Connecticut Vampire in Queen Mary's Court

by Hall, Ian

  But of course, I felt he was still too green a vampire to just abandon in an unknown past for maybe years on his own; he needed the experience of turning someone, and that meant I had to contact the boss again.

  “Dickey?” He sounded in a good mood.

  “Hi, boss, I’ve got to do a turning, a kind of training thing. Do you have anyone lined up?”

  “Nothing on the radar right now, my old son. What are you doing with yourself these days?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” I lied, and I didn’t like doing that to the boss. He didn’t like it.

  After hanging up, I needed to come to terms with a cruel truth. I had to get Steve to turn a vampire for me, then right afterwards, we’d have to kill it, because we didn’t have the time to train it properly, and we couldn’t just let it loose on the public.

  I needed to murder an innocent person.

  “I also need to kill you,” I said to Steve, sitting in the kitchen by the tall breakfast bar, who just about choked on his coffee.

  “What?”

  “Well, we vampires grow stronger by being killed a few times.” I walked past him, then jammed my kitchen knife right into the back of his hand.

  “Argh!” He stormed away from me. “What the fuck did you do that for?” he roared at me. Then he questioningly looked at the knife, still embedded in his hand. I reached for it and roughly pulled it free.

  The wound dripped blood on the floor for only a moment. Steve looked at the wound in silent amazement. “It’s actually not really painful. Why not?”

  “The initial stab is always the worst part, but we heal pretty damn quick. In an hour, there won’t even be a scar.”

  “Wow.” Then he remembered the conversation. “You need to kill me?”

  “Yup.” I took my sword from the pile in the living room, and whisked it through the air a few times. I placed the sharp tip against his chest. “Right through the heart.”

  I’ve never seen him look so serious. “How long will I be dead?” Again, the straight-forwardness of the man proved astounding.

  “Depends on the person, and the state of the injuries. Simple stabbing death, maybe six, eight hours. Falling from a skyscraper and breaking every bone in your body dead, could be a day or two.”

  “But I’ll be stronger?” I nodded. “Will it hurt?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’ll hurt.”

  “Shit.” Then he stood up straight, placed his hands on his waist, and braced himself. “Go for it.”

  So I killed him. A clean poke right through the heart, and out the other side. Steve gave a silent wince, brave guy. Then I ripped the sword back out again, sending him screaming in pain, falling to the floor.

  “Fucker,” he said, his eyes dimming quickly.

  It took him six hours and twenty-seven minutes to wake up again. I timed it.

  He gasped, clutching his chest, seeing the blood on his T-shirt. He quickly looked underneath, then poked his finger through the hole in the material . “There’s no sign on me, nothing. Not even the slightest mark.”

  Then, with the killing of Steve over, I explained my next requirement.

  He shook his head. “You’re talking about murder.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah, kinda.”

  “I don’t see a ‘kinda’ in it,” Steve said, scowling. “Seems pretty straightforward murder to me.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “And I’ve got to do it?”

  “Part of your training.”

  He stood in silence for a moment. “Okay, let’s go into Boston, get ourselves into a real bad area, and knock over a lowlife.”

  I shook my head. “Can’t be Boston.”

  “Why not?”

  “Different boss, we don’t want to draw trouble to our ‘family’ here in Connecticut.”

  “But we can’t do it in Hartford?” Steve asked.

  “Too close to my boss.”

  So we dressed appropriately shabbily and set out for Providence, heading down to the bars near the harbor area. On the way we’d decided to hit a drug dealer, that way we’d be doing the town a service. It seemed to make this part more bearable.

  We found our mark right away. Small, slimy little rat bag named Francisco. He met us out the back of the bar, and I dropped a ‘sleep’ hit on him, lifting him onto my shoulder, and ran quickly to the car.

  Once safely out of town, I stopped in a dark wooded roadway and woke our subject up.

  Even though Francisco bucked under him, Steve found the artery all right, but baulked slightly on sucking anything from him.

  “You gotta do it, Steve.”

