Sacrament

by Susan Squires

  Sarah felt her flush betray her. How could he have guessed?

  "You're going to ruin everything." George's voice was low and venomous. "His bargain with me means nothing if you call off our betrothal."

  "What are you saying?"

  "I get nothing from him if I do not marry you," George spat.

  "Oh, I look a rare fool! You go to him, leaving me mortified, my career in shreds. He need tell me nothing more about the blood. Blundell will discover everything before me. He's probably already on to using citrates to prevent clotting. And you!" George's chuckle was hardly amused. "Were you in it all along?"

  "He struck a bargain with you to marry me?" Sarah asked in a small voice.

  "He came to me after he escaped. He wanted me to gallant you about, acknowledge you. I was forced to tell him that would never do the trick, not with what you had done. I would have to marry you to save some shred of your reputation—and for my sacrifice, I wanted his knowledge. You should have seen the look on his face!" George's own face flushed with his triumph. "I might have hit him with a mallet to less effect."

  "He, he only wanted you to take me to parties," Sarah said slowly.

  George caught himself and paused, looking down at the ruins of his breakfast. When he lifted his head to Sarah, he said coldly, "Oh, he wanted me to marry you, all right. Probably foisting damaged goods on me to tie up his loose ends. It would have been worth it to know what he knows about blood. But he never meant to honor the bargain."

  Sarah knew he was punishing her for calling off the engagement. She wouldn't care if he admitted that his devotion was a sham. But he was trying to use Julien to hurt her, too.

  "You barter with my life to forward your career and you call Julien dishonorable? You are the blackest pot calling names at the kettle I have ever seen, George Upcott." Sarah felt the tears of anger begin. "You deserve to be the laughingstock of the entire town." She ran from the room, not caring that the footman saw her tears as she collected her coat and her gloves. Out in the street, she hurried toward Madame Gessande's house in Queen's Parade, as to a refuge.

  It was several blocks before her pace slowed. If George's soul was small enough to marry to further his career, then his punishment was to live with a small soul. She cursed herself for not realizing his deceit. If he wanted to marry her, why had he not proposed these last three years? George's rage had done her a good turn. He had blurted out the truth. Julien might not want her still. But for one moment he had been dismayed when George told him the price of her reentry into society. She turned into Queen's Parade. She must hurry if she was to leave tomorrow.

  Madame Gessande received Sarah in her drawing room, now lit with cold winter sunlight.

  "You look much improved this morning, my dear," Madame observed.

  "I feel much improved, Madame." Sarah wanted to tell her friend what she had learned from the story of the lover who went to Brazil.

  "I think you look decisive." Madame's eyes crinkled slyly.

  "I am going abroad for a while." Sarah smiled. "I think you know why."

  "Ah." Madame sighed and motioned Melton to put the tea tray on the table next to her chair. She began to pour out two cups as he disappeared. "I am glad to hear that, Sarah." They made no pretense between them. "Do you know where to start?"

  "I have an idea about how to trace him. I hope I do not have to go as far as Brazil."

  "Brazil is not so very far after all," Madame observed. "Whom do you take with you?"

  "Jasco and Addie agreed to go." Sarah frowned. "Amelia was out of the question. Still, dragging them all over who-knows-where does not seem a kindness. I wish I could go alone."

  "I should like to offer my services as duenna." Madame raised her brows.

  "Oh, Madame, whatever are you thinking?"

  "I am thinking I have stayed rather too long in Bath."

  It was such a perfect solution to her distress about taking Jasco and Addie that she had to protest. "But I don't even know where I am going!"

  "I shall see my banker while Juliette packs. Shall we take Melton? He travels with me."

  Sarah put her teacup aside, kissed Madame's old cheek. "We shall," she whispered.

  "I should be nothing loath if our way led to Vienna. I have not been to Vienna in years."

