The Vampyre (36 page)

‘He slumped, and fell sobbing at my feet. I reached out to him. Polidori shrunk away. “Damn you!” he screamed again. Then he fell forwards, and leaned his head against my knees. Gently, I stroked the locks of his hair.

‘“Take the money,” I whispered, “and go.”

‘Polidori stared up. “Damn you.”

‘“Go.”

‘Polidori kneeled in silence. “I would be a creature of terrible power,” he said at last, “if I were a vampire.”

‘There was silence. I stared down at him with mingled pity and contempt. Then suddenly, he snivelled. I pushed him back with my foot. Moonlight was spilling in through a window in the cell. I kicked Polidori so he lay in the light. He started to whimper as I stripped off his shirt. My blood was starting to burn me now. I put my foot on Polidori's chest. He stared at me wordlessly. I bit into his throat, then ripped with a dagger down across his chest. I drank the blood as it pumped up from the wound, while I tore at the bones, until the heart was exposed. It was still beating, but faintly, and growing ever more faint. His nakedness was horrible. I had lain stripped in the same way - deprived of dignity, life, humanity. The heart twitched, like a fish on a river-bank - and then was still. I moved on the corpse. I gave it the Gift.'

Lord Byron sat in silence. He stared at something in the darkness, which Rebecca couldn't see. Then he ran his fingers through the curls of his hair.

‘The Gift,' Rebecca said at last. ‘What was it?'

‘Something terrible.'

Rebecca waited. ‘Indescribable?'

Lord Byron stared at her. ‘Until you have received it - yes.'

Rebecca ignored the implications of the word ‘until'. ‘And Polidori,' she asked, ‘he - he was all right . . .?' She knew how inadequate her phrase was to the question. Her voice trailed away.

Lord Byron poured another glass of wine. ‘He awoke from death, if that is what you mean.'

‘How? - I mean . . .'

Lord Byron smiled. ‘How?' he asked. ‘His eyes opened - he breathed hard - a convulsive motion agitated his limbs. He looked up at me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He may have spoken - I didn't hear - one hand was stretched out to detain me, but I couldn't bear the sight of him, this corpse, this hideous monster to which I had given existence. I turned, and left the cell. I paid the guards. They escorted Polidori to the frontier at once. They were found several days later, ripped apart and drained white of their blood. It was all kept quiet.'

‘And Polidori?'

‘What of him?'

‘Did you see him again?'

Lord Byron smiled. He stared at Rebecca with burning eyes. ‘Haven't you guessed?' he asked.

‘Guessed?'

‘The identity of the man who sent you here tonight? The man who showed you the papers? The man on the bridge?' Lord Byron nodded. ‘Oh yes,' he said. ‘I was to see Polidori again.'

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, SONNET

P
olidori?
That . . . man?' Rebecca sat numbed in her chair.

Lord Byron smiled at her. ‘Why are you so shocked? I was sure you had guessed.'

‘How could I have done?'

‘Who else had an interest in sending you here?'

Rebecca stroked back her hair and patted at it, as though hoping that way to calm her racing heart. ‘I don't know what you mean,' she said.

Lord Byron stared at her, his smile slowly curling and growing more cruel. Then he laughed and raised an eyebrow. ‘Very well,' he said mockingly, ‘you don't understand.'

Rebecca listened to the sound of her heart in her ears, beating blood - Ruthven blood - Byron blood. She licked her lips. ‘Polidori still hated you, then?' she asked slowly. ‘Even once you'd given him what he had asked you for? He felt no gratitude?'

‘Oh, he loved me.' Lord Byron folded his hands. ‘Yes, he always loved me. But in Polidori, the love and the hate were so dangerously mixed, that it was very difficult to tell them apart. Polidori couldn't, certainly, so how the devil was I to? And once he was a vampire - well . . .'

‘You were afraid of him?'