  “It just feels wrong.” But of course, when he’d gotten his first taste of it, he sucked down a gutful.

  Then we did the slash of the wrist, and the jamming of it into Francisco’s eager mouth. He roared like a wild man, gasping and looking around the car.

  “Okay, you got it?” I asked.

  Steve nodded resolutely.

  “Now, that’s how a vampire turns someone.” I looked at the quivering excuse of a man. “Now break his scrawny neck,” I said with little pleasure.

  Steve wasted no time. Crunch.

  We left Francisco in two pieces in the woodland, his head about five miles from the rest of him. His remains would probably be found sometime, but we’d been careful to remove any chance of fingerprints. I felt safe about it all. Not good, but safe.

  As we drove home to Hartford, I realized the crux of the plan had suddenly been reached.

  I ticked off the check-boxes in my head; Steve had been turned and trained, we had our clothes and weapons ready, we’d immersed ourselves in Catherine’s history, we’d studied maps, and we had our contingency plans firmly in place should we arrive in different times or in different places.

  There seemed little else to do, but to travel to the same place I’d fought with Fallon, and spin into history.

  So, basically, that’s what we did.

  Same place on the sidewalk we’d started our spin. Same time of night, I think we’d thought of everything.

  So we stood, hands on each other’s shoulders.

  And spun.

  And spun.

  And spun.

  Chapter 4

  Date Unknown

  Date Unknown

  Daylight.

  I stood in woods, bracken around my feet. “Steve!” I roared. Nothing.

  “But it’s warm,” I said to myself, listening to the birds and insects. “So maybe just a few weeks after leaving? Months?” I hoped.

  Taking direction from the position of the sun in the sky, and the moss on the trees, I struck out due east, hoping to find a north-south road. I hadn’t travelled ten miles before I came across a distant cathedral town.

  But once I’d crossed half the distance to the spired building, I heard the bells.

  Single tone, monotonous.

  I passed two riders on the road heading out of the town. “Why are the bells ringing?”

  “Good day, sire, if you’ve been on the road long, you may not have heard; the King is dead.”

  “King?” I asked with a sinking feeling that somehow I’d managed to screw it all up.

  “Well, you know, not quite the King, more the boy who would be.” They made to carry on, but stopped, watching my dismayed questioning face.

  Well, if I’d arrived just as Arthur died, I’d have to stay clear of Ludlow in case I bumped into myself. It felt as dark as ever.

  “So when did he die?” I asked, hoping for more light to be shed.

  “July 6th,” the second man said, pulling at the sleeve of the first. “Just two days ago.”

  Okay, that last one did it. Trying to maintain a calm veneer, I panicked inside. Arthur had died in April, so the ‘King’ newly dead certainly wasn’t him.

  But despite the second guy’s insistent tugging, the first man had to finish his piece, had to unburden himself, and I hoped I’d feel the better for it. “Aye, and the cat’s amongst the pigeons right enough. Civ
il war probably, that’s why we’re out of Rochester.”

  Rochester? I remembered the map in my head. Rochester; just south of London, a bit to the right.

  “Civil war?”

  “Aye, before he died, Boy Edward named Lady Jane Grey as his successor. With two other legitimate princesses before her, she’ll not take the throne easily.”

  Edward.

  Crap, in all my readings and listenings of the last two weeks, I hadn’t come across one single Edward.

  So I resumed my walk to Rochester, purloined a couple of small purses on the way, giving me a little local spending money.

  Talk seemed to be in easy supply at any of the taverns, so I chose the best looking one, and tried for a room.

  “A guinea, sire.”

  I paused halfway to my purse. “That’s a bit stiff, is it not?” I questioned.

  “Forty years of good King Henry doesn’t pay for itself.”

  “Forty years…” I repeated. So England had just had forty years of a Henry, then an Edward? I smiled, cataloging the remark, and tried to think of a way I could glean more information without looking stupid.

  “So Edward… who was his mother again? I can’t remember.”

  The man laughed. “Not sure I can either, seeing the randy bastard went through six of ‘em.”

