The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar's Tale

by Reggie Oliver

  “He was all radiance, but coloured, if you can imagine colours being as bright as the white light of the sun at midday. Yet I was not blinded, for the light that came from him was contained and distinct. The man wore a seamless robe woven with a thousand separate threads of colour, all of which I could discern as if through a burning glass, and he was dark, with fine strong hands. I remembered looking at his feet, which were bare, and noticing that the toes were unusually long, the middle toe of each foot extending out beyond even the great toe. They were the most beautiful feet I had ever seen. In each of them was drilled a neat red hole through which I could see the tiles of the floor upon which he stood.

  “I looked up towards the face and had the fleeting impression of a glance which utterly possessed and enraptured me in a single moment. My whole body in that instant was pierced through with a dart of love. The exquisite joy — I dare not debase it with such a feeble low word as pleasure — that I felt was so great that I fainted and in that faint forgot the bright lineaments of the face I had seen so briefly. When I woke my cell was still and empty again except for me, but I was full of dancing light.

  “I could hardly wait until Friday to tell my confessor about my experience. I knew that my fellow boarders were coarse spirits and would only mock me if I told them, while the sisters would reprove me for boasting. Some might even have persecuted me out of jealousy.

  “When I described my experience to Father Manfred he told me in his great lion voice that he was glad, and that I had enjoyed a true vision of beatitude such as is granted to few in this life. He commended me for not telling anyone else of this great vision of mine and told me that my spiritual development was remarkable and that in addition to confession, he would come to me on Mondays to give ghostly counsel to me in my cell, as he did to some of the other nuns.

  “I was a vain young thing, puffed up with the glory of my vision, as if it was I who had somehow achieved it. I was thrilled that I was going to receive spiritual instruction, just like the most holy nuns of the Carmelite order. I could barely wait for Monday to come and prepared myself for this event with more than usually scrupulous devotions. I do not know what my fellow boarders thought as I barely noticed them now; but I saw some of the nuns, in particular Sister Matilda, eying me suspiciously.

  “When the day came and Father Manfred visited me in my cell it was something of a disappointment. His instruction did not differ substantially from what I had received before at confession, but the visit was notable for two things. When Father Manfred had come into my cell he sat down opposite me on a stool and pushed his hood back so that I could see his face for the first time.

  “His hair and beard were black and his cheeks hollow; the eyes protruded a little and were dark and lustrous. I was surprised by his mouth which, for all the asceticism of the rest of his features was sensual in appearance. It was wide and the lips were as red as the rest of his face was white. His glance had a curious and exhilarating intensity, and, as we conversed on spiritual matters, it was as if his whole being was concentrated on me. I was a little intoxicated by such a wholehearted attention for I had never experienced it before. When, in making a wide gesture, his hand touched my knee for a second or so, it was like the shiver in the air when a bolt of lightning strikes nearby.

  “There were moments when I felt this power of earnestness was hard to sustain. Most of us cannot live for long on the heights. There came a time when I could no longer look into those eyes. I had to look down. There were his bare feet in sandals. Suddenly the blood rushed to my head, my heart started thumping. I saw that his feet were the feet I had seen in my vision, identical, except for the absence of the red round holes of Christ’s stigmata. There was the middle toe of each foot extending far beyond the great toe. I looked up at him.

  “‘What is it, my child?’ he asked.

  “I shook my head and he smiled, revealing a perfect set of teeth. I was too bewildered to know what was happening and it was not long before he realized that I could not keep my mind on anything. He did not reproach me for once, he simply advised me to rest.

  “I continued to be attended to by Father Manfred in the course of the following weeks and still, as I imagined, I grew in spiritual depth and understanding. The other boarders now avoided me altogether, doubtless because of the lofty existence I was leading. Few of the nuns spoke to me except to reprove me for the very slight faults of which I was still guilty. I was happy and secure as only the ignorant and deluded can be. I had embarked on a journey of the spirit as remote from the world and as engrossing as a dream.

