‘None are here in the house.’ Simon descended the stair – an extraordinarily long stair; the cellar was very deep. No wonder Simon couldn’t hear them, sense them … ‘A motor car was kept in the shed, with cans of petrol and oil.’
‘He took them.’ Lydia turned the tiny spoon in her fingers. Miranda touched this …
She thought about laying her head on the table, weeping – like Niobe in the Greek myth – until she turned into stone and couldn’t feel the loss any more.
‘And their guardians – waking to find the cellar empty and their prisoners gone – fled, as anyone would who has seen Lionel in his anger. I smell no blood on the premises, and so take comfort in the fact that Zahorec at least did not murder your nursery maid. Yet having them prisoner, he will now use you – or try to use you …’
Lydia looked up at him sharply, in the lantern’s dim glow. ‘And Grippen will kill me,’ she said softly, ‘to keep that from happening, won’t he?’
‘He may try, yes.’ He raised her to her feet. ‘’Twere best we were gone, Mistress. Unless his minions be complete fools they shall have sent word to him at once of what befell. Daylight draws nigh. I have a house near Hertford, where you can remain hid from Lionel, but word will have to be got to James, ere Lionel’s men find him …’
He stopped, a few steps short of the door at the top of the cellar stair. ‘Putada.’ He handed Lydia the lantern. ‘He is here. Lionel. I can hold him I think until sunrise, but there is no lock on the inside of this door—’
‘Come out, you mewling Papist,’ growled the harsh bass from the kitchen. ‘I should have thought I’d see you sooner or later. Bring the bitch with you. I need a word with her as well.’
The doctor – sun-burned and sallow from service in India – bound Asher’s ankle and splinted it: the bone was cracked rather than broken, and shockingly bruised. ‘What’d you do to it, man?’ he asked. ‘Looks like a carthorse trod on it.’
‘Motor car.’ Asher took another sip of the brandy the desk clerk had fetched for him. Veronal would have been far better, but was out of the question. ‘The brake slipped off and my idiot nephew had left the thing in gear. Thing is, I must be in St Albans by eight—’
‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘It must,’ said Asher. ‘I must. If I don’t …’ He made himself look grave, noble, and not nearly as frantic as he felt. ‘There’s a woman’s honor in it.’ He laid a hand on the physician’s shoulder: a simpler explanation than the truth and one that didn’t involve a twenty-minute effort to convince people of the existence of the Undead, much less explain how he came to be working for them. ‘I can’t say more. I have a bike here; I can make the ride in good time if you’ll strap me up.’
The doctor sniffed, and eyed Asher’s loud tweeds – spattered with so much filth that Ippolyta’s blood was lost in the general mess – and unshaven chin, but wrapped his ankle tightly, first in bandages and then in strips of sticking plaster. ‘That’s going to be the devil when you start your bike,’ he warned, as Asher got to his feet – a fact of which Asher was already cringingly aware. ‘The splint’ll take part of the pressure, but if you make it as far as St Albans I’ll be surprised.’
‘Not as surprised as me.’ Doctor and desk clerk followed him as he limped down the rear stairs to the narrow yard. The moon stood just above the rooftops. He wondered if Lydia had found Ysidro, and if he wasn’t doing her some terrible disservice – or indeed, condemning her to death – by haring off at this moment.
How the hell had Zahorec discovered where Miranda was hidden?
Damn Millward – and damn the lazy bastard who hasn’t yet invented an electric starter for a motorcycle …
The clerk strapped Asher’s satchel on to the back of the bike, helped Asher to mount.
‘Good luck to you,’ said the doctor.
Asher pointed the front wheel at the gate, thrust the bike forward, pedaled three times – each stroke like a bayonet rammed up his heel – and the Indian’s engine caught with a muffled roar. As he swept out into the dark of Finsbury Circus he wondered who he could ask about the patron saint of motorcycles, to whom he owed at least a sheep.
He swung around and headed up City Road for Islington and points north.
‘So you’ve a house near Hertford, have you?’ Grippen pulled a chair from the kitchen table, and pushed it roughly around for Lydia to sit in. ‘I thought you said you were leaving this land.’
