Tales of the Slayer

by Nancy Holder

  The one-legged man spoke again, and Edmund snapped at him. “He says the king turned his back on his troops, and that he cannot find work. Who will hire a one-legged man when so many other men with two legs are starving? And so he relies on the charity of those who love France.”

  “He speaks treasonously of his monarch, yet has the gall to ask for coins stamped with His Majesty’s likeness?” Marie-Christine looked at the man with acidic contempt. “The Church can see to him. That’s what the Church is for.”

  She turned away, considering the matter resolved. Before she had walked three steps, Mathilde ran in front of her and dropped to her knees, holding up her small hands in a pleading gesture. Marie-Christine huffed at her, waving her hand to urge her out of the way. Doggedly the child held her ground, shaking her head and babbling, pointing to the man, then finally, clutching up the dirt-caked hem of Marie-Christine’s peasant skirts.

  “She begs you to give the man her bread and cheese,” Edmund said.

  “I need no translation.” Marie-Christine pursed her lips. “Tell her that if I give it to him, there will be no more food for her today. That this is all there will be.”

  Edmund complied. The girl answered, her chin raised, her head thrown back so that she could see into Marie-Christine’s eyes.

  “She understands. She still wants him to have the food.”

  “This is precisely why they are poor,” Marie-Christine muttered as she retrieved the piece of cheese and the bread and handed them to the girl. “All irrational feeling, no sense . . .”

  She watched in mute fascination as Mathilde ran to the man, gabbling at him, curtseying as she stretched out her hands. His own raised in front of his face, searching for the treasure, and Mathilde carefully placed the food into his grasp.

  He bobbed his head, sighing, “Merci, beaucoup merci,” then fell to eating with a slavish urgency, as if he were terrified the food might be taken from him before he could finish it.

  Edmund chuckled. “Mon Dieu, I’ve never seen anyone eat so fast.”

  Despite her Watcher’s amusement, Marie-Christine felt supremely irritated. She was aware of something tightening in her throat, had no idea what it might signify, and snapped her fingers at Mathilde, as she might a lapdog or a pet monkey.

  “Come along. We’ve wasted enough time,” she insisted.

  Mathilde appeared to understand. She got to her feet and darted back to Marie-Christine, babbling away. By the lilt in her voice, the Slayer realized the child was asking her a question.

  “Oh, good heavens,” Edmund blurted, rolling his eyes. “No, Marie-Christine, I won’t even repeat it.”

  “She wants more food for him?”

  “I refuse to tell you.” Edmund slipped his snuff box from a pocket in his jacket and helped himself to a quick pinch. As he put it back, he said to the old soldier, “Take care, old colonel.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the man replied. His French was decent enough after all.

  Without another word, the Slayer swept away.

  It wasn’t until she was at least a hundred feet from the scene that she realized a tear was trickling down her cheek. She dabbed it with her sleeve, convinced that she was getting ill. How else to explain her overemotional soft-heartedness today?

  “What did she ask?”

  Edmund chuckled again. “For us to take the man with us. For us to find him a home.”

  “C’est absurde,” Marie-Christine said to the girl, who stared up adoringly at her and chattered in her little voice.

  “She wants to know why it is absurd to ask this of an angel of mercy.”

  Marie-Christine rolled her eyes. “She has no idea who or what I am. If anything, I am an avenging angel.”

  “That I will not tell her,” Edmund said sternly. He spoke to the child, who nodded and replied. “She says that the bridge is not far now. It occurs to me, Marie-Christine, that she may be leading us on a fool’s errand. Perhaps she’s part of a band of pickpockets, and not at all associated with . . . our friend. She might even be a Gypsy.”

  “No matter,” Marie-Christine said darkly. “I am the Slayer.”

  They continued on, moving through a morass of misery and poverty far beyond anything Marie-Christine had ever seen. The stones of the buildings themselves stank with disease and death; rats ran in packs, and everywhere, children wailed in hopeless misery. Marie-Christine was revolted; she doubted she would ever eat again.

