‘This is not a time for quarrelling,’ said Richard, sternly. ‘We will have time enough to judge whether Melcart has the skill which his predecessor pretended. Let him be, Blondel.’
‘Quarrelling, sire?’ complained Blondel, with careful lightness. ‘I would not quarrel with good Simon, or with the kindness of the stars. I only wish that Edmund Cordery might have saved us all the trouble which now we face. Had he only troubled to consult his friend the wizard earl about his son’s future, good Harry Percy would surely have foretold both their tragic deaths, and dissuaded him from treason. If we had only had Melcart then, my lord, we might have strangled Noell Cordery in his cradle, captured the cursed Langoisse, and saved the beauteous Ladies Carmilla and Cristelle to grace the court with their presence for a thousand years.’
‘Peace, Blondel, I command you’ said the prince, impatiently. ‘I’ll not scorn any help which I can find, so hold your scalding tongue lest it bum your own fair lips. God will decide this battle, after his own fashion; we merely seek to gain such insight into his intention as he might permit, in order to shape our prayers. I’ll pray for the fortune of our arrows, and you will do the same, whether you like it or not.’
Blondel bowed. ‘As my prince pleases,’ he replied.
Richard always prayed for the fortune of his arrows, because he traced his own inheritance to that remarkable shot which plunged into Harold’s eye, and won the sovereignty of the British isle for William the Bastard, for Normandy and for Gaul. The Normans loved their bowmen as much as they loved their tourneys and their flattering minstrels, and even Charles thought the bow a lucky weapon for his kin. Whatever Norman astrologers found in the house of Sagittarius when they calculated their charts was always interpreted to the credit of their masters, and Melcart was simply following in the pathway of tradition.
Blondel would rather have placed his faith in good English cannon made of Sturtevant’s metal – if only Richard had not been forced to leave his cannon behind when he sailed away from London. He had been forced to come here with a great insufficiency of basilisks and culverins. It was touching, in a way, that the common bowmen of Richard’s army had shown such loyalty as to bring themselves to exile, but Blondel was under no illusion that these were any longer the cream of Britain’s fighting men. Their prestige within the realm had been so closely bound up with their royal patronage that to stay in the new England would have been a steep fall for all of them. If a man were to search for honest omens, the one which spoke the fate of Grand Normandy was surely the simple fact that England’s cannoneers had taken Kenelm Digby’s side in the short-lived Civil War.
‘And let us not forget,’ said Richard, without undue enthusiasm, ‘to pray for our allies the Walachians, that their musket-balls may also fly to good effect.’
‘Amen,’ said Simon Melcart, and the minstrel also, before Richard bade them leave him alone with his thoughts and his God.
Those thoughts were so bitter that Richard could not bear to be alone with them for long. Though Vlad Dragulya had raised his ire there were others aplenty on whom it might be turned. Richard saw himself as a man betrayed, by his fellow men and by his ideals, and the fact that he had lost Grand Normandy hurt him infinitely more than his scornful enemies and friends imagined. He had truly believed in the divine right of vampire princes, in the God which had supposedly ordered the world to the advantage of his kind, and in the mission which that God had supposedly given to the vampires, to civilise and bring splendour to a world once racked and rent with all the horrors of mortality.
Where now, he thought, is the reward ojall our effort? What now becomes of the glorious world which we sought to make of the estates of Gaul? It is given to darkness, and the immortality which was our privilege is cast recklessly to the meanest and most ignoble. Where now is hope, on earth or in the heavens? What can our arrows avail, against such enemies as these?
He picked up a small printed pamphlet which lay upon the table. It was an ill-looking thing, unbound and printed on the poorest stock of paper; it had not the appearance he would have imagined for a sorcerer’s book of evil, but it had already cast an evil spell upon the world. It told how to compound an elixir from the semen of vampires and the blood of men, which could then be taken into the body in any of several ways, to make common men into vampires. It was a way far simpler and less solemn that the one which Attila’s kin had always used to favour those they loved, and those who had served them most loyally.
