The Dead Travel Fast (7 page)

He waited, his hand outstretched. I thought of the revelations Cosmina had made about his character, his evil habits. I thought of them, and still I went, putting my hand willingly into his. His fingers clasped over mine and I felt a sense of completion, as if something I had not realised was lost had been restored to me. It was disturbing, for I knew my own intentions would be nothing to him or to me should he choose to ignore them. There was a powerlessness, a lassitude that came over me at his touch, and I knew it was madness to follow him.

But follow him I did, up the spiralling stairs to the upper floor. We entered his bedchamber and I gasped aloud, for this room was handsomer than any I could have imagined. The furnishings were lighter than those elsewhere in the castle—more graceful, though still decidedly masculine. The great bed was hung with dark blue velvet spangled with starry knots of silver thread fashioned to mirror the ceiling, although nothing could compare to the scene overhead. Arching above was the whole of the night sky rendered in countless shades of blue and black and violet, shading subtly from evening through midnight and into the first light of dawn. Each of the stars was carefully picked out in silver and gold, shimmering to magnificent effect in the dim light.

“It is extraordinary,” I breathed.

The count smiled. “This was my grandfather’s room. He had the ceiling painted to commemorate my birth.”

I must have looked quizzical, for he raised his arm and pointed. “This is the sky as it looked on the night of my birth. Each constellation, each star, precisely where it was when I first drew breath in this room.”

I spun slowly in a circle, taking in the heavens arching above me. “How? A painter surely would not know the location of the stars.”

“But my grandfather did. He made sketches and instructed the painters. Every detail was done to his exacting orders.”

I would have marvelled at the ceiling for hours but he moved to a little door set within the panelled wall and beckoned. “Come.”

I followed and we climbed another twisting stair, emerging into a workroom of sorts, fitted with a desk and bookshelves and a chest with great flat drawers for charts or maps. But the drawers were open, the contents spilling across the floor and the books had been dashed from the shelves, some of the spines broken. A variety of telescopes stood ranged in a corner, forlorn and forgotten, only the glitter of broken lenses betraying their wounded condition. The whole of the room was thickly veiled with dust and cobwebs, and the scrabbling in the walls spoke of mice.

The neglect was pitiable, for this room was far more decayed than any I had yet been shown, and the odour of mildew and mould was heavy in the air. The curtains hung rotting from their poles, the velvet shredded to ribbons.

The count muttered something under his breath, an imprecation from the sound of it. There was no light save the candle he carried, but even by that feeble flame it was possible to see both the decay of the room and his anguish.

“Was this your grandfather’s room?” I asked softly. My voice seemed odd and unnatural in that place, an intrusion against an atmosphere thick with ghosts.

“Yes. He was one of the foremost amateur astronomers in Europe in his day. From this tower he studied the stars and wrote scientific papers. He corresponded with some of the greatest minds. He even discovered a comet. And this is all that remains of his work,” he finished, his features twisted by anger.

His bitterness was not to be wondered at. I remembered the care with which I had treated my own grandfather’s things after his death. It had been my last service to him, and it would have been a desecration to the man himself to treat his books and papers with disrespect.

“I suppose the maids did not secure the room and the elements and perhaps wild creatures have wreaked havoc.”

He gave a mirthless laugh, scorning my simple explanation. “This is not the work of a forest animal, my dear Miss Lestrange. This was deliberate.” His voice fell then; what he said next was barely audible, rendered in a harsh whisper and—I was quite certain—not directed to me. “You cannot be rid of him, even as I cannot be rid of you.”

The remark was a cryptic one, but if I did not understand what had happened in this place, at least I knew why he had urged me to accompany him. He had feared this and not wanted to learn the worst of it alone. He had needed me, and I understood that he needed me still. It is a powerful and intoxicating thing to a woman when a man has need of her, and in that moment I put aside much of what Cosmina had revealed. His habits might have been unsavoury, but he was not so vicious as she had painted him if he still cared so deeply for a beloved grandfather’s memory.

“It can be put right,” I said calmly. “The books may be mended and the papers sorted. I suppose those are star charts there upon the floor. They want only to be pressed with an iron, barely heated, and they will come right. The curtains are quite beyond repair, but I daresay you can find others. As for the telescopes—” I went to them, peering closely through the gloom and picking carefully amongst the rubble “—this one seems to have escaped the damage.”

I retrieved the smallest of the instruments and placed it into his hands. The lenses were unbroken, the body of the telescope damaged only by a single long scratch. He turned it over in his hands, his expression inscrutable.

