European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

by Theodora Goss

  “Her pulse seems normal,” said Carmilla. “And she’s breathing normally. Mary, you’ve experienced this before. What do you recommend? Shall we attempt to revive her?”

  Mary shook her head. “I’ve found the best course of action is simply to let her be for a while. She’ll come to on her own. Meanwhile . . . Wait, where’s Diana?”

  “Playing with the denizens of the underworld,” said Laura. She was standing by one of the windows. “Look.”

  Mary went to the window. There, still in the courtyard, were one red-headed girl and two large white dogs, running around and around, growling and barking. Diana was growling and barking the loudest.

  “They won’t hurt her, I assure you,” said Laura. “For all their formidable appearance, Hades and Persephone are so gentle that I would trust them with an infant! Of course, they would not be gentle with anyone who attempted to harm this household. But they recognize Diana as a friend.”

  “I’m more worried about Diana hurting them!” said Mary, acerbically. They had important things to discuss—like what in the world was wrong with Lucinda—and Diana was playing with the dogs!

  “My dear Mary,” said Laura, putting a hand on her arm, “I haven’t forgotten that we owe you an explanation. But you must be exhausted. It’s too late in the day to leave now—nightfall would find us in the forest—so tonight you should rest and recuperate. We’ll leave at dawn tomorrow. I’ll ask Mrs. Madár to order some tea. Once we’ve eaten, Carmilla and I will tell you what we know, to prepare you for what you will find in Budapest. The situation waiting for us there won’t be easy, I assure you. The Société des Alchimistes will not want to listen to us—and we shall have to make them. But it’s no use worrying about that now. Tea should be ready in about half an hour. In the meantime, would you like to wash your hands and face?”

  Mary would indeed! How long had it been since she’d had a proper wash? Or, indeed, a proper cup of tea? Both sounded heavenly.

  MRS. POOLE: It seems to me that traveling through Europe is positively uncivilized!

  MARY: Well, to be fair, we had been kidnapped. I don’t think people are usually kidnapped in the course of their European travels. It’s not the sort of thing you find mentioned in Baedeker.

  Laura’s bathroom was not as grand as Irene Norton’s, but it had running water—quite cold, but Mary round it refreshing. She washed her face and hands with lavender-scented soap, then dried them with a soft, thick towel. She dampened the towel and brushed the dust off her dress as best she could. She must at least try to look respectable.

  When she entered the parlor again, feeling a little more herself, Justine was sitting up on the sofa, her legs stretched along it under a plaid blanket. She was sipping from a porcelain cup with a floral pattern.

  Laura was sitting in an armchair across from her, behind the tea tray, which was set on a low table. She was holding the teapot, as though she had just poured out.

  “Do come in, Mary,” she said. “Carmilla should be back in a moment. Diana was playing with the dogs too roughly, and I’m afraid there was an accident.”

  “Is she all right?” asked Mary. “What happened?”

  “Oh, Diana’s fine. But she bit Hades a little too hard on the ear. Carmilla went to bandage it up, and she insisted on going as well. Come sit and I’ll pour you a cup. And there are sandwiches—ham or egg? I can’t convince our cook to make them without paprika, so they’re not quite what you would be used to in London. But think of them as a Styrian approximation.”

  Which might have been a good way to describe the parlor itself, now that Mary could observe it more closely. It looked so very English, as though someone had decided to stage a play and this particular scene was set in Typical English Parlor, Late Summer Afternoon. But the pillows were embroidered in darker, richer colors than they would have been in England, and the carpets were deeper, more luxurious. Despite its air of Englishness, the room was somehow undefinably foreign.

  She sat down in the other armchair. “How are you?” she asked Justine, meaning not just How are you right now. Justine had been so quiet in the carriage. Of course, she was usually quiet—she was Justine, after all. But Mary still remembered her kneeling by Adam’s bed, holding his hands. What had happened between them?

  “I have recovered, thank you,” said Justine. “Could I have another of those small cakes, Laura? They were very good—filled with apricot jam, I believe.” Which meant that whatever it was, she did not want to talk about it at the moment. All right, Mary would wait until later.