  Chapter Eighteen

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  Sarah and Madame Gessande took the road out of Amsterdam in a hired carriage southeast toward the place where the Ij River joins the Rhine. Julien was only four days ahead of them, bound for Vienna on the Schwaerte Schaep according to Mijanheer Leiden, head of the Dutch East India Company. Mijanheer Leiden had been so anxious to send a message to his most important investor that he had sent it even with a girl from Bath. Sarah had found Mijanheer Leiden by tracing a load of twenty-seven boxes, labeled as tools for export, shipped from Bristol to Amsterdam. The boxes had started from Littleton-on-Severn, a small town near Thornbury Abbey. Entirely plausible, except that there were no manufacturing establishments there, and the order had been written in Julien's hand.

  Sarah peered out impatiently over the wide Ruhr Valley and a huge river that looked lazy and cold as it moved inexorably toward the sea behind them. Her eyes roved constantly among the vessels on the river, barges large and small, boats pressed upstream by oarsmen standing on the decks, pushing and pulling at their oars. The Schwaerte Schaep must be long gone. She could not expect to see Julien striding along her decks. But she looked just the same.

  It had been a shock to see Julien's face peering out from the small dark portraits of the original directors of the East India Company in Mijanheer Leiden's office. It had been labeled with the name of Alexander Trenescu, but she would know him anywhere. He had shaped the world for hundreds of years. Now, he was pulling out of the Dutch East India Company and gathering his treasures along the way, withdrawing his interests in society. What could it mean?

  The great river was lined with plowed fields, vinyards, and towns engulfed by factories. She didn't see much of the towns as they raced through them. The names melted into one another, Amersfoort, Utrect, Arnheim. Sarah had plenty of time to think about Julien, where he was, whether he would welcome her intrusion into his life. She knew full well she had taken an incredible risk, that she could not turn back. She had cut herself off from George, from Corina, from Jasco and Addie, from Bath society. Madame Gessande was now her only link with who she had once been. She found herself reaching out to hold Madame's hand at odd moments in this frenzied journey.

  They passed into the Kingdom of Prussia and thus into the German Federation in the afternoon. They traveled almost eighty miles that day, changing horses often. Sarah would have gone on through the night in spite of the jolting and the cold. But as they approached Köln she saw, in the icy darkness of the coach, that Madame looked exhausted. She chided herself for her inattention and called to the driver to pull up for the night in Koln. Sarah escorted Madame to a room, watched her order bread and a steaming bowl of broth, and then retreated to her own room to take the greenish glass goblet from her trunk and touch it, as she did each night. He left it for you for a reason, she told herself. At that moment, he had wanted her to change her mind, had he not? He could have changed his own since then. That was another risk. She would never know if she never caught up with him. She could not think of that.

  Julien stood at the window of the drawing room in the house at number five Domgasse, his small residence for those rare times he stayed briefly in Vienna. He had acquired it as a reminder of his lapse of responsibility. Mozart had died in penury here while he had been in Spain. Julien should have left provision for him. He had counted on the Hapsburgs—always a mistake after Maria Teresa died. Sometimes Julien could hear the strains of "Figaro" wafting through the rooms where it had been composed. Sometimes the house was just filled with a sense of loss, loss of a musical genius, a life cut too short contrasted with life too long. Tonight, loss won out.

  The butler, Mallnitz, and his wife were never happy
to see the arrival of their master. But he paid them well, just as he did those who had kept his houses in St. Petersburg, and Madrid, and rarely troubled them with his presence. He had closed up all his other houses through the auspices of local agents. This one would soon follow.

  Mallnitz brought in the brandy tray. Julien stood with his hands in his pockets and looked out over the street. Crystal clinked behind him. Outside, carriages and link chairs negotiated the narrow streets. Tiny flakes of dry snow disappeared on the wet cobblestones. Hardly worth the effort of snowing, he thought, as his own dry regret snowed inside him. His anger, so close to the surface in Amsterdam, had drained away, leaving an emptiness even less tolerable. Absently he fingered the smooth porcelain and gold filigree of the miniature painting of her he had taken from George Upcott the night he bargained away his future in return for the lore of blood. He kept it always in his pocket. He no longer needed to look at it. He had memorized each line until the likeness itself became unreal. He need only touch it and the portrait came alive. Perhaps he would be able to discard it when he reached the monastery. But not yet. Not yet.

