The Historian (83 page)

―‗Almost,‘ I said. ‗I would like to visit Baba Yanka one more time and thank her for her help.‘

―‗Very well.‘ Ranov looked annoyed, but he led the way back down into the village, Brother Ivan walking silently behind us. The street was quiet in the golden evening light, and everywhere there was a smell of cooking. I saw an old man come out to the central water pump and fill a bucket. At the far end of Baba Yanka‘s little street, a herd of goats and sheep was being led in; we could hear their plaintive voices and see them crowding one another between the houses before a boy whisked them around the corner.

―Baba Yanka was delighted to see us. We congratulated her, through Ranov, on her wonderful singing and on the fire dance. Brother Ivan blessed her with a silent gesture.

‗How is it that you don‘t get burned?‘ Helen asked her.

―‗Oh, that is the power of God,‘ she said softly. ‗I do not remember later how it happened. Sometimes my feet feel hot afterward, but I never burn them. It is the most beautiful day of the year for me, even though I do not remember much of it. For months I am as peaceful as a lake.‘

―She took an unlabeled bottle from her cupboard and poured us glasses of a clear brown liquor. The bottle had long weeds floating in it, which Ranov explained were herbs, for flavor. Brother Ivan declined, but Ranov accepted a glass. After a few sips he began to question Brother Ivan about something in a voice as friendly as nettles. They were soon deep in a debate we could not follow, although I frequently caught the word
politicheski
.

―When we had sat listening for a while, I interrupted for a moment to get Ranov‘s help in asking Baba Yanka if I could use her bathroom. He laughed unpleasantly. He was certainly back in his old humor, I thought. ‗I am afraid it is not so nice here,‘ he said.

Baba Yanka laughed, too, and pointed to the back door. Helen said she would follow me and wait her turn. The outhouse in Baba Yanka‘s backyard was even more dilapidated than her cottage, but wide enough to hide our quiet flight among the trees and beehives and through the back gate. There was no one in sight, but we strolled when we reached the road, went quietly into the bushes, and scrambled up the hill. Mercifully, there was no one around the church, either, which already lay in deep shadow. The fire pit glowed faintly red under the trees.

―We didn‘t bother to try the front door, where we could be seen from the road; instead we hurried around the back. There was a low window there, covered on the inside with purple curtains. ‗That will lead into the sanctuary,‘ Helen said. But the wooden frame was only latched, not bolted shut, and with a little splintering we got it open and crawled in between the curtains, closing everything carefully behind us. Inside, I saw that Helen was right; we were behind the iconostasis. ‗Women are not allowed here,‘ she said in a low voice, but she was looking around her with a scholar‘s curiosity as she spoke.

―The room behind the iconostasis was dominated by a tall altar covered in fine cloths and candles. Two ancient books stood on a brass stand nearby, and hooks along the walls held the gorgeous vestments we had seen the priest wearing earlier. Everything was terribly still, terribly quiet. I found the holy gate through which the priest appeared to his congregation, and we pushed our way guiltily into the dark church. There was a little illumination from the narrow windows, but all the candles had been extinguished, probably from fear of fire, and it took me a while to locate a box of matches on a shelf. I selected a candle for each of us from one of the candelabra and lit them. Then we made our way with great caution down the stairs. ‗I hate this,‘ I heard Helen murmur behind me, but I knew she didn‘t mean she would stop, under any circumstances. ‗How soon do you think Ranov will miss us?‘

―The crypt was the darkest place I‘d ever been, all its candles firmly extinguished, and I was grateful for the two spots of light we carried. I lit the extinguished candles from the one I held. They blazed up, catching a sparkle of gold embroidery on the reliquary. My hands had begun to shake pretty badly, but I managed to take Turgut‘s little dagger in its sheath out of my jacket pocket, where I had been keeping it since we‘d left Sofia. I set it on the floor near the reliquary, and Helen and I gently lifted the two icons from their places—I found myself averting my eyes from the dragon and Saint George—and propped them against one wall. We removed the heavy cloth and Helen folded it out of the way. All this time I was listening with every fiber of my body for any sound, here or in the church above, so that the silence itself began to thrum and whine in my ears. Once Helen caught my sleeve, and we listened together, but nothing stirred.

