then release the dog.”

  The man holds the door open, and Charles hesitates, but then follows him out of the room. As he descends the stairs he sees that the Baron is leading a young man into the library, a young man in a long coat and carrying a leather bag. Charles cannot see his face. But there is something—some vague memory that snags at him.

  Out on the causeway the air is fresh and clean after the suffocating atmosphere inside, and he stands a moment taking deep breaths down into his lungs, and wondering what the hell he is going to do next.

  And he may not be the only one. I imagine you might very well be wondering why Charles seems to have capitulated so easily. Why he did not stand his ground, just then, and refuse to leave until he had seen the girl he has travelled so far to find. After all, he would have been more than a match for the Baron’s nervous assistant, had he chosen to take him on. No, there is some other reason for his wavering. Something, perhaps, in what the Baron said to him, that gave him pause. About that breakin at the Vine Street morgue and how only a fool would do such a thing. And that is, in truth, the strangest, most inexplicable part of the whole affair, the one element of the case that Charles cannot fit into his new theory. Because if he’s right, and it’s science that is at the heart of this—if it was a thirst for knowledge that killed those girls, and not a thirst for blood—then Charles has to accept that the Baron’s logic holds. However insane Von Reisenberg’s theories, however callous his exploitation of those girls, he would never have imperilled his great discovery by taking so great a risk.

  The moon is bleaching the world black and white, and the only colour in the landscape is the yellow glow of the lamp burning in the window of the little chapel at the foot of the causeway. The light casts long shadows across the gravestones, across the ancient memorials crumbling into decay, and that one tomb that is so much newer than all the rest, watched over by its exquisite carved angels and wreathed about with fresh flowers. Charles frowns. Fresh flowers? Then he starts down the causeway, slowly at first and then with quickening pace. He pushes open the wooden gate and wades through the damp and springy grass to the grave. The flowers are luminous in the light, spiked and star-like, their heavy odour pungent in the air. Pungent, and unmistakeable. For Charles knows suddenly what these flowers are, and why they’ve been placed here. But it’s only when he reads the epitaph on the stone that the final piece falls into place at last. For this is not the first time he has read this surname. It is the same one that is printed on that little slip of white card two inches by three that he still has, even now, in the pocket of his coat:

  WILHELMINA VAN HELSING

  Filia et dilecta soror

  1834–1851

  Requiescat in pacem

  And now he knows. Knows who that young man is who has just entered the castle behind him; knows why those girls were found mutilated in the way they were, and why Rose’s dead body had to be mutilated in its turn, even in the police morgue, and even at such a terrible chance of discovery; knows why Dora Holman’s corpse was dug up and dismembered, and why the young woman buried in this very grave was taken from her coffin and beheaded, barely a week after she died. It was an act not of butchery but mercy, not cruelty but love. Because the young man who did it was her own brother.

  What was it he said to Charles that day, in the serene and sunlit surroundings of the King’s Library? “Those who resort to such methods act only in pity and compassion. To permit the souls of those they love to rest as true dead, and take their place among the angels. Or so such simple people believe.” Charles can still see the smile that accompanied those last words, the smile of the educated, the enlightened, the man of science. But that was all a façade. It is not just the simple peasants on the Von Reisenberg estate who believe the Baron to be nosferatu; Abraham Van Helsing believes it, too. Believes it so wholly and so zealously that he is prepared to desecrate the body of the sister he adored to save her immortal soul.

  For all his lies, and all his cruelties, the Baron was telling the truth when he insisted the girls left his presence alive. And yet he condemned them to death as surely as if he had killed them with his own hands. For the scars he left on their bodies marked them, in Van Helsing’s eyes, as Undead, as those who cannot die, and who can only be prevented from preying on the flesh of the living by the severing of the head and the piercing of the heart. Charles’s mind is racing now, as all becomes finally clear. Van Helsing must have been following the Baron for months, ever since his sister died and he found on her neck the marks he saw as vampire’s teeth. First to Whitby and then to London, and now,
again, to Castle Reisenberg, tireless in his pursuit of the young women he believes the Baron has despoiled, unflinching in his determination to free them from the curse of a deadly eternity. And how bitter the irony that this mission of mercy has made him a murderer—a more monstrous predator than even the Baron Von Reisenberg has been.

  Was Van Helsing still in Austria, when Charles first journeyed to the castle, and did he make it his business to find out who Charles was, and what business had brought him here? And did he follow him in London and contrive that meeting in the King’s Library, in the hope that Charles would put the evidence together and warn the police that a vampire was abroad in the very heart of the metropolis? And when that warning miscarried, did Van Helsing turn in desperation to the Daily News, knowing no newspaper could resist such an extraordinary story? And now Charles’s blood runs cold at the thought of the bag he just saw in the young man’s hand. A bag large enough to conceal all the tools he needs for his butcher work. And it will not be the Baron alone he has come for, but all those he believes he has corrupted—

  Lucy, dear God, Lucy—

  And now he is running, scrambling up the causeway wet with dew and coming to a slithering stop at the castle gate, his heart pounding, not just from exertion but fear. It is not the demon of his memory, not the hell-hound red in eye and maw, but it is a brute all the same. A vast mastiff with a spiked collar, steaming and stinking in the night air. It starts towards him, snarling, but Charles is prepared this time; he takes his gun from his coat and as the shot rings out the dog falls dead, the hot blood streaming down towards Charles’s feet. By the time he gets to the castle door the sound has brought a rush of servants out into the courtyard—as many as Charles has ever seen in this preternaturally quiet and people-less place. But it’s Bremmer he lights on—Bremmer who speaks English.

  “You have to let me in,” he cries, as two of the stable-hands lay fists upon him. “That man who just came here—he’s the brother of the girl who died, isn’t he—the girl from Delft—”