‘Aye,’ said Noell, quietly.
‘And is there aught in your dusty books which promises to lead you to that secret?’
‘If it were ever written in a book,’ answered Noell, ‘it would be no secret. No common man knows yet how vampires might be made. If anyone did know that secret, it would surely be a man like you, who once had every expectation of reaping that reward.’ The words were not sincerely spoken; there was a sarcastic edge to them. But Noell, somewhat to his own surprise, was not afraid of the pirate, who seemed for the moment anything but wrathful.
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Langoisse. ‘Perhaps I could have learned that secret, if I had made the most of my opportunities. But when I expected to become a vampire, there seemed no urgency, and when it became evident that even my kinsman, the Grandmaster of the Hospitallers, considered me so little as to use me as a common brigand, the secret was far out of reach. It was then but a brief step which made me a rebel against their kind. Do you think that the lady might tell us the secret which we crave, if she could be persuaded?’
‘What powers of persuasion do we have?’ asked Noell. ‘The vampires can overcome pain, and need not yield to torture.’
‘But they can be threatened with death, can they not? A brave man of honour like Richard would never yield to such a threat, of course, but a gentle creature like the lady is surely made of different stuff. Pain is not the whole of torture, and there is much that might be achieved by fear and horror.’
Noell wondered whether the pirate was trying to test his reaction. Langoisse approached him now as a friend, but had no real reason to trust him. Why should the pirate take it for granted that Noell was his ally? For the greater part of his life, Edmund Cordery had played the part of a loyal servant to the vampire race. The fact that he had died in order to kill his lover was not enough to convince everyone that he had all along been a member of the secret society whose purpose was to free Britain from vampire rule.
‘It is said that vampire ladies, and even certain knights, are not permitted to learn the secret by which they are made,’ said Noell, cautiously. ‘The whole rites are said to be known only to the princes and their magicians, and to be well-guarded. If the threat of death were enough to pry the secret loose from any captive vampire, do you think that it could have been kept for a thousand years and more?’
‘Have you heard it said that a common man who drinks a vampire’s blood may become a vampire himself?’
‘I have heard it said. My father told me that it is a lie.’
Langoisse smiled. ‘You do not want to try the experiment, then? You would not like to see what Cristelle d’Urfé might be forced to tell us, or taste what virtue there might be in her blood?’
Noell licked his lips, which seemed very dry. ‘I think not,’ he said. ‘You are a handsome lad,’ said the pirate. ‘My little Maroc is quite taken with you. She is a pretty thing, you must agree. Would you like to be a pirate, and come with me when I go? I’ll make you third mate of my next ship, and you can have the Maroc for your own, if she likes you better than me.’
Noell remembered his yearning for a life of action, but the attractions of piracy seemed to him slighter now than they had then.
‘Come, Master Cordery, ’ said the pirate softly, ‘a lusty lad like you was never meant to be a monk.’
Noell looked down at the Bible which he had been pretending to read, but the open page offered no inspiration. ‘I do not yet know,’ he said, ‘what course I would prefer to follow in my life.’
The pirate smiled, mirthlessly. ‘The offer will still stand, until we leave. Think on it, I pray you. Now I ask again, would you like to see my lady captive, and hear what she has to say?’
Noell could not help but recall the sight of the vampire’s face in the lamplight, and suffered a rush of feeling, which he dared not name. He stood up, and said: ‘If you insist.’
The pirate bowed mockingly, urging the boy to precede him. Noell led the pirate from the library, and walked with him through the desolate and labyrinthine corridors to the penitential cells.
The Turk Selim was standing guard in the anteroom which gave access to the cells, though all the doors were securely barred on the outside. When Langoisse took away the bar from the relevant door, and beckoned Noell to follow him inside, the noseless man remained without. Noell heard the sound of the bar sliding back into its bed, and wondered whether he would be allowed to come out again, when the pirate left.