  “How do they live this way?” she said to Edmund. “If I were born into these circumstances, I certainly would not endeavor to bring more of my kind into the world. And yet look at their women, gaunt-cheeked and big-bellied, leading a parade of starving children while they await another.”

  She gestured with bewilderment at a woman who was clearly with child, two tiny, sticklike boys clutching at the hem of her skirt. Their faces were pinched, and there was no twinkle in their eyes.

  “They may as well be dead,” she murmured.

  Mathilde appeared to take no notice. She began to speak rapidly to Edmund, who told Marie-Christine, “She says we are almost there.”

  “Thank God,” Marie-Christine bit off.

  The little child began to slow her pace. It was clear she was tired, and probably hungry again. If they were still together later on this day, Marie-Christine planned to feed her. Her threat to withhold food if she fed the beggar man had been an idle one.

  The docks were reeking with sewage and dead fish; Marie-Christine’s eyes watered from the smell, and Edmund waved a pomander in front of his face. The child rushed ahead, nearing a set of arched bridges, and called out in her strange French.

  Consternation resulted, with muttering and whispered curses. Then at last a young, thin woman appeared from the shadows beneath the bridge, and she called excitedly to the girl.

  “Good Lord, that wretch is Mathilde’s mother.”

  “Are you there?” the Slayer called out boldly, meaning not the mother, but another, more sinister person . . . if a vampire could ever be thought of as a person.

  From beneath the bridge, more faces appeared. They were weather-beaten and scarred; a woman squinted with one milky eye and one empty socket. Another man had no nose.

  “They’re common criminals,” Marie-Christine said indignantly.

  “Mais non,” came a reply. The voice was deep and sonorous; the French was impeccable. “Their only crimes are poverty and starvation.”

  Marie-Christine closed her eyes for a moment as the voice reverberated through her bones. Edmund glanced at her, and she nodded.

  “L’Hero,” Edmund said. “Come out.”

  “Into the sunlight? Merci, non”

  “I will come in and get you then,” Marie-Christine warned him.

  The milky-eyed old woman garbled something at her and spat on the gravel at her feet. The thin one—Mathilde’s mother—squatted on one knee and urged her child to come to her.

  “You will not harm these people, and they will protect me with their lives,” L’Hero said. “They are committed to the cause. They are my family.”

  “They’re not my concern. And you have no cause.” Marie-Christine wished she had her crossbow. They were at a standoff, she and this vampire.

  For now.

  “I know who you are,” L’Hero informed her. “You are the Slayer. I called you and you came.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Marie-Christine flung at him. “I certainly don’t follow the orders of one such as you.”

  “Nor those of any such as these. You fight for dukes and their mistresses. For bishops and their courtesans.” His voice dripped with contempt. “I have done more to help more people than you, Slayer. It would make more sense for you to join us.”

  L’Hero’s people nodded eagerly.

  “You live in squalor under a bridge,” she said haughtily. She turned to Edmund. “We should light fires on either side and burn him to death.”

  “It would cause an uproar. The Council would not countenance your killi
ng human beings.” Edmund frowned. “But we can wait for the darkness to fall, and then you can take him with greater discretion.”

  She nodded. “Then we’ll wait.” She looked down at Mathilde, who had stayed with her, rather than go to her mother. The girl looked up at her and wrapped her fists in the coarse fabric of Marie-Christine’s skirts. She looked exhausted and frightened.

  “We have your daughter,” the Slayer said to her mother.

  The mother looked concerned. “Mathilde,” she called. She babbled in her wretched French, gesturing to the girl. Then she looked up with concern into the shadows, presumably at the vampire. He replied in the same gutter patois.

  “I reassured her that you will not harm her child,” L’Hero said. “You are not allowed to kill human beings.”

  Marie-Christine narrowed her eyes. “Tell her this. ‘That man in there with you is no man. He’s an evil demon.’ ”

  To her surprise, L’Hero did as she had requested. She had no idea if he was repeating her exact words, but the woman, and many of the others, burst into gales of laughter.

  After the laughter had subsided, L’Hero said, “What can I say? They love me, ‘evil demon’ as I am.”

  “They don’t know what you are,” Edmund said.

