The Vampyre (40 page)

‘For the first time in several months, I slept. Teresa did not disturb me. My dreams were unpleasant - heavy with guilt - sullen with foreboding. I woke at four. The heat was still stifling. As I dressed, though, I heard a distant roar of thunder, rolling in from the sea. I stared out through my window. The horizon was darkening into a purple haze. I rode to the shore, then along the sands. The sea was still crystalline, brilliant against clouds which had deepened now to black. Thunder rolled again and then lightning, in a silver sheet, illumined the sky, and the sea, suddenly, was a chaos of boiling surf, as the gale swept in across the bay. I reined in my horse, and stared out to sea. I glimpsed a boat. It rose and plunged, and rose again, and then it disappeared behind mountains of waves. The wind shrieked in my ears. “I cannot swim.” Shelley's words, from all those years before, seemed to rise up in my mind. He had refused my offer to save him then. I stared out again at the boat. It was labouring. Then I saw it turn and start to capsize.

‘I slashed my wrist. I drank my blood. I rose up on the gale. I became the breath of darkness, sweeping out across the sea. I saw the wreckage of the boat as it was pounded by the waves. I recognised it. I searched desperately for Shelley. Then I saw him. He was clinging to a shattered board. “Be mine,” I whispered to his thoughts. “Be mine, and I will save you.” Shelley stared around wildly. I reached for him. I held him.

‘“No!” Shelley screamed. “No!” He slipped from my grasp. He struggled in the water. He looked up to the sky, and seemed to smile, and then he was swept away, and the waves pounded over his head. Down he went, down, down, down. He did not rise again.'

LORD BYRON,
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

H
is body was washed up ten days later. The exposed flesh had been eaten away; what was left had been bleached by the sea; the corpse was unrecognisable. It might have been the carcass of a sheep for all that I could tell. I thought of Haidée. I hoped that her body had never been found, a rotten mess in a hessian sack - I hoped that her bones still lay undisturbed beneath the water. Shelley's corpse, stripped of its clothes, was a nauseous and degrading sight. We built a pyre on the beach, and burned it there. As the flames began to spread, I found the scent of dripping flesh unbearable. It was sweet and rotten, and stank of my failure.

‘I wandered down to the sea. I stripped to my shirt. As I did so, I glanced round and saw, standing on the hill, the figure of Polidori. Our eyes met; his puffy lips thinned and spread into a sneer. A billow of smoke from the pyre passed between us. I turned again. I wandered into the sea. I swam until the flames were extinct. I did not feel purified. I returned to the pyre. There was nothing but ash. I scooped the dust up and let it run through my fingers. An attendant showed me a charred lump of flesh. It was Shelley's heart, he explained - it hadn't burned - perhaps I would like it? I shook my head. It was too late now. Too late to own Shelley's heart . . .'

Lord Byron paused. Rebecca waited, a frown on her face. ‘And Polidori?' she asked

Lord Byron stared at her.

‘You hadn't won Shelley's heart. You had lost. And yet - when you saw Polidori - you didn't confront him - you let him go. And he's still alive now. Why? Why didn't you destroy him, as you had said you would?'

Lord Byron smiled faintly. ‘Do not underestimate the joys of hatred. It is a pleasure fit for eternity.'

‘No.' Rebecca shook her head. ‘No, I don't understand. '

‘Men love in haste - but to detest - leisure is needed - and I had - I have' - he hissed the word - ‘leisure.'

Rebecca's frown deepened. ‘How can I tell if you're being serious?' she asked with sudden anger and fear. She hugged herself. ‘You
could
have destroyed him?'

Lord Byron stared at her coldly. ‘I believe so,' he said at last.

Rebecca felt her heart slow. She was afraid of Lord Byron - but not as afraid as she had been the night before, when Dr Polidori had surprised her by the Thames, with madness in his face, and poison on his breath. ‘Only believe?' she asked.

