Prisoner of Midnight

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘But her goal is to save him?’

  ‘Her goal is to break Cochran’s hold on him,’ said Asher quietly. ‘And his hold on any other vampire he may acquire, through whatever means. I don’t know what she’ll need this for.’ He straightened his aching shoulder, his aching neck. ‘But some information is better than no information, when you’re dealing with those who place personal power over the rights and lives of the innocent.’

  For the first time, the Graf chuckled. ‘Ah, Anglus, who among us is innocent?’

  Asher was silent after that, correlating dates and invoices, quantities used and methods noted. He wondered if the Seal of Earth, the Seal of Air, would be the same in whatever reference book Lydia would be able to find in New York, as the one that Barvell used. In over thirty years of studying the frontiers where folklore touched the fringes of alchemy, he’d encountered at least four different versions of each.

  He wondered if it mattered.

  Would Lydia have to pursue Cochran from New York back to his home in Chicago?

  Once in America, would she be able to keep the unscrupulous millionaire ignorant of her pursuit of him? Always provided he was still ignorant of her aims, after five days on shipboard?

  Through the closed shutters, the thick curtains over the bedroom’s windows, the chimes of St-Jacques de Haut Pas struck midnight. Monday morning.

  The City of Gold might already be in port.

  Before night came again, he would be on a train back to Venice. On his way to slip across the mountains, change his uniform and his identity papers, and start the long trek to the Polish forests. The five days that in some alternate world he would have spent lying in Lydia’s arms, memorizing the shape of her body and the sound of her voice and the peaceful delight of her love, were over now. The two worlds merged …

  He glanced up at the mirror again. At the thing that stood behind him.

  If I see morning.

  ‘The telegraphy office at the embassy should be manned.’ He riffled the stack of yellow foolscap with one hand. Even drastically condensed, the encoded notes covered twelve closely written pages. ‘I could send it from headquarters …’

  ‘Those at the Post Office will also be working,’ returned the graf. And, when Asher looked across at him, he had gone to the window, peering out through the louvers at the lightless street. ‘I prefer whenever possible to be anonymous. Men would remember a message of this length, at the embassy, and – I should hope – at the headquarters of your Army. I have,’ he added, letting the curtain fall back over the shutter, ‘the money to pay for such a volume. To General Delivery, in New York?’

  ‘She should be there today. Afterwards,’ Asher added, ‘you can watch me burn it. This –’ he laid his hand on the much larger, unruly pile of notebooks and invoices – ‘as well.’

  ‘Afterwards,’ said the Graf, ‘I will take it. All.’

  By concentrating, Asher could see him move, crossing from the window to stand behind his chair once more. Asher still wore three chains of silver around his throat and several more around each wrist, but knew they wouldn’t do him a particle of good. Not against the Master of Prague.

  ‘You’ll need to find a tame chemist or pharmacist, like Barvell,’ he pointed out at length, ‘or someone who’s done research in organic chemistry, to make sense of them. You may not find that easy, these days.’

  ‘These days,’ repeated the Graf. ‘Time is long, Anglus. And men forget.’

  Heller was still beside the steps when Lydia and Don Simon turned the corner of the corridor. He was talking to old Mr Goldhirsch, the tall Jew nodding. ‘And it is true, good sir,’ she heard the old man say in his thickly accented German, ‘that the men of Malareka, Vodusek and Slavik, were in the German Army. Malareka lies on the German side of the lines. For your help to me, I will be glad to say to the Americans that the Mareks, and the Adamic family, fled with me to Lemberg, to come here. For surely there will be investigation when we land.’

  ‘We’ll get through it, sir.’ Heller clapped him on the arm. ‘The main thing is for everyone to stick together and tell the same tale.’

  When the old man had left, Lydia stepped around the corner, and saw Heller’s eyes widen with shock, even at that distance, at the sight of Don Simon.

  Oh, dear, he must really look pretty bad …

  She glanced sidelong at him, and had to admit that now, even after he’d given himself an injection of antivenin and stopped shivering, he did not look like a living man.

