Sacrament

by Susan Squires

  "Boy," she called in English. "There is no Madame Ravelyn in this room."

  Before the boy could turn back, Madame snatched the note from her. "My first husband's name," she threw over her shoulder. She took the paper to the fireside and sat poring over it.

  Sarah apologized to the boy with a douceur she pressed into his hand. Madame did not look up until she had read the sheet through twice. "Well?" Sarah asked.

  Madame cleared her throat. "The note is from Baron Arlberg, at least he is a baron since he has succeeded to his brother's title, though not when I knew him, of course. At any rate, he is in Vienna, attached to Metternich's diplomatic corps. He… he wished to escort us to tea in the hotel dining room." Madame's old eyes, usually so wily and wise, now filled with tears. "Would you mind, my dear? I should like to see him."

  "It sounds as if you don't need me, Madame," Sarah said with a smile. "I wish you a delightful tea and a joyful reunion."

  "He expressly invited both of us," Madame answered with a note of urgency in her voice.

  "Much to his credit, Madame, not to leave what he must believe to be your charge, alone," Sarah agreed. "But as we know, I am not your charge."

  "True," Madame agreed. "But I would like your company."

  "Never tell me you need a chaperone!" Sarah laughed. "This is a twist."

  "Well, sometimes reunions are easier in company. He knew that." Madame folded the note carefully. "What if we turn out to be strangers, after all these years?"

  Sarah began to think herself very stupid. Tears over a man who was in the diplomatic corps, a younger son? "Madame, this man is never your young consul who shipped to Brazil?"

  Madame nodded. "But I have changed since then." She blinked away her tears and looked up into Sarah's eyes with steady gray ones. "I am old Madame Gessande now, not young Madame Ravelyn."

  "What a delightful surprise your baron has in store for him," Sarah said and bent to kiss her friend's cheek. "I shall send our acceptance. I would not miss this tea for the world."

  Sarah climbed the stairs to her room after tea, feeling wistful. She was a good chaperone, it turned out. She had drawn the two old lovers into talking about the first time they met and so had gotten over the awkwardness they both felt. The baron then led the way. He was, after all, a diplomat. Just what she would have wanted for Madame, come to think of it. He was handsome, with iron-gray mustaches and a faintly military demeanor, softened by laughing eyes. And Madame… who would have thought to see her smiling like a glowing girl? Madame had always wanted their journey to include Vienna. Had she known her baron might be here? Sarah might not be the only one who had chased across the continent in the name of love.

  Sarah wished her own quest progressed as well. The baron did not know Julien. But he had promised to make inquiries. A man like the baron would move in the highest circles. Certainly he would be able to find Julien for her, if anyone could.

  It was just coming on to dusk when Julien was ushered into Khalenberg's elegant residence in the Graben. The impassive butler was a thin stalk of a man much like his master. He took Julien's coat, hat, his cane and gloves, and left him to kick his heels in a first-floor salon done in somber grays and browns. Soon Khalenberg strode into the room where Davinoff stood with his back to the crackling fire.

  "Good," Khalenberg barked. "You got my note."

  "I wanted to see you urgently myself."

  "Eh?" Khalenberg grunted. "What's to do?"

  "I went to the Stephanplatz today," Julien drawled. "Magda was not there. But I saw your Villach. Our job is more pressing than I thought. Our indiscretions are themselves planning to be indiscreet, if they have not already. Even now our job may be expanding."

  Khalenberg's eyes narrowed. "Fools! I should have thought they wouldn't want to share the power. Why not keep it to themselves?"

  "They envision a salon of their own kind replacing the likes of you and me." Julien rocked back and forth on his heels in front of the fire while Khalenberg paced the room. "They think us reticent about using our powers, needlessly solitary. They would be bolder, as Villach says."

  "Then we must act tonight." The words were torn from Khalenberg's entrails.

  Julien nodded. "Magda will be at a concert. I wager Villach will be with her. I had planned to take Magda away immediately after the last curtain."

  "Join me in the Stephanplatz during the concert. We finish any who remain afterward." Khalenberg looked out at the street. March snow covered the city like a sodden blanket.

