Empire of Fear

by Brian Stableford

  ‘You know that is not so, Master Cordery,’ she said levelly. ‘You have seen me ill.’

  ‘It was a pox which killed many common men, my lady, yet it gave to you no more than a mild fever.’

  ‘There are reports from the captains of Dutch ships, and from the master of the Freemartin, that the plague which has been raging in Africa has now reached the southern regions of the Imperium of Gaul. It is said that this plague makes little distinction between common man and vampire.’

  ‘Rumours, my lady,’ said Edmund, soothingly. ‘You know how news becomes blacker as it travels. I doubt that this disease is half as bad as it is painted by travellers’ tales.’

  The Lady Carmilla turned again to Noell, and this time addressed him by name so that there could be no opportunity for Edmund to usurp the privilege of answering her. ‘Are you afraid of me, Noell?’ she asked.

  The boy was startled, and stumbled slightly over his denial.

  ‘You must not lie to me,’ she told him. ‘You are afraid of me, because I am a vampire. Master Edmund Cordery is a sceptic, and must have told you that vampires are not such marvellous magicians as some believe. But he must also have told you that a vampire lady can do you harm if she wills it. Would you like to be a vampire yourself, Noell?’

  Noell hesitated before replying, but said: ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Of course you would,’ she purred. ‘All humans would become vampires if they could, no matter how they might pretend when they bend their knee in church and thank God for making them what they are. And men can become vampires; immortality is within our gift. Thus, we have always enjoyed the loyalty and devotion of the greater number of our common subjects. We have rewarded that devotion in fair measure. Few have joined our ranks, but many have enjoyed the fruits of our favours. Even the nobles among the common men, which you call in England earls and baronets, have much to thank us for, because we are always generous to those we love.’

  ‘I have told him the same thing, my lady,’ Edmund assured her.

  ‘I could not doubt it,’ said the Lady Carmilla. ‘And yet, had I asked you whether you earnestly desired to be a vampire, you would not have said yes. Am I correct?’

  ‘I am content with my station, my lady,’ said Edmund. ‘It is all that I have desired. I am not nobly born, even among the common folk.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Your first delight was always to shape things with your hands, to work with metal and with fire, to make new things, and learn all you could of the mechanical arts. You have done well, Edmund, and I am sure that you have sung our praises to your son, and told him what excellent masters we are.

  ‘Have you explained to him how the vampire princes rescued Europe from a Dark Age, and that as long as vampires rule, barbarism will always be held in check? No doubt you have told him, rightly, that our rule has not always been kind, and that we tolerate no defiance, but that we are just as well as hard. It would have been far worse, would it not, for Gaul to remain subject to those terrible mad emperors of Rome?’

  ‘I fear, my lady, that my duties have made it difficult for me to supervise my son’s education,’ replied Edmund, ‘but he has had the best tutors in the court to teach him Latin and Greek, and rhetoric and history.’

  ‘And I am sure that he learnt his lessons well,’ said Carmilla, turning again to face Noell. ‘Even so,’ she said, softly, ‘there are men who would upset our rule, and destroy us – did you know that?’

  Noell did not know how to reply to this, and simply waited for her to continue. She seemed a little impatient with his gracelessness, and Edmund deliberately let the awkward pause go on. He had seen that his interruptions would not dissuade her. Perhaps, he thought, there was a certain advantage in allowing Noell to make a poor impression.

  ‘There is an organization of rebels,’ the lady went on, ‘ambitious to discover the mysterious way by which vampires are made. They put about the idea that they would make all men immortal, if only they could discover how it might be done, but this is a lie, and foolish. The members of this secret society seek power for themselves.’

  The vampire lady paused to ask for a new bottle of wine. Her gaze wandered back and forth between the gauche youth and his self-assured father.

  ‘The loyalty of your family is, of course, beyond question,’ she eventually continued. ‘No one understands the workings of society better than a mechanician, who knows how forces must be balanced, and how the different parts of a machine of state must interlock and support one another. Master Cordery knows how the cleverness of rulers resembles the cleverness of clockmakers, do you not, Edmund?’

