‘Paradeisvogel,’ said Asher. ‘It means “bird of paradise” in German.’
‘Mein Paradeisvogel, he said. I was …’ She wiped her eyes again, her hands shaking.
‘Where was this? At the farm?’
‘No, sir. That’s just it. I’d run away, I’d got us out—’
‘Is there anyone there now?’ Lydia, he thought, Lydia was ahead of me …
‘I don’t know, sir. They fell asleep – Mrs Daphne, and Mick, and Reggie. All at once, they just put their heads down on the table … It was just the same as happened at your house, sir, the night we was took – taken,’ she corrected herself. ‘Mrs Brock just fell asleep sitting in front of the fire, and I got so sleepy myself, just like they say when you’re little, that the Sandman comes and blows magic dust in your eyes … Poof! I was asleep. Was it sleeping gas, sir? It doesn’t seem to have hurt Miranda afterwards …’
‘Don’t worry about it now,’ said Asher. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Oh, yes, sir. We were playing cards at the table – they’d often come down to do so. Mrs Daphne was so fond of Miss Miranda, and told me all about her own daughters … So when I saw Mick, and Mrs Daphne, both fall asleep, just like that – and I felt myself so sleepy too – I thought, This is the same as happened before. So I got one of the forks out of the bureau and stabbed myself in the hand with it, to stay awake, and I got Miranda and went upstairs, and there was Reggie in the kitchen sound asleep too. And I felt queer, as if something terrible were about to happen, though that may just have been that I’d been down that cellar for so long. I … Oh!’
She turned sharply, and looking around, Asher saw Lydia emerge from a farm track a hundred feet further along the lane. Lydia in a dress of faded red-and-blue calico that was far too short for her, red hair bare and spectacles flashing in the dappled brightness.
She saw them, snatched up her skirts and ran toward them; shouted ‘Jamie!’ when she got near enough to be heard. And then, ‘NAN! Oh, God, Nan!’
Asher saw her slow, as she took in the fact that no child made up part of the little group in the lane. Her face convulsed with anxiety as she threw herself into his arms, then turned and caught Nan in an embrace of joy and relief. ‘What happened? Did they let you go …?’
‘No, ma’am. I was telling Professor Asher, they fell asleep, and I took Miss Miranda and got out of the house.’ The nursery maid turned huge blue eyes back to Asher. ‘It was dark, there wasn’t a moon, but I swear I saw no one in the field. I looked, sir, I really did! Miranda was still asleep, and I felt so queer, like there was danger all around, that I didn’t dare wake her lest she make a noise. I could barely to keep awake myself. All that time we were down that cellar, I’d creep up to the door and listen to their voices in the kitchen, and try to put together everything they said about what was around the house. I knew we had to be close to a railway line, because I could sometimes hear the trains when I did that. And they’d talk about there being woods nearby, and hedges and fields and a road into town, though it sounded like a fair distance to town itself because they’d take the motor car, every time.
‘But I ran across the field making for the hedgerow, because I knew we could hide in the hedges, and follow them to the road. But it was like – it was like I’d tripped, only I don’t remember tripping.’ Her voice shook again and she blew her nose on her handkerchief once more. ‘It’s like I fell asleep on my feet. All of a sudden I was lying on the ground, and I looked up and saw this lady with Miranda in her arms—’
‘Dark lady?’ asked Asher.
‘Yes, sir. Dressed fancy, in silk with beads all over it that shined in the starlight, and a big necklace of diamonds and pearls—’
‘That’s what Cece was wearing,’ said Lydia.
‘And there was a man with her, a tall man in evening dress. His hair was black, sir, and he was handsome, and young. I couldn’t see his eyes in the dark, but I could feel he was looking down at me.’
‘And because Cece was with him,’ said Asher softly, ‘he couldn’t let her see him … harm … an innocent girl.’
‘I stayed quiet, sir.’ Nan’s glance, terrified and miserable, went from Asher to Lydia, then back. ‘I wanted to shout out, Give her back to me, but I knew they wouldn’t, and there was two of them. And the gentleman, for all he was so handsome, he looked like a bad customer. He took Miranda from the lady – she was wrapped up in the quilt, and I don’t think she waked, the whole time – and they went off across the field, to the gate that led to the lane. The minute they were out of sight I followed, but I heard a motor car start up, and drive away down the lane.