  “The dream broke one day in spring just after my sixteenth birthday. That day my mother paid a call on me in the convent. She told me that she had some important and delightful news for me: I was to be married! To whom? I asked. Somehow I had deluded myself into thinking that I could stay for ever in the convent with my spiritual exercises and ecstasies. My mother told me that it was to the Margrave of Wittelsbach, a man whom I had met once. I half stifled a cry of horror: the man was old! Perhaps he was only forty, but he seemed old to me, and he had the most villainous reputation as a lecher and a skinflint.

  “My mother saw at once my anxiety and sought to reassure me. She told me that I would be acting in the interests of Saxony and obliging my father exceedingly. Besides, I would not have to endure him for long, as the Margrave’s life was bound to drive him to an early death. Then I would be rich, and my issue would be great Princes and Princesses. But I could not be consoled. Finally my mother became impatient with my agonies and told me that I should have to reconcile myself to this fate.

  “I was desolated, and when Monday came I could barely wait to pour out my anguish to Father Manfred. He listened with his usual rapt concentration and at the end of my recital there was a pause.

  “‘You know that you have to marry some day?’ he said.

  “‘But not to him!’

  “‘Very well. Tell me, my daughter, do you have faith in me?’

  “‘What do you mean?’

  “‘Do you trust me?’

  “‘I do. More than anyone in the world.’

  “‘Good. There may be a way of preventing this match. But it is a secret way of which you must tell no-one, a way that the ignorant will not understand, but which you who have grown so much in wisdom and spiritual beauty will understand. It is a path of some danger. Will you follow it?’

  “‘What is this way?’

  “‘Do you trust me?’

  “This time I merely nodded.

  “‘Then follow my instructions. Tonight when you hear the convent bell strike twelve I want you to get out of bed and come out of your cell into the corridor. Wait there. Presently you will see a strange thing. The spectral figure of a veiled lady in white will pass you by holding a candle. Do not be afraid, but, having faith in me, follow her. She will come to a wall and seem to pass through it. Follow her and you shall pass through it as well. Then follow her down many steps to a great vaulted chamber deep in the earth where lie the faithful dead of this convent in great stone tombs. In the centre of the chamber is the richest and most venerable of these monuments, a marble sarcophagus with a flat top, where lies the great founding Abbess of this convent, Magda of Hildesheim. Having no fear, but having faith in me, lie down upon that tomb and close your eyes, not opening them until you are bidden. Do you trust me?’

  “I nodded again.

  “So it came about, and I did as I was told. A secret doorway led down into the vault of tombs. There I laid down, as instructed, on the cold slab. Who my spectral guide was I could not say, but she had an oddly substantial air about her, and I suspected a living person dressed to frighten away inquisitive people. As I lay on the slab I was filled with fear and an understandable amazement that I had brought myself to this place. But once again I repeated to myself Manfred’s words ‘Do you trust me?’ which acted like a drug upon my confused senses.

  “So powerful in fact was the influence of Manfred that for a few moment
s I must have fallen asleep, cold as I was, upon that sepulchral stone. I awoke to find myself feeling warmer and slightly more comfortable, for there was a small cushion behind my head.

  “‘Look up at me,’ said Father Manfred’s voice. I opened my eyes and looked straight into his face. The vault was ablaze with torches, but he seemed to be the only man there. I opened my mouth to cry out, but he stopped it with his hand. He was dressed as a priest and wore a purple silk chasuble. For some moments his eyes looked into mine and I knew that the words ‘Trust me!’ were their unspoken message.

  “Slowly his right hand began to weave over my body, about six inches above it. It seemed to my blurred sight to be describing strange signs in the air, as if with a pen of light. Low murmuring sounds came from the depths of him like laughter in a sea-washed cavern.

  “I lay there in a sort of dream, no longer caring what happened to me because I had surrendered my will to his; it did not matter whether it was pleasure or pain to come because the joy was not in them but in the submission.

