At one time, Noell had thought the cellar a fine place, and it had given him a thrill of excitement to place himself in it, with the stone concealing the trapdoor set firmly in place. It had seemed theft to be a place gravid with magic – magic as white, of course, as its whited walls, but magic nevertheless. It had been stimulating to be among so many fabulous secrets, inscribed on parchment by monkish hands because they were too precious or too dangerous to be trusted to the printing press.
Now, Noell had learned to see the room in a different way – less magical, though arguably no less strange. Now, it seemed to him that the windowed library up above was the storehouse of the world of the orthodox Church, of belief lit by official wisdom. In that world were vampires and common men, alike made by God, alike in adoring God, each in their own particular way a chosen people. It was a world not entirely happy, no doubt, but a world fundamentally at peace with itself; a world reconciled to its order. Here, by contrast, was an underworld, dark and murky, where Gregorians and Gnostics, magicians and alchemists could deposit their whispering voices and discords. In the world glimpsed in the pages hidden here, vampires were the spawn of the devil and common men helpless victims of their outrage – two races constantly at odds, destined to be at war until the Day of Judgement. This world was by no means peaceful, but was instead a veritable palace of Pandemonium, a riot of painful cries forlornly demanding justice, hearing no answer.
Noell no longer liked to read in the cellar. He could see little risk in removing books to the upper room, which was well-lighted, or even to his quarters in the outer court, beyond the private and sacrosanct bounds of the inner abbey. The existence of the secret room was undoubtedly known to every one of the monks, despite the fact that those not supposed to know would never acknowledge the fact. The monastery had few lay visitors, save for the bailiff who conducted its business affairs, and was rarely required to play host to the peripatetic friars who were the secret police force of the vampire-led College of Cardinals. Cardigan was one of the safest places in the nation – which was one reason why Noell was there – and its rules had come to seem overly protective. To his Benedictine hosts, though, the idea of breaking or bending a rule to take advantage of the leniency of circumstance was unthinkable. Obedience was the very core of their existence, and all rules had for them the same force as the rule: the Regula Benedicti.
As he watched the candle-flame flickering in the draught from the ventilation-holes, Noell allowed himself to be distracted from his studies, asking himself yet again why his father might have sent him to a place like this, placing him in the care of a priestly scholar like Quintus. He could not answer the question; his father’s plan, interrupted by his death, remained unexplained.
He looked back at the book which he had been studying. It was the Discoverie of Vampyres, written by the Kentish gentleman Reginald Scot in 1591, following an earlier tract exposing the follies of witchfinding. It was the first substantial treatise on vampirism written in English, and treated with scalding scepticism many popular beliefs regarding the supernatural powers of vampires. It also contained a long speculative essay on the origins of the vampire race. Clearly Scot, a lay scholar who was also an expert in the cultivation of hops, had had access to other forbidden books, including the early editions of that encyclopedia compiled by many hands, The Vampires of Europe, and an English translation of Machiavelli’s book of cunning advice to tyrants, The Vampire Prince.
Why, complained Noell, could I not have been entrusted to the care and tutelage of a man like Scot? Even if he was a man of words, and not action, he was a man of bold words.
Pale slanting sunbeams suddenly streamed in above him as the stone which sealed the cellar was drawn back. Guiltily, he bowed his head over the page, as though he were studying it assiduously, trying to give Quintus the impression that nothing in the world mattered to him more than Scot’s argument to prove the case that vampirism originated in Africa, not in India as Cornelius Agrippa had asserted.
Quintus had brought him a cup of cool ale, which would no doubt have been very welcome had he been tending the cabbages and kale in the kitchen gardens, sweating in the sunlight. In the cold of the cellar, though, he would far rather have had hot tea.
‘The bailiff has gone on his way,’ said the monk. ‘He brought news from the town. The galleon Firedrake limped into the fisherport at Milford Haven two days ago, battered by a great storm off the south of Ireland. She had been chasing the pirate Langoisse, and her captain claims that the pirate’s caravel, dismasted and holed, went down off Cape Clear.’
