The Stuart Vampire

by Andrea Zuvich

  “Isabella, see to it that no one disturbs me for eight days. Is that understood? Eight days. Whatever you hear within my chamber, you will ignore. No one is to enter under any circumstances, do I make myself clear?”

  The thin young lady’s maid had to protest, for she was usually responsible for packing Griselda’s clothing and dressing her hair. She had nothing ready for her mistress to take.

  “But my lady…”

  “Do not trouble me with your views,” Griselda spat. “Do as you’re told, and make certain that no one knocks upon this door or tries to enter, or I’ll have you and your entire family thrown into a plague pit alive!”

  Isabella, knowing full well that her mistress would keep such a macabre promise, bobbed another quick curtsey and scarpered off. Griselda shut the door.

  “Bolt it,” the man said. She bristled at being told what to do, but since she had given her word, and wanted what he had offered her, she bolted it. Griselda turned towards and saw that the light had diminished substantially in the room. Only a few candles were now lit. She walked into the middle of the great circular room, her velvet slippers skimming the stone floor as she did so.

  The man was once again in the shadows. He spoke to her from the darkness. “Are you certain of this, my lady? For once you accept the gift, you can never change your mind.”

  Griselda scoffed at this warning. “I have only ever wanted one thing, so give it me –Make me beautiful always! Give me the power!”

  “As you wish.”

  Suddenly, he emerged from the shadows and into the light– no longer a man, but the Devil himself! His eyes were green-yellow and huge, and his scaly skin the colour of freshly-spilled blood. Massive coiled horns sat upon the crown of his bald head. His teeth, razor sharp, and he growled like a wolf about to consume his prey. She fell to her knees in awe of him and his great evil power. He lunged towards her, shredding into her throat with ferocity. He gorged himself upon her blood, and she was helpless as he consumed her life. She felt herself falling, down, down into the abyss as he continued to suck her blood from her neck.

  The Devil had indeed been given many names in his time: Satan, Beelzebub, and Lucifer, among others. He was generally successful in wooing his victims into his dark world, for he could adopt any guise, speak any language, and offer the one thing a person coveted the most. He had lured Griselda into his service with promises of everlasting youth and beauty. As her heart stopped beating and her body died, she was still conscious, for his power was great, and the blood he had poured into her mouth from his breast was strong. He then carried her into his world of darkness in the centre of the Earth. They journeyed through the nine circles of Hell, passed the gluttons, the adulterers, the murderers, the avaricious, and all the other sinners who had won their place in his realm. At last she was with him, in his castle deep within the vast pit of hellish flame, and there he slaked his lust in her.

  “I had heard tales of your cruelty, my Griselda, and it was this that made me seek you out. Now you are mine for eternity.” He smiled then, displaying his own ancient, yellow teeth, which were sharp and carved with daemonic symbols. Every deep kiss from his mouth would draw blood. She wanted to stroke his horned head and his red skin, which was covered in scales like a serpent, the way a lover strokes her beloved. But she lacked the strength, for her mind was still alive whilst her body was dead. She was in awe of him, for he was God’s fallen angel, now King of the undead, overseer of the nine circles of Hell. He had his way with her body again and again, her corpse surging with new power from his malignant seed. The Devil had made Griselda his own, and she abandoned herself to his dark power, and revelled in having been chosen as Satan’s mistress.

  Six days they were thus, and when they at last emerged from his dominion and returned to her bedchamber in the Palazzo di Cuorenero, Griselda was an altered being. The Devil laid her down upon the large, red-curtained bed, and she felt an all-consuming hunger as she lay upon the costly sheets. She glanced over at the door, which was still bolted and undisturbed as per her explicit instructions. She felt her eyes grow heavier and as she closed her eyes, she saw only the souls of those in torment whom she had seen in the underworld.