  “Presently his hand began to brush my body lightly and I could feel its warmth through the thin linen of my bed gown. This delicate touch was oddly soothing, and at the same time thrilling. When he touched my breasts I felt a great surge of force rush through me, arching my back and making every limb quiver. Then the movement of his hand became heavier as it travelled to every part of my body and I lost all sense of restraint. I was wholly in his power and rejoiced in my powerlessness.

  “His hands tore off my gown and wrenched it from under me so that I was now naked on the slab. The next moment he was naked, thin but muscular and splendidly triumphant over me. I was barely myself now, simply a mass of raw and exquisite feeling, then, as I felt his whole being launch into me to break my innocence with the force of ten thousand thunderbolts, I heard a great gasp of breath in the vault. I looked around me in terror and saw myself surrounded by many of the nuns of Carmel, all dressed in thin white draperies which barely disguised their forms. They were looking on at my immolation with a kind of rapture, and nearest to me, on the very steps of Abbess Magda’s tomb was kneeling my tormentor, Sister Matilda, the Prioress.

  “The next few days are a confusion in my mind. I think I preserved an outward sanity, but everything inside me was in turmoil. Prayer, meditation, contemplation, all those things in which I thought I was schooled, seemed utterly meaningless whenever I tried them; my mind, which I had thought disciplined, would skitter off down tortuous paths of triviality. Then one night I woke to find Father Manfred in my room.

  “He stood half in shadow and the hood was on his head so that his face was in utter darkness. I wanted to scream but could not.

  “‘Are you the Devil?’ I asked. Manfred only laughed.

  “‘What do you mean by the Devil? What would you know if I said I was? I have shown you the depths. One abyss was through austerity and Christian prayer, and that exalted you. Then you went into the vault with me and performed the rite of Saturn. I gave you what you did not refuse. Why do you reject it now? Because it will not conform to the sacred images with which you were brought up? Now Christ and the ancient Saturn are in you, you are doubly rich. By the confession and the scourge of discipline I showed you the mountain tops; the other night I showed you the power. You may refuse the power if you wish, but the mountain tops cannot save you from your coming marriage, whereas the power can. Will you take it or leave it? No. I have seen by your face that you have already taken it.’

  “‘I must marry as I have been told to do. How can this be stopped?’

  “‘Put forward your will and it shall be stopped. Try it now.’

  “Then I wished that I should not marry the Margrave. It is curious how when you desire something normally, the desire in your mind seems to come up against a wall. It is as if you are beating against the barriers of your brain trying to find some way for the wish to escape. But this time the wish went forth: it left my mind like an arrow from a bow, and with it all anxiety.

  “‘You will not marry the Margrave,’ said Manfred.

  “‘But a King instead,’ I replied.

  “‘So be it,’ said the monk. ‘But for this, as for all things, you must pay a price. The gods below who have been served in our rites require from you a sacrifice. Power for power. Therefore watch for my coming. Your second child shall be mine and theirs. Remember that I was the first to take your flesh.’ Then the monk vanished and he left my life for a season.

  “Preparations went ahead for the wedding, but I was indifferent to them. The Margrave signed a document handing over all his estates to me and my issue should he die, but the wedding day came and he was still there.

  “Nevertheless I felt invulnerable, and sure enough the Margrave died of a seizure as he was mounting the steps of the cathedral where he and I were to be married.

  “But the documents he had signed before the wedding were still valid, so I was left heiress to the Margrave’s estate and presently I married Xantho, recently become King of Transylvania on his father’s death. We had a son, your brother Mircea, but then Xantho began to look for pleasure other than in me, and I remembered Manfred who was to come for the second child.

  “At that time your half brother Ragul came to my notice. We were innocently in love. There was nothing but flowers and gallantry between us. Xantho noticed nothing; his concerns were not mine. Ragul and I would meet to talk in secret in the Old Queen’s apartments. We barely touched hands, but our lives belonged to each other. Everything we said and did together was precious.

