This new horror, of course, was relegated to rumour only among the humans, for it would only serve to create even more fear and hysteria among an already-frightened populace. Ethelred stated that this mutation was only in small pockets of the more insalubrious areas, and that the only way of stopping the spread of the new strain was to drain the infected before they reached the phase of attacking others. The taste of contaminated blood was sickening, but they drank on. Those who had already turned into zombies had to be killed. The only way of doing this was by severing their heads from their bodies. This was no hardship for the vampires, who were able to snap heads off like dried twigs.
During the next few days and nights, Henry joined his new vampire acquaintances and witnessed the savage effect of the mutated plague first-hand.
There were usually several ill people in the houses marked with the dreadful pestilence. The enraged, cannibalistic zombie would lash out at the nearest living human and bite and tear their flesh from their arms and faces. Within a few moments, these victims would attack another, and it continued thus until there were no more humans upon whom to unleash their violence.
“Why do they not attack us?” asked Henry, surprised to find that those afflicted with this new strain seemed unaware of the vampires’ presence.
“We are already dead,” answered Ethelred, “and so are as unworthy of being attacked as a chair or a broom. The contagion seeks a living host in order to spread. As you have just seen, the violence and speed in which a victim, once bitten, becomes a zombie is extraordinary to behold.”
It usually took more than a week for a vampire’s Begetting to become complete, but these creatures could mutate within mere seconds. It was the most advanced and rapid transformation any of them had ever known about. As long as a person was alive, the zombie mutation would seek to spread to them; neither the plague nor any other disease protected them. Only they — these few vampires scattered throughout London — had any hope of containing this most horrifying strain, but even they were fighting against something they were unable to destroy.
***
The drought, which accompanied the worst of the plague, was severe, and everyone prayed for rain, but none came. And so what had already been a troubling situation was rendered worse. One night in early September, as they walked down Pudding Lane on their way back to the area they had been containing, they suddenly heard screams emanating from the baker’s window. The vampires flew through the open window and found a single maid contorted upon the floor. She manifested all the signs of the mutated plague, and so they quickly ripped her head off.
“There is no other zombie here. She must had contracted it from another source!” cried Lucy, standing over the growing pool of tainted blood at her feet.
“The fleas,” stated Prudence, bending over and inspecting the maid’s legs. “It must be the fleas. She has a least a dozen flea-bites.”
“Friends,” said Sebastian. “I fear the circumstances are ripe for us to resort to the most abominable plot we can possibly conceive. If we are to save more people from this pernicious plague, we must set fire to the capital. I am sure fire is the only way we can stop this.”
“But people will die!” cried Henry, aghast that such an idea could even be imagined.
“More people will die if this mutated plague is allowed to spread,” reasoned Ethelred, grim-faced.
Henry glanced anxiously at his friends, when Ethelred determinedly surged forward and opened the baker’s ovens. With quick movements, he scooped out the burning embers onto the wooden floor. These smouldering embers quickly sparked into full flames, and spread hungrily to the timber and pitch of the walls and ceiling beams. And thus began the Great Fire, which roared from one wooden house to the next with destructive power. What the Other vampires had thought a necessary evil soon went beyond their control, and they were soon faced with the horror of what they had created. They flew above the fire and saw how the orange flames continued to spread quickly because of the strong winds.
From above, Henry could see how devastating an inferno it had become — it was as though a chasm had opened up from Hell, spewing forth hellish orange and yellow flames. He circled around, the billowing plumes of thick smoke wafted into the night sky as he saw men scrambling to put the fire out. Men used fire-hooks to raze buildings, hoping it would prevent the flames from spreading even more through the densely packed housing structures. Henry lit some houses in order to stop the flames from spreading further. The fire continued to rage, the continued winds only fuelling its ravenous nature.
“Henry, the fire has spread! It is nearly at St. Olave’s!” cried Sebastian, his heart full of concern for his beloved church and its parishioners, but no one, not even the vampires could stop the fury of the fire. “Oh, what have I done?” he exclaimed.
“Fear not, Sebastian!” Henry cried, “We will fight the fire as we’ve fought the plague.”
The wind was threatening to destroy the church, and if this happened, the Tower of London would soon fall to the flames as well. On the third day of the inferno, Henry’s exceptional hearing caught: “The Tower is full of gunpowder and if we don’t stop the fire from reaching it — the whole of London will be destroyed!”
He remembered well how much gunpowder was generally stocked in the Tower, which also had large stockpile of weapons — all of which would mean a disastrous explosion. He told the others, and they decided to try to shift the wind and make the fire fall back upon itself. They flew against the wind at great speed, again and again, and slowly but surely the winds changed course.
Finally, as exhausted as a vampire could possibly be, Henry sat down and rested by some men and smiled as he heard them rejoice at this change — which meant that the fire was certain to die down. He then walked down to the riverbank nearby and plunged his handkerchief into the Thames. As he began to clean the soot from his face, he was oblivious to the fact that he was being watched intently.
King Charles, covered in soot himself, narrowed his eyes and wondered if the smoke was making his eyes see things. “Harry?” he said, tentatively stepping towards the man who looked so much like his deceased brother.