“This was his gift to me when I was twelve years old. I never took it when I travelled because there was no better place to see the stars than here, he always said,” the count told me, his voice low. He seemed calmer then, his anger banked but not diminished.

He glanced to the window, and the starlight I had seen from my room must have beckoned him, for he went to an iron ladder I had not noticed and pulled hard upon it. Satisfied that it was firmly fixed to the wall, he pocketed the telescope and began to climb towards a door in the ceiling above.

“When I have opened the trap, I will come back and help you up,” he promised. I heard a great metallic clang, and before I could refuse he had swarmed back down, agile as a monkey, and taken my hand.

“Put your hand here and your foot upon this,” he instructed. I did as he bade me—slowly for I was hampered by my heavy skirts—and soon emerged onto an open platform bound by a stone battlement that stood just higher than my waist. It was a precarious place to stand, for the tower’s conical roof rose high and pointed from the centre and our perch was the narrow footing at the base of it. But it felt as if we had climbed to the top of the world, and I looked about in wonderment. As far as the eye could see, the dark shadows of the Carpathians rippled in peaks and valleys, shrouded in forest and faintly lit with starlight. Above us the vault of the cold black sky stretched to eternity, the stars scattered over it in thousands of pinpricks of light.

“I have never seen its like,” I told him as he climbed up to join me.

He took a deep breath of the cold night air and expelled it slowly. His eyes were shining, his manner more animated and vital and yet more relaxed than I had yet seen him.

“You are happy here,” I observed.

“As I am never happy elsewhere,” he agreed. “It is my own private retreat. There is a trapdoor in each tower,” he explained, nodding towards the towers punctuating battlements. “Originally they were put into place so that the watchmen could have the vantage of the highest point in the valley to keep watch against invaders. They are connected by a single walk along the battlements, and the whole of it had fallen into disuse until my grandfather. It was he who discovered the entire walk could be put to use as an observatory.” He took another deep draught of the crisp air. “Exhilarating, is it not?”

He turned to smile at me, and I felt the force of his pleasure as a creeping warmth in my blood. I had never known anyone like him. He was so strange a mixture of imperiousness and informality that I could not understand him. But even if I had had the grasp of his character, still I could not have explained my own feelings towards him. He had only to stand near me and I was aware of him, keenly aware, sharp to any emotion, any shift in his mood. As for myself, his approbation, the fascinated looks he fixed upon me, the warmth of his interest, all of these effected reactions I was quite powerless to overcome in his presence. My blood ran hot or cold, I shivered and felt myself unable to move. I was restless within my own skin, tossing like a creature in heat, and it ought to have embarrassed me. Instead I was intrigued by these feelings and by the man who created them.

I should not have reflected upon such things in such a place with such a man. I ought to have stayed in my room with the door bolted against him. Instead I had followed him up to the ends of the earth and would have cast myself over the edge if he had asked it of me. I shivered in the chill of the east wind and he gave a short curse.

“I ought not to have brought you here. It is far too cold,” he said, removing his coat and wrapping it about my shoulders. The warmth of it enveloped me, and the scent of it—of him—clung to the fabric, and later, I would discover, to my skin. It was a rich and sensual smell, like that of overripe fruit just before bursting.

He should have dropped his hands when he finished arranging the coat, but he did not. He stood, his body blocking the wind from mine, his hands twisted in the lapels of his own coat, drawing me closer to him.

“Better?” he asked, his lips hovering at my ear. I nodded and he stood and lingered a moment more beside me.

Suddenly a flutter of wings brushed past and I dropped my head, crying out.

“It is nothing,” he assured me. “Only a bat, intent upon its nightly hunt.”

I rose to discover the creature flying away, darting from tower to tower as it chased the darkness.

“Come,” said the count, urging me forward. He pointed upward into the night sky. “That bright spot just there is Venus. Fix it in your mind.”

I did as he instructed. Then he reached into the pocket of the coat he had placed about me to retrieve the small telescope. “Look again.”

It required a few attempts to master the instrument, but when I did I was rewarded with the sight of Venus, fairly dancing in the sky above us, the brightest star in the heavens.

“Do you observe anything peculiar?” he asked. He stood behind me, still shielding me from the wind, and the air carried the scent of him to me.

“She is lopsided, as if a bite had been taken from her.”

“Precisely. Even as she rises and seems to grow larger and brighter, she loses her roundness, forming eventually a crescent at her zenith. Galileo discovered this phenomenon.”

I proffered the telescope. “Thank you for that. I have never observed the stars before, at least not with someone who knew them so well.”