  "Agreed," Julien said shortly and made as if to go.

  "One more thing," Khalenberg said without taking his eyes from the street. "You are like to meet an old acquaintance if you attend the concert tonight."

  Julien looked up sharply. There was an edge in Khalenberg's voice that demanded attention. "Who?"

  "Baron Arlberg asked me today if you were in Vienna. It seems a dark beauty from some backwater… Bath, I believe, has been asking after you. You mentioned Bath, I think?"

  Julien felt the room recede. Dimly he heard Khalenberg continue. "I took the liberty of making certain inquiries. I even saw her dining at the Krenplad. She is not just in the usual style. I expect she will take Vienna by storm. Do you wish to be found?"

  For a long moment, he could not gather himself for a reply. His heart had begun to leap in an old way, yet it leapt now into his mouth in fear. Sarah was in Vienna. She'd asked after him. He should never have been weak enough to leave the mementos. She should never have been resourceful enough to find him. He focused again on the room to find Khalenberg staring at him.

  "I know you will be wiser than I have been, and stronger," the other man said in a rough voice. "For her sake, for the sake of us all."

  Julien searched the face of his old adversary-turned-ally as if he might find answers there. Sarah was in Vienna. She had asked after him. He could not think what it meant. He needed to go away. He had to think. Khalenberg wanted an answer, and then he could go. "Of course," he finally croaked and pushed his way into the hall.

  His steps slowed when he reached the wall at the Danube Canal. His mind began to think again, enough to let in pain. Why now, when he had rubbed the filigree frame of the tiny portrait shiny, when the picture had begun to transform itself into an icon rather than reality? Why, when he was just about to make his escape into Mirso Monastery?

  The bright outline of a future filled with love and engagement with the world pushed through his dark thoughts. Sarah looked at the world like that. He shook his head convulsively and leaned over the stone wall. Not real. Reality was Khalenberg, Magda, and Villach, his own sordid past. She was in Vienna to accept the offer he had made so rashly in Bath because she did not know the risks. She did not know about the solitary destiny of a vampire, the weight of years, the dreadful experience of human inhumanity. And he was vulnerable to her offer. He had proven that. Some childish part of him wanted a soul mate, no matter how impossible that was for one of his kind. That vulnerability frightened him. There was no other word for it. Even the fact that he could be frightened after all these years betrayed his belief about who he was.

  Julien studied the black water below him swallowing bright snowflakes as it swept on, a thousand miles to the sea. He closed his eyes for a moment. Vulnerable or not, he must refuse her offer, for her own good as well as his. Perhaps he could just avoid her in Vienna. He would do his duty by Magda and escape into the Carpathians and the sanctity of the Vow, where she could never enter. The prospect of his escape did not excite him. Fighting a bone weariness, he pushed himself upright and walked down the snowy street toward number five Domgasse.

  The boxes of the Burgetheater brimmed with the cream of Vienna tonight. The boards of the stage had been cleared to make room for the orchestra. Feathers nodded, jewels winked, silk and satin shone. As the baron led them to their box, Sarah scanned the crowd. Madame thought Julien certain to be here.

  So many faces, so much movement. She didn't see him.

  A dim
inutive woman with creamy skin and sparkling blue eyes approached. The baron introduced her as the Marquise de Foucault. Sarah barely had opportunity to nod in acknowledgment as the baron murmured their names. "Oh, but Lady Clevancy, you are Anglais, bien sur. I knew by your dress! Tres ravissant! My dressmaker in Paris—I go to Fanchon, of course—Fanchon was saying only the week before I left that we would have waists again. She had been to England to visit her cousine, and waists were all the rage. Tres curieuse that England should set the style for France! But here you are, English, and I quite see how Fanchon would feel that such a thing would be. I say again, ravissant."

  In the face of this onslaught, Sarah only smiled absently as she searched boxes behind the marquise. She had almost forgotten her dress might be scandalous. Addie had remade many of her mother's dresses. Tonight she wore white rouched satin trimmed with black Austrian fringe. When finally the marquise wound down, Sarah murmured, "Thank you for your kindness."

