Bessie clucked her tongue, reached in a pocket for her own handkerchief, and began dabbing at my neck. I shifted a little on my seat, seeing two Bessies for a brief moment, and tried not to swoon.
"She's never done anything like this before," Bessie said to Abbot, as if I were no longer present.
"It was always in her" was the reply. "I've heard Missus often enough and I agree with her opinion about the child. She's an underhanded little thing. She wants to be like them."
Like them? My heart revolted, but I did not care to correct the notion for fear of losing my breath. My head swam.
Bessie didn't answer, but addressed me. "You ought to be aware, miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed. She keeps you. If she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse."
Miss Abbot joined in. "And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missus kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They have a great deal of money, and you have none. It is your place to be placid, and if Master Reed wants a taste now and then, so be it."
A taste? No doubt the bloodless Abbot thought it nothing to simply offer a sample.
11
"What we tell you is for your own good," added Bessie. "You should try to stay out of the way and be quiet. Then, perhaps, you would have a home here."
"Come, Bessie, we will leave her; I wouldn't have her heart for anything." Indeed, even an animal's blood took preference over my common sort. "Miss Slayre, when you are by yourself, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away."
I could not imagine much worse than with whom I currently resided. They went, shutting the door behind them. The red room was a square chamber, seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless a particular noble the Reeds fancied came to visit. It was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. I could not see well in the dark, but I remembered the layout from coming in once on an afternoon before Bessie came to fetch me and said it was too early to be up and I had best return to my own chamber.
A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre. An ample cushioned easy chair sat near the head of the bed, white, with a footstool before it, looking like a pale throne. The two large windows, with their blinds always drawn, were half shrouded in falls of similar drapery. The carpet was red. The table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth. The walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it. The wardrobe, the toilet table, and the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany.
The room was chill because it seldom had a fire; silent, due to the remote location far from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The housemaid came here on Saturdays to wipe from the furniture a week's worth of dust. Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her jewel casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red room--the spell that kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.
12
Mrs. Reed had been a vampyre nine years. In this chamber she breathed her last mortal breath at her husband's side. Here, Mr. Reed had bitten her and transformed her, as he had been attacked and transformed on the road home from his sister's--my mother's--funeral. Bessie said that Mrs. Reed didn't want her husband to suffer through the curse of immortality alone, but I suspected that Mrs. Reed cherished the idea of eternal life more than she even cared for her husband.
It seemed Mr. Reed alone suffered agonies over his new soulless state. He had never been much for the hunt, and being required to kill to feed his cravings left him feeling forlorn and most unsettled, according to Bessie's assessment, though she was fairly new to the Reeds' service at the time. Mrs. Reed suffered no such pangs of conscience. She adjusted to her new situation as easily as learning a new mode of dance for a society ball, but her husband remained morose.
Mr. Reed, trusting in Mrs. Reed's ability to maintain the household and provide proper care for his children and infant niece, enlisted a mercenary to drive a stake through his heart, turning him instantly to a pile of fine dust, thus ending his earthly tortures in the very room where he'd turned his wife into a vampyre. A sense of dreary consecration had since guarded the red room from frequent intrusion.
Unable to contemplate eternal life without her darlings, it was not five years before Mrs. Reed gave in to John Reed's pleading to make him a vampyre, too. Georgiana and Eliza followed. Aside from turning her children, Mrs. Reed stayed true to the last promise she made Mr. Reed, to never turn another living being to her own altered state--most especially not me, for I did not deserve, nor want, the honour.
My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me half-conscious, was a low ottoman near the marble chimneypiece. The bed rose before me. To my right was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels. To
13
my left were the muffled windows and the empty frame of what I guessed had once had been a great looking glass. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door, and when I tried to move to check, I fell to the floor.
All looked colder and darker from my low vantage point. I struggled to my knees, crawled to the window, clutched the curtains, and tore them open before I fell back again to the carpet. I slept, perhaps an hour or more, but woke again to darkness. How I wished it could be the sun!
Somehow, I found strength to return to my stool. I shook with fear, or perhaps rage. John Reed's vicious attacks, his tyranny, occupied my mind. What if he struck again? How could he be stopped? I felt my head, my hair sticky with dried blood, and my neck, still sore at the wound, the handkerchief Bessie bound me with damp but not soaked. I thought of Eliza, headstrong and selfish but still respected, asking for a taste of me, her mother's admonishment delivered to protect Eliza from my common taint rather than to save me from harm. I was glad Georgiana hadn't asked. She, with her spoiled temper, was universally indulged and might have been allowed a sample, just small enough to satisfy without putting her in danger of contamination.