To Richard, the pamphlet was an unholy thing, which reeked far more of evil than the Gregorian heresies which called the vampires devil’s kin and demon-possessed. The true nobility of his own station, Richard thought, was assured by the fact that his own vampirism, and that of many whom he had converted, was based in love and affection, and not in the cold calculation of men like Noell Cordery.
There was one way, and one way only, to relieve the anguish of his bitterness, and so he went to his bedchamber, which was the most luxurious part of the villa which had been given him to use in Naples. There he called out for the youngest of his servants, who had eyes of Mediterranean blue and yellow hair, and would one day make a handsome vampire knight.
Richard, deposed prince of Grand Normandy, called Coeur-de-Lion, picked up the silver dagger which he kept beside his bed, and lifted it to the level of his eyes, which were thus reflected in the polished blade. They were remarkable eyes, coloured coppery red instead of the near-black which was typical of vampires.
Eyes offire, he said, silently. Brave eyes. The eyes of a hero; a man born to rule. Gently, he licked his lips, anticipating the sweet warm taste of blood.
THREE
Noell Cordery sat on a three-legged stool, watching his cauldron warming gently beside the fire.
He was in a windowless room with benches on either side which were strewn with jars and alembics, lamps and candle-trays, clamps and files. It was a perfect alchemist’s den, save for certain embellishments not often associated with such places: the cages housing little ragged dogs or big brown rats, which gnawed incessantly at the wire mesh which confined them; the mops and the ammonia used in cleaning; the microscope upon the table. All these things were necessary, for his alchemy, and there had betimes been other things, which to the casual observer might have signalled his involvement in still blacker arts: cadavers to be dissected; limbs removed by surgeons; bottles and phials and jars and goblets and gourds and wineskins, all containing naught but blood. He had become the most earnest student of blood in all the world, and would have said that he knew more of its mysteries than any man alive … and yet, not enough.
Not near enough.
He had tried to see to the very core of human nature, to find and understand the animating soul, but when he added up the sum of his discoveries, he could only count himself a failure. He had discovered the elixir of life, but he knew not how it worked, or why it sometimes did not work.
Though the room was a cellar, and was usually cool, the fierce heat of the summer and the fire burning in the grate had combined to banish its coolness and take a soothing grip on Noell’s tired bones. The heat conspired with lack of sleep to send him off into a trance-like state where memories and associations floated into his mind like the rags and tatters of discarded dreams.
Watching the cauldron, he remembered the kitchen in the monastery at Cardigan, where once he had laboured to pay for his keep. He remembered the taste of the puddings which cooked to moist perfection while those cauldrons seethed above the fire, whose like he had not tasted since.
He remembered another cauldron, too, which had featured in a play which once he had seen in the Tower of London, while he was still a small boy. Around the rim of that magical vessel, three witches had cackled and canted, while sending some mortal princeling to his fated end. He could remember so little of his youth, now. It had been such a carefree time, now overlain in memory by a deal of pain, which had etched more powerful impressions on his soul. But certain fleeting lines of that once-beheld pl
ay now lingered near the threshold of consciousness, and he frowned as he tried to recall them.
Double, double, the witches had said, toil and trouble. Once that was remembered, the couplet was not too difficult to complete: Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. They were words he might easily address to his own cauldron – which contained, he felt sure, a more awful admixture of sinister things than ever those poor hags had chuckled over. But his own cauldron was not to be boiled, only warmed in gentle fashion, to protect what was within it. He could not remember the recipe which was quoted in the play to make the audience smirk in disgust at the witches’ nastiness, but he had read all the best books of recipes and other magical prescriptions. He knew the Compendium Maleficarum of Guazzo, the so-called Clavicula Salomonis, the Ars Magna of Ramon Lull, the book of black magic falsely attributed to Cornelius Agrippa, the works of Marcello Ficino, and countless other works of occult art. He knew well enough what kind of ingredients witches and sorcerers were reputed to use in their potions. He had tried more of them than he cared to count, but had found them all quite impotent.
