Dracula_in_London

by P. N. Elrod

I was polishing the hamster rail when she came sweeping up, head high, the way great ladies do; she was looking at those stairs as if she'd bought 'em whole. I knew she was going to be trouble—did you know, she wouldn't even let us call her Liz? No, it had to be Elizabeth, like the Queen herself. And Mrs. Ravenstock thought she hung the moon.

  She had skills, I suppose. She was good with stains; when Miss Mina cut her finger and got blood on her best blue gown it was Elizabeth who took it away to clean it, wouldn't give it over to the laundry maid Gracie at all. 'Twas Gracie who carried the first tale about her, I suppose. She whispered to me as how she saw Elizabeth sucking the blood out of that dress, like a half-starved woman licking at spilled soup.

  Poor Gracie. Dead two days later in her bed when I went to wake her, her skin blue and cold, her eyes staring up at the ceiling. No sign what killed her. Mrs. Ravenstock said it was her heart, but the poor little bint was only fifteen. Poison, I say. But as nobody sent for the constable, it'll never be proved.

  With Gracie gone the work got harder. Soon enough we found we was washing the sheets as well as ironing them, and doing most of Elizabeth's work as well. Mrs. Ravenstock told us to stop our complaining. She took Elizabeth's part every time, no matter the cause; the way she looked at that girl fair gave me a turn. And Elizabeth looked at her like Mrs. Ravenstock was a cream pastry at afternoon tea.

  Dracula? I told you, I'm getting to him. Now be quiet and listen, stop wiggling like a wet puppy. All right, now, where was I? Oh, yes, Gracie was dead, poor soul, and upstairs, Miss Lucy was having her own troubles. Sleepwalking, the way she used to as a child. Nothing to fret over, I said at the time, but of course I was quite wrong about that.

  I made an enemy out of Elizabeth Gwydion about then. It was over a little thing, really, sounds ever so stupid. It was over me being Catholic. Mind you, now, the others tolerated it right enough. "Oh, Mary Margaret, she's heathen," they'd say cheerfully, though not where the Mistress could hear. Mr. Gage knew I kept to my faith, and he said nothing about it. I even wore a crucifix, under the neck of my dress, of course. That was what caused the trouble. I was bent over scrubbing the floor and my crucifix must have slipped off, it fell on the floor and I didn't notice it.

  Well, Miss High-and-Mighty Elizabeth stepped on it as she walked by, and screamed like she'd put her foot on a nail. Hissed some foreign words at me and all but slapped me, she did; kicked over my bucket, water and soap everywhere, and flounced off with her cap-ribbons bouncing. Well, naturally, I complained of it to Mrs. Ravenstock, but she told me I must have overset the bucket myself and to mop up the mess and not to carry tales. The look in her eyes was like she'd had herself an opium pipe. Well, I wasn't content to be leaving it at that—after all, I'm not a clumsy cow, and there was no call for Elizabeth to do such a thing. The row brought Mr. Gage, who called Elizabeth down.

  She lied, of course, but Mr. Gage didn't believe it. He gave her a dressing-down such as few of us had ever heard, and when she looked at me there was a smile on her lips, but murder in her eyes, and I knew that wasn't the end of it.

  The next morning there was broken glass scattered on the floor next to my bed. I might've cut my feet bad except that I got up on the wrong side to pick up my Bible, which had fallen off the nightstand. When I struck the candle I saw the glass glittering like ice, and my skin crawled, I can tell you. I hadn't heard a thing, not breaking glass, not someone creeping around in the dark. I could well imagine Elizabeth Gwydion's pale hands scattering that glass, her bloodless face bending over me as I dreamed.

  What do you mean, what did I do? Got a dustpan and cleaned it up, of course. And smiled at her nice when she passed in the hall as I was sweeping wet tea leaves on the carpet to lay the dust. Smiled for all I was worth, I did. Confusion to the enemy!

  The next day there was something in my tea. I barely touched it, but still it made me sick, sick enough that even Mrs. Ravenstock let me take an hour to lie down in the evening after supper. That was when I dreamed.

  I dreamed there was an adder in the house. A black shining adder as glided from room to room, winding around the feet of the servants. An adder that wound itself around Mrs. Ravenstock's ankle and oozed up under her skirts. I fair screamed the house down in my dream, but nobody heeded. She went on with her mending, and all of a sudden her eyes flew open and she jerked hard, as if somebody had pushed her, and then she was lying on the floor and the adder was crawling away toward the stairs.

