Anno Dracula (41 page)

H
e stood in front of his open fireplace, hands behind him, feeling the heat. Even the short stroll from Caversham Street to Cheyne Walk had chilled him to the bone. Bairstow had set the fire earlier and the room was warm and welcoming.

Geneviève wandered around the room like a cat getting acquainted with a new home, alighting on this and that and examining, almost tasting, an object, before replacing it, sometimes making a slight adjustment to a position.

‘This was Pamela?’ she said, holding up the last photograph. ‘She was beautiful.’

Beauregard agreed.

‘Many women wouldn’t care to be photographed when they were with child,’ Geneviève said. ‘It might seem indecent.’

‘Pamela was not like many women.’

‘I don’t doubt it, to judge by her influence on her survivors.’

Beauregard remembered.

‘She didn’t wish you to give up the rest of your life, though,’ she said, setting the picture down. ‘And she certainly did not want her cousin to reshape herself in her image.’

Beauregard had no answer. Geneviève made him see his late engagement in an unhealthy light. Neither Penelope nor he had been honest with themselves or each other. But he could not blame Penelope, or Mrs Churchward, or Florence Stoker. It had all been his own fault.

‘What’s gone is gone,’ Geneviève continued. ‘I should know. I’ve buried centuries.’

For a moment she bent over and did a comic impersonation of a shaking dowager. Then she straightened and brushed a wave of hair away from her forehead.

‘What will happen to Penelope?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘There are no guarantees. I believe she will survive, and I think she will be herself again. Maybe she will be herself for the first time.’

‘You don’t like her, do you?’

She stopped her wandering and cocked her head in thought. ‘Perhaps I’m jealous.’ Her tongue passed over her bright teeth and he realised she was closer to him than modesty recommended. ‘Then again, perhaps she isn’t very nice. That night in Whitechapel, after I had been hurt, she didn’t strike me as entirely sympathetic. Lips too thin, eyes too sharp.’

‘Do you realise how great a thing it was for her to come to such a quarter? To seek me out. It ran against everything she had been taught, everything she believed about herself.’

He still found it hard to credit that the old Penelope had ventured out by herself, let alone travelled to a place she must have viewed as in the neighbourhood of the pits of Abaddon.

‘She doesn’t want you any more,’ she said, bluntly.

‘I know.’

‘She’ll be incapable of being a good little wife now she’s new-born. She’ll have to find her own way in the night. She might have the makings of a very fine vampire, for what that’s worth.’ Her hand was on his lapel, sharp nails resting against the material. The heat from the fire made him almost uncomfortable. ‘Come on and kiss me, Charles.’

He hesitated.

She smiled, her even teeth almost normal. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I won’t bite.’

‘Liar.’

She giggled and he touched his mouth to hers. Her arms slipped tight around him. Her tongue ran over his lips. They moved away from the fire, and, not without some awkwardness, settled on a divan. His hand slid into her hair.

‘Are you seducing me, or am I seducing you?’ she said. ‘I forget which.’

She was amusing at the strangest times, he noticed. His thumb felt the nap of her cheek. She kissed his wrist, touching her tongue to the healed-over bites. A jolt ran through him. He felt it most in the soles of his feet.

‘Does it matter?’

She pressed his head down into a cushion, so he could see the ceiling, and kissed his neck.

‘This may not be the love-making you are used to,’ she said. Her teeth were sharper now, and longer.

Her chemise was free of her skirt and undone. She had a pretty, slim shape. His clothes were loose, too.

‘I could say as much to you.’

She laughed, a full-throated man’s laugh, and nipped his neck, hair
falling in front of her face, wisping over his mouth and nose, tickling. His hands worked under her chemise, up and down her back and shoulders. He felt the vampire strength of the muscles sliding under her skin. She picked the studs out of his collar and shirtfront with her teeth and spat them away. He imagined Bairstow finding them one by one over the next month and laughed.

‘What’s funny?’

He shook his head and she kissed him again, on the mouth, eyes and neck. He was aware of the pulsing of his blood. Gradually, between caresses, they divested each other of the four or five layers of clothing deemed proper.