‘Afraid?' Lord Byron stared at her in surprise. He shook his head, and then suddenly all was silence, and Rebecca put her hands up to her eyes. She saw herself sliced with a thousand cuts, hanging from a hook, her blood dripping like the finest rain. She was dead, drained white. Rebecca opened her eyes. ‘Have you not understood, the power I have?' Lord Byron smiled. ‘I, afraid? No.'

Rebecca shuddered, and tried to stagger to her feet.

‘Sit down.'

Again her mind was invaded by fear. She struggled against its hold. The terror grew worse. She could feel it melting her courage away. Her legs collapsed. She sat down. At once the terror drained from her. As she stared, despite herself, into Lord Byron's eyes, she felt an unnatural calm returning to her mind.

‘No, no,' he said. ‘Fear? - no. Guilt, though. Yes, there was guilt. I had made of Polidori what the Pasha had made of me. I had done what I had sworn I would never do. I had added to the ranks of the living dead. For a while, I was quite wretched about it, and like all complaining persons, I couldn't help telling my companions so. I had no wish to see Polidori again - not after what I had seen in the cell - but the Contessa Marianna, who loved me, tracked the Doctor down. She found him in the hall of a tourist's hotel. He was laughing hysterically, as though quite insane, but he knew Marianna as a vampire at once, and with her beside him, he seemed to calm down. He had been hired, he explained, by an Austrian count. The Count had caught a chill. “He asked me” - and here Polidori had begun to splutter again - “he asked me - ha, ha, ha! - he asked me
to bleed him
! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Well - I did as he asked. He's upstairs now. And I have to say - his chill has got worse!” Here, Polidori had collapsed into mirth - then he began to cry - and then his face froze totally. “Tell Byron,” he whispered, “I want the money after all. He'll understand.” His eyes were bulging by now. His tongue was like a mad dog's, hanging foamy and flaccid. His whole body shook. He turned his back on Marianna, and ran into the streets. She didn't bother to follow him.

‘Her advice to me later was simple. “Kill him. It will be for the best. There are those,
milord
, who cannot take the Gift. Especially not from you. Your blood is too strong. It has unbalanced his mind. There is nothing for it. You must put him down.” But I couldn't bear to. That would merely have compounded my fault. I sent him the money he had asked me for. I made only one condition - that he return to England. I had decided by now I would live in Venice. I didn't want Polidori bothering me.'

‘And he went?'

‘When he received the money - yes. We heard reports of him. He had been hired by a succession of Englishmen. They all died. No one suspected Polidori though. It was merely said of him he was overfond of applying the leech.' Lord Byron smiled. ‘He got back to England at last. I knew, because he started pestering my publisher with unreadable plays. The news of that caused me some amusement. I warned my publisher to keep his windows locked at night. Otherwise, I gave Polidori very little thought.'

‘He really kept away from you, then?'

Lord Byron paused. ‘He would not have dared come near me. Not while I was in Venice.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because Venice was my stronghold - my lair - my court. In Venice, I was unassailable.'

‘Yes, but why Venice?'

‘Why Venice?' Lord Byron smiled fondly. ‘I had always dreamed of the city - I had expected much - I was not disappointed.' Lord Byron stared back into Rebecca's eyes. ‘Why Venice? You need to ask? But I forget it has changed. When I lived there, though . . .' Lord Byron smiled again. ‘It was an enchanted, sadness-haunted island of death. Palaces crumbled into the mud - rats played amongst the maze of dark canals - the living seemed outnumbered by ghosts. Political glory and power had been destroyed - no reason for existence was left her but pleasure - Venice had grown into a playground of depravity. Everything about her was extraordinary, and her aspect like a dream - splendid and filthy, graceful and cruel, a whore whose loveliness concealed her disease. I found in Venice, in her stone and water and light, an embodiment of the beauty and vileness of myself. She was the vampire of cities. I claimed her as my right.