  On the eighth day, she opened her eyes as a vampire. Her bones had hardened, her muscles had strengthened, and her skin had become impenetrable and… perfect. No longer did she look like a woman of thirty-three, but of a nineteen-year-old — as she was in her prime. She could no longer ignore the hunger, which roared inside her begging to be satiated. Her Prince of Darkness had prepared well. He brought forth a young beggar woman he had trapped. She was to be Griselda’s first victim.

  “Feed and retain your beauty,” he commanded.

  Griselda walked towards the unfortunate wretch and placed her now cold hands upon the woman’s tanned throat, and could feel the thumping of her heartbeat in the throbbing vein beneath her sensitive fingers. The young woman’s face held an expression of sheer terror as Griselda’s hunger took over and she turned into her vampire form for the first time. Her spine flipped back with a sickening crack and she fell to her knees in excruciating pain. Her beautiful features warped into bizarrely furrowed brows, her cheekbones grew outwards into two severe angles, her lips pulled back to reveal a set of razor-sharp teeth. Her fingernails lengthened and hardened, and resembled talons in their sharpness. She surged to her feet and bit down into the woman’s neck, into that vein she had felt, and the heartbeat increased in pace.

  Griselda could taste the fear in the woman’s blood. The rocketing heartbeat gradually slowed, slowed, until it suddenly gave out. Griselda had fed upon every single last drop of blood. The young woman’s corpse dropped to the floor with a thud, the expression on her wretched face one of complete terror.

  Griselda, wiping her stained crimson lips upon the back of her hand, turned to her powerful lord and snarled.

  “Another, bring me another, Master, for I still hunger.”

  Chapter 3:

  The Begetting

  The fifteenth-century vampiress now stood beside him, having entered through the casement window. The crude instruments and potions the physicians had used lay upon the table beside Henry Stuart. Griselda’s wild eyes looked down at his trembling figure in the midst of the lush tester bed. Henry’s eyes could barely open now, as the pustules of smallpox were even on his eyelids, and had oozed slime which had encrusted upon his eyelashes. She slid her hand over his feet, up his leg, passed his manhood, over his abdomen, and finally, over his beating heart. How it fought to survive! How fragile was human life!

  It was so easy for her to kill a human that all the fun had gone. The Contessa had known several generations of Stuarts, and almost every single one of them possessed a fierce animal magnetism that was almost tangible. She had long wanted to make one of them into a vampire, to see how they would react to the powerful gift from the Prince of Darkness.

  She had seen Henry Stuart for the first time some six months prior to this night when he had disembarked at a port in The Dutch Republic. She followed him back to England, and admired him wherever he went. She particularly enjoyed watching him when he wore a suit of black armour, for he had been posing for his portrait that day. She had looked upon his haunted face, with the dark, glittering eyes, and the full red mouth. He aroused her interest far more than his more aesthetically pleasing older brothers. From that moment on, she studied him, watched him. Everywhere he went, she followed, lurking in the shadows, always ready to make her move. When she learned that he had contracted smallpox, she rejoiced. She had been waiting for the right moment to claim him as her new eternal lover. Now the time had come, and he would soon be hers.

  He was so different from other men, and Griselda sensed almost immediately that he could be the mate she had so longed for. Her eyes misted over as she remembered a painful memory from her past, for he reminded her of another man from long ago. Henry had the same dark hair; the same haunted look in his eyes. She turned away and bit her lip as the old wo
und ripped itself open in her heart. The betrayal happened almost a hundred years before, yet in all the time that had passed, she could not forget the first man she had turned. He was gone forever now, but the pain remained. She had never been able to move on from that time, and she took in a deep breath.

  She turned and moved closer to the ailing Duke of Gloucester, who lay upon his sickbed now gazing up at her in wonder. He was so much like her lost love! This time, she promised herself, nothing would get in the way, nothing and no one.

  “Who are you?” Henry croaked, unsure as to whether this was a figment of his feverish imagination or if she was truly a real woman. Fear crept into his bowels, but why, he did not know.

  “My name is Griselda,” she answered, her voice ethereal, captivating, with a touch of an Italian accent. “I am the Contessa di Cuorenero.”