‘Langoisse!’ exclaimed Noell, then added, dolefully: ‘If’tis true, there will be celebration in Swansea Castle … and when the news reaches London, Prince Richard will likely declare a public holiday.’
Langoisse was the hero – or villain – of many a broadside ballad. The romantic version of his life suggested that he had once been a French aristocrat, darling of the court at Versailles, certain one day to be inducted into the True Aristocracy, but that his enemies had conspired to have him cast down, wrongly convicted of treason. Sentenced to the galleys, he had one day struck a whip-man in protest against his brutality. He had been flogged near to death, and had sworn a curse against the entire Imperium of Gaul. Later, he had led a successful mutiny, and used the captured galley as a pirate ship against the merchant shipping of the Mediterranean. The French and Spanish had both sent ships to hunt him, but he captured one of the finest after a great battle, and became master of the seaways.
Noell had heard a different story in London. It was common knowledge in the Tower that the pirate’s real name was Villiers. Like Noell, this Villiers had been brought up in the Tower, but had been taken into exile by his mother when his father was imprisoned. He had indeed gone to the court in Versailles, to ask the Emperor Charles to intervene on his father’s behalf, but Charles had taken Richard’s part in the quarrel. Later, when Richard had visited Charles’s court, the emperor had tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the two. Villiers, claiming to have been insulted, had tried to challenge the Prince of Grand Normandy to a duel, though the law made all princes immune to such challenges. Some time after, while living in Paris, Villiers was charged with murder. Though he had been in low company of late, he may have been unjustly accused, perhaps by agents of Richard and perhaps by a vampire lady. In any case, he had gone to the galleys. He had indeed become a mutineer, and had taken his captive galley to Malta, where he had kinsmen who were important men in the Order of St. John – the Knights Hospitallers. Although the knights of Malta were loyal to the Imperium of Gaul, and had made themselves great heroes in defending Europe against the Turkish fleet in a great siege, they were also known for being somewhat independent of spirit, and made their living by piracy when the need was there.
Sailing with the Maltese privateers, the man now called Langoisse had learned the arts of seamanship, and established a reputation of his own. The greater part of his piratical exploits involved stealing cargoes from unarmed merchantmen – the small galleys which plodded between the Mediterranean ports were no match for sailing ships in terms of speed. Nevertheless, Langoisse had always been enthusiastic to come into the rougher northern waters where he might prey on English ships, and in so doing offer insult to Prince Richard. Noell guessed that a careful count would probably show that this brave buccaneer had attacked far more herring-fishers than carracks, and had not grown greatly rich by his depredations, but the big slow ships of such navies as vampire princes kept could not put a stop to his activities. Their inability to catch him had been elevated into a legend by his own boasting.
Despite knowing this truer account, Noell considered Langoisse to be a hero. He was, after all, a true rebel against the vampire aristocracy of the Imperium of Gaul. He was a free man, who need not and would not bow the knee to blood-supping masters. The vampire empire was extensive, but its security on land contrasted with its fragility at sea, and on the oceans of the world men could fight vampires on almost eq
ual terms, because vampires could drown as well as bum, and a vampire admiral who went down with his ship would surely die.
Because of this, Noell was troubled by Quintus’s news. If Langoisse was dead, then Noell had to reckon it a tragedy.
‘Perhaps he reached safety,’ he said to the monk. ‘The pirate must have more friends than enemies in Ireland.’
‘Aye,’ said Quintus. ‘But that was a fearful wind blowing across St. George’s channel, as we found when we caught the tail of it ourselves. Dismasted, he would not have been able to steer for Baltimore or Kinsale. On the other hand, the Firedrake’s captain has every reason to hope that the caravel went down, if he is not sure. He will not be lightly forgiven if Langoisse has escaped him – the bailiff says that the pirate had earlier taken a vampire lady from the wreck of the Wanderer, else he’d not have been caught in the storm at all, but would have run for safe harbour when the wind began to blow.’