The Lady Cristelle was sitting on a wide wooden bench which had been brought into the room to serve as a bed. Mary White was not with her, and Noell assumed that she had been put in a different cell in order to deprive the vampire of her donation of blood.
When Langoisse came in the lady shrank back against the cold wall, but though she was certainly ill at ease she was by no means terrified. Her face, so pale as to seem almost luminous, was quite still. Her eyes were not so glazed, now; whatever poison they had used to drug her was wearing off.
‘I see that you are rested,’ said Langoisse. i have brought Master Cordery to see you. You must have known him at court.’
Cristelle turned her dark eyes to Noell, and looked at him curiously. ‘I knew his father,’ she replied. ‘But I do not think I ever saw Master Noell. His father was a handsome man, but he should not have destroyed himself that way for love of a lady. It was a silly thing to do.’
The lady’s voice was low and musical. She seemed less proud and less assertive than the Lady Carmilla, who had died of the plague which she had drunk in Edmund Cordery’s blood, but Noell thought that such humility might simply be the result of her being so far from home. Haughtiness was natural in those who ruled the world when they were safe inside their castles, but she was in a dungeon now.
‘He might help me to question you,’ said the pirate. ‘He is a scholar, and may know better than I what questions we should ask of you. ’
‘I will not answer your questions,’ said the lady, calmly, ‘and you know that there is no compulsion by which you may force me to reply.’
Langoisse turned to Noell. ‘She means, Master Scholar, that she has no fear of pain. But are we to believe that, without a test? Perhaps it is only a lie, which vampires broadcast for their own protection.’
‘All vampires can control pain,’ Noell replied, unwilling to play a part. ‘It is one of the attributes of their nature. Long life, immunity to disease, the healing of wounds that would kill a man. Common men tell all under torture; vampires reveal nothing.’
‘Have you seen that opinion put to the proof, Master Cordery?’ asked the pirate.
Noell shook his head. He felt a slight unease in his stomach as Langoisse took a dagger from his belt. ‘Where would you like to cut her?’ asked the pirate.
Noell would not reach out to take the dagger. It was not because he was frightened of the lady’s curse - if such curses worked, then all who sought to do the vampires harm would have been dead long ago - but his awe of common mankind’s masters was still sufficient to make the futile gesture repugnant to him.
‘You are convinced by what your books have told you, perhaps?’ said the pirate, ironically. ‘I was once a scholar myself, and I have since found that many assured truths are not so certain as the masters of ancient lore would have us believe. I have heard it said that a man who tastes a vampire’s blood, as vampires taste ours, may become a vampire himself, but I may not say it is true, and I may not say it is false, while I have never tried it for myself.’
Noell said nothing, wishing now that he had not come.
Langoisse said: ‘Perhaps, on the other hand, it is the Gregorians who are correct. Demons should be exorcised, and we ought not to traffick with them. Should we, then, plunge a stake into her heart, cut off her head, and burn her body, in the fashion prescribed by the last true pope? Authorities proclaim it the most correct and proper method by which a vampire’s death can be assured, do they not? Or would you, perhaps, favour the magic which your father use
d to curse his vampire lover with the plague? He taught you that magic, I trust?’
Noell felt sweat on his brow, though the room was very cool. His heart was beating very quickly. He felt that it was he, and not the Lady Cristelle, who was under attack.
‘Let the boy be,’ said Cristelle. ‘He has not the savage heart for your work. Send him away, and do as you will. It will do no good to spill my blood, and it were better for everyone if its shedding should be on your hands alone.’
The pirate reacted with quick annoyance to her intervention. He lashed out at her without warning, striking at her face with the dagger.
She barely flinched, and it seemed to Noell that she might even have avoided the blow if she had wished. The blade ran across her cheek beneath the right eye, and stopped against the bony part of her nose. It was as if she wanted to come quickly to the business of bloodshed, as though it would be better for her to bring this matter to a head.