  He looked like something that hadn’t been alive for a very long time.

  Simon held out his hand to Heller, and said, in slightly old-fashioned German, ‘Herr Heller? I am Don Simon Ysidro. Madame—’ he nodded infinitesimally towards Lydia – ‘tells me that you are willing to be of help.’ His eyes, like abysses of sulfur and salt, met the German’s blue ones, and Heller – suddenly pale under his tan – did not speak.

  Could not say, Lydia guessed, It’s ridiculous.

  Or ask, What are you?

  Only after Don Simon had gone – by then it was nearly ten o’clock – did Heller whisper to Lydia, ‘He was not one of the emigrants.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They said—’ He stopped, not able to say, They said there was a vampire, and was it him? She felt a little sorry for him, understanding – from all she had seen on the ship, of ignorance and prejudice and the twisted lies told by the power hungry – why he insisted with such doctrinaire rigor on the materialistic view of the world. Jamie had never done so. And Jamie, she knew, had had enough trouble, coming to completely believe that the creatures that had existed in the legends he studied were, in fact, real.

  She said, gently, ‘You were right, Herr Heller. It was Vodusek who invented the vampire kills, to get rid of a man whose demands for the money he owed him had ruined him. Maybe – probably – to get into his cabin and help himself to the money in that suitcase, in all the confusion. Don Simon had nothing to do with that.’ She briefly clasped his hand. ‘But there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Comrade. Or mine.’

  And quickly she climbed the stair, her shoulder throbbing, her whole frame shivering at the thought of how long she’d been below decks. Waiting every second to feel the jarring explosion of a torpedo gutting the City of Gold’s bowels, condemning them all to death.

  And I have the right to go up to B Deck whenever I want, she reminded herself. What about all these women down here who have to wait for the impact, before they can flee?

  It felt like the longest night of Lydia’s life.

  She spent it on the Promenade, dressed in her warmest clothing, with Miranda at her side wrapped up in a blanket. If we end up in a lifeboat there won’t be room for anything.

  Mrs Marigold, clutched in Miranda’s arms, was tucked inside a rabbit-fur muff that Mrs Allen had given her ‘to keep her warm’. Icy wind lashed across the lightless ocean; clouds hid the smallest glimmer of moon or stars.

  They weren’t alone. Aunt Louise, firm in her conviction that no German submarine would dare torpedo an American liner, slept – presumably soundly, and in her flannel nightgown – in her stateroom, after giving Lydia a lecture about the dangers of the cold night air on her child (and telling her to take her glasses off). But Mrs Tilcott was there, swaddled in sable and frothing with indignation at President Wilson for permitting Americans to find themselves in such a predicament. Likewise swathed in fur, her son poodled back and forth between his mother and Lydia with offers of hot cocoa (provided gratis by the Willow Grove) and extra blankets.

  Princess Gromyko appeared, bundled in chinchilla and equipped with a deck of cards. ‘There is absolutely no reason not to amuse ourselves while waiting for Armageddon, darling.’ Her entire suite accompanied her, Ossolinska carrying Monsieur and Madame snugly arrayed in warm little knitted coats. At least five people – with varying degrees of subtlety and discretion – came up from C Deck to Princess Gromyko’s card party to ask Madame Izora
if they would, in fact, be torpedoed in the night. Lydia, watching over the rail as the distress flares burst in long trails of red or green in the sullen darkness, was never close enough to hear what the seer replied.

  Other First Class passengers came up from the lower tier of the Promenade also, including poor Mr Hipray, who spent an uncomfortable night standing guard over the locked and sealed door of his deceased employer’s suite. When Lydia took him a cup of cocoa, he unbent enough to tell her that young Mr Cochran was staying with his widowed aunt in her stateroom on the deck below, playing two-handed pinochle and discussing the provisions of her husband’s will.