I have potions more powerful than those of which the playwright spoke, he thought, and I deal not in petty fate but in liquors to give long life to mortal men, and in poisons to steal it back again.
That playwright, serving vampire masters, had written dramas of recent history to flatter the vampires – which Noell had never bothered to see – but had saved his greater art for tragedies set in more distant ages, which dwelt upon the perils of mortality, and spoke forthrightly to crowds of common men. Noell could remember very little of the play which was now in his mind, but he did remember something of its climactic speech, which had made of life a walking shadow, strutting upon a stage for a few brief moments before it was snuffed out like a candle. He struggled to piece the phrases together in their proper order, but could not, though he thought he had captured the beginning.
His lips framed words which he did not speak aloud: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow … creeps in its petty pace, but his memory failed; it had been too long, and his younger self had not known how to listen as fully as he might.
More memories arose then to crowd the others away – memories of other dark and airless rooms, with hardly a breath of coolness, where fever was always near. He hated his memories of Adamawara more than any, though he could not really say why, for nothing so very dreadful had happened to him there, and it was there that Berenike had taught him the love of women. But it was a realm where he had not belonged, because its people were bizarre, and the supernatural world which they created with their fears and hopes was horrid and alien.
His journey to Adamawara and the time which he had spent there he remembered now as his season of blood, his ejodun, when he had stretched himself upon the altar of sacrifice and given up his health and strength in exchange for a perverse wisdom whose potency was denied to few save for himself. He had drunk the blood of man, and yet had failed to make it just and right that he had done so. He thought of his mortality now as a kind of punishment – the vengeance of God – though he never could decide on the precise form of his sin.
The door of the cellar opened, screeching on its hinges, and he started, suddenly sitting upright, ready to make a guilty denial if he were to be accused of having fallen asleep. But no such accusation came; it was only Leilah, the most loyal of all his servants and helpers.
He had a great many servants and helpers now, for he was a man who had immortality in his gift, if not in his bones. Every week he created more vampires, but his time was running out – his candle-life fluttering in the cold draught of Gaul and Walachia’s enmity – and he knew that the vampires he had made might not be enough, when the Grandmaster of the Order had nothing with which to arm his further recruits but bows and daggers. There were no more cannon to be positioned, no more muskets to be given out, and even arrows were in short supply.
‘It is late,’ said Leilah. ‘Thou must go to thy bed, and sleep. Thou hast a dozen apprentices to watch over the work.’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘The work needs no attention now – even the new and desperate work, which goes on alongside the old. All is still, but I do not like to go away just now. Is there news?’
‘Langoisse and la Valette sent fireships into the harbour at Palermo, aided by a kind wind. They did fair damage among the close-packed ships, but the enemy is too many to be defeated by such means. They came back into the Grand Harbour some hours ago, and they say that all the galleys must now be at sea. They are making ready as fast as they can to set to sea again, and will go forth tomorrow on their last great expedition, to do what damage they can.’
‘What of the Mohammedans?’
‘The ghazi are at sea in the south, creeping in closer the while, but they only want to watch. The sultans will fight on their own account when we have wrecked the Gaulish fleet for them.’
‘No word from other friends?’
‘None.’
Noell bowed his head, relaxing his weight again upon the stool. The defending fleet had already been supplemented by a handful of English privateers, who had sailed to join the battle on their own account – heroes all, given the odds, though they would take their ships away when the fight at sea was settled. Such allies could not be asked to drop anchor in order to join the fight on land, where great armies of vampire knights would oppose one another for the first time. None could blame the sailors for staying away from that gory circus.
Noell had clung to the very faint hope that a part of Kenelm Digby’s navy might after all have come to join the knights of St. John, but he had always known it as a romantic illusion. In his heart he was not sorry that his friend had chosen to be prudent. The safety of England had to be paramount in Digby’s thoughts, and England would be all the stronger for standing back from this dire battle. It was a pity that more English cannon could not have been spared.
