Empire of Fear

by Brian Stableford

  There was no need to lie now, and there was a delicious sense of freedom in that knowledge. There was a joy in being able to face her, at last, quite naked in his thoughts, and unashamed. ‘Yes, my Lady,’ he said, faintly. ‘I had missed the knife. Its touch rekindled flames in my soul, where I had thought to find mere embers.’

  She had closed her eyes again, to allow herself to wake slowly. She laughed. ‘It is pleasant, sometimes, to return to forsaken pastures. Thou canst have no notion how a particular taste may stir congenial memories. I am glad to have seen thee again, in this way. I had grown quite used to thee as a grey mechanician. But now … the flush of youth is upon thy countenance.’

  He laughed, as lightly as she, but the laugh turned to a cough and something in the sound alarmed her. She opened her eyes and raised her head, turning to face him.

  ‘Why, Edmund,’ she said, ‘thou’rt as hot as fire!’

  She reached out to touch his cheek, and snatched her hand away again when she found it unexpectedly strange and dry. A blush of confusion spread across her own silken features, removing just for an instant that magical glamour which marked her for what she was.

  He took her hand, and held it, looking steadily into her eyes. ‘Edmund,’ she said, softly. ‘What hast thou done?’

  ‘I cannot be sure what will come of it,’ he said, ‘and I do not think that I will live to find out whether I have succeeded, but I have tried to kill thee, my Lady.’

  He was pleased by the way her mouth gaped in astonishment. He watched disbelief and anxiety mingle in her expression, as though fighting for control of her features. She did not call out for help.

  ‘This is nonsense,’ she whispered.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps it was also nonsense which we talked last evening. Nonsense about treason. Thou knowest only too well that it was a doomed man which thou took to thy bed. Why didst ask me to make the microscope, my Lady, when to make me a party to such a secret was to sign my death warrant?’

  ‘Oh, Edmund,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘Thou couldst not think that it was I who decided it. I have tried to protect thee from the Lord Lieutenant’s fears and suspicions. It was because I was once thy protector that I was made to bear the message. What hast thou done, my poor traitor?’

  He began to reply, but the words turned into a fit of coughing.

  She sat upright, wrenching her hand away from his enfeebled grip, and looked down at him as he sank back upon the pillow.

  ‘For the love of God!’ she cried, as fearfully as any true believer. ‘It is the plague: the plague out of Africa!’

  He tried to answer, wishing to congratulate her on her lucky guess, but could only nod his head as he fought for breath.

  ‘But there was no sign of any sickness on the Freemartin,' she protested. ‘They would have held the ship by the Essex coast, but there was no trace of plague among her crew.’

  ‘The disease kills men too quickly,’ said Edmund, in a shallow whisper. ‘But animals can carry it in their blood for much longer, before they die.’

  ‘You cannot know this?’

  Edmund managed a small laugh. ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘I am a member of that Fraternity which interests itself in everything which might kill a vampire. This information came to us in good time for us to arrange delivery of other animals, as well as those which brave Prince Richard demanded as symbols of his valour. When we asked for them, we had not in mind the means of using them which I have employed, but more recent events …’ Again he was forced to stop, unable to draw sufficient breath to sustain the thin whisper.

  The Lady Carmilla put her hand to her throat, swallowing as if she expected to feel evidence already of her infection.

  ‘Thou wouldst destroy me, Edmund?’ she asked, as though she genuinely found it difficult to believe.

  ‘I would destroy you all,’ he told her. ‘I would bring disaster, turn the world upside down, to end your rule … we will not allow you to stamp out learning itself to preserve your cruel empire. Order must be fought with chaos, and chaos is come among you, my lady, ne’er to be subdued again. Where’er your kind will sup, ’twill be the blood of martyrs that is spilt. With all my heart, I curse your kind … despite that I have loved thee, lady mine.’

  When she tried to rise from the bed he reached out to restrain her, and though there was no power left in him, she allowed herself to be checked. The coverlet fell away from her, to expose her breasts as she sat upright. Her skin had the polished brightness of a marble statue, such as those giants among common men, the Greeks, once made with such consummate artistry.

  ‘The boy dies for this, Master Cordery,’ she said. ‘His mother too.’ ‘They are gone,’ he told her. ‘Noell went directly from your table to the custody of the society which I serve. By now, they are beyond your reach. Richard will never find them, for the true extent of his realm is less than the precincts of this castle. Common men may easily hide among common men, and you cannot find what you cannot truly see.’

  She stared at him, and now he could see the beginnings of hate and fear in her stare. ‘You came here last night to bring me poisoned blood,’ she said. ‘In the hope that this new disease might kill even me, you condemned yourself to death. What did you do, Edmund?’

  He reached out again to touch her arm, and was pleased to see her flinch and draw away, because he had become dreadful in her eyes.

  ‘Only vampires live forever,’ he told her hoarsely. ‘But anyone may drink blood, if they’ve the stomach for it. I took full measure from my two sick rats, and I pray to God that the seed of this fever is raging in my blood, and in my semen too. You have received full measure, my lady … and you are in God’s hands now like any common mortal. I cannot know for sure whether you will catch the plague, or whether it will kill you, but this unbeliever is not ashamed to pray. Perhaps you might pray too, my lady, so that we may know how the Lord prefers one unbeliever to another.’