  “Griselda?” he murmured. It was a strange name to him, but one he vaguely remembered from the literature he read in his childhood. Boccaccio’s Decameron, was it not?

  Her eyes were glowing again with a strange green-yellow colour. Such odd eyes seemed incongruous in the face of such sublime beauty. She bent over him and pressed her cold hands on either side of his pustule-riddled face. He shivered, as her flesh was as cold as the River Thames in winter.

  “Poor sick prince, I have admired you for so long, and now you stand before the precipice of death. Only I can save you from the pain you are now suffering.” She paused, and then leaned in even closer to his face.

  “You can stop the pain? How?” he asked, still somewhat frightened by the woman.

  “I have a great power, and I am generous enough to use it now to help you,” she said. “But, first, do you think I am beautiful?” she asked, shifting her face to a peculiar angle as she leant over him, the waves of her unbound golden hair brushing against his body like soft whispers.

  “Yes,” he managed to reply. She was unquestionably the most stunning woman he had ever laid eyes on, and again did he think she was a Renaissance painting come to life. He allowed his hazy eyes to move down her voluptuous body, her full bosom, her small waist, all encased in a luscious dark blue dress.

  He liked this dream, despite the ever-present feeling it could, at any moment, turn into a nightmare.

  She knew from the look of desire upon his boil-infested face that he would be a slave to her will. And she smiled in a crazed way that he found greatly disturbing, for it was a look of obsession, of insanity. Suddenly, her exquisite features altered into the most foul, the most hideous contortions. Hers was the face of a she-devil — with long canine teeth, jutting from snarling lips. Elegant, cold fingers elongated, became talon-like, and dug into the soft tissue of his cheeks. Henry made to scream when she savagely reared down upon him, biting him ferociously with those monstrous teeth. His eyes widened with the horror of what the harpy was doing, sucking his very blood from his veins!

  He could not fight her off, as the smallpox had taken all of his strength. Even so, she seemed to have the strength of a dozen or more men. His eyes wildly focused upon the physician still fast asleep in the chair beside him. Wake up, you fool! Help me! Henry could not have known that the vampiress was very quiet in her actions, that no one could suspect anything was amiss. A great hissing sound increased in his ears as his blood rushed out of his body.

  His eyes rolled back into his head, as the evil she-creature continued to drain his life from him. He was sure now that he was dying. He could feel his heart slowing, the thump-thump, thump-thump, becoming steadily duller until his brain became numb. Suddenly, there was a fierce ringing in his ears, and he could not open his eyes, nor move in the slightest. He felt like a prisoner inside his own body, unable to defend himself from the onslaught of his attacker.

  A searing pain enveloped him, followed by a sudden blast of icy feeling, which rippled throughout his body like an explosion of gunpowder.

  His heart stopped beating… but he was still breathing…

  ***

  The warm glow of the autumnal dawn began to beam through the stained glass of the window, sending an array of colours to dance across the room. The fire had died, leaving only ash. The physician snored himself awake and rubbed his sore neck from the strange position he had slept in during the night. He wiped the sleepy dust away from his eyes and slowly got up onto his feet. Stretching widely and giving a large satisfied yawn, he waddled over to a small table by the wall upon which there was a jug of water and a bowl.

  He poured the water into the empty bowl, cupped his hands into the cool liquid and swilled his face, snorting out the contents of his nose into the bowl. As he patted his pudgy, wrinkled face with a dry linen cloth, he felt nice and fresh and ready for another long day of caring for his royal patient. He pondered over whether or not to administer leeches again to his patient. He turned around to the bed and jumped back against the table and shrieked. His patient, the King’s brother, lay as dead and pale, save for the blood and pus, which now stained his skin, shirtsleeves, and bedsheets.

  “Good Lord, no! No!” he shrieked, almost stumbling over the chair he had slept in. The physician scrambled to the door, flinging it open, “He’s dead!” he cried, “The Duke of Gloucester is dead! Fetch His Majesty, someone!”

  The news spread throughout the whole of Somerset House like wildfire. All the servants were whispering to each other and buzzing about like flies.