  The sandwiches, while delicious, did not taste English at all—but the tea, strong and hot, took Mary right back to the parlor at 11 Park Terrace. It was Mrs. Poole’s favorite Yorkshire blend. She felt terribly homesick.

  “You started without us!” Diana strode into the room, with Hades and Persephone on either side of her. Hades had a white gauze bandage on one ear, but did not seem otherwise the worse for having been attacked by a vicious wild animal.

  DIANA: Hey!

  Up close, the two dogs seemed even more formidable, and Mary could not help drawing back into her chair, although it was unlikely to protect her. They were almost pure white, except where they had gotten dirty playing outside, and so large that they came up to Diana’s waist. She had one hand on each of their backs.

  “Are those really dogs?” asked Mary. “They look . . .”

  “Like wolves?” Carmilla strode into the room after them. One really did need trousers to stride. There was no striding in layers of petticoats. Just for once, Mary envied the striders. How freely they moved! Yet could anyone look more ladylike than Laura in her smart skirt and shirtwaist—she had taken off her jacket—sitting by the tea tray? Surely there was also value in looking, and behaving, like a lady.

  MRS. POOLE: Of course there is!

  “They are, partly.” Carmilla sat down on the sofa by Justine’s feet. “We call the breed farkaskutya—wolfdog. They have guarded the Karnsteins for generations. But Hades and Persephone are very sweet. My godfather gave them to me when they were just puppies.” She ruffled Persephone’s head affectionately, and the great white wolfdog put her head on Carmilla’s lap.

  “Is anyone going to give me something to eat? I’m starving.” Diana sat cross-legged on the floor. To Mary’s surprise, Hades lay down beside her. If Diana had bitten her ear, Mary would not have been nearly as friendly!

  “Ham or egg?” asked Laura. “Never mind—I know you’re going to ask for both. And cake, of course. I’ll make you a plate. In the meantime, I think Carmilla had better tell you about the situation in Budapest. And about what is ailing Lucinda.”

  “Who will need to be fed again later tonight,” said Carmilla. “She seems to be stable now, but she shows no signs of regaining consciousness. Either Magda or I will stay with her tonight, in shifts. We will make certain that she is well cared for, I promise. I hope that my blood will help her—at least until we can get her to the Count.”

  Mary put her cup and plate on a side table. “Why you? And why does she need to drink blood? What did Van Helsing to do her?”

  Laura handed Diana a plate of cakes and sandwiches that could most accurately be described as “heaping.” She looked at Carmilla and said, “I think you’d better tell them the whole story, starting from the beginning. Your beginning.”

  DIANA: You always do that so awkwardly. It wasn’t as awkward in real life, you know. Laura just said “Go on, then. Tell them.” And Carmilla did.

  CATHERINE: If you think you can write this book better than I can, you’re welcome to try!

  Carmilla smiled, but Mary thought it was a sad, even bitter smile. As though sensing her mood, Persephone licked her mistress’s hand and whined. Carmilla stroked her head.

  “If you wish,” she said, “I will tell you my story.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  Carmilla’s Story