  She looked down at him, her face becoming masklike in its steadiness, so that she was indeed like a statue of some unkind goddess.

  ‘I trusted thee once,’ she whispered, ‘and I might have made Richard trust thee now, had thou not chosen to be guilty. Thou couldst have become a vampire. We might have shared the centuries; lovers forever.’

  This was dissimulation, and they both knew it. Vampires did not love vampires. They could not; time, it seemed, killed that kind of love. Only mortal blood could feed a vampire, and a vampire must have that food. Edmund could not pretend to know why these things were true, but he did not doubt that they were. He had been Carmilla Bourdillon’s lover, and then had ceased to be, and had grown older for so many years that now she remembered him as much in his son as in himself. Her promises were hollow, and she must have realised as he looked at her that she could not even taunt him with them. There was not a pang of regret to be wrung from him.

  From beside the bed she took up the small silver knife which she had used to let his blood. She held it now as if it were a dagger, not a delicate instrument to be plied with care and love.

  ‘I thought that thou still loved me,’ she told him.

  That at least, he thought, might be true.

  He actually put his head further back, to expose his throat to the expected thrust. He wanted her to strike him - angrily, brutally, passionately. He had nothing more to say.

  He knew that his motives had been mixed, and that he genuinely did not know whether it was merely loyalty to his cause which had made him submit to this extraordinary experiment, or whether there was in what he had done a fury against this perfect lady, who had outgrown his love.

  It did not matter, now.

  She cut his throat, and he watched her for a few long seconds while she stared at the blood which gushed precipitately from the wound.

  I was right, he thought. No pity at all.

  But then he saw her put stained fingers to her lips, knowing what she knew … and he realised that after her own particular fashion, she did still lo
ve him.

  PART TWO

  The Shadow of Eternity

  ‘Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

  ‘Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

  ‘For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

  ‘He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him … ’

  (John 7:53—56)

  PROLOGUE

  The de-ciphered text of a letter received by Sir Kenelm Digby at Gayhurst in the summer of 1625.

  Cardigan Abbey, June 1625

  My friend,

  I am not yet accustomed to the cipher with which you haue entrusted me, but I shall not allow myself to be content with a short missive on that account. If this is the language of the Invisible College, then I am ardent to master it, for my one mission is to serve that College well. It is what my father hoped for me, and it is what I now must hope for myself.

  I have found Cardigan very different from the other places where I have stayed. It seems hardly to be a part of the same realm as London, and one could easily believe that it lay altogether beyond the bounds of the Imperium of Gaul. To hear the ordinary folk talk – when they condescend to use the English which I can understand – one might think that this was still Ceredigion, the Kingdom of Elphin, where Taliesin was found. Of course there are no druids any more, nor bards either, but the motto of the Bardic Order is still quoted as if it carried the allegiance of all: Y Gwir yn erbyn y Byd; which means, The Truth against the World.

  I suppose there are worse watchwords which a man might adopt.

  The monks of the Abbey who are my hosts are certainly no Gregorians, and do not seem to hate the vampires, but they observe a privacy in their faith which all but disowns the authority of Rome – and hence ignores the pronouncements of the Borgia pope. There were Christian churches in Wales, so they say, before Augustine came to Britain to convert the Saxons, and the Saxons once converted then set out to slaughter the Welsh monks in the name of Rome. In a place such as this, a thousand years is not sufficient to wipe out the memory of a grudge; there is little writing here to make old news stale, and the tales passed down by word of mouth from father to son (or from abbot to novice) remain forever fresh in the telling.

  I can only judge, from what I have seen here, that the Abbey is not flourishing – though I do not know how much this reflects the independent spirit of the monks. I dare say that if heresy-hunting Dominicans were sent here they might find cause for displeasure, but I cannot imagine that these amiable and pious men would bring down any reasonable wrath upon themselves. I think the lack of novices may have more to do with the general apostasy which has been rotting the faith ever since the vampires turned it upside-down, and made it plain to all Christendom that mere power is the governor of doctrine.

  Whatever the reason, there are but twenty monks here, who employ a single bailiff to look after their business. One of the brothers must serve as almoner, and though he has three boys to help him in his work it does not seem to me that any of them is determined to take Holy Orders himself. There are no lay workmen in the Abbey, not even in the brewery, and the monks cultivate very little land of their own, leasing the rest of their small estate to tenant farmers. They have few visitors to put a claim on their charity, though they help a good many of the poor men and women of the town – which is called Aberteifi by all its citizens, save for the petty nobles and soldiers who live in the castle.

  I pay for my keep here by performing certain duties within the monastery. I had initially hoped to make some contribution by the mechanical arts which I had begun to learn as my father’s apprentice, but the monks have some tool-making skill themselves, and have no use for those pumps and tuming-machines which were my father’s pride and joy. The only trick which I have been able to put to use here is to show the monks how to make a weight-driven clockwork jack which will turn the roasting-spit before the kitchen fire, relieving the almoner’s boys of the sometimes-painjul task of acting as turnspit.

