He covered his head with his arms, but the sound receded and David was suddenly there in front of him. David, with his kind face and endless courage, always a source of strength in this hell. Of course, David would be here, he was their captain, but that meant…
"I didn't know you were dead, too," Edward said.
David looked at him with solemn, sad eyes.
"What do you mean, dead?"
"Well, you wouldn't be here if you weren't."
"Neither of us are dead, old man. You're in hospital. I've come to see how you are."
Edward looked up and down the trenches. The coffins were white, like beds… the trench walls were green, roofed in. Strange how the battlefield looked different sometimes, but the screaming never stopped. He saw two of the corpses struggling with a third, trying to force him down while he cried out with agony. Injured… his heart pounded with the reasonless fear that never left him now.
"We're all dead here," Edward said. "But I'm so glad you're with me, David. You'll help us to repel the attack."
"What attack?" David said gendy.
"Oh, they attack all the time. First the bombardment to soften us up, then they come over the top through the barbed wire… the vampires, you know."
David nodded, but his face was grave. "The War's over, old man." His voice was hoarse. "That's what I've come to tell you. I killed the vampire. He's dead."
Then Edward realised that David didn't understand. He reached out and clutched his sleeve, willing him to hear. "But there are others. They're gone now but they'll come back… They always come back when it's dark… "
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
Ghost in the Looking-glass
The spring sky above the Rhine was capricious. One moment rain clouded the river as if the Lorelei had breathed on the mirror surface; the next, the clouds were torn apart and the green sides of the gorge would be awash with glittering diamonds. At the top of the gorge, the castle turned from earth-brown to golden-russet in the ever-changing light.
Within the windowless lower rooms of Schloss Holdenstein, where daylight never came, Kristian was aware of the breeze dancing across the sky outside. He was aware of everything. The corridors which linked the twisted maze of cells and chapels also angled away into the Crystal Ring, into infinity. Kristian could see both realms at once, the solid world and the mind of God, overlaid. He and the castle were the symbiotic heart from which veins of wisdom branched in every direction.
And here was his inner sanctum, where world and Ring were perfectly interlinked, permeated by the power of God. Here was absolute purity; bare walls, one chair and one desk on which lay his Bible—the Bible he was writing—and in the centre, two coffins lying side by side on catafalques.
They were ancient stone coffins, lidless, the inner cavity shaped to fit a human form. Both were full to the brim with blood.
Kristian sent his flock far and wide each day to bring victims to replenish the supply. He would not let them hunt too near Holdenstein lest suspicion fall on the castle. He took care to avoid discovery, not because he was afraid of what humans could do to him—they could do nothing—but because he would resent the intrusion. For the same reason, he hated having live humans brought here at all. But it must be endured—as must the cloying scent of blood, distasteful to one who only drank from vampire throats.
He recruited Stefan and Niklas to do the worst of it for him; they were the only ones he felt he could trust to keep the secret. The others would be told in time. Each day, Stefan and his twin skimmed off the coagulated blood so that Kristian could inspect the progress, then replenished it by bleeding new victims into the coffin, took the bodies away. When it was done, they all prayed together.
It was going well. Kristian felt expansive, optimistic. He relished the sense of his vampires moving through the corridors, beloved children of Lilith in dark robes like monks, ever returning to the fount of life to renew their faith in Kristian before they went out into the world again to feed. Here they were completely his; they called him Beloved Master and Father; they bowed to him and received from his wrist the single swallow of communion wine. The blood of their messiah, quite literally.
Kristian sat at his desk, staring at the gore-filled coffins by the light of a smoking torch. Their shadows swelled and shrank on the stone walls and on the blood-blackened flags, making him think of other shadows; three black figures who had ambushed him on a cold hillside as he went home from preaching at the church. Hellfire and the wrath of God he had preached; perhaps it was their revenge, an immortal joke to show the man of God what true evil was. Make the priest into a vampire. But the trick had recoiled upon them because in the transformation Kristian had found the truth, seen the face of God at first hand, become His ambassador on earth.