  Mind you, my gran had dreams. She dreamed of a cave-in at the mine, and it happened just the way she said. I don't hold none with imagination, it's destructive to a woman's character, but I didn't imagine this. I dreamed it, and that's a different thing entirely.

  Mrs. Ravenstock? Next day she was hale and well, except for that opium distance in her eyes. And doting on Elizabeth. But the day after that Mrs. Ravenstock caught her heel in her dress hem and fell down the service stairs, and broke her neck.

  So. After Mrs. Ravenstock's death—which was accident, sure enough—you can well imagine things changed. For one thing, we were already short a laundry maid and now a housekeeper, and next thing you know the bootboy Joseph had given notice, and so had the scullery maid Mary. Now, you can't hardly run Hillingham on so few servants; Mr. Gage was fair desperate, I tell you. Meanwhile, things were bad upstairs, too. Miss Mina left to meet her fiancé Jonathan, and the whispers came round that Mrs. Westenra was in poor health. Miss Lucy's sleepwalking had gotten so bad it scared us half out of our wits. Yes, even me, though I don't hold with nonsense.

  One morning as I came around the corner with my broom and tea leaves—mind you it was well before six in the morning— I saw a ghost floating white in the hall. I froze, my breath locked in my chest, and after a second or two I realized the floating white ghost was Miss Lucy.

  She was dead asleep on her feet, her gown fluttering in a cold draft that poured out of her room, her fair hair lifting and twisting around her pale face. As I watched her, her head fell back, and her lips parted, and she spread her arms wide. She let out this long, low sigh that frightened me ever so much more than a scream—something immoral in that sigh, I can tell you. Desperate. She pressed herself against empty air, her whole body arching.

  Well, it was indecent! And frightful! I tore my eyes away from her and saw that Elizabeth Gwydion was standing at the bottom of the stairs. Pale as something drawn with pen and ink, and her lips were stretched wide in what I couldn't have ever named a smile.

  Well, the only thing I could think was dear sweet Mary save us all. So I did what any good Catholic girl would have done. I crossed myself.

  Miss Lucy's eyes flew open, wide and blank as a winter's sky, and she collapsed to the carpet in a froth of wind-whipped gown. Downstairs, Elizabeth Gwydion shrieked; when I looked to her she was staring at me, and the hate of it fair burned me where I stood. Her eyes smoked, I tell you, and I thought she might strike me dead in my shoes.

  Right then Mrs. Westenra came out of her bedroom, her hair still in night-braids, and cried out at the sight of her daughter spilled on the carpet. Poor dear lady, I remembered what Mr. Gage had said about her health; she looked fair to drop. But she got down on her knees and took Miss Lucy's pale hands in hers, and said, "Mary Margaret, fetch some brandy. Immediately."

  Well, of course the brandy was locked up—you don't leave brandy lying where any servant could sneak a glass, do you? So I went for Mr. Gage, straight through the kitchen where Mrs. Brockham, red-faced, was bent over the pots and Jeannette, parlor maid or not, was whisking eggs with just enough force to be surly about it, straight to the closed door of the butler's pantry, where I knocked.

  He didn't answer. Well, of course I knocked again, and said his name. Mrs. Brockham left off her stirring to stare at me. I knocked again, fair pounding this time.

  "Here now," Mrs. Brockham frowned at me. "What's the trouble, Mary Margaret?"

  "I need brandy for Miss Lucy!"

  We went through a bit more knocking and rattli
ng before she opened the door and went right in. And screamed, her hands flying to her mouth. I squeezed around her and saw Mr. Gage lying half across his desk, his eyes bulging and gray. Dead for hours, likely. I suppose I might've screamed, too. It brought Jeannette running, who dropped to the floor in a dead faint, and George, the footman, who as a man was too mindful of his dignity to faint, though he swayed a bit and looked very pale.

  "Better tell the mistress," Mrs. Brockham said, voice gone all weak. "Get on with you, girl!"

  I went, my shoes knocking on hard wood. Mr. Gage, dead? Butlers didn't die, at least not in service, not in that undignified way like they were no better than the rest of us. Up the stairs I went, my heart hammering in my chest.

  Crouching there next to miss Lucy and the mistress was Elizabeth Gwydion, with a glass of brandy in her hand that she held to Miss Lucy's lips.

  I wasn't thinking, mind you. Not a bit of it. I reached out and I slapped it out of her hand, sent it crashing against he polished wood of the wall.