  So we were talking Henry the Eighth.

  I silently cursed, my quick mental arithmetic put the date around 1550. Steve and I were way off course. Shit, Catherine would probably be dead. In fact, I’m sure I read somewhere that he outlived her. Damn if all the studying his early years had been for nothing.

  With my mind racing, I absently paid the money. “I expect a meal and a glass of wine or two for that price.”

  “Certainly, sire.” His smile preceded him into the kitchen, shouting instructions.

  I got back into the main part of the tavern and soon gleaned the story, I mean, the people were talking about nothing else. I sat, I listened, and I soaked in whatever I could.

  With King Henry long dead, and his son Edward dying before he reached eighteen, a vacuum had formed at the top, and there were no men to fill it.

  Just three women. Each one probably being manipulated by the most powerful men in England.

  Lady Jane Grey, Protestant, aged about seventeen, ‘King’ Edward’s cousin.

  Princess Mary, Henry’s eldest, and Catherine of Aragon’s daughter.

  Princess Elizabeth, Henry’s bastard by Ann Boleyn.

  Like every man in England, I had to decide who to rally to. I tried to remember who’d succeeded Edward, but my mind clouded. As the evening progressed, I listened to the tide in the tavern, and went through my options.

  I had little inherent fealty to the Lady Jane Grey, the daughter of the smallest of Henry the Eighth’s sisters, I mean Princess Mary had been five when I’d visited England last.

  I’m certain that I’d read Princess Elizabeth grew up to be Queen, but maybe it would turn out to be the wrong Elizabeth.

  This new Princess Mary, however, would be an unknown quantity to me. I’d sped back in time to help her mother, Catherine of Aragon, but obviously missed the mark by some fifty years. If I’d arrived too late to help the mother, why not help the daughter?

  Ah well, I thought; perhaps it would prove to be another Sam Beckett mission; I had been sent back in time to make sure she came to power.

  “Where will Princess Mary gather her forces?” I asked into the general hubbub of the tavern.

  “Jane Grey has taken defensive positions in the Tower,” a large man stated, lifting his tankard. “Let’s hope she stays there!”

  Amid the laughter, I felt my sleeve being pulled. “Sire, the Princess Mary will be gathering her loyal men in Norfolk.”

  All the information I needed.

  Risking my neck, I set off at breakneck speed in the gathering darkness.

  I got through London in the pitch black of night, and across the Thames on a very deserted Tower bridge.

  At the frontage of the north end, seeing no ‘X’ from Steve, I carved a deep ‘X’ on the fascia, a sign to Steve that I’d arrived.

  But even in the dead of night, a group of soldiers were pinning leaflets onto wooden walls. “Long Live the Queen Jane!” they announced, then marched off in silence.

  “Who declares this?” I asked, falling into step beside them. “For it is indeed great news.”

  “The Privy Council has met, and declared it to be so.”

  Even I knew the ‘Privy Council’ meant the best of the noblemen, and the might of parliament.

  I thanked the men for their news, grabbed one of the posters, and set off again, soon leaving the dark stink of London behind me.

  I knew Norfolk lay north of London, and off to the right.

  By the first shafts of dawn, I’d zeroed in on Mary’s position, determined to throw my lot with Catherine of Aragon’s daughter.

  I met a group of men, seemingly marching with purpose in their stride. “Your goal?” I asked, following in step.

  “We’re off to Framlingham Castle,” they said, almost as one.

  “Who leads?” I asked.

  “We ain’t got a leader,” one said, “On account, no one’s got any money.”

  “I can lead you, and pay your wages!” I said, and it raised a cheer. I handed out silver coins to at least twelve men. “I am Richard DeVere! If you find any other stragglers, bring them into the party. I will fight as bravely as any man here, and I will always pay my men well.”

  I set off at a faster pace, then at a run, finding Framlingham after just an hour. I got stopped at the gate by a bunch of panicky soldiers.

  “Is the Princess here?” I asked.