The three vampires who had transformed him, he had tracked down and destroyed. And many, many others after them; the ones who set themselves against him, the ones who disappointed him.
But those who were the most disobedient were the ones he loved the best. Ilona, Pierre, Karl (of course, Karl)—he would tolerate them, stretch out his arms to absorb their doubt and bitterness and heresy. Yes, sharpen your teeth on me, my children, the better to deliver my message to mankind.
He had punished Ilona only lightly for her wilfulness. Slaying humans for personal reasons was a crime—not against humans but against Kristian's law. Humans were an anonymous mass, except the few Kristian singled out for attention. The ones he had used to put pressure on Karl were no use dead, and Ilona had killed them out of spite, to defy Kristian and hurt Karl. All Kristian had done in return was to starve her for a few weeks until she repented. He felt generous. Would it not be punishment enough when she discovered the miracle he was weaving?
It wasn't yet time for the blood to be replenished, but Kristian, impatient, went to look down into the coffins. In one, only the body and limbs were firmly defined, sheened by crimson; the head-shaped cavity contained a semi-solid red mass that merely hinted at a face. In the second coffin, the reverse was true. The body was indistinct under a wetly gleaming blanket of clotted blood—taking shape so very slowly—but the face gleamed strong and clear; beautiful, even though it was waxen and spattered with gore.
"Come back," Kristian said quietly. "In God's name you will come back." His fingers rested on the cold stone rim; he willed strength, healing and energy into the lifeless head.
Karl's spirit, those entrancing eyes so full of life and deceptively acid humour, were absent; yet there was a presence in this chamber. Something brooding, slow-breathing, stirring in its sleep under layers of darkness. Clawing its way up towards life on rungs of human blood.
Kristian's mouth thinned with satisfaction. The process could not be rushed, after all; but time and God were on his side.
***
Life went on, but Charlotte merely existed. She drifted easily through the duties that were expected of her, said and did appropriate things; but inside she felt like a bird that had died in the air, somehow still coasting along on fixed wings. Waiting for the inevitable crash.
The grief of Fleur's and Clive's funeral was followed by the subdued joy of Anne and David's wedding in the new year, Charlotte's marriage to Henry in spring. There was a sense of shaking off a nightmare and making a new beginning. Charlotte's father, being what he was, clammed up about "those unfortunate events;" Anne and David took the healthier approach that there was no point in dwelling on the past. With distance, entrenched scepticism about the existence of vampires regained its power. How could they speak of it without taking those walls down again?
Charlotte now found it paradoxically easy to express the affection she had never been able to show her family. They were all closer than before. Silence had fallen, but memories imbued every word or kiss exchanged with unspoken affirmations: "It's over, we're alive, we're together. It can't touch us again."
Yet Charlotte was uneasy when Anne and David moved to Parkland Hall to take up the duties of runn
ing the estate. They were living in a wing of the Hall that Elizabeth refurbished for them, while the manor house remained unfinished, deserted. Although they issued endless invitations for Charlotte to go and stay with them, she could never quite face it.
It was hard enough in Cambridge, where everything she touched seemed to release a silvery cascade of memories, like wind chimes in the lightest breeze. Here in this study we really talked for the first time and I started to realise I loved him. Here, at this laboratory bench we worked, and when Henry was pompous Karl would catch my eye and make me laugh. Here we walked, here we sat…
The memories at Parkland would have been unbearable. She had never been allowed to mourn Karl—by the others or by herself. Who could mourn for a murderer, a demon in human shape?