Lord Byron's eyes were still cold as he replied. ‘Of course. How can we be certain of anything? Polidori is infused with a part of myself. That is the Gift - that is what it means. Yes,' he said with sudden vehemence, ‘I could destroy him - yes - of course I could. But you ask why I don't, and why I didn't in Italy, after Shelley drowned. It is the same reason. Polidori was given my blood. He was my creature. He, who had bequeathed me my loneliness, had become by that act almost precious to me. The more I hated him, the more I understood that I had no one else. Perhaps Polidori had intended such a paradox. I don't know. Even Jehovah, when he sent the flood, could not bear the total destruction of his world. How could I have outraged Shelley's ghost by behaving worse than the Christian Divinity?'

Lord Byron smiled grimly. ‘Because it was Shelley's ghost, you see, and Haidée's, which haunted me. Not literally - not even any longer as visions in my dreams - but as a blankness - a desolation. My days were listless - my nights restless - and yet I could not stir myself, nor do anything but kill, and brood, and scribble poetry. I remembered my youth, when my heart overflowed with affection and emotions; and yet now - at thirty-six - still no very terrible age - I could rake up all the dying embers in that same heart of mine, and stir scarcely even a temporary flame. I had squandered my summer before May was yet ended. Haidée was dead - Shelley was dead - my days of love were dead.

‘And yet from torpor, those same memories aroused me at last. All that long, ditch-water year, the revolt in Greece had been gathering apace. The cause of which Haidée had dreamed - the revolution which Shelley had longed to lead - the lovers of freedom, amongst which, once, I had counted myself - now looked to me. I was famous - I was rich - would I not offer the Greeks my support? I laughed at this request. The Greeks didn't realise what they were asking for - I was a deathly thing - my kiss polluted all it touched. And yet, to my surprise, I found I was moved - a thing I had come to believe quite impossible. Greece - romantic and beautiful land; freedom - the cause of all those I had loved. And so I agreed. I would not just support the Greeks with my wealth - I would fight amongst them. I would leave Italy. I would tread, once again, upon the sacred soil of Greece.

‘For this, I knew, might be my last chance - to redeem my existence, perhaps, and exorcise the ghosts of those I had betrayed. And yet, for myself, I had no illusions. I could not escape what I was - the freedom I fought for would not be my own - and though I fought for liberty, I would still be more bloodstained than the cruellest of the Turks. I felt a terrible agitation when I glimpsed the distant coast of Greece again. I remembered my first sight of it, all those years before. What an eternity of experience I had undergone since then! What an eternity of change . . . These were the same scenes -
the very soil
- where I had loved Haidée - and last been mortal - and free of blood. Sad - so sad - to look upon the mountains of Greece, and think of all that was dead and gone. And yet there was joy too, intertwined with my misery, so that it was impossible to distinguish between the two. I did not try. I was here to direct and lead a war. Why else, after all, had I come to Greece, if not to occupy my stagnant mind? I redoubled my efforts. I sought to think of nothing but the fight against the Turks.

‘And yet when it was proposed that I should sail to Missolonghi, the shadows of horror and regret returned, blacker than ever. As my ship crossed the lagoon towards the harbour, the guns of the Greek fleet boomed out to welcome me, and crowds were gathered on the walls to cheer. But I barely noticed them. Above me, distant against the blue sky, was Mount Arakynthos; beyond it, I knew, was Lake Trihonida. And now, waiting for me - Missolonghi - where I had ridden to after killing the Pasha - and rejoined Hobhouse - not a mortal any longer - but -
a vampire
. I remembered the vividness of my sensations that day, fifteen years before, watching the colours of the swamps and the sky. The colours were just as rich now, but when I looked at them, I saw death in their beauty - disease in the greens and yellows of the swamps, rain and fever in the purples of the clouds. And Missolonghi itself, I could see now, was a wretched and squalid place - built on mud, surrounded by lagoons, fetid and crowded and pestilential. It seemed a doomed place for heroism.