  “She’s at Kenninghall,” one of the men offered, and again. I wasted no time. I gave the men the news that Lady Jane Grey had been declared lawful Queen, and set out for Kenninghall, almost thirty miles away.

  Expecting a huge marshaling of soldiers, I met none of it.

  With the easiest of suggestions, I got an audience with Princess Mary, and found myself immediately struck by her poise and steely determination.

  A spindly woman, Mary had sharp features and thin lips, and seemingly nothing of the fiery passion that had oozed from her mother.

  “Richard DeVere, Your Majesty.’ I almost prostrated myself before her.

  “A relation of John De Vere, the Earl of Oxford?” she quizzed.

  I shook my head. “I’m afraid my name in the Low Countries comes from less august stock, Your Majesty. My grandfather of the same name knew your mother in person, and spoke the better of having done so.”

  A flicker of recognition passed over her face. “Master Richard. What brings you to Kenninghall?”

  “I have a small detachment of men, Your Majesty, marching to Framlingham Castle as we speak. Not many, maybe thirty if we can keep them together, fed and paid.”

  “I am in your debt, sir.”

  “I also bring news, Your Majesty.” I produced the folded proclamation from inside my doublet. “The Lady Jane Grey has been pronounced Queen by the Privy Council.”

  She accepted the sheet and read it slowly. “Master Richard, I have need of refreshment. Will you excuse me?”

  As she closed the door behind herself, I heard her bark for scribes. She would send a letter to this upstart Jane Grey, and demand she recognize her as Queen Mary.

  Then the door opened again. “Master DeVere?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “I need an escort for Thomas Hungate. Are you available?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, at your service.”

  Okay.

  I’d hit the ground running. In less than one day, I’d found we’d hit the wrong time period, made the right adjustments, travelled a hundred miles, and spoke with the daughter of the Princess I’d screwed just a few weeks ago.

  Not bad.

  I felt way more in control this time around. Determined to keep the ball rolling, I snatched a couple of purses on
the way back to Framlingham Castle.

  Forty-six men sat by the roadside, and I recognized a few from before. I paid the newcomers, and gave them some extra money to buy food.

  And got back to Kenninghall for my journey to London by horse.

  Thomas and I rode like the wind, stopping for neither rest nor food. He strode into the chambers of the Privy Council, announcing himself as messenger from ‘the rightful Queen’.

  Of course, him being a ‘gentleman’, they whipped him off to the Tower, instantly imprisoned. His only crime? Delivering a letter.

  I paced the halls outside, awaiting my own fate, when a deputation exited from their deliberations. A large man with low-hanging jowls placed a folded parchment in my hand.

  “Take this to the bastard Lady Mary.”

  I looked at the pious slob. I’d remember his face.

  “Yes, sire,” I teased him to reveal his identity, but he remained silent to my insult.

  I handed the reply into Mary’s hands before bedtime that day.

  To my consternation, she did not dismiss me. I stood, white from the effort of the last few days, and weak from the travel through time.

  She read from the parchment. “They dispute my heredity!” she screamed. “They assert that Jane is Queen, and state I am still illegitimate in the eyes of the world!” She brandished the paper like a sword. “They ask me to submit.”

  Although emotions surged through this frail form, she never wept, nor showed weakness. I saw her mother in her movements, and recognized Catherine’s determination flowing in her veins.

  “Your majesty,” I began, and a few heads turned to see the upstart that had spoken out of turn. “May I be excused? I am beyond exhaustion.”

  To my surprise, she swept across the room, and kissed me on the forehead. “You are excused, dear friend.” She caught my eye as she spoke. “My mother spoke of your grandfather, and spoke of him well.”

  I retreated from the room, and exited Kenninghall in minutes.

  Then I killed a calf in a field, drank deeply, and presented it to my men at Framlingham for their butchering.

  Blood is blood, and sometimes beggars can’t be choosers.

  I got put in charge of a section of wall between two towers, and my men patrolled, their vigilance sparked into attention by the new ‘lord’ who paid their wages and kept them well fed.