  Sometime after midnight, Lydia rendered Miranda over into Ellen’s care (Mrs Frush and Prebble were down on the lower First Class Promenade) and went into her stateroom. Deliberately closing her mind to what she was doing, she unlocked her big steamer trunk and removed everything from it, distributing dresses, nightgowns, toiletries, medical journals, gloves, coats, and stockings among her other luggage, and concealing what couldn’t be crammed into the other bags, under the bed and in the cupboard. The phials she’d taken from Barvell’s workroom she wrapped in a shawl and tucked in one corner of the trunk, and left the trunk itself standing half-open, its key on the nearby nightstand.

  Returning to the Promenade, she left not only the door of her bedroom, but the door of the suite unlocked. Every soul I have killed, Simon had said, each life taken, over the years …

  How many others will he kill in America?

  If he makes it to America.

  If any of us make it …

  When the British liner Freedonia appeared on the horizon shortly after nine the following morning, Lydia returned to her stateroom and found the trunk closed and locked. She secured its two outside locks, and pocketed the key. As she had suspected would be the case, First Class passengers were permitted to bring one trunk aboard the Freedonia. Relief vessels – Captain Winstanley reassured the assembled First Class passengers in the dining room as the Freedonia neared them – would be dispatched from New York the moment First Officer Theale stepped aboard the rescuing vessel and could wireless the American Shipping Line’s offices. They should all have the remainder of their luggage (and their servants) within the week.

  Monsieur and Madame were included in the rescues taken aboard the Freedonia.

  The Freedonia, it transpired, had been delayed for several hours in her mission of assistance to the stranded City of Gold by a detour, to rescue the crew of a surfaced and disabled German submarine, whose captain, second officer, and three able seamen had inexplicably taken a fire axe to their vessel’s generator.

  Forty-eight hours later, the overcrowded liner put in at New York.

  TWENTY-NINE

  It took Lydia most of Wednesday night, the twenty-first of March, to decode Jamie’s three long telegrams, after a day of arguments with Aunt Louise that left her exhausted and close to tears of nervous dread. From the Freedonia she had exchanged wireless messages with the house agent recommended to her by Mr Tilcott, and Barclay’s Bank in New York. With Tilcott’s help she had made arrangements to lease – and occupy immediately – a slightly rundown town house on Charles Street in the Greenwich Village district of the city, and had wired instructions back to Mr Mortling on the City of Gold that her luggage be sent directly there when the great liner finally landed.

  Aunt Louise, who had taken an apartment at the Osborne (furnished) before leaving England, was both scandalized and furious at being deserted. It was all Lydia could do to get free of her, and take a cab – accompanied by Captain Palfrey, Miranda, Ellen, and her trunk – first to General Delivery, then to 13 Charles Street. During the first night she’d spent on the Freedonia – at the cost of a hundred-dollar go-away bribe to the two friendly young ladies in Second Class who’d agreed to share their stateroom with her and Miranda – she had obtained from Don Simon the name of a lawyer in New York who could be trusted to hire reliable servants.

  The sight of him, when she’d helped him sit up in her trunk, nearly made her weep, from grief and shock and anguish. It was he who brought up the name of the lawyer, in a voice nearly inaudible with exhaustion and pain.

  ‘This isn’t the time to be talking of hiring servants!’ she’d exclaimed, and he’d made a small gesture with fingers like a dead bird’s claws.

  ‘You will need them, Lady.’ He could barely get the words out. ‘I doubt I shall last until then—’

  He was dying, she thought, and then, he died long ago. She could only grip his hand. ‘Of course you’ll last …’

  He shook his head, and she thought, he chose this. With small doses of antivenin, he might have made it.

  She made herself sound cheerful. ‘You don’t mean there are vampires in New York?’ which brought the smallest touch of a smile to his mouth. She had long suspected that a network existed of living men and women willing to hire out their services – no questions asked – to those who hunted the night.

  ‘I know not.’ His scars stood out livid on a face ghastly with agony. Where the sleeves of his shabby shirt were pushed back, she saw that his hands and wrists were bleeding where his claws had torn at his own flesh. ‘This Madame Quarterpace … recommended to me … Master of Venice. We spoke … upon a time … of America.’