‘And so it proved to be. Hemmed in by the enemy as we were, the Greeks seemed more interested in fighting one another than the Turks. Money flowed like water through my hands, but to little purpose that I could see, beyond funding the squabbles of which the Greeks were so fond. I sought to reconcile the various leaders, and discipline the troops - I had the money, after all, and the power of compulsion in my eye - but any order I imposed was fragile and brief. And all the time, the rains fell and fell, so that even if we had been ready to attack, we could have done nothing, so dismal and hopeless the conditions had become. Mud was everywhere - swamp mists hung over the town - the lagoon waters began to rise - the roads were soon nothing but an oozing morass. And still it rained. I might just as well have been back to London.

‘As a cause, then, liberty began to lose its gloss. For a long time, since arriving in Greece, I had reduced my number of killings to a minimum - now I began to feed wantonly again. Each day, through the cold winter rains, I would leave the town. I would ride the oozing path along the edge of the lagoon. I would kill, and drink, and leave my victim's corpse amongst the filth and reeds. The rain would wash the corpse into the mud of the lagoon. Before, I had tried not to prey on the Greeks - the same people I had come to save - but now I did it unthinkingly. If I hadn't killed them, after all, the Turks would have done.

‘Then one afternoon, as I was riding by the lake, I saw a figure muffled in rags by the path. The person, whoever it was, seemed to be waiting for me. I was thirsty - I had not yet killed - I spurred my horse on. Suddenly though, the horse rose up and whinnied with fear - it was only with an effort I could bring him under control.

‘The figure in rags had stepped onto the path. “Lord Byron.” The voice was a woman's - cracked, hoarse, but with a hint of something strange, so that I shivered, caught between horror and delight. “Lord Byron,” she called again. I saw the glint of bright eyes beneath her hood. She pointed a bony hand at me. It was bunched and gnarled. “A death for Greece!” The words sliced through me.

‘“Who are you?” I shouted, above the drumming of the rain. I saw the woman smile - suddenly, my heart seemed to stop - her lips had reminded me - though I knew not how - of Haidée. “Stop!” I shouted. I rode towards her - but the woman was gone. The lagoon bank was empty. There was no sound but the pelting of the rain upon the lake.

‘That night I was seized by a convulsion. I felt a terrible horror come on me - I foamed at the mouth - I gnashed my teeth - all my senses seemed to fall away. After several minutes, I recovered, but I was afraid, for I had felt, during my fit, a state of self-revulsion such as I had never known before. It had been heralded, I knew, by the woman who had met me on the path by the lagoon. Memories of Haidée - torments of guilt - longings for what was impossible - all had risen like a sudden storm. I recovered. Weeks passed - I continued to marshal my troops - we even launched a brief attack across the lake. But all the time, I remained tense - filled with a strange foreboding - waiting to glimpse the strange woman again. I knew she would come. Her demand echoed in my brain: “A death for Greece!”' Lord Byron paused. He stared into the dark, and Rebecca heard - or did she imagine it? - the sound of something from behind her again. Lord Byron too seemed to have heard the noise. He repeated his words, as though to silence it. His words hung like the pronouncement of a doom. ‘“A death for Greece.”'

He looked away from the darkness, back into Rebecca's eyes. ‘And she did indeed come again - two months later. I was riding with companions, reconnoitring the ground. Some miles from the town, we were overtaken by heavy rain, slanting down in sheets of grey. I saw her, squatting in a pool of mud. Slowly, as before, she pointed at me. I shuddered. “Do you see her?” I asked. My companions looked - but the road was empty. We returned to Missolonghi. By now, we were soaked. I had a violent perspiration, and a fever in my bones. That evening, I lay on my sofa, restless and melancholy. Images of my past life seemed to float before my eyes. Dimly, I heard soldiers squabbling in the street outside, shouting violently as they always did. I had no time for them. I had no time for anything but memories and regrets.