‘And I thought you said you would leave Mrs Asher and her husband in peace,’ returned Simon. Lydia set the lamp on the corner of the table and surreptitiously slid her feet from the gold-spangled slippers. She’d nearly broken her ankle twice between the motor car and the farmhouse. If it came to a dash for her life, she refused to be like a heroine in a novel and trip on her own shoes.
‘’Tis no concern of yours, Spaniard.’
‘’Tis no concern of mine if your fledglings find themselves another master – deeply as ’twould grieve me to see you driven from London. I can recommend a number of minor cities in Italy whose masters might conceivably permit you coffin space.’
‘I’d sooner lie in Hell than within smellin’ distance of Rome – an’ I’ll drag that snivelin’ Bohemian with me to the Devil’s door sooner than stand by while he sets up for himself in my city! Yes, and them puking traitors—’
‘Stop it!’ cried Lydia. ‘Both of you! Listen to me. Titus Armistead owns four copies of the Book of the Kindred of Darkness. Among the four of them, there’s sure to be one formula that will break the hold of a master on his fledglings—’
‘There’s no such thing!’ Grippen must have raised his hand to strike her, though Lydia didn’t see it. Only that suddenly, Simon was standing next to her with his hand locked around the master vampire’s upraised wrist.
Grippen yanked his arm clear. ‘Nothing can break the hold of a master on his get. Not if the master’s got any hair on his …’ He glanced at Lydia, then at Simon, and finished: ‘Chest.’
‘And what will you do,’ retorted Lydia, ‘if one of those volumes also contains a recipe for the growing of that hair? For making himself stronger, if he isn’t so already? He’s been hiding from you all this time, Dr Grippen, by possessing the man who’s going to marry Armistead’s daughter. Controlling him when he’s in an opium sleep. Taking his place outright when the sun goes down. Moving underground, only coming to the surface to kill. Through the girl, with Armistead’s money, he’s going to build a power-base in London. After the marriage I think he plans to step into Lord Colwich’s identity completely, with the girl to cover for him.’
‘Where’s he gone, then?’ growled Grippen. ‘Him and this American slut? Looks to me like the answer to this puzzle is to kill her …’
He glanced at Lydia again, calculatingly, and then at Simon.
‘And any other that’ll give him aid. And you can’t tell me, Spaniard, that this girl of yours won’t betray you, if Zahorec but sends her a lock of her babe’s red hair.’ The dark eyes turned to Lydia. ‘Would you, Missy?’
‘I would,’ replied Lydia steadily. He’ll know anything else is a lie, and so will Simon …
‘Any parent would,’ she went on, looking up into his face. ‘Surely you remember that at least, from your days as a living man. Had you not a daughter? Would you not have killed any man who harmed a hair of her head?’
The vampire looked aside. ‘Greedy little bitch.’
There was pride, and deep affection in his voice.
‘Which is why it would make more sense for you to help me catch him,’ said Lydia. ‘To help me get my daughter away from him would make more sense than it would for you to kill me. I mean, if you kill me, and kill Jamie, you might have to kill Simon also … at least I hope Simon would try to stop you from doing it …’
‘I would.’
‘You’re a fool!’
‘I’m not the one who made fledglings of a weaselly dandy and a scheming tradeswoman.’
‘No, you’
re the one who—’
‘Stop it!’ Lydia said again. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him, Dr Grippen; he’s just trying to annoy you. Listen. Before anything else Zahorec will try to get in touch with me, to secure my aid by threatening my daughter. Like the coward he is.’ She spared a hard glare for the Master of London. ‘But he doesn’t know I’ve followed him here. He’ll try to write to me, or contact me through some kind of middleman. While he’s waiting for my reply he’ll need to hide somewhere with Miranda. He knows I know where all his properties are, and he knows there’s a good chance that I’ve told you. The one place he doesn’t know I know about – because I didn’t learn about it from banking records or bribing the servants, but just from knowing the family – is in Scotland.’
‘Scotland!’