  Mrs. Westenra shot to her feet and snapped "Mary Margaret! Whatever has got into you? Stop this instant!"

  I gulped down some air and tried to steady my voice, but I didn't take my eyes off of Elizabeth Gwydion. Behind me I heard the whisper of voices—Penny and Kate and Alice at the foot of the stairs, watching.

  "I sent you for brandy," Mrs. Westenra continued coldly. "When you didn't return Elizabeth was good enough to fetch some. Now explain yourself."

  "Mr. Gage," I managed to say. "Mr. Gage has passed, ma'am."

  "Oh," Mrs. Westenra said faintly. "Oh my. That is most— distressing. How—"

  "Don't know, ma'am."

  "I see." Mrs. Westenra took a deep breath. "I've already sent for Dr. Seward about Lucy. When he arrives, I'll have him examine the body. I'll address the staff presently."

  "Yes ma'am." I dropped a very small curtsy and turned to do what she'd ordered, but she stopped me one more time.

  "Mary Margaret," she said. "Tell Cook to make it a cold breakfast."

  Mind you, she wasn't a cruel woman, Mrs. Westenra; she was a good employer, never harsh, never unfair. But if you ever wanted to know the difference between upstairs and down, there it was in the one short command. Mr. Gage was dead, and all it meant was a cold breakfast instead of a hot one.

  Do? What could I do? We ate our cold meal, waited for Dr. Seward to come and tell us it was Mr. Gage's heart, most unfortunate, but natural enough. Took him all of a minute to glance at the body and say so, and then he was off to Miss Lucy.

  The minute he was out of sight, Alice began to cry, and Penny too, both good for nothing the rest of the day because they were sure the house was doomed. Floors didn't get scrubbed, or the carpets swept, or the brasses polished. With Mr. Gage and Mrs. Ravenstock gone, Mrs. Brockham didn't have the heart to force us to it.

  Jeannette run off that night, not even asking for a reference. That left me, Penny, Alice, Kate, Mrs. Brockham, and George.

  And Elizabeth Gwydion, of course. Herself.

  Poison? Oh, of course it was, Nora, whatever Dr. Seward might have said. Herself had tried to kill me already, and she'd done for Gracie and Mr. Gage and probably for Mrs. Ravenstock as well. If I'd had any sense I would have packed my carpetbag and followed Jeannette. But I never did have sense, everyone's said so.

  I stayed, instead. And that night, I dreamed of Whitby Abbey.

  In my dream I followed Elizabeth Gwydion there to those tumbled white stones, and in moonlight she was all marble and shadow. Mind you, the place is harmless enough in daylight—I'd climbed the place from one end to the other, as a girl. But this dream-abbey was drenched with black, and every shadow hid horror.

  Dracula? Oh, aye, I'll give you Dracula, you silly bint, because that's who came to her there in the dark shattered ribs of the church. He poured himself out of the shadows, tall, he was, tall and cream-pale, with heavy foreign features—red, red lips the only touch of color to him.

  The evil of him made my skin crawl, even as far away as I was. He looked like a man, but he wasn't, he was more, he was worse, and he stank of rotting blood.

  Elizabeth dropped right to her knees in front of him, drowning herself in a thick puddle of fog.

  "Well?" His soft, deep voice carried to me on a dream wind. "Is it done?"

  "She is prepared for you, master," Elizabeth said, and she looked up at him with a slave's devotion, fair turned my stomach. That accent to her voice, the one she claimed was Welsh, it sounded thicker now, and I was dead certain it came from farther away than Cardiff.

  "Excellent. I will go to her soon. The others?"

  "Servants of no consequence." Elizabeth's face twisted in sudden distaste. "There's a meddling maid who deserves your personal attention."

  "I do not stoop to battling servants," he said. "If you think she does not recognize her place, then show it to her, Elizabeth my beauty. Teach her the pleasure of obedience."

  She groveled to him. She crawled to him, crawled. It made me sick to see anyone, even Elizabeth, stripped of dignity like that. He put a booted foot against her ribs and rolled her on her back.

  The pleasure of obedience, indeed. I'd see him in hell first, and her too. At that moment he—the thing—turned and met my eyes. Not surprised at seeing me—he'd known I was there the whole time.

  It was like staring into the sun, all that blinding hunger. He drank me down like a bracing tot of hot gin.

  "Well." He smiled slowly, those red lips parting like the edges of a new wound. "A dreamer."