  Another wave of agony made him shudder, clinging to her hands.

  ‘… made arrangements,’ he whispered, in a voice barely louder than the scratch of mice feet on tile, ‘… transfer funds … to you.’ And his fingers fumbled with the signet ring that lay loose, now, around the bone.

  This was the first Lydia had heard, that Don Simon’s intricate net of financial trusts and corporations extended to the New World.

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ she promised, and gripped his hands. He returned her clasp, and she had to wear gloves the following day, to hide the finger marks where his clutch nearly broke her bones.

  When, on the night of the twenty-second, she descended to the dark sub-cellar of the Charles Street house, she felt nearly ill with dread that she would open the trunk to find only dust and bones.

  And would that be more merciful? She unlocked the doorway of the crypt (what on earth did anyone store down here?) and stood for a time, looking at the locked trunk in its center, and fingering the signet ring on her hand.

  It was, in fact, what she knew she should do. Every way – any way – that she looked at it, Don Simon was a vampire. He had not hunted on the City of Gold, not only because he could not conceal how he looked, but because he was well aware that even Third Class passengers were tallied and accounted for. On the Freedonia, he had been too far gone even to get about.

  Here on land, in a city of three million people – many of them so poor that nobody would bother to investigate their deaths – to restore him to health would be as irresponsible, as reprehensible, as to turn loose a pack of rabid dogs in the streets.

  Why do I even think of it? Pani Marek’s tears seemed to stain the shoulder of her dress. The cries of poor Mrs Adamic, and Mrs Pescariu, to ring in her ears.

  I can’t do it. I shouldn’t want to.

  The fact that he was charming – the fact that she loved him – did not change what he was. Nor what he would do, when he was able once again to deceive the eyes and the minds of his victims.

  In her hand she held the hypodermic syringe of the fluid on whose manufacture she had worked throughout the afternoon.

  It had taken her all the morning, to visit chemical supply houses and purveyors of scientific instruments, and to look up alchemical symbols in the New York Public Library. Her head buzzed from lack of sleep and from a dozen cups of café noir; every bone in her body seemed to hurt. She felt like Henry Jekyll, like Dr Moreau or Victor Frankenstein, pottering over secret formulae with the certain knowledge that her work would bring evil to the world.

  If it works, she thought, with a queer sense of detachment from her true self. It might not. She didn’t know whether she would be glad, or sorry, if it didn�
��t. The serum had been perfectly straightforward – given the requirements of the alchemical vessels and formulae – but in his very brief note, Jamie had warned her that the notes had been sourced from an early phase of Dr Barvell’s work.

  And this cold little cylinder of steel and glass, that seemed so heavy in her hand, contained only her first attempt at the serum.

  It’s been four days since his last dose of the antivenin.

  Since he saved the lives of everyone on that ship … over three thousand people.

  Even if – as she suspected – he only did it to save Miranda’s life, and mine …

  I should go back upstairs. She pressed the worn gold of Don Simon’s signet ring to her lips. Her shadow, by the wavery glow of the gas light in the stair, stretched into the little crypt and lay over the trunk, then disappeared beyond into the blackness. Lock this door, have one of the servants – Mrs Quarterpace had provided butler, housekeeper, cook and maid – make me some supper, go to bed in that lovely room on the second floor.

  Arrange to have this door, this room, bricked shut tomorrow.

  And after another day or two, get Miranda from Princess Gromyko – she had not dared consign her daughter to Aunt Louise’s care, knowing how determined her aunt was to bring her, Lydia, to heel – and …

  And what?

  Forget?

  Upon the arrival of the Freedonia, word had swept the vessel that the Tsar had abdicated, that Russia had become a republic. The Princess Natalia Nikolaievna had shaken her head, as if in exasperation; Lydia had asked her, ‘Will you go back?’

  ‘Back?’ Her Illustrious Highness had seemed startled at the thought. ‘To what? To be ruled by those peasants in the Duma?’ And for the first time, true sadness had filled her eyes.