Langoisse watched the blood coursing from the wound like a red curtain drawn down to her chin. The flow was sudden and strong, for the cut had gone deep, but it slowed very quickly, and was stemmed within seconds, after the fashion of vampire injuries. The lady drew the fingers of her right hand across her cheek from ear to nose, and then held the hand out to Langoisse, a pendulous drop of blood at the tip of each finger.
‘Drink,’ she commanded him.
He would not, but Noell could see in his face that it was the fact that she had dared to command him which prevented the act, not any lack of desire. There was a fascination in his eye which suggested that he did not entirely disbelieve the dangerous rumour he had quoted.
Cristelle put her hand to her own lips, then, and licked the blood from the fingers. She made no pantomime of it, and yet Noell found the quickness of the gesture somehow alarming.
‘Shall I offer you my heart?’ she said, to Langoisse. ‘Or my throat, perhaps?’ She tilted her head back, though her gaze was unwavering. Noell knew that there was sense in this taunting. If Langoisse were tempted to use the dagger to inflict a deeper wound, then she might slip into the deep coma which all vampires required in order to exercise their extraordinary powers of self-repair. Once in that state she would be beyond the reach of any questioning. Langoisse might kill her, then, but there was nothing else he could do.
The pirate refused to strike again. Instead, he put the dagger back in his belt. He looked at Noell, as if uncertain whether or not to leave him in the cell, but then said: ‘Come away, Master Scholar. I would consult with you.’ His voice had regained its ironic edge, but there was no lightness in the tone now.
Noell’s gaze was trapped by the sight of the vampire lady, and he felt a catch in his throat at the thought of such perfection spoiled by the dagger’s careless cut. He knew that she felt no pain, but the tragedy of beauty despoiled seemed none the less for that. When a moment had gone by, though, he tore his gaze away, and followed Langoisse to the door.
As the Turk let them out of the cell, and then replaced the securing bar, Noell heard Mary White sobbing in another cell. He wanted to call out to her, to offer her encouragement and a promise of safety, but he knew only too well that such a promise was beyond his ability to keep.
Poor Mary!, he said to himself, angrily. It was a safer thought to hold in his mind than any idea of sympathy for the vampire.
FOUR
Noell sat upon the three-legged stool before the kitchen fire, staring into the flames. The twin cauldrons suspended over the fire were each host to a pot of simmering meat and herbs, a string bag full of vegetables, and a pudding wrapped in a cloth. This would be the substance of the evening meal, stretched to serve the abbey’s unwelcome visitors as well as the brethren. Though he had worked hard earlier, alongside Martin and Innocent, now he had only to watch while the cooking ran its course, rising only occasionally to carry more dry wood to feed the fire, and to pour water from the big ladle into the cauldrons. The food would be served on the wooden trenchers which the monks of Cardigan had used for hundreds of years; they scorned plates, as they scorned forks, precisely because those things were newly fashionable in the mundane world. The followers of St. Benedict were not to be hastily taken up by the currents of change.
Noell had never found his work in the kitchen arduous, because the good brothers took a great pride in their management of the chopping and mixing, while his own role was restricted to lifting and fetching. In spite of the simplicity of the labour, though, Noell often found it oppressive in the hot kitchen, especially in the summer months. He had suggested once to Brother Martin that his work was a sharp reminder of the threat of Hell’s fires, but Martin could neither appreciate the jest nor sympathise with the suggestion of blasphemy which it harboured.
On the evening which followed his reluctant excursion with Langoisse to Cristelle D’Urfé’s cell Noell was pleased to have a place of retreat, where he could be uncomfortably alone with thoughts and feelings which were prickly with guilt. For once, he did not mind in the least the angry heat of the fire, and relished its pressure, as though it might help to burn away the ferment in his soul, purging him of his fears and his doubts. But he was not to be left alone for long.
He was lost in a dream, eyes bedazzled by the flames which licked the bellies of the cauldrons, when Langoisse’s mistress came quietly to his side, and startled him. He would have blushed but his cheeks were already ruddy from the heat.
‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I did not mean to alarm thee.’
Noell had read in the grubby broadsides which carried news of pirates and highwaymen even into the precincts of Richard’s tower that men like Langoisse had female companions, but had never known whether it was a true report or an embellishment of the literary imagination. Such tales, their excitement masked by a hypocritical pose of alarm and censure, delighted in painting pictures of scarlet women, temptresses of exotic beauty and uncertain temper. Now he found himself confronted by a legend made corporeal.
Despite Langoisse’s description of her as a Maroc gypsy princess, Leilah did not seem quite as exotic or as glorious as a broadside heroine. She seemed to him, now that she came to stand before him, a paradoxical creature. She still wore male attire, and a dagger in her belt, but the excitement which had animated her face the night before was gone now, and she seemed less than intrepid. Her dark eyes were shadowed, and her expression seemed regretful.
When Noell spoke to her, his tone was petulant. ‘What do you want with me?’ he asked.
‘Langoisse has asked me to seek thee out, Master Cordery,’ she said. ‘He is anxious that he has offended thee, when his wish is to be thy friend.’ Her voice was accented, somewhat in the Spanish way. He was surprised that she addressed him in the familiar way, for it seemed to contrast with the pretence of nobility implied by the title ‘princess’, and by the fact that Langoisse had given her a little servant girl of her own. ‘Thee’ and ‘thou’ were not used at court, save by lovers in their intimate moments, or by parents and children. He wondered whether she had learned her English in an archaic fashion, or whether she had chosen to address him in this way, perhaps at Langoisse’s instruction.
‘I bear him no ill-will,’ said Noell, ‘but I am a guest here, and I fear for the safety of my hosts. I think he will understand that I would like to see him quickly gone, with least disturbance left behind.’
She stood in front of him, perhaps a little closer than he would have liked. While he was sitting down she was as tall as he, and her dark eyes looked into his own, though he could not see them clearly while her face was silhouetted by the fire. He stood up, and moved away, so that when he turned to look down at her he could see her in a better light. She was good-looking, by common standards, but not truly beautiful. She had only the prettiness of common youth, which might be very likeable in its way, but she had nothing, in his eyes, to compare with the pale and opalescent splendour of the vampire ladies of the court, who had set for him the standards of desirability.
She, on the oth
er hand, seemed to be looking at him with a fascination which he found embarrassing. It put him strangely in mind of the speculative gaze with which Carmilla Bourdillon had addressed him on the fatal eve of his flight from London. He had never been much in the company of women, and felt that he could neither properly read nor properly respond to such overtures.
‘He would be thy friend,’ she told him again. ‘A better friend, perhaps, than these monks.’
‘His, I think, is the more dangerous vocation,’ he replied. ‘The brothers are cold friends, but their coldness promises a certain security.’
She did not understand that. ‘Wilt thou become a monk thyself?’ she asked. ‘Art thou made for celibacy and for prayers, instead of adventure and the love of women?’
‘Men make of themselves what they can and what they will,’ he told
She looked around the kitchen, as if to imply that his surroundings told the tale of what he was making of himself. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘but I was a slave until he freed me, and could have made no more of myself, had he not given me the chance. He calls me princess now, but that is only his way. I am free, though, and have killed one or two of that kind of men which once kept and used me.’
‘Well,’ said Noell, softly, ‘I am glad of that. I could not wish that you were a slave, or that you were miserable in what Langoisse has made of you. I beg you to be happy in your fashion, but I truly do not know whether a pirate could be made of me.’
She smiled, then, at the kindness of his words, and he was caught by surprise at the sight of the smile, which gave him a thrill of pleasure. He smiled in return.
Now, it seemed, it was she who became a little shy, and she looked away. ‘I like thee,’ she said, simply. ‘I wish thou wouldst come with us when we go.’
‘Perhaps I will,’ replied Noell – who felt he could say so honestly enough, so uncertain was he of his fate.
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