Leilah put her gentle hands on Noell’s shoulders, and looked him in the face. His eyes were so weak that even with the lenses to aid them he could not bring her face into proper focus, and that was a cause of sorrow to him. But if there was one thing in his memory that would remain forever sharp and clear it was the lustre of her skin, and the brightness of her eyes, and the lush blackness of her hair.
He hoped that she would remember him as well, if fortune let her live and preserved her honest soul through the centuries which she surely deserved. He hoped for this memorial above all others – that when she lay with future lovers, their caresses would always recall his own.
Leilah was clad now almost as she had been when he first saw her, in leathern male attire, but she wore no tricorn hat and carried neither pistol nor poniard. Noell ran his hand along the sleeve of her jacket, slightly surprised by its texture. It was with something of a shock that he realised why she needed to be dressed in this fashion.
‘You have come to say goodbye,’ he whispered.
‘Not yet,’ she told him. ‘I came to bring you away, so that we might make our farewells more comfortably, and in a better place.’
‘A better place?’ Noell looked up and around at the gloomy walls, his failing eyesight barely able to pick out the bottles and beakers on the shelves, the books and the manuscripts, the tools and instruments. But his attention was caught by the brass barrel of the microscope which Kenelm Digby had made for him so long ago, gleaming in reflected firelight.
This is my better place, he thought, for this is where the alchemist belongs, in his witch’s kitchen, brewing the essences of life and death, juggling with destiny and God’s dark secrets.
Nevertheless, Noell suffered himself to be taken up from his stool, and led to the doorway, where Quintus was waiting. Noell was glad to see him, for he did not want to leave this room unguarded, despite that no vital work still remained to be done. There was none among his legion of apprentices he could trust wholeheartedly to keep his vigils for him, but he trusted Quintus now as always.
Noell grasped the monk’s hand as he ca
me to the doorway, and clutched it hard, conveying more by that wordless message than any instruction could have done. The monk’s grip was firmer by far than his own, the hand corded with strong muscle. When they had lived in Burutu, Noell had been the younger man, in the prime of his life, tall and lean and handsome. Now he was the older by far, not in terms of elapsed years, but in every appearance.
The fevers which had visited Noell in Adamawara, and the potions which the elemi had fed to him, had left their mark on body and soul alike, and while Quintus had flourished with the breath of life, Noell had shrivelled and weakened without it. It was sometimes easy to imagine that the few donations of blood which Noell had made to Quintus over the intervening years had achieved a transfer of vitality, but Noell did not begrudge his friend the strength which those donations had helped to secure in him. After all, Noell Cordery was the creator who had breathed that life into Quintus and thousands more, and when he was dead, he would be revered as a saint by some, no matter how many there would be who would call him a devil.
‘I will pray for you,’ promised Quintus, as Noell began to mount the steps beyond the door.
‘Pray for us all,’ Noell told him. ‘Pray for our shipmasters, our artillerists, and our bowmen. Pray for our cannonballs and our arrows. Pray for England, and New Atlantis, and for generations yet unborn. This night of all nights we cannot have too much of prayer, for we will need a miracle to deliver us from destruction.’
He let Leilah lead him up into the open streets of Mdina, but when she turned to take him to her own lodgings he would not go with her, and brought her in the opposite direction, to the church which was the first place of Christian worship on the island. On this site had stood the house of Publius, made first bishop of Malta by St. Paul himself, when that saint was shipwrecked on the island in the company of St. Luke, some thirty years after the crucifixion of Christ. The church which stood here now was not the one which Publius had built, but a grander one built to replace it by the Norman, Roger of Sicily – for this island, like Britain, had suffered a Norman conquest in the eleventh century, when the Imperium of Gaul had set its limits at their furthest bounds. What kin that Roger had been to Richard Coeur-de-Lion, or to Charlemagne, Noell did not know, though The Vampires of Gaul would no doubt have told him had he cared to consult it. He had not opened that book in ten years and more, having spent his life so far outdating what was writ in it that no one could produce a new and full edition.
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