  I was born in the year 1680,” Carmilla began, “the privileged daughter of a powerful family. Who in this
region had not heard of the Karnsteins? My father, Count Karman Karnstein, was wealthy in land, if not in gold, a counselor to Archduke Leopold himself. It was a time of war—principally against the Turks, but also the French. And Catholics warred with Protestants, peasants with landowners. We did not see any of this, my sister Millarca and I. We were twins, born in the same hour, which was also the hour in which our mother died. She was a Hungarian lady, a Székely from Transylvania. Her last act was naming us: Millarca and Mircalla—Mila and Mira, as we were often called. It was the custom, in those days, to give twins names that were anagrams of each other, to confuse the Devil, who might otherwise steal one of them—such superstitions were widely believed. We were raised by a succession of nurses, and then governesses, largely unsupervised, for our father was often away at court in Gratz, or in battle against the Turks. We were said to be beautiful, and it was thought we would make promising marriages, perhaps to relatives of the Archduke himself. Mila was content with such a prospect—she was older than I by a quarter hour, and therefore the heir of Karnstein. She was also the more beautiful, more docile—the more reconciled to what was then considered a woman’s life. She embroidered on silk, and sang like a nightingale, accompanying herself on the lute, and danced like a birch tree in the wind. And besides, she was good, much better than I was. It was she who took on the duties of lady of the castle, dispensing alms and medicines to the poor, who were numerous in those days. But I was the one who concocted the medicines. I had become fascinated, early, by the books in my father’s library—he had copies of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica, Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica, even Harvey’s De Motu Cordis, which described the circulation of the blood. While Mila studied music or sewed altar-cloths, I rode my horse around the countryside, accompanied by a retinue—both safety and propriety decreed that a daughter of the Karnsteins could not ride alone. Portraits were painted of us, to show potential suitors—you have seen mine. I never cared for it, but Mila’s hangs in my study, over my desk. It has been almost two hundred years, but I still miss her.”

  “Then that tomb in the churchyard—it was your sister’s?” asked Mary. That would explain what she had assumed was a misspelling.

  “Yes, alas,” said Carmilla. “If we had not been so hurried today, I would have left her flowers.” She looked down at her hands, then clasped them around her knees. She continued, but Mary could see that her eyes were shining with unshed tears. “One day, word came from my father that Mila was to be married—a very good marriage, to a nephew of the Archduke himself. His messenger brought a portrait of a handsome young aristocrat, Baron Stefan Alexander Matthias Vordenburg. Mila was pleased, if apprehensive. Soon, the aristocrat himself arrived. He was handsome in person as well, and he had very blue eyes. I thought they looked so sincere!”

  MARY: You can’t trust men with very blue eyes. That should be included in manuals for gentlewomen, right after the chapter on how to get in and out of carriages.

  BEATRICE: What would you call Mr. Holmes’s eyes?

  MARY: Well, not very blue anyway! They sort of change depending on the weather.

  “It was clear that my sister was in love with him,” continued Carmilla. “But one evening, after we had been celebrating their engagement, he asked me to walk with him to the chapel. He said he wanted to talk to me. ‘What about?’ I asked him. We were walking through the graveyard. It held no terrors for me—was this not sacred ground? Were not all those who had been laid in those graves at rest, until the day they would rise to be with our Father in Heaven? Or so I had been taught.

  “He did not answer, and I looked at him, wondering why he had brought me here—I was young, but not naive, and it occurred to me that engaged to one daughter of the house, he might be looking for another sort of favor from the other. Well, he would find no such favor from me.

  “But what I saw on his face was not amorous desire—it was a snarl, like the snarl of a wolf! Before I could scream, he had caught me in his arms and bitten down on my shoulder. His teeth sank into my flesh, and he lapped up my blood, sucking, licking, while I cried out in fear and horror. I knew then what he was, for our superstitions speak of it—the oupire, or what you might call a vampire. Of course, I was being foolish—there is no such thing.”

  “No such thing as a vampire?” said Diana, who had been listening so breathlessly that she had left a slice of cake, uneaten, on her plate. Hades cautiously put out a long pink tongue, licked at it once, and then—just like that, it was gone. He licked the plate clean. Mary put one hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Only the guardian of the dead could have taken a morsel of food away from Diana! She noticed that Laura was doing her best not to laugh as well.

  “Of course not,” said Carmilla. She stroked Persephone’s ears. “Or not in the sense you mean, Diana. Spirits of the dead who rise from the grave to feast on blood? Who turn into bats and wolves, who fear crucifixes and cannot cross running water? Who can be defeated by garlic or sprays of wild rose? What nonsense. Of course, like much folklore and superstition, the legend of the vampire is based on a core of scientific fact. There is a blood-borne disease that gives its sufferers many of the attributes associated with vampires. Those who are infected become stronger, more agile. They develop keener senses. They can see in the dark, hear the beat of a bird’s wing. Their canine teeth sharpen and elongate, as you have seen on Lucinda. My godfather believes that vampirism is atavistic—a revision to an earlier evolutionary state. And they can heal from wounds that would kill an ordinary man. Such is their immunity to disease and the ravages of time that they can live for centuries without aging. But they pay a heavy price for such abilities—they must live on blood, and there is a mental deterioration—they begin to go mad.