‘If you think this a Herculean labour,’ she said as he discovered yet another set of hooks on the thigh of her skirt, ‘you should have tried to court a high-born lady in the late fifteenth century. It is a miracle my generation have any descendants at all.’

‘Things are easier in hotter climates.’

‘Easier does not always mean more pleasant.’

They lay together, warmed by their bodies.

‘You have scars,’ she said, following the slice-mark under his ribs with a fingernail.

‘The service of the Queen.’

She found the two bullet-wounds in his right shoulder, entry and exit, and tongued the long-healed pockmark under his collarbone.

‘What exactly is it that you do for Her Majesty?’

‘Somewhere between diplomacy and war there is the Diogenes Club.’

He kissed her breasts, his own teeth pressing delicately into her skin.

‘You have no scars at all. Not so much as a birthmark.’

‘For me, everything heals on the outside.’

Her skin was pale and clear, almost but not quite hairless. She adjusted her position to make it easier for him. She bit her full underlip as he gently settled his weight on to her.

‘There now,’ she said. ‘At last.’

He sighed slowly as they slipped together. She held him tight with her legs and arms and reached up with her head, attaching her mouth to his neck.

Icy needles shocked him and, for a moment, he was in her body in her mind. The extent of her was astonishing. Her memory receded into the dim distance like the course of a star in a far galaxy. He felt himself moving inside her, tasted his own blood on her tongue. Then he was himself again, shuddering.

‘Stop me, Charles,’ she said, red drops between her teeth. ‘Stop me if it hurts.’

He shook his head.

A
letter under the seal of Lord Ruthven was passport enough to gain him an audience. The new-born Yeoman Warder seemed to plod down the stone-walled stairwell while Godalming followed with a darting lightness of step. It was an effort to contain his energies. He was excited, almost exploding. The guard was so much slower than he, in thought and motion. He was only gradually becoming aware of the breadth of his new capabilities. He had not found his limits yet.

Just after nightfall, he had encountered while walking in Hyde Park a young lady of his acquaintance. Her name was Helena Such-and-So-Forth, and she had sometimes come to Florence’s after-darks, usually with one of Mrs Stoker’s fatheaded theatrical cronies. He had reached out with his gaze and held her fascinated. Guiding her into a convenient gazebo, he had made her shrug her way out of her garments. Afterwards, he opened her neck and sucked her almost dry. She had been alive when he left, barely.

Now he was full of the taste of Helena. Sometimes there were little explosions inside his skull and he knew more about the warm girl. Her tiny life was his. With each feeding, he became stronger.

Above was the White Tower, the oldest part of the fortress. Nearby was the Cell of Little Ease, a four-foot-square chamber constructed so a prisoner could not lie down. It had held such enemies of the crown as Guy Fawkes. Even the less unpleasant rooms were bubbles in stone, allowing no possibility of escape. Each stout wooden door was inset with a tiny grille. From some of the tenanted cells, Godalming heard the groans of the damned. The prisoners were near starvation. Many had taken to biting their own veins, seriously injuring themselves. Graf Orlok was notoriously harsh on his own kind, punishing them for their treasons with an imprisonment that amounted to slow death.

Kostaki was kept in one of these cells. Godalming had made enquiries about the Guardsman. An elder, he had been with the Prince Consort since Dracula’s warm days. Since his arrest, he had apparently not uttered a single word.

‘Here, sir.’

The Yeoman Warder, faintly silly in his comic opera costume, took out his keyring and unfastened the triple locks. He set down his lantern to wrestle with the door and his enlarged shadow danced on the stone behind him.

‘That will be all,’ Godalming told the guard as he stepped into the cell. ‘I’ll call out when I’m finished.’

In the gloom, Godalming saw burning red eyes. Neither the prisoner nor he needed a lantern.