  ‘Indeed I do, my lady,’ replied Edmund.

  ‘There might be a way,’ she said, in a strangely distant tone, ‘that a good mechanician might earn a conversion to vampirism.’

  Edmund was wise enough not to interpret this as an offer or a promise. He accepted a measure of the new wine, and said: ‘My lady, there are matters which it would be as well for us to discuss in private. May I send my son to his room?’

  The Lady Carmilla’s eyes narrowed a little, but there was hardly any expression in her finely-etched features. Edmund held his breath, knowing that he was trying to force a decision upon her that she had not intended to make so soon.

  ‘The poor boy has not quite finished his wine,’ she said.

  Edmund did not argue. She clearly did not want the boy to go yet.

  ‘Why do you think, Noell,’ she said, ‘that so many common men are opposed to our rule?’

  Edmund looked quickly at Noell, and saw that he was flustered. He wanted to deflect the Lady Carmilla’s attention away from this perverse interrogation, but had already found that he could not do it with polite interventions. He wondered whether she was using the boy to provoke him, or whether she was simply indulging herself in cruel playfulness.

  She was capable of casual cruelty. None knew that better than he.

  ‘Noell cannot know these things,’ he said, his voice now sharper and more insistent. ‘May I be allowed to make the explanation?’

  She raised her eyes, as though in defeat. ‘Very well,’ she said, pretending displeasure.

  ‘Common men,’ said Edmund, ‘believe vampires to be very cruel. They know that vampires are themselves almost immune from pain – that a vampire can become quite indifferent to pain, by an effort of will. They cannot help but be envious of this immunity, when tortures of every horrible kind are prescribed as punishments by law. They see men cast into dark and filthy dungeons, shackled and pinned. They see men flogged. They see hands struck off, and the stumps dipped in boiling pitch. They may not see prisoners stretched on the rack, or broken by the strappado, or torn with pincers, but they know that these things happen in the crypts beneath this very building. They may see executions on Tower Hill, and at Tyburn, if they have the stomach for it.

  ‘You spoke earlier of Kenelm Digby, and whether you intended to or not, you reminded me what happened to his father, whose part in the plot against the prince was but a little one. He and three others, if you will recall, my lady, were lashed to hurdles and dragged by horses a full mile to the scaffold in St. Paul’s churchyard, through streets crowded with onlookers. He was sorely bruised, and cut, and smeared with all manner of filth. No sooner had Sir Everard climbed the ladder, my lady, than Richard’s loyal executioner cut the tightened rope by which he hung, so that he had not even time to become unconscious, let alone to choke to death. Then he was dragged, still bound, to the block, where he was castrated, and his belly cut so that the entrails could be drawn out. Then he was quartered, and his heart cut out to show to the crowd.

  ‘I do not believe, as some have said, that when the executioner declared him an enemy of his own people, Sir Everard’s dead lips pronounced the words “Thou liest!” but I know that he was a good man, who did not deserve to die thus because he gave unknowing succour to rebels.

  ‘Common men, my lady, believe that such things could not happen, were they rule
d by their own kind. Oh, they have heard of Nero and the other mad Romans, but they cannot credit that common men of today, who know the meaning of pain, could subject their fellow men to such ordeals. Christian men have little sympathy for the heathen Turks, but they are sickened by tales of what the Walachian warlord Vlad the Impaler did to his prisoners when he recaptured Byzantium. When our own Richard fought the Saracens, and when Charlemagne made treaty with Haroun al Raschid, things went differently, but these days, which should have become less cruel, have instead become blacker. Alleged Gregorian heretics burn daily throughout Gaul, and when so many men are consigned to the fire, how can others be blamed for wondering whether vampires might indeed be demons?

  ‘That, my lady, is why so many common men detest you. ’

  Edmund glanced at Noell, then, and saw that his son wore an expression of horror, fearful for the fate of a man who could say such things to a vampire’s face. But the Lady Carmilla was not horrified at all. In fact, she laughed aloud, in apparent delight. ‘Oh Edmund,’ she said, ‘I had forgotten what it is to dispute with an honest man!’