  He turned into the room and poured out a brandy. Khalenberg had summoned him tonight. That was odd. They were not on good terms. Julien did not ordinarily obey a summons. He had contemplated ignoring it. But like called to like and Vienna belonged to Khalenberg, who was a stickler for the Rules. And the Rules demanded that he who owned a city be obeyed as long as one was passing through. Julien downed the last of his brandy and turned to dress.

  It was midnight when he met Khalenberg in a private smoking room above the gaming tables of a very exclusive club. It was small and rococo and dimly lighted by two sconces. Davinoff closed the door after them. Khalenberg folded his long frame into a wing chair by the fireplace and motioned Julien to its mate. He leaned over, opened a carved wood box, and offered a cheroot. Julien took the cigar and settled himself for an unpleasant conversation. Using the lighter provided, he studied Khalenberg's hawk face and ruthless gray eyes. There was a subtle sag about the thin lips Julien thought was new in the years since he last had seen him. The man's dark hair was still shot through with a gray that those who did not know what he was would call premature. He looked to be in his prime, just as they all did.

  The man seemed lost in thought. Julien raised a brow. "What do you want with me, Khalenberg? You have long been immune to the need for my company."

  "What are you going to do about her, Davinoff?" Khalenberg began his conversation as though he swung a battle-ax against an enemy, an act he had performed in truth many times over during the centuries. He and Julien's differences had pitted them against each other in more than one war, in more than one battle of intrigue. Julien was taken aback. Khalenberg couldn't know of his near lapse with Sarah. Her name washed over him, and with it came the pain, all over again. "With whom?" he managed.

  "An error of yours, I believe. Flaming hair. Goes by the name of Magda Ravel."

  Magda? Here in Vienna? Damn! She should be immured in Mirso Monastery by now—she and her rat-faced companion. Julien studied the glowing tip of his cigar, not willing to let his old enemy see his discomfiture. Then he turned it and brought it to his lips, drew in a long breath, and let the smoke pour slowly from his nostrils. He was for Mirso himself. The last thing he wanted was to stop and take care of Magda. "I sent her home to Dacia."

  "It has been called Transylvania for a hundred years, Davinoff."

  Julien nodded. "My lapse. I take it she is misbehaving?"

  "There are only three murders so far," Khalenberg grunted. "But there will be more."

  Julien sighed. Magda was his responsibility. Khalenberg was right. He said, "She must be stopped. I am sorry to inconvenience you." But he gazed at Khalenberg with some curiosity. There had been no scorn yet, no disdain for his Crime. "As the Master of Vienna, you will be able to give me her direction."

  The man's eyes lost their razor's edge. He sighed and pressed his lips together as he watched the smoke from his cheroot curl upward. There was a long silence, Julien did not press him. One did not press Khalenberg. He rose and went to a small escritoire. "She lives with one Johann Villach just off the Stephanplatz." He scribbled the address on a scrap of paper and handed it to Julien, who glanced at the paper and put it in the inside pocket of his coat. There was something more here.

  "You wonder why I do not take this opportunity to remind you of the strict Rules governing the spread of the Companion," Khalenberg said stiffly. His eyes turned inward. "I always believed that our kind must not be made willy-nilly by exchanging blood."

  "You were not wont to be generous when it came to my faults," Julien agreed.

  "Ah, but that was before I shared them." Khalenberg pushed the smoke from his lips in a pillar toward the ceiling and watched it rise. He glanced at Julien. "When you go to the Stephanplatz, you will meet my own mistake, no doubt. He is beautiful, I will give him that." Khalenberg stood, straight as a ramrod. "And ruthless. Hoisted on my own petard."

  "Villach?" Julien asked.

  Khalenberg nodded. There was another long silence. Finally, he continued reflectively. "It always changes them, doesn't it? Giving the Companion, I mean. It finds the smallness in their souls and magnifies it. You would think I would know better, given my sentiments about tradition." He chuckled bitterly. "We're two old war horses looking for new vigor in our lives, companionship to share the triumph and the tragedy of immortality. Pitiful, are we not? We cannot accept the destiny of solitude that is our heritage."