Kostaki looked up at his visitor. It was impossible to perceive an expression on his ragged face. It was not rotten, but hung on his skull like old linen, stiff and musty. Only his eyes betokened life. The Carpathian, who lay on a straw-stuffed cot, was chained. A silver band, padded with leather, circled his good ankle, and stout silver-and-iron links fixed him to a ring that was set into the stone. One of
the elder’s legs lay useless, a wadding of soiled bandage about the smashed knee. The stench of spoiled meat filled the cell. Kostaki had been shot with a silver ball. The elder coughed. The poison was in his veins, spreading. He would not last.

‘I was there,’ Godalming announced. ‘I saw the supposed policeman murder Inspector Mackenzie.’

Kostaki’s red eyes did not move.

‘I know you are falsely accused. Your enemies have brought you to this filth.’ He gestured around the low-ceilinged, windowless cell. It might as well be a tomb.

‘I passed six decades in the Château d’If,’ Kostaki announced. His voice was still strong, surprisingly loud in the confined space. ‘These are by comparison quite comfortable quarters.’

‘You’ll talk to me?’

‘I have done so.’

‘Who was he? The policeman?’

Kostaki fell silent.

‘You must understand, I can help you. I have the ear of the Prime Minister.’

‘I am beyond help.’

Water seeped up between the cracks of the flagstones. Patches of green-white moss grew on the floor. There were spots of similar mould on Kostaki’s bandages.

‘No,’ Godalming told the elder, ‘the situation is very grave, but it can be reversed. If those who scheme against us can be thwarted, then there are many advantages to be won.’

‘Advantages? With you English, there are always advantages.’

Godalming was stronger than this foreign brute, sharper in his head. He could turn the situation so he emerged as sole victor. ‘If I find the
policeman, I can uncover a conspiracy against the Prince Consort.’

‘The Scotsman said the same thing.’

‘Is the Diogenes Club mixed up in this?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Mackenzie mentioned them. Just before he was killed.’

‘The Scotsman kept much to himself.’

Kostaki would tell what he knew. Godalming was certain of it. He could see the gears turning in the elder’s head. He knew which levers to depress.

‘Mackenzie would wish this cleared up.’

Kostaki’s great head nodded. ‘The Scotsman led me to a house in Whitechapel. His quarry was a new-born, known as “the Sergeant” or “Danny”. At the last, his fox turned on him.’

‘This was the man who killed Mackenzie?’

Kostaki nodded, indicating his wound. ‘Aye, and the man who did this to me.’

‘Where in Whitechapel?’

‘They call the place the Old Jago.’

He had heard of it. This business kept running back to Whitechapel: where Jack the Ripper murdered, where John Jago preached, where agents of the Diogenes Club were often seen. Tomorrow night, Godalming would venture out into Darkest London. He was confident this Sergeant was no match for the vampire Arthur Holmwood had become.

‘Keep up your pluck, old man,’ Godalming told the elder. ‘We’ll have you out of here directly.’

He withdrew from the cell and summoned the Yeoman Warder, who refastened the thick door. Through the bars, Kostaki’s red eyes winked out as he lay back on his cot.

At the end of the corridor, framed by an arch, stood a tall, hunched
nosferatu
in a long, shabby frock coat. His head was swollen and rodentlike with huge pointed ears and prominent front fangs. His eyes, set in black caverns that obscured his cheeks, were constantly liquid, darting here and there. Even his fellow elders found Graf Orlok, a distant family connection of the Prince Consort’s, a disquieting presence. He was a crawling reminder of how remote they all were from the warm.

Orlok scuttled down the passageway. Only his feet seemed to move. The rest of him was stiff as a waxwork. When he was close, his flamboyant eyebrows bristled like rat’s whiskers. His smell was not as strong as that in Kostaki’s cell, but it was fouler.

Godalming greeted the Governor but did not shake Orlok’s withered claw. Orlok peered into Kostaki’s cell, pressing his face close to the grille, hands against the cold stone either side of the door. The Yeoman Warder tried to edge away from his commanding officer. Orlok rarely asked questions but had a reputation for gaining answers. He turned away from the cell and looked at Godalming with active eyes.