  ‘But father,’ said Noell, ‘you only describe what other men might think, do you not?

  ‘My lady knows,’ said Edmund, gently, ‘that I am no Gregorian. I know that she is no demon in disguise. But she also knows that I pity those who must burn to death for mere foolishness, and all those who are hurt only for the sake of hurting them. I would that the world were a kinder place, and I understand why some men think that it never can be, while those who reign over us have no proper understanding of that thing which truly rules all our lives.’

  ‘Which thing is that?’ asked Carmilla, no longer laughing.

  ‘Fear,’ my lady, said Edmund. ‘Only fear. Fear of death itself, but chiefly fear of pain. I think we could all bear to die, even though our masters do not. But men find it hard to suffer pain, in the knowledge that those who inflict such punishment could never be thus punished in their turn.’

  ‘We punish vampires who are guilty of crimes,’ said Carmilla, flatly.

  ‘Oh yes. You kill them, in the ingenious ways by which vampires must be killed. But you do not make them suffer pain, because you cannot. All of your kind are indifferent to pain, unless you choose to feel it. Is that not so?’

  ‘It is so,’ she conceded. ‘But will you tell me, Edmund, whether the greater number of men are any happier in those lands where they are ruled by common lords? You take leave to pity the Turks, but do you not also pity those who were their victims when they ravaged Byzantium? Is there no pain in the world of the Arabs, who likewise cut off the hands of thieves, and execute murderers, and devise cruel tortures – and keep slaves besides! There are no slaves in Gaul, save only for felons and Mohammedans who serve as oarsmen in the galleys.’

  ‘You are right, my lady,’ said Edmund, ‘to remind me that savages are savage. I have no doubt that matters in the heart of Africa stand as ill, though if what is said can be believed, common men may there rule over vampires. But the people of Gaul are Christians, who have heard that they must love one another, and you cannot blame those poor followers of Jesus who think the vampire princes have turned an uncaring ear to that message. They believe that kings who were common men, and understood pain, and were Christians besides, could never do the things which vampire princes do. Perhaps they are wrong, but they believe it.’

  ‘And do you think that they might succeed in taking our place?’ she asked. There was a sharper edge to her voice now.

  ‘I think they might, my lady. Once, all the vampires of Europe were united by the cause of conquest, which took them far into the northern nations, extending the Imperium of Gaul to Denmark and these British isles, and taking Walachia’s boundaries deep into Russia. Afterwards, the vampires of Gaul and Walachia were united by the threat of a common foe: the Turks. But the Turks are chastened now, and have retreated from Byzantium. Now is the time when the vampire-led nations will develop their own rivalries – and an empire divided is an empire which one day must fall.’

  ‘By your own account,’ she replied, coldly, ‘the vampire race can never lack for a common enemy.’

  Edmund smiled, and acknowledged the point by raising his wineglass in salute. Then he glanced, briefly, at Noell, before trying to measure the mood to which the argument had brought the lady.

  ‘I think my son has had wine enough, my lady,’ he said. ‘I will send him away, if you will permit. There is a matter I would discuss with you in private.’

  Carmilla studied him for a few seconds, then waved a languid hand to signal her consent. Noell came quickly to his feet, and took an awkward leave, bowing and blushing. Edmund watched the boy go quite calmly, reacting not at all to Noell’s last apologetic glance in his direction. Edmund knew that Noell would carry out his instructions, and dared not risk suspicion by any hint of an untoward farewell.

  When Noell had gone the Lady Carmilla rose from her seat and went from the dining room into an inner chamber. Edmund followed her.

  ‘Thou art presumptuous, Master Cordery,’ she told him. He marked the change in the manner of address, and knew that the game was all but won.

  ‘I was carried away, my Lady. There are too many memories here.’

  ‘The boy is mine,’ she said, ‘if I so choose.’

  Edmund bowed, but said nothing.

  ‘And wilt thou be jealous of him?’

  ‘Yes my lady,’ said Edmund. ‘I will. But I grow ever older, while he must take his turn to become a man such as I once was; and as for thee … why, the time will be no different, but just the same.’