  Julien did not answer. It was too painful. He addressed Kahlenberg's first question instead. "I don't think the Companion changes them. Has it changed us? We have had it for millennia. Magda was always selfish, wanton, a sexual predator, though I did not always know it. I think we just chose badly." He owed Khalenberg more. "It is a great temptation, when you think you have found a soul mate and mortality is in the way." He bared his wound in kind. "I was tempted most sorely in Bath of late, in spite of experience. She was not like Magda. She is blessed with a large soul. If it is any consolation, I despise myself for my weakness."

  Khalenberg searched his face. "It cannot work—for them or for us. We are not meant for companionship. Remember what happened at the court of Charlemagne?"

  Julien stared into the fire and clenched the arm of the chair. That one had committed suicide when she realized in full what he had made of her. Suicide for their kind must needs be horrific. "I shall remove my indiscretion from Vienna," he said after a moment.

  "I hoped mine would come round." Khalenberg tapped his cigar ash on the grate. "But he prefers your redhead's company to mine. Out of curiosity, what will you do with her?"

  "I will take her with me when I go to Mirso." Julien let the name hang in the air.

  Khalenberg let his razor eyes search Julien's face. "You would not guess it, but I am sorry to hear that is your destination. You are young to take the Vow. It is a kind of death, you know."

  Julien didn't acknowledge the sympathy. "I thought of suicide." He made certain his tone was nonchalant. "I cannot do it. Perhaps that means I have not given up all hope. And if I take the Vow, if I practice faithfully under the Old Ones, perhaps I can find peace. Who knows? I may even find meaning. Under their teaching, I can certainly reduce my need for blood."

  "Taking the Vow is admitting defeat." Khalenberg was frightened. Julien could see it.

  "Don't think we have everything in common," he said wryly. "If I have come to the last resort, it does not mean that you are right behind me. I am resigned."

  "You didn't seem resigned in Amsterdam according to Beatrix." Khalenberg took another tack. "Aren't monks supposed to leave rage and sullenness behind?"

  Julien didn't rise to the bait. "I do what I can, old friend. And what I will do now is rid you of Magda Ravel. I hate to foist her upon Rubius. But the Elders are better equipped than I to decide her fate. I can no longer serve as judge and jury."

  Khalenberg stubbed out his cigar and tossed t
he remains into the grate. "If you remove your indiscretion, I shall deal with mine. Upon that you have my word." His hawk face hardened further. "But he is not destined for Mirso. He is not worth that." With one more searching glance, Khalenberg turned and strode from the room. He left Julien to finish his cheroot in the dim light, feeling very much like an old war horse.

  "Well," Madame greeted a wet and tired Sarah as she returned just after luncheon to their private parlor in the Hotel Lofer, one of the most correct addresses in Vienna. "I dare say my news is better than yours, from the look of you."

  "Oh, I hope so." Sarah sighed as she removed her gloves, her hat and cloak, all dusted with melting flakes. "I could not find the cartage firm at all." Her remarkable run of luck seemed to have ended. She could find no trace of Julien's cargo, which had grown as she followed it until it was a huge load of boxes and barrels, enough to fill a dozen wagons. There had been hints in Strasbourg that he had been Guttenberg's partner, Johann ' Faust, who built the first printing press in the early seventeenth century. Of course Julien would have named himself Faust. He had removed a fabulous collection of first editions from Strasbourg. He had also been the patron of Vermeer and now removed a treasure of art from Germany. He had come as far as Vienna, she was sure. But now where?

  "Never mind, cherie," Madame adjured her. "I have connections here."

  Sarah could see there was something else that Madame wanted to tell her. The woman was blushing. She could not say she had ever seen her blush before. "I wager we shall have a visitor soon ourselves." Madame pulled over some needlework lying discarded on a side table.

  "And whom are we likely to receive?" Sarah asked. Madame harrumphed self-consciously. "One never knows. It could be almost anybody."

  Though Sarah could pry no further commitment from her, she was alert to Madame's mood. When, at almost two, a note was delivered by one of the hotel staff, Sarah raced to the door and took it from the boy. It was addressed in a precise male hand to Madame Ravelyn.