‘And in Scotland,’ Lydia continued, ‘Miss Armistead can marry Lord Colwich immediately, without her father’s consent. Right now he’s trying to tie up her money so Lord Colwich can’t touch it – probably somebody snitched to him about Colwich’s use of opium. He may even suspect she has a lover. Zahorec has to be able to get at that money. If they present Armistead with a fait accompli, he’ll capitulate. By what I’ve seen there’s nothing he won’t do for his daughter.’
‘Armistead,’ said Grippen. ‘The cuffin that’s got four copies of the book, so you say—’
‘He does. He’s looking for a vampire—’
‘Looking for one?’
‘To hire. To use as a paid bully-boy against the working men in his mines. Whether he’d do so if he knew his daughter was being courted by one I don’t know. But the marriage will give Zahorec the upper hand. He’ll use him – and he’ll try to use me. And Stenmuir Castle – which belongs to Colwich’s family – is close enough to Glasgow that within a few days Miranda could be taken anywhere, even out of the country …’ She forced her voice steady, unnerved by the dark river of thought she could see racing behind those hard black eyes.
‘We can’t give him that few days. We have to follow him now, immediately, before he has time to get his plans ready.’ She turned to Simon. ‘Will you come with me?’
‘Unto the ends of the earth, Lady.’ He kissed her hand.
‘God’s blood!’ Grippen stared at him, aghast with the dread that lived in every vampire’s heart, dread of travel in daylight, boxed asleep in a coffin and knowing that the slightest accident would result in agonizing death. There was no animosity, no enmity, in his voice ‘You’re mad, Simon.’
Simon bowed. ‘I need no heretic provincial to tell me so, Lionel. I assume – this house being a hiding place of yours – that you have a sub-cellar beneath the one in which Mistress Miranda has spent the past week, and a suitable trunk for travel?’
‘I thought you’d a house in Hertford?’
‘I cannot make arrangements for the journey – and for the disposal of Mr Grosvenor’s motor car – and reach there by daybreak. Mistress …’ He turned again to Lydia. ‘Wilt you await me here?’
She glanced at Grippen.
‘I should kill you now,’ he growled. ‘T’would be simpler.’
‘No,’ said Lydia calmly, and propped her spectacles more firmly on to the bridge of her nose. ‘Actually, it wouldn’t. We need help, Lionel. Zahorec is strong – I think only another vampire can match him. I certainly can’t.’
She got to her feet, stood looking up at him as she had on the mist-drowned bridge over the Cherwell, not angry now, nor even conscious of much fear.
‘The first trains to Scotland won’t start running until nine. We can be there just after darkness falls. But we need your help.’
‘Nay.’ His pockmarked face hardened, and his glance shifted to Simon. ‘You do as you like, man. But you’ll not get me crated like salt beef hell-bound to the wilds of nowhere to meet that Bohemian blackguard. If you’re off to St Albans to make arrangements for your journey I’ll ride with you that far in that motor car, but I’ve an errand in London-town ere cock-light, and the night’s waning fast. Lady …’
He took Lydia’s hand, and kissed it with surprising grace. ‘I was wrong snatching your brat, and I admit of it. I’ll do what I can to amend it, but go to Scotland I will not, and travel with any living soul I will not, not to speak of lying anywhere near a scheming liar of a Spanish whoreson for so much as five minutes, let alone the whole of a day. Good fortune to you.’
It was always difficult to see vampires move. One moment, it seemed to Lydia that she was standing, barefoot on the cold stone floor, with the Master of London on one side of her and Don Simon on the other. Then she was alone in the lantern-lit kitchen, hearing from the darkness outside the whisper of voices:
‘The least you can do is dispose of the motor car for me …’
‘You stole it; you drown it.’
‘Heretic …’
‘Papist cur …’
And they were gone.
TWENTY-SEVEN
In the dark frieze of houses, lights glimmered in kitchens, basements, areas: servants laying fires, making coffee, boiling water for shaving and baths. Ysidro’s agent at the Bank of England must have come through with the information. Asher swerved past the glare of a trench where workers were laying electrical cable. How did Zahorec get it from Lydia?
The vampire had obviously learned that Lydia was working against him, if he’d gone to steal Miranda from Grippen … How? From her dreams?