  “Oh, they do.” L’Hero’s voice was filled with amusement. “They know very well that I am a vampire.”

  Marie-Christine shook her head.

  “They know what I am, and that I protect and care for them,” the vampire cut in. “They know that I and my kind have certain . . . limitations, such as moving freely by daylight, and they help us. In return, I treat them well. I give them bread, and a place to sleep. And if they truly merit the honor, I promise them eternal life . . . once we have overthrown the monarchy.”

  “Treason!” Edmund cried as, without a moment’s hesitation, Marie-Christine withdrew a stake and prepared for attack.

  L’Hero guffawed. “Slayer, in your journeys through the fair city of Paris, have you not come to realize that the king and queen are worse vampires than I? That they have sucked the lifeblood of their people, until they are driven mad with hunger and pestilence? The queen herself has said, ‘Let them eat cake.’ Well, I say, ‘Let them drink blood.’ ”

  A chorus of cheers rose up among the people crowded under the bridge. Their voices shouted the slogans of anarchy: “Vive le Republique! Le rois, la-bas!”

  “This is intolerable,” Marie-Christine shouted at them. “You’ll all be executed if you continue this folly!”

  “We’ll die like dogs if we do not,” someone shouted back. “It is our lot, to slave and starve! Why is it wrong to demand something better?”

  Marie-Christine’s temper flared. Raising her skirts to keep them above the mire, she trotted toward the clump of people. They drew close in, obscuring her view of L’Hero. When a young man moved to block her, she knocked him aside without a second glance. More came at her, including a man with a pitchfork. He was in the filthy river before he knew what had hit him . . . literally.

  Of the tall vampire, there was no sign.

  “Where is he?” Marie-Christine demanded as she pushed through the throng of peasants beneath the arched bridge. The mossy, rotting stonework reminded her of a dungeon. The stench was that of a charnel house.

  But L’Hero was not among them. Somehow, he had disappeared. Again. Frustrated, Marie-Christine faced the mob and said, “Leave here! Get away from him. He is a demon! He is evil.”

  A woman pushed through the crowd. She stood before Marie-Christine. “If he were the devil incarnate, I would do his bidding. He has saved us. All of us.” She gestured to the woman with the rheumy eye. “Elizabeth would have lost her good eye, too, except for the medicine he gave her. And Arnaud”—she gestured to the noseless man—”they cut him for stealing one baguette.”

  “It is wrong to steal. . . .” Marie-Christine’s voice was not as steady as she would have liked.

  “It is wrong to starve. In the king’s own city, it is wrong for babies to die because their mothers cannot feed them. It is evil to refuse medicine to people who are dying because they have no money. That is what is evil.”

  “The aristos dance and game,” said a man, stepping forward. “And we die. We die every day, by the hundreds. But L’Hero . . . he has saved us. All of us.”

  The others nodded vigorously.

  Edmund called out to her. “This is a battle for another day. Let us depart.”

  Mathilde’s mother came toward her, speaking rapidly, pointing at her daughter.

  “Of course she wants her back,” Edmund said.

  “Absolutely not.” Marie-Christine wrapped her arms around the girl. “Tell her she is insane to expect good treatment from that diabolical monster.”

  The woman’s lip curled in an ugly sneer as Marie-Christine spoke.

  “She says that no matter where you take Mathilde, L’Hero will find her and bring her back to her. He has promised her that her child will have eternal life, and never starve or have to sell herself on the streets, as she has.”

  Marie-Christine shook her head. “Tell her that I will never hand this girl over to them. I—I will make her my ward and give her a decent, Christian upbringing.”

  “Marie-Christine,” Edmund reproved.

  The Slayer raised her chin. “It is what I will do,” she insisted.

  “Maman,” Mathilde murmured softly, but she did not let go of Marie-Christine’s hand. Silent tears streamed down her face, but not once did she allow a sob to escape her. Misery clearly warred with resolve in the little girl, and she kept hold of Marie-Christine.

  “We’ll have to feed her,” the Slayer muttered.