‘I didn’t know what else to do, sir. I thought Reggie and Mick would be out hunting for me, so I hid in the hedgerow until it got light. Then I started walking toward town, whatever town it is …’
Asher looked down at her, small and plump and seventeen years old, at her first job as nursery maid. She hadn’t panicked, she hadn’t put a foot wrong, she’d kept her head and would have made her escape – with her charge in her arms – had she not been hopelessly outmatched. He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘You did splendidly, Nan. We know who took her.’
‘It was Dr G that paid Mrs Daphne and Reggie and Mick, sir. I don’t know who he is but I heard them speak of him. It sounded like they were afraid of him – and it sounded like they hadn’t any idea why Miranda was to be kept. Mrs Daphne’s husband’s name is Henry, and he keeps a pub in London called The Scythe. But now she’s been took – taken – by this other gentleman—’
‘We know who he is, too,’ said Asher quietly. ‘And we have a list of places where they could be.’ He turned to Lydia. ‘He’ll be getting in touch with you—’
‘He knows all his properties are blown.’ Lydia used the term they did in the Department. ‘He found my list of his hideouts in my room, and my list of Grippen’s. He must have guessed I was being forced to work for Grippen. Grippen was here, by the way. He has a crypt down under the old laundry, in what used to be a cistern, and lent Ysidro his coffin, though he refused to come with us—’
‘Come with you?’
‘I think I know where Zahorec has gone,’ said Lydia. ‘It’s the only place they could go, the only property that wasn’t on the list. They’ve gone to Stenmuir Castle, in Scotland.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
When Asher returned from Watford later that morning in a carter’s wagon – exhausted, half-nauseated from phenacetin that hadn’t stopped his right ankle from feeling like it was being crushed between red-hot rollers – it was to find that Lydia had given Nan Wellit ten pounds and dispatched her in St Albans’ only cab to the Bower Inn in Hatfield. (‘It’s quite the nicest in town …’)
‘She promised to stay till called for,’ said Lydia, fetching tea from the great iron range in Tufton Farm’s kitchen (she couldn’t be trusted to make cocoa) while the carters bumped and manhandled the huge black metal trunk, quadruple locked, up from the old cistern deep beneath the laundry. ‘And she promised not to get in touch with anyone at home, and to remain indoors. I let her think Miranda’s kidnapping was for ransom, and that until you and I knew what the mysterious Dr G was up to, she wouldn’t be quite safe and neither would anyone she spoke to.’
Asher caught her wrist, pressed her hand first to his unshaven cheek, then to his lips. ‘To say that your value is above rubies, o Best Beloved,’ he said, ‘would still understate it. It is above light, above life, above breath. And far above phenacetin and tea,’ he added, as he lifted the cup.
‘There’s probably some bread and butter around here,’ she offered. ‘It might settle your stomach.’
‘What I need is something to settle my ankle.’
‘I suppose phenacetin has the virtue of being a counterirritant.’ Lydia began opening and shutting the doors beneath the counter and dish-cupboards on the far side of the big, stone-floored room. ‘The idea is to make you so sick you forget about your ankle—’
‘It’s having a good try
, but it hasn’t worked yet.’
‘I hope there’ll be a pair of Daphne Scrooby’s shoes somewhere hereabouts. Her dress fits me all right but I feel like a giraffe in it, and—’
Her sudden silence made Asher turn. She stood before an opened broom cupboard, looking at what was on the single shelf inside.
Asher got to his feet, holding his balance on the back of the chair.
Lydia whispered, ‘Oh—’
‘It’s all right.’ He limped to her side.
There were two shotguns in the broom cupboard, several bricks on its floor, and, folded on the shelf, two sacks, one large and one small, some clothes rope, and a bottle of aconitine.
Poison.
Lydia said, in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, ‘They were planning to cut and run if anything went wrong.’
‘Come sit down.’