‘I stayed in a great
palazzo
by the Grand Canal. I was not alone in Venice. Lovelace was with me, and other vampires too - it was the Contessa Marianna who had first persuaded me to come. She lived across the lagoon in an island palace, from which she had preyed on her city for centuries. She showed me her dungeons. They were as damp as tombs; coils of chain still hung from the walls. In former times, she explained, victims had been fattened and prepared in them. “It is harder now,” she said. “Everyone talks of these absurd things, rights -
droits
.” She spat the word in French, the language of the Revolution which had overthrown the old order in Venice. She laughed derisively. “I feel sorry for you,
milord
. All the true pleasures of aristocracy are dead.” Yet in Marianna herself, the spirit of the Borgias still seemed to survive, and her entertainments were cruel enough. Her victims were carefully selected or bred - it amused the Contessa to garnish them, to dress them as cherubs or arrange them in tableaux. These banquets would be served by the Contessa's slaves - mindless revenants, such as the Pasha had possessed.

‘Lovelace, when he was drunk, would taunt me about these. “ 'Tis fortunate, Byron, the Contessa did not find you before you grew her King. See yonder Tom-turd-man?” he would ask, gesturing towards one of the blank-eyed slaves. “He was once a rhymester, much like yourself. He scribbled libels against
ma donna
the Contessa. What think you, does he play the satirist now?” But to Lovelace's regret, I would merely smile, for I watched the zombies and the meals they served, not indifferently, but with a sense of numbness. I ruled, as Ahasver had ordered me to rule - but I did not prescribe. Marianna's cruelty was as much a part of her as her beauty, or her taste, or her love of art - I did not seek to change it. But later, once I had crossed the lagoon back to my own
palazzo
, memories of what I had seen would return to me, and give me much to wonder and philosophise about.

‘For I was still much perplexed by myself and my breed. I had a gondola, black, edged with gold. I would haunt the canals, gliding along them like the fever-mists, preying on the human filth of the city, the whores and pimps and murderers. I would drain them, then toss them overboard, leave them floating as food for the rats - I would order my gondola out from the canals - I would abandon the city and cross the lagoons. There, in the purple stillness of the marshes, I would contemplate my own emotions, and all I had done and experienced that night. My feelings, it seemed, were becoming dull. Freshness was gone. The deeper in blood I waded, the colder grew my soul. I was a vampire - and more, greatest of the vampires - Ahasver had taught me his lesson well. I could not deny what I was - and yet still I regretted what was dying in me. I fought against it. I remembered the opera of
Don Giovanni
. When I wasn't feeding, I was making love as Don Giovanni had done, compulsively, to reassure himself of his humanity. Countesses, prostitutes, peasant girls - I had them all - an endless stream - in gondolas - at masques - or bargained for with their parents in the street - against walls - on tables - or under them. It was life - yes -
it was life
- and yet . . .'

Lord Byron paused. He sighed, and shook his head. ‘And yet always, at the very height of pleasure and desire - worldly, social or amorous - there mingled a sense of sorrow and doubt. This grew. I fucked numbly - like the rake who is growing old - whose powers can no longer keep pace with his desires. My wildness was really nothing but desperation. In the lagoons, at night, I would admit this to myself. I had no pleasures now but the drinking of blood - my mortality was dead - I could scarcely remember the person I had been. I began to dream of Haidée. We would be in the cave above Lake Trihonida. I would turn to her, to kiss her - but her face would be rotten, enslimed with mud, and when she opened her mouth, she would choke up water. In her eyes, though, there would be reproach, and I would turn away, and the dream would fade. I would wake up, trying to remember the person I had been, in that lost, precious hour before the Pasha had come. I began a poem. I called it
Don Juan
. Its hero was named in mockery of myself. He was no monster - he did not seduce, he did not prey, he did not kill - instead -
he lived
. I used the poem to record, while I could, all my memories of mortality. But it was also a farewell. My life was spent - it was nothing now to me but a dream of what once had been. I continued to write my great epic of life, but without any illusions that it would rescue me. I was what I was - the vampire lord - and my realm was that of death.