Georgiana's beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted, much less punished; though he tortured servants, snacked between meals on the little peachicks and barn cats, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory. He liked to call his mother "old girl," too. He bluntly disregarded her wishes, often tore and spoiled her silk attire, ridiculed her appearance for the dark shadows under her eyes that were similar to his own; and he was still "her own darling." I dared commit no fault. I strove to fulfill every duty. And I was termed naughty and tiresome, too cheerful, and sneaking, from dusk to midnight, and from midnight to dawn.
"Unjust!" said my reason. Why should I suffer their accusations
14
and live with John Reed's bullying and without the sun? Could I run away? Where would I go? How would I find food? Might it be worth it to take the chance even if death was my reward? I would die free of the Reeds, at least, and with a bright sun shining to warm my limbs as I passed.
How cold I was without a fire. I began to shake with chills, or was it weakness? I couldn't run away when it was a struggle to remain sitting upright, let alone attempt to stand or walk. Yet my mind reeled.
Gateshead Hall sheltered a family of vampyres, an undead maid, some two dozen mortal servants who were paid well for their silence and their service, and me. Where did I fit in? I was like nobody there.
Eventually darkness began to make way for day. The clouded night grew lighter with the dawn. I heard the rain begin to stop, and the howling wind give way to tranquil breezes. I grew colder still, but my heart warmed. My courage rose. The Reeds would soon be off to bed, and I might be
forgotten and get a glimpse of sunlight. I might see the day break, bright and beautiful, over the valley beyond the fields surrounding the house. My cheer returned.
What delirium had led me to think such thoughts as I had? I was aware that I never wished to be like the Reeds, and nothing could have induced me to drink another being's blood, most especially John Reed's. If he came to me now and gave me the choice that my uncle's attackers had reportedly given him, to drink or die, I would indeed choose death and not be sorry for it. But to give up without a fight? To admit defeat at John Reed's hands? Never. I did not have it in me to concede. Running away and dying of want would as much be giving John Reed his triumph as if I drank of his blood after he began to drain me of mine.
I would live to see the sun. There, it came up over the field, just peeking out from a cloud. I drew closer to the window and squinted through the pane only to fall from the ottoman again. On the floor, I let the light wash over me, warming me and growing brighter as
15
it rose. Or was it all a dream? I closed my eyes, I thought for just a second, but when I opened them again, the light was gone. As I sat squinting through the darkness towards the dimly gleaming windowpanes, I began to recall Bessie's nighttime tales of dead men coming back to earth as ghosts to right past wrongs or simply to visit those once known to them. Again, I might have slept. What happened next was more likely the result of losing so much blood, making my head swoon, my imagination wax fantastic, instead of any real occurrence.
A light shone brighter through the window, a small dot of light not large enough to be the sun, yet growing brighter and larger as it neared until it almost filled the room. I heard a voice, a deep male voice--my uncle Reed?
"Jane," he addressed me. "Dear Jane."
"Uncle?" I responded, a little frightened to contemplate that he was speaking to me. I could not see him, only light, bright yet soothing light that blinded me to all else in the room.
"Jane, you are a Slayre. You must fulfill your destiny."
"My destiny?"
"To slay. It's in your Slayre blood. Your aunt and your cousins need you to end their earthly tortures. They're abominations. Monsters. Only in death can they be reunited with their mortal souls. Save them, Jane, as only you can."
"I don't believe they want saving. And how--" What did he ask of me? To slay? I was but a child, too easily injured myself. Yet my mind flashed to my earlier vision, standing over John Reed with a wooden stake in my hand. "How would I begin to know what to do?"
"When the time is right, you will know. Seek out your kindred spirits, your family. There are Slayres living still. You must find them, study with them."
"I know no other family." My heart raced. Family? Someone else, besides the Reeds, who might care for me, take me in, dare I hope--might love me? "My parents are dead."
16
"Your parents died attacking a band of vampyres. Your father's brother, a master slayer, sent for me. His life's vocation, hunting vampyres, was too dangerous to allow for the safety of an infant in his care. Though estranged from my sister due to her marriage to your father, who was inferior to her in birth and station, I was a magistrate with a wife and children of my own, a suitable situation for raising a baby. Quite honestly, I missed your mother. I loved her. I wanted to make amends."
"And so you agreed to take me in?"
"But on the way home, a terrible thing happened."
"The vampyres."
"The county was rife with them at the time, before your uncle brought the region under control. They surrounded me. Fortunately, tucked away as you were in a basket under the carriage seat, they never found you."
"Oh, Uncle!" My heart ached. If not for me, my uncle Reed might never have been transformed. No wonder my aunt Reed hated me so! I could hardly blame her.
"You were an infant, an innocent. I'm only glad that I could keep them from finding you."
"By becoming one of them!"
"Not my wisest choice. And now you must undo my crime of bringing such a curse home to my family. Save them. Save them all!"
"But how?" I cried.