‘Now that would be a fine tale for a broadside, if any printer dared publish it,’ said Noell. ‘A vampire lady prisoned by a handsome pirate, spirited away to some hot lair in the Canaries, to be wooed or tormented at his whim.’
Of course, no printer could issue such an article legally. The presses in London operated under the strictest supervision of secular and religious authorities, and the Star Chamber was notoriously sensitive to any direct slander against the aristocracy. Vampires were mentioned by name and by race only in the most favourable terms, even in the plays performed in inn-yards and the lyrics of popular songs – though scurrilous versions of such lyrics were often better known than the true ones. But the eyes of the vampires’ agents could not watch every printing press through every hour of every day, and when this rumour reached London, broadsides would appear, as fanciful and as scandalous as their printers cared to make them.
Noell already knew from his years in London how obscene tales of vampires and their human lovers enjoyed wide circulation; he had discovered before coming to Wales that the tale of Edmund Cordery and the Lady Carmilla was becoming well-known, told and told again in the taverns and market-places of Grand Normandy. It had such a glorious end, with Cordery welcoming his own death in order to destroy his lover.
This was one tale of rebellion, though, for which Noell did not care at all, and he would far rather that his father had never been lover to a vampire in the first place, no matter how noble or clever his real intention might have been. Many who had heard the tale were of the opinion that Edmund Cordery had loved the vampire with all his heart and soul, and that his thoughts had turned to murder only after she had rejected him. Even Noell’s mother had harboured that suspicion, else she would not have told him, before he set out on his long journey to Cardigan, to disregard completely any such notion.
‘Tell me, then,’ said Quintus, bringing Noell back from his flight of fancy, ‘what you have learned today from Master Scot.’
Noell looked up into the tall monk’s gaunt face. Despite its leanness it was not a harsh face. Quintus was one who took the admonitions of St. Benedict very seriously, and lived a genuinely ascetic life, but that had not made him mean. He smiled a good deal, and could be very gentle and patient, though he could also be stern. Lately, he had had more occasions to be stern, as Noell’s impatience with his studies had begun to show.
‘That he knows very little,’ replied Noell, with a slight edge to his voice, ‘except that other men know still less.’
Quintus sighed. ‘It is a valuable thing,’ he said, ‘to know where ignorance truly begins. The greatest handicap to the growth of wisdom is not the difficulty of discovering that which we do not know, but the difficulty of forgetting that which we think we know, but is false. Francis Bacon, who was a friend to your father, tells us that there are many idols in the Church of Knowledge, which must be cast down if we are to clear the way to the truth.’
Noell had often sat on Francis Bacon’s knee in the days when he was a tiny child. That somehow made it difficult for him to maintain a proper reverence for the philosopher’s views.
‘The end of scholarship is surely not to debate where it was that vampires first walked upon the earth,’ said Noell. ‘The true end is to discover a way by which they might be destroyed. If the world is to be made ready for the return of Christ, it must be purged of the minions of Satan.’
Quintus frowned at this reply. He knew that Noell was no Gregorian, nor even a believer, and that his invocation of the name of Christ was entirely for dramatic purposes. Noell realised that he was causing his mentor some pain by trying to use his beliefs to taunt him, but Quintus did not pause for an apology, let alone demand one.
‘My son,’ he said. ‘You cannot properly fight evil unless you first understand evil. That is a truth we have too long neglected. The power of armed might is lessened by ignorance no less than the power of prayer. Satan operates by the permission of God, in order that we may understand what evil is – how could we reject evil and become good if we had no opportunity to understand it?’