She obeyed. Her face had turned chalky, as if her throat had been cut.
‘Grippen would have killed them for it.’ He didn’t add, I will, if he doesn’t, but when she looked up into his face he saw by her expression that she knew this.
After a long time she whispered, ‘Will we always live like this?’
The carters emerged from the hall, carefully hauling the black trunk on dollies; maneuvered it out the door. Because it was Sunday there was no train connection in Watford. They’d have to catch the ten-thirteen to Inverness at Willesden Junction, with no more baggage than Asher’s satchel – now bulging with Lydia’s gold-and-turquoise evening gown – and Ysidro’s borrowed trunk.
‘Even if we get Miranda back, will we always have to spend our lives looking over our shoulders?’
‘No.’ His voice sounded flat to his own ears, like leather striking stone. He stood, put his hands on her shoulders, then framed her face in his palms, knowing there was no way he could promise. ‘I promise you.’
They must be destroyed.
Long ago Ysidro had said to him that there could be no congress between the living and the dead. Now it seemed clear to him that they could not even exist side by side. Not so long as the dead preyed on the living, and the living – from the Titus Armisteads of the world on up to the Kaiser and the King and the men in Asher’s own Department – sought to use the abilities of the dead against one another.
They must be destroyed. All of them.
Except, of course, he reflected bitterly, as Lydia helped him out to the wagon, that the only one among the Undead that he currently could destroy, here and now, he needed, if they were ever going to see their daughter safe.
He climbed into the back of the wagon, a sorry and shabby figure in his loud mustard-colored tweeds spattered with sewer-mud and vampire-blood, and propped his back against Ysidro’s trunk. Lydia settled beside him in her too-short cotton-print dress, and set their satchel against the wheel of the tied-down motorcycle. His hand closed around hers, and as the cart lurched into motion he leaned back and shut his eyes.
There was a bookshop across the road from the train station at Willesden Junction, beside the garage where they left the Indian. Asher purchased another walking stick, and found Ordnance Survey maps of Argyllshire, twenty-five inches to the mile, with the intention of studying the territory that lay between Kynnoch Hall and Stenmuir Castle during the nine hours it would take them to reach Glasgow. Once on board the train, with his leg elevated on his upended satchel, Asher fell deeply and instantly asleep, to be awakened, somewhere between Birmingham and Manchester, by Ned Seabury saying: ‘… honestly, ma’am, we had very little choice. These things must be destroyed – and Professor Asher was in almost no danger.’
‘If Professor Asher was in almost no danger,’ retorted Lydia, ‘why didn’t you volunteer to be the bait yourself? Or is betraying one’s honor as a gentleman venial compared with knowing more about the Undead than Dr Millward does? Which I gather was the justification your master used for nearly getting my husband killed.’
In a stifled voice, Seabury replied, ‘He isn’t my master.’
Asher opened his eyes. Lydia – still attired in Mrs Scrooby’s red-and-blue calico – stood beside the half-open door of their compartment, while Seabury – who had clearly taken time to bathe, shave, and change into respectable tweeds while Asher had been haring down to St Albans with his ankle in sticking plaster – hovered in the corridor beyond. ‘If he can command you to violate your sworn word,’ said Asher wearily, ‘and put the life of an innocent man in jeopardy, solely on his own judgment and command, yes, he is your master, as surely as any vampire rules his fledglings. Did you find the woman Ippolyta?’
‘No.’ Seabury drew a shaky breath, brushed aside the dark curl that hung over his forehead. ‘You were … quite right. She eluded us in the sewers.’
No wonder you needed to change clothes.
‘How she could have done so, with two silver bullets in her …?’
‘You’re lucky she didn’t kill you both. Vampires kill more, to strengthen themselves if they need to heal. It’s why Zahorec started killing in Paris, after he began taking drugs to control Colwich. And when you went back to the vault, was your friend Roddy’s body gone?’
The young man started. ‘Did you know it would be? You could have warned us—’
‘Would it have kept Millward from hunting for Madame Ippolyta for what remained of the night? He’d put me out as bait for her on the strength of my having talked to a man who was trying to hire a vampire. If I’d told him that I was pretty certain the London vampires would dispose of a suspicious corpse, he’d probably have shot me. What takes you to Scotland?’