He took the instrument from my hands. “Now that you know where to look, you might even be able to determine Venus in the daylight sky. Napoleon did so once while he addressed the people from a palace balcony. He believed it was an omen of success for victory in Italy. He was quite correct.”

“It is a harbinger of good things to see Venus then?” I asked lightly.

“Of course. The planet was called after the goddess of love because it was supposed to shine a kindly light upon lovers’ meetings. I will show you.”

He stepped closer and leaned near to me. “Close your eyes,” he said, putting a hand over my face.

I complied, waiting expectantly for what would come next. My lips parted a little in delicious anticipation of the touch of his. I think I leaned forward just a bit, and even as I did so, he removed his hand.

“Open your eyes and look at me.”

I did, surprised and disappointed that he had not taken the opportunity to kiss me. I was shocked at myself, for such a thing was not to be wished. It was inappropriate and unseemly and yet it was what I wanted above all things.

But if he desired it as well, he betrayed no sign of it. His expression was calm, his tone even as he explained.

“Now, keeping your eyes fixed upon me, look with the tail of your eye at the wall. What do you see?”

I strained my eyes, looking without looking as I tried to discover what he wished me to see. And suddenly, there it was.

“There are shadows but no moon,” I said.

He gave me an approving look. “Very good. It took me quite a bit longer to understand when my grandfather taught me to see them. It is said that any love affair begun in the shadows of Venus will last an eternity, for it is blessed by the goddess herself.”

I did not know what to make of this. He was both scientist and mystic, capable of blending fact and legend to suit him. But to what end? What did he want of me?

Before I could puzzle over him further he put out his hand. “Come, Miss Lestrange. It grows late and the day has been a long one. You must be tired.”

But as he helped me down from the observatory, through his rooms and to the door of my own bedchamber, I was not aware of being fatigued. Instead, I felt more alive than I had ever done in my life, aware of the sound of my own blood rushing in my veins. I might have tarried on the roof with him a hundred years and never slept.

And yet, when he had kissed my hand and taken his leave, I scarcely managed to wash myself and put on my nightdress before I fell into bed and dropped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

6

Through the next several days at the castle a pattern emerged, each day as like to the next as beads strung upon a rosary. Each day I breakfasted alone in my room, then passed the rest of the morning in solitude, working on my book. I wrote in the library, but the count left me strictly alone—to my disappointment and relief. Something about the atmosphere, charged as it was, gave a fresh fillip to my work. I had not thought to begin so soon after my arrival, but the setting was so evocative I could not help myself. I remembered too what Cosmina had told me of the count’s plans. He meant to stay only a month or so, hardly enough time for me to take the proper measure of him. If I meant to use him as an inspiration, I had to begin, and quickly. Even with this determination, I found myself gazing often at the library door, wondering if this would be the day he provided a pleasant interruption to my labours.

But each morning ended with my collecting the sheaf of pages into a morocco portfolio and returning them safely to my room before taking a midday meal with Cosmina. If the countess was well, we ate together with the Amsels in a pretty little room with views of the mountains. More often, the countess kept to her rooms and Cosmina and I were served trays in her bedchamber. We talked of many things, but the count was not among them. After her first outburst she was content not to speak of him, and I hesitated to introduce the subject. I could not trust my own emotions not to betray me, and I knew I could not confide in her where I spent my evenings, for they were always passed in his company. The household dined together formally each night, and if the countess was strong enough some little entertainment followed, cards or perhaps music. But even those evenings we spent together were concluded early and I went to my room with hours yet to pass before I retired. The count, whom I had come to learn was largely nocturnal in his practices, knocked each evening upon my door soon after we retreated to our rooms. We passed our evenings in his grandfather’s workroom or, on clear nights, out upon the observatory walk itself watching the full moon rise over the valley. The count had cleared away the worst of the rubble in the workroom himself, refusing to permit the maids access to this most private of sanctuaries. The fact that he invited me there when no one else was granted such a privilege was not lost upon me, and as he conducted himself with propriety and restraint, I found myself increasingly at ease in his company. If his hand or gaze occasionally lingered a heartbeat too long upon me, this was countered with a seeming indifference that could only rouse my interest. Our evenings were spent in conversation that touched upon all subjects, and for the first time in my life I experienced the acute pleasure of being treated as an intellectual equal, for we sparred as often as we agreed, and I held my ground against him, frequently to his amusement, and always with his approval. I knew that he enjoyed me; I believed that he liked me, and the novelty of it was intoxicating.