Instead she tried to go on as she had before, locked into the magic circle; herself, Father and Henry, immersed in probing the secrets of the structure of matter. Fascinating still, but sometimes the laboratory walls seemed confining rather than safe, and nothing was the same. She could have left, now she was twenty-one—but there was nowhere she wanted to go, nothing to fill the emptiness. This was home, all she had to cling to. Marrying Henry had been a great mistake. Was it that he had changed, or that she had never seen him clearly before? Both, perhaps. Henry was not unkind but he was weak, and he possessed the immense stubbornness of weak men. She had thought he would be too obtuse to mind her apathy, but under his bumbling surface there was an inchoate sensitivity, resentment and frustration. It was partly her fault; for his sake, she should not have married him without love. He reacted to her indifference by being overbearing. He could not win her heart, so all that was left was to try to control her.
He would pick arguments with her, trying to change her life when there was no reason. She was incredulous, shortly after their dismal honeymoon, when he actually suggested that she give up work.
"Whatever for?" she said.
"It is generally the done thing for married women to stop work," he replied stuffily.
"What do you want me to do, arrange flowers all day while Father has to employ a postgraduate in my place and spend months teaching him how he likes things done?"
"Mother thought you could become more involved with her Methodist circle. They do awfully worthwhile work."
Charlotte regarded this suggestion with such contempt that it was all she could do to reply. "That is your mother's life, not mine," she said tightly. "I should like to hear what Marie Curie said if her husband ever told her to stop working."
Henry became stiffly resentful. "You will have to stop anyway, when we have children."
The thought froze her. "Very well, I'll stop then," she said with thin anger. "Not before."
It was easy to defeat Henry in any argument, but the war went on. She hated it. She almost hated him… but not quite, because sometimes she could see herself so clearly from his fixed point of view that she detested herself.
When Henry made love to her she never thought of Karl. She tried to think of nothing at all. But if her body responded independent of her will—desperation, perhaps, for what she had lost—her passion seemed to alarm him. He thought only wanton women enjoyed themselves. And he was inhibited, easy to put off when he knocked timidly at the door of her room. She had insisted on keeping separate rooms.
And each month she dreaded finding she was pregnant, breathed a sigh of relief when she found she was not. Why don't I want a child? because I don't want anything of his. I don't want anything to bind me to life—-just in case I should want to leave it.
Once she dreamed she had a grown-up daughter. Her name was Violette and she had black hair and bore a striking resemblance to Karl.
There were pleasanter aspects to life. Madeleine, as Karl had said, was resilient, and soon returned to her vivacious self, treating Charlotte with an affection and respect that she had never shown before. Maddy went to London with Elizabeth for a second Season, but came home early in the summer, seeming quiet and restless. Then she suggested to Charlotte that they go and visit Edward in the nursing home.
"I don't know," said Charlotte. "David says he hardly recognises anyone now. It might be terribly upsetting."
"But he was our friend, still is," said Maddy. "It must be awful to be deserted, as if mental illness is somehow worse than any other sort. Sometimes you have to face up to upsetting things, don't you? Please come with me, Charli."
The truth is, I still feel too guilty. Rationally I know I am not responsible for Edward's illness… but in loving Karl, it became partly my fault. Yet she agreed to go, for Maddy's sake.
Madeleine drove them to Hertfordshire in her sleek new open tourer. David was ensuring that Edward received the best of care in a private nursing home; to leave him in an asylum would have been unthinkable.
At the home, a nurse led them into a pleasant sunny garden, where Edward was sitting on a bench beneath a chestnut tree. "He's well enough to come outside now," said the nurse. "We don't have to restrain him very often at all. But he is in rather a world of his own, and I'm afraid there's little hope of improvement."
Little hope of improvement, echoed Charlotte's thoughts. He watched them as they approached, but she was not sure he recognised them. His face was thin, looking nearer fifty than thirty, and his eyes had the hunted introversion of paranoia. What does he see? she thought. She knew what David had told her, that for Edward the War was still going on, looping endlessly through his tormented mind, and his enemies were not Germans but vampires.
This was the nearest Charlotte had come to weeping since Karl had died.
"Edward, dear, it's Madeleine, don't you remember?" Maddy said, sitting beside him. "And Charlotte."