  He rushed at me, darkness and the stench of rotten blood, and I screamed myself awake.

  Dr. Van Helsing had been in and out of the house by that time, though I'd had aught to do with him. He'd come back to do some terrible strange thing to Miss Lucy, taking blood from Mr. Holmwood and putting it in her veins. A Godless thing to do, I still say; no good can come of a thing like that. Still, Dr. Van Helsing had a kind way about him, and I saw him cross himself once, when they were praying over Miss Lucy. So I knew it was likely we had a bit in common—and, anyway, he was foreign.

  I made myself bold and talked to him uninvited.

  Yes, of course I know it could have gotten me shown the door! Blessed Mary, well I know it! But I had to do something, so I spoke to him about the dreams, and Elizabeth Gwydion, and all the deaths below stairs. Which he hadn't heard, of course—the deaths of servants weren't worth mention, I suppose. And he was gravely worried about it. Did you know he smelled like caraway seeds even then? And a sharp mint he liked to chew. He was ever so nice to me, and he told me to watch Elizabeth Gwydion close, and tell him what she did. He'd be gone that night and the next day, going back to his home, but he'd receive my report on his return.

  Mind you, the household was in chaos. No butler, no housekeeper—poor Mrs. Brockham wasn't up to the task. And the maids were in hysterics, terrified of losing their positions but even more terrified of leaving them. George, the footman, insisted nothing whatsoever was wrong, but then he was a dim sort, and as the only man in the house, I suppose he had to say it. So there was no one left to tell me that I couldn't stay with Miss Lucy. I sat up outside her room that night, and when Elizabeth Gwydion came to the door I told her right sharp to be on her way. Later that day, going down the stairs I'd traveled at least a thousand times, something wrenched hard at my foot and I fell. It was a fearful long fall, but I turned on my side, wrenched my shoulder, bruised something terrible—and I didn't break my neck, like poor Mrs. Ravenstock. Must have been a terrible disappointment for Miss High-and-Mighty Elizabeth.

  After that, it was a quiet night. I suppose I fell asleep in the chair outside of Miss Lucy's room. I woke up in pitch darkness, and something cold was touching my throat.

  Well, you might imagine, I drew breath to scream, but a hand clapped over my mouth, and I pushed, pushed hard, threw myself off of the chair and down to the carpet. This time I did scream, and loud enough to wake the dead. Wasn't more than a minute I suppose before light blo
omed gold in Mrs. Westenra's doorway, and there she was staring at me, her face gone dead pale, her eyes big as saucers.

  Lying half across me was Miss Lucy, her skin ice-cold, her color like ashes. She had two wounds in her neck, fresh drops of blood staining the white linen of her nightgown. Poor thing, she was like a breathing corpse. I got to my feet, and Mrs. Westenra bent down to help, but her color was almost as bad as Miss Lucy's. I couldn't drag the girl, it wasn't proper, but George was nowhere to be seen, nor any of the other servants.

  Except Elizabeth Gwydion, coming, up the steps with a candle. She was smiling.

  "I'll help you," she said, and took Miss Lucy's feet. I hated the idea, but what choice did I have, then? We carried her into the bedroom and laid her in the disordered bed; I tucked her carefully in, added blankets from the wardrobe, and closed the open window.

  All the garlic flowers Dr. Van Helsing had left around the room had been swept into a corner. The necklace he'd asked Miss Lucy to wear was broken on the floor.

  I looked up and Elizabeth Gwydion was staring into me, digging her eyes in like claws. Smiling.

  "Too late," she said.

  "We'll see about that," I snapped, and saw that Penny had finally worked up enough courage to come down, and lurked like some hunted animal behind the doorframe, only her round pale face showing. "Penny! Get George and tell him to drive like Jehu for Dr. Seward. Go now!"

  She went, her bare feet padding on the carpet. Elizabeth Gwydion never quit smiling.

  "Mary Margaret—" Mrs. Westenra, who'd been standing quietly by my side, put a hand over mine as I straightened blankets atop Miss Lucy. "That will be all. I'll sit with my daughter."

  Elizabeth Gwydion lost her smile. She didn't like that, didn't like it at all. She'd thought Mrs. Westenra defeated, I saw.

  But she bobbed a curtsy and said, "Tea, ma'am?"

  "Fine," Mrs. Westenra snapped. Elizabeth went.

  "Ma'am—" It was terrible forward of me to say anything, but I had to. "Ma'am, best not to drink anything she brings you. Until Dr. Seward arrives."