‘Noel.’
A stout man in tweeds almost as garish as Asher’s passed along the corridor and Seabury stepped into the compartment, as if taking Asher’s reasonable tone for welcome. In the better light his face was haggard, his dark brows standing out sharply against a pallor of weariness.
‘Noel came to my rooms this morning, on his way to catch the early train. He said Cece had gone up to Kynnoch last night – the Earl of Crossford’s shooting place, you know …’ He hesitated, then laughed shortly. ‘You must know, of course. I assume that’s where you’re going …’
‘Are they staying at Kynnoch Hall?’
‘Well, he said Stenmuir, but it can’t be that. He was … He seemed exhausted, and confused …’
‘Did he tell you he and Cece were going to be married in Scotland?’ Lydia put in.
Seabury turned shocked eyes on her – shocked but aware. ‘I didn’t …’ he stammered. ‘I couldn’t … Noel was confused, as I said. He’d been taking opium, laudanum, who knows what. He shook so badly he could barely sit still. Yet there was something about him …’
Sudden tears flooded his eyes.
‘This is going to sound completely mad but it’s true … I thought that he seemed himself again. And I don’t mean that “himself” is necessarily a … a soused, unshaven opium-eater. But it’s as if … as if Noel were really Noel, and not … not whoever it’s been, it’s sometimes seemed to me … As if I were really talking to the person I’ve known all these years …’
‘I understand,’ said Lydia softly. ‘You were.’
‘What?’ His gaze searched her face, and for a moment he seemed to struggle, wanting to ask but not wanting to know. Then, ‘He said he wanted to see me before he left. To warn me against Zahorec – though Noel has no idea that I know Zahorec is a vampire …’
He passed his hand across his face. ‘Yes, he said they were getting married, in the Registrar’s office in Glasgow. He said, Don’t let yourself be drawn into our set, Teddy. Even if I invite you, don’t come. I said, Can’t you cut the connection? And he shook his head. It’s too late for that. It’s too late for me. I’m in too deep. But you get out. He seemed to think …’
The young man broke off again, looked away. Lydia’s glance crossed Asher’s: When Zahorec got on the train for Scotland, it was too far to control him, wasn’t it?
Either that, reflected Asher, or whatever Zahorec was taking to rema
in awake into the daytime was finally taking its toll.
But entangled in family demands, in promises he only partially remembered making, in dreams and the recollection of dreams, Noel Wredemere obviously considered himself bound to go through with Cece Armistead’s plans.
‘He took the early train up,’ Ned continued after a time. ‘But the more I thought about it – and about what you’d said, Mrs Asher, of how vampires can manipulate the dreams of the living – the more I thought, I have to get him away from her. From them. From Zahorec. God knows what he’s going to tell his parents … But I have to take him back to Paris. Take him to Spain, or Italy, or China if I have to.’ He shook his head, like a man trying to waken from deadening sleep. ‘Does it sound as mad to you as it does to me? I feel as if I’m fighting for Noel’s life – and for his soul.’
They reached Glasgow at ten. The sun had gone down, but light still filled the sky. ‘Simon said he’d follow us,’ murmured Lydia, as Ned Seabury took the instructions she’d given him and left the station to find one of the several companies in the city that rented motor cars. ‘He wired ahead, to make arrangements for the motor car. Also to rent a house, where we’re to store his trunk. Drat these shoes!’ She stumbled – for the tenth time in the course of the day – in the delicate gold-and-turquoise slippers she’d worn to the dinner at Wycliffe House. Though Daphne Scrooby’s red-and-blue dress fit her – albeit with serious deficiencies in sleeves and hem – and Lydia had even found a corduroy jacket on the premises, Miranda’s jailer, ‘no bigger than a minute,’ had feet to match her stature.
Asher looked at the black trunk, loaded on to the porter’s barrow, ready to be delivered to a rented house on the old High Street. Every kill he makes from this day forth, his old master Karlebach had told him, will be on your head …
The Kindred of Darkness Page 27