I also came to enjoy the society of Dr. Frankopan, whose path crossed with mine nearly every day. He called often to see the countess and stay to a meal, and sometimes I ventured down to the village to accept one of his kindly invitations to tea. It was during one such visit, perhaps a week after I had come to the castle that I began to understand how deep the mysteries of Transylvania flowed. Cosmina had stayed behind to read to the countess, but I had grown familiar enough with the countryside and with the good doctor to call on my own. Usually we were alone, and I poured out while he sliced pieces of cake or cut bread and butter. But this day a dark, sullen lady attended us, and Dr. Frankopan introduced her as his housekeeper. As she passed me a cup, I realised her manner was brooding rather than surly, and the hostility she exhibited was not directed to me. Rather, she suffered from some calamity that worried her, for I saw that her nails were bitten cleanly to the quick and her eyes were rimmed red as though she had recently wept.

When she left us, Dr. Frankopan leaned near, his voice pitched low. “I must apologise for her, my dear. My good Madame Popa is very lowly at present. She has been at home these past days for there has been trouble in her family. Her husband, as they say in the vernacular here, has gone wolf.”

“Gone wolf?”

He sighed heavily. “Yes. Poor Teodor Popa. He has done what so many of his family have done before him. He has taken to the hills to live as a wolf.”

I stared at him, not even realising I had burnt my hand upon the teacup. I put it down hastily and summoned a polite smile.

“Forgive me, doctor. I must be very dull, for I do not understand. Do you mean he has gone to live in the forest, amongst the animals?”

“No, no, my dear. I mean he has
become
an animal. It is a failing of the men of his family. Some of them are perfectly normal, and some of them fall victim to this disorder or curse, I hardly know which to call it. On the main, they live as normal men, but once a month, they will take to the mountains to hunt and to howl when the moon rises.”

I started to laugh. Cosmina had told her tales of peasant superstition, but surely this educated gentleman did not profess to believe in werewolves. “Now you are making sport of me.”

But he leaned forward still further, his face deadly earnest. “I assure you, I am not. I am not. This is the way of these men. Many of them make good enough husbands save for the nights of the full moon when they must run with their own kind. But sometimes the lure of the moon is too strong, and they leave their wives and children forever, content to roam the mountains in the shape of wolves.”

I gaped at him. “You are a man of science, Dr. Frankopan. Surely you do not really believe such things.”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “Child, child, do not let your imagination fail you, for this is a place like no other. Perhaps I would not have believed in such things were I not brought up in the shadow of these mountains. The rest of my family live in Vienna, and they have all forgot the old ways, or they pretend to. They say it is nonsense and they will not speak of such things in Vienna lest they be mocked and ridiculed. But I, who have come back to this place and lived here for so long, I know the truth. The first time I was brought to this house I was five years old. My father wanted to hunt the bear and the lynx and the wolf. He gathered a great group of his friends and they went out together in a hunting party. The first night, they hunted by moonlight, knowing the great full moon would light their way. My father was the first to see the wolf, a tremendous, solid creature, high as a man’s waist and with two red eyes glowing in the darkness. He fired, but the shot was a poor one, and it only took off the animal’s paw. He ran off into the night, streaming blood from his wound and howling. The next day, my father saw the village blacksmith, his arm swathed in bandages, his left hand completely missing. It was no accident, my dear. My father had shot the blacksmith, for he too was a Popa, one of these men who ran wolf when the moon was full.”

I strove for kindliness towards the old man and his fanciful tale. “Dr. Frankopan, I am certain your father did hunt a wolf, and that the blacksmith lost his hand. Who is more likely to lose a hand in the course of his work than a smith? But is it not possible that you imagined the link between these two events? You were a small child, such things would have impressed you. And doubtless your nursemaid told you stories of wolves to keep you safe within the house.”

He smiled at me, then rose and took a box from the mantelpiece. It was a pretty thing, a fine example of the Roumanian carver’s art, painted with bright colours. He opened it and withdrew something almost as large as his own hand, but covered in grey-black fur and crusted on end with what looked horribly like dried blood. The other end was spiked with nails, long and curved and black as night.

“A wolf’s paw,” I whispered.

He put it into my hand and I felt then the weight and the gruesomeness of this place.

“My father brought home the wolf’s paw as a trophy. It has stayed in that box ever since, a reminder to us that in Transylvania, that which is impossible becomes possible,” he finished in a darkling voice.

“But this might have been only a coincidence,” I protested, even as I held the paw in my hand. It was heavy and real, but was it real enough to persuade?

Dr. Frankopan’s expression was one of pity. “My dear child, you are a writer, a teller of tales. In this land, that is a sacred thing, for it is the storyteller who passes the legends, the storyteller who makes certain we do not forget. But to tell the tales, the storyteller must believe. Can you not believe, even a little?”