  “One night, tired with the delight of talking, we fell asleep together on the Queen’s bed, like two young children. My dreams were troubled and I woke to find myself in a moment of ecstasy, gripped by my lover and being entered, even as I was, with all my clothes on, merely my skirts and legs parted for the quenching of desire. I thought it must be Ragul, yet it was not like him. Terror stopped my mouth. The man who held me was dressed as a monk and under his hood was darkness. My mind was captive. The violence of his love threw me into an ecstatic submission, half pleasure, half agony. I knew that this was the fulfilment of the rite of Saturn and that it must be, then mercifully I fainted and slipped into dreams again.

  “When I woke I asked Ragul if he had been with me that night. He said he could not tell. He had dreamed of it, but was uncertain whether or not he had actually satisfied his longing on me in sleep. So I cannot say for certain that it was him and that the monk was a kind of imagining. I pray to God it was.

  “Not long afterwards Ragul and I became lovers in reality, though Xantho, curiously, had also begun to show a renewed interest in my body. I conceived and bore a child nine months after that ambiguous night. You, Vladimir, were the child.

  “Who your father is I cannot tell you. That is my most secret agony which now you share with me. You could be the King’s true second son, or his grandson to my shame, or, to my eternal torment, you could be the son of the—”

  Here the manuscript ended abruptly.

  XXX

  In the following weeks I made it clear to the King that I was anxious to return to Wittenberg as my usefulness was at an end here, but my submissions were rejected. Mircea was enjoying a progress with his bride around the royal territories; Vlad had taken sanctuary with the monks of Snagov whose power was great enough to resist Xantho’s demand that he be extradited.

  I was kept busy arranging the library and writing the words to a nuptial cantata which would greet the bride and groom on their return to Castle Dracula. I once more enjoyed the insidious and somehow stifling friendship of Alexander of Glem, but the urge to leave was insistent despite my affection for some in the castle.

  I longed for the dull, fertile plains of Germany and for minds not sick with superstition. Our journey through life takes us to many places. I had climbed the precipice of danger and walked through the woods of unreason; now I longed for the sweet, mown meadows of sense. But, unless we are gifted with second sight, we can never be sure whe
n a part of our life is to close.

  The return of Prince Mircea and Princess Rozelinda from their travels signalled a period of great rejoicing in the castle. The people of Transylvania have short memories for some things and the ominous scenes at the wedding had been quite forgotten. My masque, with music by Signior Giardini, was entitled “The Triumph of Aphrodite” and was accounted a great success. The Goddess of Love herself was played by a page boy tightly sheathed in rose coloured satin with a wig of golden thread. He descended from the heights in a chariot drawn by swans. The chariot was, of course, built by Alexander, but the swans were real and these birds, despite having been fed the choicest food strongly objected to being yoked to Venus’ car and lowered by means of wires onto the stage. One broke his bonds and proceeded to fly round the hall in a state of panic. The swan was finally captured after having broken the arm of a serving man and pecked out the eye of a vice-chamberlain. The rest merely became agitated and extremely loose-bowelled.

  Cupid, a spoilt little boy reputedly one of Mircea’s illegitimate offspring, suffered most from their evacuations. He was standing in the Grove of the Muses awaiting the descent of his mother’s chariot and consequently stood directly beneath the birds. So enraged was he at having his gold costume spotted by these creatures that he let forth a shaft from his bow which missed the swans but hit the page boy playing the Goddess of Love his mother in the fleshy part of the thigh.

  But, apart from these incidents, which may perhaps have relieved the tedium for some, the performance had some merit. It was also the first time that I had had the opportunity to observe the new Princess since her wedding. She sat a little apart from her husband with the Lady Dolabella who had once more taken up the post of her chief Lady in Waiting much to the disgust of some other ladies in Castle Dracula. Rozelinda seemed to me more beautiful than ever. It was a beauty that had reached its prime early, for she was only some sixteen years of age, but I was troubled by the stillness with which she held herself. Throughout the performance not a flicker of emotion passed across her face, neither a smile nor a frown. She might have been a statue; and if she blinked I did not see her do so.