  “This disease, the Baron’s retinue had brought from Gratz. Sometimes the oupire’s desire is only to feed. Sometimes, particularly in the first stages of madness, it wishes to reproduce others of its kind. That is what he wished. I was terrified, and fought him with all my might. I snatched the knife in his belt—in those days, a man of his class would never have been without a weapon. I stabbed him in the chest, but he laughed exultantly and held my face to the wound, so that my mouth was filled with his blood. I must have ingested some—enough.

  DIANA: That is so gross.

  BEATRICE: I do not think it is polite to criticize another way of eating, no matter how unusual. Many of us have our own . . . dietary restrictions. I, for, example, am limited to vegetable matter, which is easiest for me to ingest in liquefied form.

  DIANA: That is also so gross.

  “The next thing I remember is waking up in a small room, in the highest tower of the castle. It was evening—the room was in shadow. I hurt—my whole body hurt, as though I had been dropped from a height and all of my limbs had been broken, although I could feel they were not, that I was still whole. As I looked about me, terrified, a darker shadow detached itself from the wall and moved toward me. I screamed and crouched on the floor, looking about for any avenue of escape. If need be, I would jump out the window and end my own life, rather than endure any further indignities.

  “ ‘Mira!’ said the shadow. ‘My dear Mira, do not be afraid.’ He, for it was clearly a he, spoke in Hungarian, the language of my mother, which I had learned from my nurses. When he stepped into the light, I could see that it was not Baron Vordenburg, but my godfather, the Count, who had an estate in the Carpathian Mountains. I had met him several times—he was the head of my mother’s family, a wealthy and respected man although there were some who called him a heretic for his views, which were unorthodox. ‘My dear, I have come for you,’ he continued. I said nothing—I could not speak. ‘Come, we must leave this place, and quickly. The peasants have heard that it has become the haunt of vampires, and they are coming to burn it down.’

  “ ‘Mila!’ I cried. ‘Where is Mila?’ He must rescue her too—after all, he was godfather to us both. I could not leave without her.

  “ ‘Mi
la is dead,’ he said gently. ‘Truly dead, and better so. She will not become one of those who rise again once the vampire blood is in their veins. I have left her body in the wine cellar and locked the door so the peasants will not find it. I promise that after they have done their worst, I shall come back and make certain she is buried in holy ground.’

  “ ‘But, keresztapa,’ I cried—that is godfather in Hungarian—‘What shall we do? We cannot simply desert everyone in the household!’

  “ ‘Mira,’ he said to me, ‘There is no one left alive. I do not know how long even you . . .’

  “Just then we heard a sound—chanting, from far off as yet. He looked out the narrow window. ‘I can see them coming,’ he said. I crawled to the window—I had scarcely enough strength to stand. In the distance I could see, winding up the hill, torches—a procession of torches.

  “ ‘We must go,’ he said. ‘Mira, can you climb upon my back and hold on very tightly?’

  “I told him that I could. I clung to his back as he climbed down the stone wall of the tower, my limbs trembling, terrified every moment that I would fall—or that he would, but he seemed as secure on the wall as a spider.

  “ ‘My carriage is waiting in the woods,’ he said.

  “As soon as we had gotten into his carriage and were driving away as fast as the condition of the road and the darkness allowed, I begged him to explain what had happened in the castle, and how he had come to be there.

  “It had been no coincidence, he told me. He too had been in Gratz, conducting some research in the scientific archives of the university. There had been an outbreak of vampirism in the city, and he had heard such things of the Baron as had made him suspicious. So he had followed as soon as his research would allow, but arrived too late. Then he explained to me the dreadful disease of vampirism, which I had contracted. And which, he now confessed to me, he too had contracted long ago. He, too, was an oupire. Before I go on, would anyone like more tea? It gets cold here in the evenings. Laura, should we light the fire?”