I looked down at the paw, the terrible remains of that long-ago hunting party, and I wondered. Was it possible? Could I allow that such things
could
happen? I had explained to Charles that the uneducated folk in the Carpathians held such beliefs, but could I? My grandfather had spoken of such things; I had been reared with tales of witches and selkies, mermaids and faery changelings. I knew that some people still believed in them. Even Mrs. Muldoon, with her stolid Irish sense, had put out a cake for the faeries on the garden step on Midsummer Night. How much easier would it be to believe in these wolfen men in a place such as this, where the howling carried on the wind and the forests pressed in about us, thick and black and knowing?

“I suppose,” I said slowly. Suddenly, I remembered the little maid Tereza and the word she had spoken. “Dr. Frankopan, what is
strigoi?
”

He put down his cup and fixed me with a solemn look. “Where did you hear the word?”

“The maid, Tereza. She seemed to be cautioning me against sleeping with an open window, and she hung basil upon the casement latch. What am I to fear?”

The doctor gave another sigh and settled further into his chair, looking rather older of a sudden. “I presume you know what a vampire is?”

I nodded. “Of course. Cosmina used to talk of them at school, and my grandfather was a scholar of folklore. He wrote a monograph upon the subject of vampires. I cannot recall to mind the details, but I do remember his thesis was that such creatures exist in almost every known civilization.”

“This is true, this is true. And here, the word for such a monster is
strigoi
. There are two varieties, but the
strigoi morţi
are the dead who will not rest. Death has taken the
strigoi mort
, only he does not lie easy in his grave. He walks in search of blood, to take it and feed his monstrous need with a bite to the neck or above the heart.” His eyes took on a faraway look, and I was not certain he even saw me as he continued to recite in a dreamy tone. “The
strigoi mort
comes at night to take the life of those left behind, of those most dear to him. He is immortal so long as he steals blood from the living. He is a monster, risen from the grave to take what does not belong to him.”

“And the other form?” I asked.

“
Strigoi vii
, living men who have given up their immortal soul, either by choice or happenstance. One might be the seventh child of a seventh child, or perhaps have suffered the bite of a
strigoi mort
. These living vampires draw sustenance not from blood, but from the life force of those around them. A
strigoi viu
is doomed to become a
strigoi mort
after his death.”

It seemed an impossible thing to accept. The stories I had read about these creatures had been unreal to me, no different than any other bit of dark folklore. Somehow even as I had lectured Charles on the subject, I had failed to grasp that these creatures were very real to the folk who believed in them.

“But vampires, Dr. Frankopan,” I told him. “Surely they do not exist.” And even as I said the words I heard the shiver of doubt.

To my astonishment, the doctor leaned forward and covered my hands with his own. “My dear, you are a friend to the Dragulescus, and for this reason, you are dear to me as well. I must care for you as they would in their absence, and you must be warned.”

“Warned against what?” I demanded. I felt a little impatient with him now, and I struggled against it. It was not his fault that he had been brought up with such superstitions; indeed most folk had. Even in Edinburgh, a city that prided itself upon learning and sound common sense, I had heard of the ways of the peculiarities of the country folk and their odd beliefs about unseen things. How much more easily could they thrive here, in this fertile land of myth and magic?

He did not loose his hold upon my hands. “You cannot guard yourself against what you will not believe. There have been troubles here, long ago, but the memory of them is fresh. Should trouble come again, whilst you are here, you must be prepared. The
strigoi mort
is a creature of revenge, created out of the evil misdeeds of a once-living man. He will repay the slights suffered in life at the hands of his family by attacking them after his death. It is said the
strigoi mort
first works his evil in small ways, bringing bad dreams and rendering men incapable with their women. Then he begins to feed, first upon cattle, then upon children and youths, draining them of their blood. There is no mistaking the work of the
strigoi
, either living or dead.”

In spite of myself, I felt chilled at his words.

“But surely there are rational explanations for such things,” I reminded him gently.

“The explanation is evil!” he replied, dropping my hands abruptly. I noticed then that he had gone quite pale and sweat had begun to bead upon his brow. He wore his usual red coat with the brass buttons, and I wondered if he ought to remove it.

“Dr. Frankopan, you are unwell. Let me call for Madame Popa,” I began.

He waved me away and drew a green silk handkerchief from his pocket. “No, no. It is only that I become too excited sometimes. Because I am afraid,” he finished in a whisper.

I caught my breath on a sudden inspiration. “You believe it has already begun,” I said.