Henry was taken aback as he registered his older sibling before him — of course Charles would be out fighting against the fire — that was the kind of man he was. Henry had to fight the desire deep within him to run over to his brother and tell him all that had happened. Oh, how he wished to impart all that he had seen to him! But he held back, for he knew Charles was far too sceptical a man to believe such a story. After all, what good would it do for a King of England to know there were supernatural horrors as well as those made by God and man? Henry fell to his knees with respect.
“Your Majesty honours me by comparing so lowly a man as myself to his late brother the Duke,” he replied, doing his best to adopt a gruff voice and a Somerset accent.
“I could have sworn you were… ‘Odd’s fish! Jimmy, come look here!” he called to their brother the Duke of York.
James, his face also blackened with soot and dribbling with sweat, ran to his brother. “Aye, brother, what is it?”
“Look you at this fellow here…” he gestured to where the man was. Henry was gone.
“My word, the fellow’s scarpered! He was the spitting image of our Harry, I tell you. I could have sworn it was he!”
James shook his head, and exhaled wearily. “You need to rest, brother. You’ve been out here too long. I fear the smoke has gone to your head.”
The vampires, exhausted from being unable to sleep for days, rejoiced once the fire had been extinguished. Not only did it mean that the damage was prevented from completely destroying all of London and its environs, but the plague and its horrific mutation had been defeated. All of the slums that had been breeding grounds for pestilence had been destroyed. The mutated plague would trouble them no more.
Chapter 12:
Susanna
She dug her well-used spade into the rich dark brown soil. She held th
e tall green stems and leaves in one hand and continued to dig with the other until the plant was loosened from the ground. There were many potatoes, and her mouth watered as she thought of how she would prepare them with the soft butter she had churned the day before. She popped the potatoes up and into a wicker basket, which she made only a month before. The soil embedded itself under her short, stubby fingernails, and she brushed the loose bits of dirt off on her apron.
Susanna Edmonds, exhausted after another strenuous day of labour upon the farm, sat back briefly upon her calloused heels, and wiped the sweat away from her brow, inadvertently leaving behind a smudge of dirt. Her warm hazel eyes scanned the whole of the large plot of vegetables that she had toiled arduously upon. She then let her gaze rest on the hole that was left by her recent exertions; ants and worms crawled and writhed in the dirt, disorientated by the sudden change in their surroundings. She could empathise well with such a feeling, for her world had once been upended in a not too dissimilar manner.
Her misbegotten child having died only the previous year, Susanna had endeavoured to work hard and put those awful memories behind her. It had not been an easy task, for she would often awaken in the night, plagued by nightmares about that horrific attack. And now, in the Year of Our Lord Sixteen Hundred and Sixty-Seven, Susanna was now two-and-twenty years old and already considered the village spinster. She was resigned to the fact that no man would have her; for Belinda had made sure that none of the villagers in Coffin’s Bishop would ever attempt to court her, especially after her public disgrace. Susanna did not particularly like any of them, for none had ever been remotely kind or considerate in all of her interactions with them over the years.
For a brief moment in her life, things seemed well: the afternoon’s sun shone brightly down upon her as she completed the rest of her daily tasks. The yellow orb in the sky rarely showed its head in the village, for Coffin’s Bishop was situated in such a way as to be often misty and under heavy cloud cover. The English weather being what it was, it usually rained, and the streets and fields were often muddy, and spotted with large pools of water. The pattens slipped on over her shoes helped her avoid the worst of this.
Susanna was looking forward to her evening sojourn. Every evening, since her boy’s death, she had taken to wander the forbidden Sanguinem Wood. There were tall oaks, birch and lime trees, and the whole of the ground was covered in deep green ferns which browned and curled at the ends. These ferns were tall enough to hide a large man. Red squirrels scampered about, darting up the trees and burrowing into the soil to hide the nuts they had found. It was enchanting woodland, and flecks of golden light would sometimes trickle down onto the mossy, fern-laden undergrowth. The suspicious villagers of Coffin’s Bishop often referred to Sanguinem Wood as the Haunted Wood, and no one dared enter into it, not even to hunt or to gather kindling wood for their fires. But Susanna had never encountered anything other than tranquillity and beauty in those woods. It was, on the contrary, far more comforting and enjoyable than anything back in the village. It was here, amidst the shadowy ferns and dark elms, that Susanna knew the only peace she had ever known.
And so, Sanguinem Wood had become a sort of refuge, the one place where she felt free from the harshness of her life. In the accommodating space between the Black Stones, Susanna began to keep her most precious things: a lock of her mother’s flame-red hair, and her father’s only book — his most cherished possession. Susanna could not read, but treasured the black print upon the yellowing pages just the same. Sometimes she would skim her calloused fingers over these, wondering what it said, and she had no way of knowing what book it was. She so longed to learn how to read, and indeed, reading would have afforded her a much-needed journey into a fantasy world. But books were costly, precious things, and few people had access to them. Just as few, of course, ever learned to read or write.