  “Indeed.” Edmund moved his shoulders. “I can’t wait to get back to the palace. I need a bath and a good night’s sleep.”

  But there was something in his voice, a catch, a lack of conviction, and Marie-Christine glanced at him. To her surprise, he looked a little older than before. His forehead was creased and his mouth drooped.

  He said no more until they were gone from the city. In the coach, Mathilde dozed against Marie-Christine’s shoulder, and Edmund tapped his fingers against the thick woolen blanket spread across his lap. Marie-Christine’s own mind wandered, replaying again and again the scene beneath the bridge. Mathilde sighed in her sleep, crumbs from a croissant charmingly dotting the corner of her mouth, like a trio of beauty spots.

  “I will need to make a report,” Edmund said at last. “The Council emissary will want to know how we’re progressing.”

  “We discovered the lair,” Marie-Christine filled in. “He got away.”

  Edmund snorted. “He lured us there. You and I both know it. He’s a powerful creature. Charismatic in the extreme.”

  “Lucifer was the most beautiful angel in heaven,” Marie-Christine observed.

  There was a long silence. Then Edmund said, “In some of the other Watcher Diaries, it is said that the Slayer worked for the common people.”

  “To what purpose?” Marie-Christine queried.

  Edmund took more snuff. He tapped his nostrils with appreciation and leaned his head back against the pillows. “The common good.”

  “What nonsense. There is no such thing.”

  “Agreed.” Edmund exhaled. Then he began to snore.

  * * *

  Fast asleep, Mathilde was carried by a footman to Marie-Christine’s maid’s room. Marie-Christine thought with a flurry of nervous excitement that the peasant child’s arrival would create a mild scandale. But the Slayer was resolute: she would never surrender the waif to her awful mother and L’Hero.

  She and Edmund entered the palace, to discover that the Duc de Chambord was waiting for them in the small pink salon off the Hall of Mirrors. He was pacing, and frantic, as she curtseyed deeply to the duke, apologized for her disheveled state, and listened to his tale of woe.

  “As you know, my family has an ongoing problem with certain . . . unsavory personages,” he said, “and now th
ose . . . creatures demand full payment on our, ah, obligations or they intend to marry their oldest son to my daughter. Imagine the scandale.” He whipped a handkerchief from the lacy sleeve of his shirt and patted his forehead. “A de Chambord, married into a family of demons!”

  “Wealthy demons, however,” Edmund pointed out. “And very barely demons. It is a well-kept secret in the circles of nobility. It’s only by accident that you know of it yourself.”

  “That is not my fault,” de Chambord said. “The rogue was losing at cards and, in his distress, revealed his demonic nature.”

  “Worse has befallen daughters,” Edmund said, continuing on. “Recall Anne Bordeaux, who was married off to that epileptic idiot son of that Prussian prince?”

  De Chambord blinked. “But—”

  Edmund pressed on. “She has several fine children—no doubt from her lovers—and she has time and resources to serve as patroness to a very fine university. Her life is full and blessed.”

  The duke took pause. Finally he said, “I had not thought of it that way. And Clarisse . . . she’s a flexible child.” He shook his head. “No. I demand that you do what you must to keep my family’s reputation from harm.”

  “The payment of your debt . . . ?” Edmund inquired discreetly.

  “Is not possible at the present moment.” He smoothed his coat sleeves with impeccable grace. “Besides, I suspect that they cheat at cards.” The duke turned to Marie-Christine. “You are the Slayer. You must help me.”

  Marie-Christine thought of Mathilde’s mother, who had been willing to sell her soul to the devil in return for bread. Then she looked at this man before her, extravagantly dressed, well fed, and her stomach turned with revulsion.

  “I am engaged in another enterprise at the moment,” she said crisply. “But as soon as I am finished, I—”

  The man’s lips parted. “I am boggled! I require, non, I demand, your immediate attention!” He scowled at Edmund. “Such insolence!”

  “Mademoiselle is very tired,” Edmund soothed. “She’s not thinking clearly. Of course she will do whatever she must to satisfy your honor. It is her duty, and she knows that. Do you not?” He stared hard at Marie-Christine.