He tried not to think about what he’d find at Tufton Farm. Oh, that Dr G, he’s a close one, Violet Scrooby had said to him, over a companionable pint at The Scythe. If you ask me he’s up to some lay. Many’s the night he’s come in here, and chatted with Henry quiet-like. But I will say, what he pays Henry makes all the difference to Henry’s girls, bein’ sent to a proper school, and to Daphne’s mum getting the care she needs, and her bedridden with palsy …
His comfort at the barmaid’s description of Daphne Scrooby (Lord, quiet as a mouse and no bigger than a minute, but she’d rip the leg off the man who laid a hand on one of her girls, and beat him to death with the soggy end) faded in the conviction that hers would be one of several bodies he would find in St Albans. Hers and Nan Wellit’s.
I will kill him, thought Asher calmly. Zahorec, Grippen … all their filthy get.
Carts and vans filled with fruit and flowers from the countryside dotted Islington High Street, lanterns swaying as Asher flashed past them. The outbound road lay empty.
Karlebach was right. Millward – ass that he is – is right.
Blue dawn light showed him neat villas, standing apart each in its own garden. Then the long slope of Golders Hill, rolling green countryside and the smell of hay and livestock.
Blood and darkness spread wherever they touch. Even the innocent – who don’t even know what they are or that they exist – are pulled into that darkness and devoured.
The church steeple of Barnet showed above the trees. Stone park gates to his right, guarding a glimpse of Restoration stonework, the blink of water reflecting brightening sky. Along the roadsides, between the fields, lines of stumps where the elm trees of his childhood had been cut down, sacrificed to the pressing economies of twentieth-century agriculture. What does Ysidro think, of the England that is not the England he knew as a living man? What does Grippen think?
Or is that something that vanishes, when they pass into shadow?
Did the original book, the book that had actually been written by that wandering scholar of Valladolid (And what was a Spaniard doing studying in Prague anyway?) speak of that? And his dream returned to him, of the wooded hillsides of Spain that was now yellowed scrub.
A square church tower and the ruins of a Roman wall, then a high street of sweet shops and greengrocers just stirring into life. The Hatfield Road, trees and hedgerows holding the damp chill of last night. A railway whistle sounded.
If anything happens to Miranda, can we find our way back from that?
Lydia after her second miscarriage, shattered and withdrawn …
Movem
ent in the hedge. A flutter in the corner of his vision as he swept by, a figure with arms upraised. Even before he realized that the words she cried were, ‘Professor Asher, sir!’ his mind registered her dark skirt, white blouse, dark cape, and he skidded the motorbike to a halt – even taking his weight on his left foot, not his right: the jolt was agony.
‘Professor Asher, sir! Oh, lord, is that you?’
She was running down the shadowed road to him as he turned the bike around, gunned back to her (It can’t be a vampire’s illusion, it’s broad daylight)– and caught her as she flung herself into his arms.
‘Professor Asher, sir! I did my best, sir, I did! I tried, sir, I tried …’
It was Nan Wellit.
He knew he should say, It’s all right, you’re safe, I’m here, for the girl was obviously terrified and exhausted, her hair tangled with leaves and her creased skirt a mess of stains and twigs from spending the night in the hedges. But the first thing he could say was, ‘Where is she?’ and the words came out at a desperate almost-shout.
The young nursemaid burst into tears, and for an instant the world stood still between the future and death.
‘I don’t know, sir! I don’t know! They took her—’
Took her. She’s alive.
‘Who took her, Nan?’ Calm flooded him. If they took her they mean to keep her, at least for the moment … He stroked her tangled hair, as he had stroked Lydia’s the first time he’d found that lovely and fragile schoolgirl weeping in the summer house at Willoughby Close, at the news that she was to be sent away from England. ‘It’s all right. We’ll find her …’
‘I don’t know who it was, sir.’ She straightened and stepped back from him, as if aware that one didn’t clutch one’s employer. From her sleeve she produced a handkerchief, to wipe her eyes. ‘It was a lady and a gentleman. I heard him call her Para-something … Parady-vogel?’
The Kindred of Darkness Page 26