―When the reliquary lay bare, we looked down on it, trembling. The top was beautifully molded with bas-relief—a long-haired saint with one hand raised to bless us, presumably a portrait of the martyr whose bones we might find inside. I caught myself hoping that we would indeed find just a few holy shards of bone, and then close the whole thing up. But then there was the emptiness that would follow—the lack of Rossi, the lack of revenge, the loss. The reliquary lid seemed nailed down, or bolted, and I couldn‘t for the life of me pry it open. We tipped it a little in the process, and something shifted inside, gruesomely, and seemed to tap against the interior. It was indeed too small for anything but a child‘s body, or some odd parts, but it was very heavy. It occurred to me for a horrible moment that perhaps only Vlad‘s head had ended up here after all, although that would leave a lot of other matters unexplained. I began to sweat and to wonder if I should go back up and hunt for some tool in the church above, although I wasn‘t very hopeful of finding anything.

―‗Let‘s try to put it on the floor,‘ I said through gritted teeth, and together we somehow slid the box safely down. There I might be able to get a better look at the hasps and hinges of the top, I thought, or even brace myself to yank it open.

―I was about to attempt this when Helen gave a little cry. ‗Paul, look!‘ I turned quickly and saw that the dusty marble on which the reliquary had rested was not a solid block; the top had shifted a little with our struggle to move the reliquary off it. I don‘t believe I was breathing anymore, but together, without words, we managed to remove the marble slab.

It was not thick, but it weighed a fortune, and we were both panting by the time it was leaning against the back wall. Underneath lay a long slab of rock, the same rock as the floor and walls, a stone the length of a man. The portrait on it was crude in the extreme, chiseled directly into the hard surface—not the face of a saint but of a real man, a hard-faced man with staring almond eyes, a long nose, a long mustache—a cruel face topped with a triangular hat that managed to look jaunty even in this rough outline.

―Helen drew back, white lipped in the candlelight, and I fought the urge to take her arm and run up the steps. ‗Helen,‘ I began softly, but there was nothing else to say. I picked up the dagger and Helen slipped a hand into some part of her clothing—I never did see where—and drew out the tiny pistol, which she put an arm‘s-length away, near the wall.

Then we reached under the edge of the gravestone and lifted. The stone slid halfway off, a marvelous construction. We were both shaking visibly, so that the stone all but slipped out of our grasp. When it was off we looked down at the body inside, the heavily closed eyes, the sallow skin, the unnaturally red lips, the shallow, soundless breathing. It was Professor Rossi.‖

―Iwish I could say that I did something brave, or useful, or caught Helen in my arms to make sure she wouldn‘t faint, but I didn‘t. There is almost nothing worse than a much-loved face transformed by death, or physical decay, or horrifying illness. Those faces are monsters of the most frightening kind—the unbearable beloved. ‗Oh, Ross,‘ I said, and the tears welled up and ran down my cheeks so suddenly that I couldn‘t even feel them coming.

―Helen took a step closer and looked down at him. I saw now that he was wearing the clothes he‘d had on the night I‘d last talked with him, nearly a month ago; they were torn and dirty, as if he‘d been in an accident. His tie was gone. An ooze of blood filled the lines of one side of his neck and made a scarlet estuary on his soiled collar. His mouth was slack and swollen around that faint breath, and apart from the rise and fall of his shirt, he was still. Helen put out her hand. ‗Don‘t touch him,‘ I said sharply, which only increased my own horror.

―But Helen seemed as much in a trance as he was, and after a second, her lips trembling, she brushed his cheek with her fingers. I don‘t know whether it was worse yet that he opened his eyes, but he did. They were still very blue, even in that murky candlelight, but the whites were bloodshot and the lids swollen. Those eyes were horribly alive, too, and puzzled, and they moved here and there as if trying to take in our faces, while his body stayed deathly still. Then his gaze seemed to settle on Helen, bending over him, and the blue of his eyes cleared with tremendous force, opening as if to take her in whole. ‗Oh, my love,‘ he said very softly. His lips were cracked and thick, but his voice was the voice I loved, the crisp accent.