‘My father said the same,’ Noell admitted. ‘The vampires rule us first and foremost because they terrify us. We cannot learn to hate them in a level-headed way, unless we know exactly what they are and what they are not. It is good that Scot reduces them, by his argument, to a lesser stature than they have in the fearful imagination. It is no better to think of them as the progeny of Satan than to think of them as the favoured sons of God. Common men they are not, but men they are, and only men – we must learn to hate them as men, and then defeat them.’
Quintus was not entirely happy with this answer, and Noell knew it. He sometimes wondered whether Quintus would have preferred not to hate the vampires at all, remembering Christ’s advice that men should love even their enemies. But even Quintus must be at a loss to suggest how the evils of vampire rule might be set aside without the assistance of hate.
‘Judgement, ’ said Quintus, ‘must in the end be left to God.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Noell, ‘but for myself, I would rather believe that they who can feel no pain deserve no pity.’
TWO
Noell’s bedroom was in the almonry. It had its own separate stair, so that he might come and go without being seen by other lay guests, on the very rare occasions that the abbey played host to such, or by the businessmen who sometimes had dealings there. He did not bother to conceal himself from the poor who came for gifts of food, or from the almoner’s boys who helped to dole out such charity, because none among them could possibly know that he was not what he seemed, but he hid from all who might wonder at his presence. For this reason, he was usually alert even while he rested, anxious to catch any noise of hoofbeats on the road, or any commotion in the outer court, and he slept lightly enough that any disturbance of the silence would normally wake him.
In the dark night which followed the night of the great storm, though, Noell was sleeping more soundly than usual, and when he was startled from his slumber he was too confused to know immediately what it was that had disturbed him.
Had there been a cry? Was it one of the almoner’s boys whose fearfully raised voice had woken him? Or had it been a dream?
He could not tell; by the time he was fully awake the cry, if cry it was, had been stifled. He lay still for a while, listening, and was almost sure that he had been dreaming when he heard the sudden sound of many footsteps, as though a number of men were hurrying through the precincts of the gatehouse.
Immediately, he sat up in bed. Fearfully, he strained his ears to hear more, and heard steps approaching from the direction of the cloister, which told him that the monks were alert to the presence of strangers. No doubt the abbot would be summoned.
He rose from his pallet, and put on his clothes. The thought upper-most in his mind was that Richard’s men had discovered his where-abouts, and had come to capture him. There were, no doubt, a hundred explanations which might account for the noise, but something was wrong. Few guests came to claim their right of shelter at this remote religious hous
e, and they were not inclined to arrive at dead of night.
Noell crept from his room, and began to make his way through the dark corridor to a window, where he could look down into the court, to judge what was afoot.
Before he reached the window, though, he heard a furtive foot upon the outer stair, and knew that someone was coming up as silently as he could. He turned, as quietly as he was able, intending to go to the other stair, but it was too late; he had given himself away. He was seized before he had taken three steps, dragged back from the doorway of his room, and bundled along the passage.
There was light upon the stair, from candles burning low, but it was difficult to turn to look at his captor, because his shirt was held tight at the collar, choking him. His struggles were impotent against his captor’s greater strength. He caught a glimpse as he twisted, of a dark and terrifying face, scarred and bearded, which might have been a demon in some nightmarish Dutch painting of Hell. Its most horrible feature was the seeming absence of a nose; there appeared instead to be an ugly patch, like a huge wart.
He was hurried by this monster – who must have been a tall and powerful man to handle him so casually – down the steps, and out into the courtyard.
There was already a great crowd in the open space, some of them hurrying past the brewhouse to the cloister, where laymen did not belong, others guarding the gate, which stood open. There was no doubt that these were laymen, who had no right to go where they were going, but Noell could not tell what might be happening. He was shoved and harried along the pavement, through the arch into the inner precinct. He was not the only one who was subject to such unceremonious treatment, for the three boys who served the almoner were being likewise led, by captors hardly less brutal in appearance than the one which held him, though they were smaller of stature. Their clothes were stained and ragged, and they carried pistols which they clapped to the heads of their prisoners, demanding silence.
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