  “No!” cried the King, upon hearing the news. “It cannot be!”

  He ran quickly down the corridors, his heart in his throat. Henry had been improving, the physician had said as much! He should have stayed with him, after all! He flung open the door and nearly vomited at the sight. Henry’s mouth was open in horror, his face frozen in agony.

  “What happened?” asked King Charles with tears trickling down his face. “He looks as though he was scared to death. Did you leave his side?”

  The physician shook his head. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, I must have dozed off in the night. I did not leave his side once, and when I awoke he was as you see him now.”

  Charles’s eyes espied the open window. “Who opened this window?”

  “Not I, Your Majesty,” exclaimed the physician. “It was open when I awoke.”

  “You said he would survive!” roared the King. “Get out of my sight, you negligent fool! Or better yet, guards! Throw this man into the Tower!”

  King Charles’s commands were quickly carried out, though several servants now stood gawping at him. “All of you get out! Get out, I say!”

  “Oh, dear Harry, I am so sorry,” he cried, cradling the Duke in his arms. His tears fell upon his brother’s dead lips and he wailed unashamedly with his mounting grief.

  “You should have fought it, why did you not fight?” Charles continued to weep upon his brother’s cold chest. “Should anything happen to me, what will become of our line? James is a Catholic and more stubborn than any of us. Harry, why did you go? Why?” They had been the three Stuart men, strong and healthy and their line secured. He knew Henry’s passing was not merely a personal blow, a dynastic tragedy, but soon Clarendon would press Charles to marry and secure a legitimate line of his own.

  He stood up for a few moments with his face in his hands before he blew his nose on his handkerchief. There was so much to think about, so much to deal with. Charles had lost too many of those he most loved, that it was getting harder. He thanked God he still had his little sisters, Mary and Minette, and dour James. Charles took the remainder of the water in the jug and a new linen cloth and walked over to the bed, upon which he then sat. He wet the cloth with the water and began to cleanse his brother’s face. His face was a grotesque mess, but Charles would not allow anyone else to touch his brother. Soon he had wiped the pus and blood from Henry’s face, and on his cheeks he found nail marks — as though sharp nails or claws had dug into the flesh there.

  He then thought he should continue with at least the neck and torso, so he untied the shirt and pushed it down. He set to clearing the rest
. There was a good deal of coarse dark stubble around his mouth, chin, and throat. This, as well as the pustules and boils from smallpox hid the gnawing and the two puncture wounds at first. But notice them he did, and as he pressed the damp cloth against these and wiped, crimson slime oozed out from within.

  Charles jumped up in alarm, and it was only then did he harbour the suspicion that his brother had been murdered — and not by the hand of man.

  Chapter 4:

  The Devil’s Paramour

  “This day the Duke of Gloucester died of the smallpox — by the great negligence of the Doctors.”

  - Samuel Pepys, Diary, 13th September 1660

  “In the midst of all the joy and jubilee, dies the Duke of Gloucester of the Small-pox, which put all the Court in Mourning: died the 13th in prime of youth, a Prince of extraordinary hopes.”

  - John Evelyn, Diary, 13th September 1660

  As Henry’s body began to change from human to vampire, Griselda ruminated over her own rebirth as a creature of the night. She knew full well what would be in store for him. The first days after the begetting are among the most violent, the most powerful, and the most unrestrained. Self-control was usually a futile quest. The memories flooded back to her like the rapids of a river, frothy and tumultuous.

  Griselda mastered the art of the night with him, Satan, and on the eighth day after her Begetting, she had awakened in her bedchamber in the round tower. She heard the shorebirds and the crash of the waves against the rocky foundations of her great palace. She heard the creaking of the boats upon the Adriatic Sea; she heard the wind blowing against the grains of sand upon the shore. After the first peasant woman she had fed from, the Devil brought her more victims upon which to feed, and after she drank her fill, they joined in sexual union. She wantonly succumbed to his every command, feeling increasingly more powerful with each movement of his devilish form.