―‗No—my mother,‘ Helen said as if groping for speech. She put her hand against his cheek. ‗Father, it‘s Helen—Elena. I‘m your daughter.‘

―He lifted one hand then, as if he controlled it only waveringly, and took hers. His hand was bruised and the nails overgrown and yellowing. I wanted to tell him that we‘d have him out of there in no time, that we were going home, but I knew already how desperately wounded he was. ‗Ross,‘ I said, bending nearer. ‗It‘s Paul. I‘m here.‘

―His eyes turned in bewilderment from me to Helen and back again, and then he closed them with a sigh that went all through his swollen frame. ‗Oh, Paul,‘ he said. ‗You came for me. You shouldn‘t have done it.‘ He looked at Helen again, his eyes clouding over, and seemed to want to say something else. ‗I remember you,‘ he murmured, after a moment.

―I fumbled for my inside jacket pocket and took out the ring Helen‘s mother had given me. I held it close to his eyes, but not too close, and then he dropped Helen‘s hand and touched the face of the ring clumsily. ‗For you,‘ he said to Helen. Helen took it and put it on her finger.

―‗My mother,‘ she said, her mouth trembling openly now. ‗Do you remember? You met her in Romania.‘

―He looked at her with something like his old keenness and smiled, his face crooked.

‗Yes,‘ he whispered at last. ‗I loved her. Where did she go?‘

―‗She is safe in Hungary,‘ Helen said.

―‗You are her daughter?‘ There was a kind of wonder in his voice now.

―‗I am your daughter.‘

―The tears came slowly up to the surface of his eyes, as if they did not flow with ease anymore, and ran down the lines at their corners. The trails they left glistened in the candlelight. ‗Please take care of her, Paul,‘ he said faintly.

―‗I‘m going to marry her,‘ I told him. I put my hand on his chest. There was a kind of inhuman wheezing inside it, but I made myself hold him there.

―‗That‘s—good,‘ he said finally. ‗Is her mother alive and well?‘

―‗Yes, Father.‘ Helen‘s face quivered. ‗She is safe in Hungary.‘

―‗Yes, you said that.‘ He closed his eyes again.

―‗She still loves you, Rossi.‘ I stroked his shirtfront with an unsteady hand. ‗She sent you this ring and—a kiss.‘

―‗I tried so many times to remember where she was, but something—‘

―‗She knows you tried. Rest for a moment.‘ His breathing had become alarmingly hoarse.

―Suddenly, his eyes flew open and he struggled to rise. The effort was awful to watch, especially since it produced almost no result. ‗Children, you must leave at once,‘ he panted. ‗It is very dangerous for you here. He will come back and kill you.‘ His eyes darted from side to side.

―‗Dracula?‘ I asked softly.

―His face went wild for a moment at the name. ‗Yes. He is in the library.‘

―‗Library?‘ I said, looking around in astonishment despite the horror of Rossi‘s face before us. ‗What library?‘

―‗His library is in there—‘ He tried to point to a wall.

―‗Ross,‘ I said urgently. ‗Tell us what happened and what we should do.‘

―He seemed to struggle with his eyesight for a moment, focusing on me and blinking rapidly. The dried blood on his neck moved with his struggle to breathe. ‗He came for me suddenly, to my office, and took me on a long journey. I was not—conscious for some of it, so I do not know what place this is.‘

―‗Bulgaria,‘ Helen said, keeping his swollen hand tenderly.

―His eyes flickered again with an old interest, a spark of curiosity. ‗Bulgaria? So that‘s why—‘ He tried to moisten his lips.

―‗What did he do to you?‘

―‗He brought me here to look after his—diabolical library. I have resisted in every way I could think of. It was my fault, Paul. I had started doing some research again, for an article—‘ He struggled for breath. ‗I wanted to show him as part of a—greater tradition.

Beginning with the Greeks. I—I heard there was a new scholar at the university writing on him, although I couldn‘t find out the man‘s name.‘

―At this, I heard Helen draw her breath in sharply. Rossi‘s eyes flickered toward her. ‗It seemed to me that I should finally publish—‘ He was wheezing now and he closed his eyes for a moment. Helen, holding his hand, had begun to tremble against me; I kept a tight grip on her waist.

―‗It‘s all right,‘ I said. ‗Just rest.‘ But Rossi seemed determined to finish.

―‗Not all right,‘ he choked, his eyes still closed. ‗He gave you the book. I knew then he would come for me, and he did. I fought him, but he has almost made me—like him—‘