"If they are repentant of their choices and eager to reclaim their souls, you need only drive a stake through the heart and end the torture."
I barely contained my laugh. Repentant? Even if I could manage to drive a stake into John Reed's heart, I could not imagine he would ever be repentant. My uncle charged me with a heavy task, nay, an impossible one.
"All things are possible, Jane. You have the tools, the natural ability. You merely need the training and the discipline."
17
"I can be disciplined," I offered, eager for him to believe me. I couldn't say as much for the tools or ability. Had he seen me run? "But where to seek the training? You speak of family. How can I find them?"
The light grew dim. The room, silent.
"Uncle?" I called to him. "Please!"
I must have shouted in my sleep, for surely it had been a dream. Upon opening my eyes, I saw Bessie and Abbot leaning over me, their faces bathed in candlelight. Bessie checked my wound and pressed a hand to my forehead.
"Miss Slayre, are you ill?" said Bessie.
"You were making a fuss," Abbot intoned.
"I want to go to my chamber," I said. "Please, let me go."
"Have you seen something?" Bessie demanded. "I saw a light from under the door and I thought a ghost had come."
The servants all believed in ghosts, and why shouldn't they? They lived with vampyres, and Abbot. And of all rooms to be considered haunted, the red room was at the top of the list. Yet, they had left me in here. Alone. And bleeding. In the cold darkness without fire or even a candle. I took hold of Bessie's hand, and she did not snatch it from me.
"No ghosts. She has screamed out for attention," declared Abbot in her usual monotone. "And what a scream. If she had been in great pain, one would have excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here. I know her naughty tricks."
"She has been bleeding," Bessie observed, as if it had escaped Abbot's attention. "The flow seems to have stopped, but she might have lost too much."
"What is all this?" another voice demanded, Mrs. Reed's. She came along the corridor in her nightcap and gown, ready to settle in for a good day's sleep. She cut it perilously close to sunrise all for the sake of furthering my punishment. Perhaps I should have been flattered. "Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Slayre should be left in the red room until I came to her myself."
18
"Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma'am," Bessie pleaded. "You would let her wait until evening?"
"Let go of Bessie's hand, Jane" was her answer. "You'll win no sympathy from me. Your problems are brought on by yourself and well deserved. It is my duty to show you that tricks will not be tolerated. You will stay the day here, and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you at nightfall."
I said nothing. I formed great plans to watch the sun rise and arch over the azure afternoon sky for as long as I could manage to keep my eyes open. Punishment indeed.
If only I hadn't been so weak as to faint at her feet before realising my fantastic dream.
CHAPTER 3
AT DUSK, I WOKE with the feeling I'd had a wonderful dream, and seeing before me a beautiful white glow. I heard voices, too, speaking softly as if desiring me not to hear. I became aware that someone was handling me, lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture. I rested my head against a pillow or an arm and felt easy. In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved. I knew that I was in my own bed, and that the soft glow was the nursery fire. Day gave way to night. A candle already burned on the table. Bessie stood at the bedside with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me.
I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security, when I knew that a stranger was in the room, an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed.
Turning from Bessie, I scrutinised the face of the gentleman. I
19
knew him. It was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing. For herself and the children, she avoided medical attention at risk of exposing them all for what they were. Vampyres weren't often in need of physicians, besides.
"Well, who am I?" he asked.
"Mr. Lloyd."
"Yes. You're doing well." He smiled, took my hand from where it gently gripped the lace edge of the coverlet, and held it. "You're colour is returning, though I dare observe there's not much colour to return. How long has it been since you've been in the sun?"
"Mrs. Reed's not one for sunlight," Bessie interjected too quickly. "She believes it bad for the complexion, sir, if I may."
Mr. Lloyd pursed his lips, as if he knew more than Bessie suspected. "Hm. That might be the way of it for her, but this child"--he smiled again, turning to me--"this little one needs sunshine, fresh air. A few afternoons out of doors would work wonders. Don't you like the outdoors, Jane?"
I nodded. If only I could roam the hills with the sun shining overhead! My heart soared. It seemed too much to hope.
"I'll see to it she gets out more," Bessie answered dutifully.
"Very well." Mr. Lloyd had no reason to disbelieve her.
I had no idea if she meant to keep her word. Still, my nerves tingled with excitement--to be given time to play outdoors in the sun! True, there were not many fine days in mid-November, but I could make the most of what I had.
Mr. Lloyd issued further instructions that I was to sleep through the night, not to be disturbed, and he should call again the next day. To sleep at night! I didn't think sleeping would be a problem. As delighted as I was at the prospect of sleeping at night and going out during the day, I still felt weak and light-headed from my injury. He took his leave, and Bessie claimed the chair at my bedside.
Jane Slayre Page 2