Belinda soon realised that Susanna ventured daily into the woods, come rain, or wind, or snow, and she had no shame in telling the whole of Coffin’s Bishop about it. She herself had no wish to set foot in what she was sure was the Devil’s own wood. What could Susanna be doing in the haunted wood that bordered Farmer Smith’s sheep and barley farm and their own? The villagers held onto the old myths that stated that red-haired maidens were probably witches. And witches practiced their black arts in woods. In their superstitious minds, the red-haired temptress was probably dancing naked in the wood, conjuring up demons and engaging in carnal games with the Devil himself. No one could possibly understand that Susanna was merely a young, lonely woman, who enjoyed spending time on her own.
Despite all the troubles that had come her way, they had not broken her spirit. It was in this secluded grotto she would sing, for she sang like a nightingale, her song full of woe and yearning. Singing for pleasure had been banned in the village for as long as she could remember, but she loved music — which she could only hear in the passing flutter of birdsong and in the whistling wind flowing through the trees. Her father had once, in his drunkenness, spoken about country dances where he used to dance and sing with her mother. Susanna hoped that one day she, too, would be able to dance and sing openly.
***
Susanna, carrying her basket full of potatoes, carrots, and turnips, walked down the lavender-bordered path that led to the cottage. The house itself was small, with an old thatched roof, now covered in lichen and home to some crows. She cast her eyes over the visible beams of wood that crossed the edifice of the cottage. There was a long old wooden fence, which her father had constructed before she had been born, and opposite this was an old, gnarled apple tree. She walked up the wooden steps and quietly entered into the kitchen. She had to always be as quiet as possible, or Belinda would wring her ears. Her sister-in-law was remarkably similar in temper to her brother, Peter, the man who had ravished Susanna almost two years before.
Toby ran around and around in his wheel, which was affixed to the wall and was connected to the spit. As the small black dog ran, the spit would turn and roast the meat Susanna had skewered onto it evenly. Even though he was just the spit dog, Susanna treated Toby well.
She sat down at the worn oak table that her father had made when their family had settled in Coffin’s Bishop. She found some comfort in working in that spot, knowing that his hands had sawed and filed the wood.
Belinda did not care much for manual labour, in fact, that was one of the reasons she had agreed to keep Susanna on at all. Samuel would not have been able to prevent her had she truly wanted the wretched girl to leave. Susanna provided free labour, costing only the most meagre room and board. If Belinda were forced to hire another in Susanna’s absence, they would want wages. And, there was also the fact that few in the village were capable of doing half the things Susanna could do.
Susanna kept chopping the vegetables and Peter soon appeared at the door, and she had no choice but to let him in. She refused to look at him and went back to preparing the vegetables.
“And how is Miss Susanna this evening, I wonder? Has she been a good girl?” he taunted, the tang of his armpits causing her to wrinkle her nose in disgust.
She made no reply but continued chopping with the sharp knife in her now trembling hand.
He went on. “Making a stew, are we? I’ll stay for some of that, as I am hungry. But first, I think you should see to some of my other needs.” He then began rubbing the front of his breeches against her shoulder, hardening the member contained therein.
She shuddered; he was so vile.
He bent over and quickly licked her neck to her cheek in one stroke of his foul-smelling tongue. He picked her up by her armpits, making her drop her knife, and sat her down on the wooden table though she protested.
“Let go of me, Peter,” she said as he gripped onto her forearm. It took a great deal of courage to look her former attacker in the eye, but she did so.
He began to unbutton his trousers. “Open your legs,” he commanded.
No!
“Quit your struggling,
you know you like it.”
She slapped him his pig-like face and he grabbed her, turned her around, and pushed her violently onto the table.
“You bitch, I’ll mount you like a dog, I will!”
He pressed her face against the table as he pulled her skirts up, but she caught sight of the little knife she had left in the basket. She would not endure this calumny again. The fury within her came to a head and, with one quick and courageous move, she took hold of the knife and slashed at Peter. Susanna had left a bleeding line across the top of his groin. In spite of the superficial nature of this wound, he screamed in an exaggerated manner, which sent Belinda running down the stairs to see what had happened.
“What’s going on here?” she exclaimed, seeing Susanna clutching a knife, which she still had pointed at Peter.
“That bitch cut me with a knife!” he complained, clutching at his wounds. “You best give her a sound thrashing, sister, or I’ll do it meself!” With that he kicked the knife out of her hand, and grappled with Susanna, pushing her violently against the china cabinet, sending various ceramic plates crashing to the ground. Peter then began pummelling her face and body. Unable to thwart his attack, Susanna fell to the floor and tried in vain to protect herself from his blows.
“Stop, Peter! This is my house and I will deal with her!”
“Father will be furious when he finds out!” he cried, holding up his falling trousers in a fist. “You wait and see, witch, you’ll be sorry!” Peter ran out, leaving the kitchen door wide open.
“How could you have done such a thing?” Belinda cried, rounding towards Susanna. “He’s the son of the magistrate, and you’ve attacked him? I could have you put in the stocks for three days for such an offence!” It did not occur to her that her beloved brother was on the verge of ravishing Susanna for a second time.
The Stuart Vampire Page 12