Edward looked up at Charlotte, squinting a little in the sunlight. Then he said, "There's a shadow behind you."
Charlotte glanced round by reflex, saw nothing. "How are you?" she said.
He shook his head. "The shadow's still there. He's still with you. Following you. Can't you see him, behind your left shoulder?" There were strings of foam in the corners of his mouth. His words, his expression, rooted Charlotte to the spot.
"It's all right, Edward," said Maddy, giving her a concerned look. "There's nothing there, only us."
"No, you don't see! They don't go away, they come back! Can't you see it, the red tongue in the cage of teeth? The dead ones come back. There's a black aura all around you… "
"I'd better fetch the nurse," said Charlotte.
"No, sit down, Charli, quickly," said Madeleine. "I think it's because you're standing against the sun. Edward, I'm David's sister. We've met before, don't you remember?" Madeleine linked her arm through his, went on talking softly to him until his trembling subsided and his eyes clouded back to relative calmness. Charlotte sat next to them in silence.
Somehow Madeleine seemed to reach him; after a while, he turned to her as if he had only just realised she was there and said, "Maddy? What are you doing here? Am I on leave?"
In the car on the way home, Charlotte hugged her stomach against the heaviness she felt there. What was it he saw in me? Am I tainted? Poor, poor Edward… I wonder if he's really mad or just seeing the truth. The veil of safety gone and his nerves stripped raw, burning and shrivelling in the slightest breeze. We should listen to him instead of locking him away. Was it the War, or Karl's bite, or would this have happened to him anyway ?
She said, "You were so good with him, Maddy. All I seemed to do was upset him."
"Don't feel bad about it," said Maddy. She sounded thoughtful. "The slightest thing can set him off, David said. He recognised me; that's a good sign, isn't it?"
"I hope so," said Charlotte. "Oh, I do hope so."
For a few moments there was only the sound of the engine, the wind streaming past. Then Madeleine said, "Charli, can I ask you something? About… well, you know. Last year. I'll understand if you don't want to talk about it."
"No, I don't mind."
"Did you really love him? Karl, I mean." It was
the first time Maddy had mentioned his name since it had happened. They had never discussed it.
Charlotte answered, "Yes, I did. I thought I did. I don't know what love is, really."
"Neither do I. It's nothing like, say, the love I feel for you and Father. How can love cut you to pieces like that?" Maddy sighed. "I used to think I was such a hero, you know? I was never afraid of anything, I thought nothing could hurt me. It was no fun at all to find that I'm not brave but an idiot."
"You were never that, Maddy," Charlotte said, smiling. "But I was so blind. With Karl… I was trying to think of something to compare it to. I was like a child who sees a big beautiful dog and falls in love with it, and assumes that all she has to do to possess it is to say, 'I want that.' It never occurs to her that she can be denied. Then she's told she can't have her way. While she's still clinging on to the dog and crying, she sees that it's not a lovely sweet creature at all but a wolf, with red eyes and fangs, and it's too late, she wants to run away but she's trapped with it and the whole world has turned dark… " she trailed off. "That's how I felt about Karl."
"I understand you, Maddy," Charlotte said softly.
"Do you? I look back and I can see that I was quite insane for a few days. I can't stand to think of Karl now. It's his fault I don't feel safe any more. We've both been through the same thing, haven't we? Only it was much worse for you. There we were fighting over him while he was betraying us both."
Charlotte felt tears pushing at her throat, her eyes, and she thought, No, don't let me start crying, not now. "I don't think he meant to. It was just the way things were… "
"I'm scared to fall in love now," Madeleine interrupted, as if she didn't want to hear qualifications. If she's made sense of it, Charlotte thought, I’ll let her be. "Do you know why I came back from London early? I got sick of the Season. It all seemed so shallow, one party after another, Aunt Lizzie dangling me like bait for some stinking-rich titled fish to catch. I've been doing an awful lot of thinking."
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