  ‘I did not ask thee here tonight to make love to thee. Nor was it my intention to begin the seduction of your son. This matter which thou wouldst discuss with me – does it concern science or treason?’

  ‘Science, my lady. As you have said yourself, my loyalty is not in question.’

  Carmilla stretched out upon a sofa, and indicated that Edmund should take a chair nearby. This was the antechamber to her bedroom, and the air was sweet with the odour of fine perfume.

  ‘Speak,’ she bade him.

  ‘I believe that Richard is anxious as to what my little device might reveal,’ he said. ‘But I think you know well enough that a discovery once made is likely to be made again and cannot properly be unmade. Do you want my advice, Lady Carmilla?’ He had changed deliberately to the less intimate form of address, and was perversely pleased to observe that she did not seem to like it.

  ‘Do you have advice to offer, Edmund?’

  ‘I do. Do not try to control the things that are happening in Gaul by terror and persecution. If your rule is as unkind as it has been in the past, you may open the way to destruction. Should the vampires of Grand Normandy be prepared to concede power gradually to a parliament of commoners, they might show the way to a better world; but if instead they strike out, their enemies will surely strike back.’

  The vampire lady leaned back her head, looking at the ceiling. She contrived a small laugh. ‘I cannot take advice such as that to Prince Lionheart,’ she told him. ‘He would not hear it. He rules, in his own estimation, by divine right, according to his code of honour. He is certain that the common people acknowledge the propriety of his claims.’

  ‘I thought as much, my Lady,’ Edmund replied, smoothly. ‘But I had to say what was in my mind.’

  ‘Common men have their own immortality,’ she complained. ‘The Church promises it, and you all affirm it. Your faith tells you that you must not covet the immortality which is ours, and we do no more than agree with you when we guard it so jealously. You must look to Christ for salvation. I think you understand that we could not convert the whole world if we wanted to. Our magic is such that it must be used sparingly. Are you distressed because it has not been offered to you? Are you jealous? Would you become our enemy because you cannot become our kin?’

  ‘Prince Richard has nothing to fear from me, my lady,’ he lied. Then he added, not quite sure whether it was a lie or
not: ‘I loved thee faithfully. I still do.’

  She sat up straight, and reached out a hand as though to stroke his cheek, but he was too far away for her to reach.

  ‘That is what I told Richard,’ she said, ‘when he said to me that thou wert a traitor. I said to him that I could test thy loyalty more keenly in my chambers than his officers in theirs. I do not think thou couldst delude me, Edmund.’

  She rose to her feet, and came to him, and took his face between her hands.

  ‘By morning,’ she told him, gently, ‘I will know whether or not thou art a traitor.’

  ‘That thou wilt,’ he assured her.

  FIVE

  He woke before her, his mouth dry and his forehead burning. He was not sweating; indeed, he was possessed by a feeling of desiccation, as though the moisture was being squeezed from his flesh. His head was aching and the light of the morning sun, which streamed through the unshuttered window, hurt his eyes.

  He pulled himself up to a half-sitting position, pushing the coverlet back from his bare chest.

  So soon! he thought. He had not expected to be consumed so quickly, but he was surprised to find that his reaction was one of relief rather than fear or regret. He had difficulty collecting his thoughts, and was perversely glad to accept that he did not need to do so.

  He looked down at the cuts which she had made on his breast with her little silver knife; they were raw and red, and made a strange contrast with the faded scars whose criss-cross pattern told a story of unforgotten passions. He touched the new wounds gently with his fingers, and winced at the fiery pain.

  I suffer, he thought, but there is virtue in suffering which those who cannot suffer cannot know. Who feels no pain can feel no pity.

  He pitied his sleeping lover, and was proud to do it. ‘We are martyrs both,’ he whispered, very softly. ‘Martyrs both.’

  She woke up then, and saw him inspecting the marks.

  ‘Hast thou missed the knife?’ she asked sleepily. ‘Wert thou hungry for its kiss? Thou may’st delight in its caress, for ’twas lovingly done.’