  "Oh, I am never kind about matters of fashion, Lady Clevancy, not kind at all." The marquise twinkled. After pointed questioning, she concluded that her Fanchon was actually the cousin of Sarah's reliable Courette. Sarah confided that she had been the one to wear the first waisted dress in Bath. This was enough to win the marquise's good graces.

  A very young man in a military uniform approached for an introduction. Sarah did not quite catch his long name. When he asked her to share his family's box, she politely declined.

  "My dear," Madame whispered frantically. "You just dismissed the young crown prince."

  "I have no time for crown princes," Sarah said as they took their seats.

  The baron directed their attention to a wild-haired man of about fifty making his way to the conductor's podium. He was disheveled, even in his evening clothes, and his broad face with its beetling brows scowled out over the room. A spontaneous ovation rippled across the huge room. "Beethoven," Madame whispered.

  "Why does he not play the piano?" Sarah asked as the soloist also took his seat. "I understand he is a virtuoso."

  "He has been deaf for twenty years," the baron said, leaning forward. "He still composes and conducts, but he can no longer play."

  To be cut off from the sustaining passion of one's life! Tragedy was carved in the face of the man taking the podium, as well as passion. Sarah thought suddenly that she should study those lines. They might disfigure her own face some day.

  Boys raised the great chandeliers, snuffed the candles, turned down the lamps. The room dimmed. She couldn't see to find Julien. Had he seen her? If so, would he be making his way to her side, or calling for his carriage? Remember the chalice, she thought, to bolster her courage.

  The orchestra emitted soft, cacophonous tuning sounds. A woman with flaming red hair on the arm of a blond and dapper young man with a small mustache engaged Sarah's attention as they made their way to a box to the right of the stage. Sarah's mind darted back to a London night in the autumn. She could not be mistaken. There could not be two heads of hair just that shade. She peered into the gloom and saw the woman's face turn from profile to full-on as she arranged her gaudy skirts of arise. Sarah recognized the hard lips and eyes, the sharp features. It was the woman she had seen in the glow of a streetlight where passersby gawked at a murder. Julien had said she was vampire, and that she had done those dreadful murders.

  Shock shivered through her system. How could she be here, at a concert in Vienna, when Julien said he sent her back to wherever vampires came from?

  The music of "The Pastoral" wafted peaceful notes over the hushed crowd. Sarah's soul was hardly in harmony with those sweet strains. A thousand thoughts skipped through her head. Was this woman the reason Julien had chosen Vienna? Had she drawn him across a continent through love? How much easier for Julien to love one of his kind than a silly girl of six and twenty!

  Could she sit until the interval? Perhaps it was the music that calmed her. She waited, drenched in music and darkness, her eyes straying often toward the box where the red-haired woman and her companion sat. In the dim light from the stage, she could make out a boy delivering a note to their box. The blond man excused himself. The woman wanted to go with him but he pushed her back into her seat. Sarah's curiosity deepened.

  When the lamps were turned up for the interval, the red-haired woman looked nervously about her. Sarah saw her rise and make her way out of her box. Impulsively, Sarah rose as well. "I see an old acquaintance," she murmured: The woman might be a link to Julien.

  Madame searched the crowd. "It can't be…"

  "It isn't." Sarah smiled. "I do not need an escort, Baron," she added as thai gentleman rose.

  He looked stubborn until Madame patted his hand and pulled him down. She knew very well that the last thing Sarah needed tonight was an escort.

  Sarah glanced over to see cerise skirts disappear among the swishing velvet curtains of a side entrance. She hastened after them. Her way was blocked by a very large woman in voluminous skirts of dull gold, trundling slowly toward the exit curtains, complaining all the while of the draft. The woman's escort towed his graceless barge up the aisle. When finally they reached the corridor Sarah managed to squeeze around them. But when she reached the exit, there was no sign of red hair or cerise dresses. The grand lobby, gilt and ornate, was a crush of people. The crowd talked and sipped champagne as it folded and refolded itself without revealing anything. Sarah found an alcove out of the way and surveyed the room. There she was! The redhead, off to her right, searched the lobby, too. They scanned the throng together.