  The outcome of this inspiration, has been that I am put to work in the kitchen, helping Brother Martin and Brother Innocent to prepare the prandium and the coena each noon and evening. When the brothers are at vespers I am in sole charge of the kitchen, but by then the day’s work is almost done, the bread having been taken from the ovens, and nothing left within but custards in pastry cases. My time is mostly spent in carrying water from the well, or in watching the cauldrons simmer.

  I do most of my studying in the library, which is a plain room but not uncomfortable. The forbidden books are kept in a cellar beneath a hidden trapdoor. I grow weary of my lessons in Latin and Greek, and the study of books which were written before there were vampires in Europe. I want to know my enemy, that I may learn to fight him, but Q insists that I must become a man of learning before I endeavour to set my learning to special use.

  Q is a strange person, and I do not understand why my father ordered that I be given into his care. I know that my father was an unbeliever, and it seems remarkable that he should have appointed a monk to be my guardian, even a monk who is more than a little sceptical of certain items of dogma. It is not that I question Q’s wisdom, for I am quite ready to believe that he is the wisest man in Gaul, but I cannot quite perceive his position within the Invisible College. He seems so detached and calm, less than fervent in his opposition to vampire rule.

  Q is no more a Gregorian than the monks who live here, though he is no more a Roman either. He is a guest here, as am I, and has no special intimacy with our hosts by virtue of his cloth. He is an outsider, respected for his learning, but kept distant. He does not seem to mind this in the least, being a man much wrapped up in his own thoughts, and although he is not a big man – I outweigh him by at least two stones, now that I am nearly full-grown – I think he is very strong of constitution and character.

  I understand, now, why my father kept so much hidden from me. I know that it was to protect me that he would not let me share his secrets until the very end, and would not tutor me in treason. But the result of his carefulness is that I have grown up hardly knowing him at all, and I cannot discover what might have been in his mind when he laid down the instructions which you have faithjully followed. I would far rather be at G——than here, though I know that if I were I would be inviting danger to your household as well as to mine. The fact that I am now parted from my mother makes things even harder to bear. Of course I am a man now, and no longer a child, but to find myself so utterly removed from all that I have known is a trial. Perhaps it is not right that I should air complaints before you, who lost your own father at a much earlier age; but I cannot help but wish, sometimes, that my father had met a martyrdom as manifest as the one which yours suffered. There is too much that I cannot fathom regarding his life and his motives.

  I am anxious for action. I am beginning to think that I was not cut out to be a scholar, and though I know that you combine with ease the arts of the scholar and the skills of the fighting man, I do not know whether I dare try to be a man of so many parts. If it were to come to a choice, I think that I might rather be a swordsman, to pit myself against the vampires in open combat, than a cunning man striving to defeat them by stealth. That is not what my father imagined for me – but did my father know me any better than I knew him? How can I trust that he knew best what path of life I should follow?

  I wish that I were not a hunted outlaw, so that I might go my own way, instead of looking to others to hide and take care of me. Sometimes, I look out over the sea, watching the herring-ships, and the fluyts which collect the lead from the nearby mines, and think of taking passage for some alien land, where no one has ever heard my name, there to make a career of adventuring. But you will doubtless think me foolish, and that the child in me is slow to yield to the man.

  Even Q sometimes watches the sh
ips with a curious light in his eye, and I have heard him say that the vampires’ fear of the sea is one more nail in the coffin of their dying empire. He argues that the big sailing ships which ply the northern seas are marking out a new empire, which the land-loving vampires cannot own. Sometimes he stares westward as if he were looking across the world, to that lost Atlantis which some men believe might still exist on the far shore of the ocean, between Ireland and distant Cathay. The other monks, though, think he is mad to speculate about undiscovered continents, and I believe some of them are not yet reconciled to the belief that the world is round. When they look westward, their dreams are of lost cities and fortresses which are said to have been drowned by the sea in Elphin’s time. There are many tales to be heard hereabouts of sea-sprites more beautiful than vampire ladies which haunt such lost estates, sometimes tempting foolish mariners to leap from the safety of their decks to the merciless embrace of the sea. I have never heard such sirens calling, though, and I trust that I never will.

  But I must not trouble you with my discontents, which can only make you weary. I hope that in future time I will write you letters with more substance in them, and more of a cargo of joy. In the meantime, I beg you to see that my mother is well cared for, and will let her know that I am hale and hearty in my exile. I do not often pray, for I cannot bring myself to believe that the prayers of men are anywhere in Heaven heard, but when I do, I pray for you, and for my mother, and for the deliverance of England. If there is in truth a God, I am sure that my doubting Him will not prevent His giving just attention to my pleas.

  Fare well.

  N

  ONE

  In the cellar beneath the library of the Benedictine monastery at Cardigan, Noell Cordery looked up from the book which he had been studying. He rubbed his tired eyes. Although it was barely four o’clock, and the summer sun still stood high in the sky, he was forced to read by candlelight, because the room had no window. Indeed, the cellar had no official existence; it was where the forbidden books were kept.