  Sarah stood stock-still as the crowd parted. It always parted in that manner for him. He towered over the Viennese men and cut his black swath smoothly through the glitter, in a diagonal, across the lobby toward the redhead. Sarah jerked her gaze toward his destination. The redhead was white-faced and startled. Was meeting Julien unexpected? Sarah's gaze raced back to Julien. She hardly recognized the hardness there. What did he want with this woman? Was he come to claim her as his own? I am yours! Sarah wanted to shout. She put her hand to her mouth. She must watch this meeting play out. She had to know how things stood before she declared herself.

  Julien took the redhead by the arm and turned toward the door. They stood not five feet from Sarah. He called to a footman for Mademoiselle Ravel's cloak. Sarah drew back into the shadows. He must not see her. She need not have worried. He had eyes only for the redhead.

  "You cannot be surprised, Magda." His deep voice washed over Sarah for the first time in a month, almost brought tears to her eyes. "Villach must have told you I called."

  "Where is he? What have you done with him?" the woman hissed.

  "That is up to Khalenberg, not to me," Julien snapped. "You are my only concern." He stopped short, as though a new thought had occurred to him. "Where is Keely?"

  The woman tried to sound casual. "I can't remember where I left him. Was it Paris?"

  Julien's mouth grew ever more grim. "Don't defy me, Magda. You can't protect him."

  Sarah was confused. Julien did not sound like a lover.

  "Oh, very well, he's at Villach's house." The redhead pouted. Then she practically hissed, "I won't go with you. We have friends now, more of our kind."

  "You state the problem clearly." Julien claimed her cloak. "We are for Mirso Monastery."

  The redhead started to struggle in his steely grip, and the pair began to attract attention. A man with dark hair shot through with iron gray and a hawk nose came through the doors to the theater and headed straight for them. His eyes sliced like daggers around him. All color had drained from his face and his mouth was bleak. At his approach, the redhead went still. Julien grunted a greeting to the thin man. "Is it done, Khalenberg?"

  The man opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Finally he nodded.

  "What have you done to Johann?" The redhead accosted the newcomer Julien had called Khalenberg. Then, as she looked into the man's cold eyes, she began to whimper. "Oh my God!"

  Julien locked his gaze to the redhe
ad; both men did. Sarah knew they were bending her to their will. But to what purpose? Julien had said, "We are for Mirso Monastery." They were not words of love. What were they about?

  Sarah had no chance to solve the puzzle. The crowd melted away from the strange threesome and wandered back to their boxes for the next movement. Julien jerked Magda toward the doors. Should she call to him? Unconsciously, Sarah moved out of the alcove, racked with uncertainty. Khalenberg looked up and passed his eyes over her, revealed now by the dissipating crowd. His eyes went on, then came back. They sharpened into focus, strong eyes, gray and piercing. He reached out one hand and touched Julien's arm.

  Julien glanced briefly back at the man who signaled him, then followed his gaze until he saw Sarah. Everything stopped. This was the moment, the moment she would know whether all her longing, all her journey had been in vain or no. She stood silently. Their eyes locked together. Her own filled with tears. His face contorted in an instant of pain and longing. A turbulent current of emotion seared her as it rolled over her. Yes, she thought somewhere deep inside. She found herself moving forward into the power of his gaze. She embraced the darkness willingly. She wanted to touch him, his face, his hand. She wanted to feel the flesh of him.

  Then she saw his mouth set into a thin line. His eyes, so fierce with those emotions she had seen in the darkness of her room one night in January, dulled. His face slowly hardened. He handed Khalenberg Magda's wrap. "Take care of this one for me," he said. "I will meet you shortly in the Stephanplatz." He turned then to Sarah.

  "Be careful, Davinoff," the other man warned roughly. "She will be your Waterloo."

  Julien did not answer but waited as Khalenberg guided the now-docile redhead into the night. "I'll get your cloak," he said to Sarah, and moved away. Liveried vassals scurried in all directions.

  Sarah stood, abandoned for the moment, torn with doubt. She had seen how he felt. And she had seen it disappear. She trembled in the aftershock of her own emotion.