by J. S. Barnes
‘The Council…’ I said. ‘Yes. But only dimly. As a rumour. A whisper.’
‘We are a hereditary group which can, in certain circumstances, be permitted to circumvent Parliament and the Upper House and take control of the state.’
I swallowed hard. ‘In what circumstances, my lord, could that possibly come about?’
‘In conditions of… emergency.’
‘But, my lord, from where would such an emergency originate?’
Tanglemere smiled as the dog beside him growled, low and deep. ‘Can you not sense it, Mr Salter? Can you not feel it on the wind? The emergency we need is already on its way.’
LETTER FROM MINA HARKER TO DR JOHN SEWARD
13 November
My dear Jack,
I write to you today, hardly for the first time in our long acquaintance, with a marvellous sense of gratitude. What a treasure is Miss Sarah-Ann Dowell! What a diligent, sweet-natured girl. Thank you for your generosity in sending her to us and for your touching, though quite unnecessary, insistence upon paying her wages.
She arrived late yesterday afternoon, shortly before nightfall, and we all took to her at once: to her kind nature, her demureness and eagerness to please. Both Quincey (and even Jonathan) are quite smitten, I think!
She is very young (not more, I would venture, than nineteen?) but she seems to me to have a wisdom far beyond her tender years. She has already proved herself to be an excellent nursemaid, and her very presence has cheered considerably our beleaguered household and provided a most welcome restorative.
There is, alas, no change in the Professor’s condition. He remains wholly insensible. One of us is always with him – dear Sarah-Ann in particular – and, although we all hope that his strength is, by some miracle, being restored as he slumbers, the prognosis is poor. Our sottish local doctor visited this morning and, very grave in his manner, informed us that the Dutchman’s powers continue to fade. Another stroke, even one half so potent as that which felled him upon our anniversary night, will, said the physician, prove fatal.
Do come and visit us soon, dear Jack, whenever you can. We should all be delighted to see you (Sarah-Ann speaks of you as the very kindest of employers) but, more than that, it is now quite clear to me that any future opportunities to see the Professor are dwindling by the day.
Until then, believe me to be your good and faithful friend, Mina Harker
PS. Would you be so kind as to tell Arthur the latest news? I cannot seem to bring myself to write two such sad letters in a single day.
MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL
13 November. I have written to Dr Seward to tell him of recent developments. I will not rehearse again those dispiriting details here. Suffice to say that while I have given Jack the facts – the arrival of Miss Dowell; the sad continuance of the Professor’s condition; the practitioner’s mournful diagnosis – I could not provide him with the complete truth. That is to say, the truth about my fears, concerning the Professor’s ominous last words, the sense that his death is but a single sudden shock away, and, above all, of my inexplicable disquiet concerning Miss Sarah-Ann Dowell.
Dear me, but she is so very pretty and so young. She seems to me to resemble some little doll whose surface hides an awful vulnerability. Jonathan noticed this at once, for all that he tried to hide it. With something like a rush of indignation, which I know does me no credit, I saw the way in which he looked at her. I glimpsed the appetite in his eyes. I feel – and I would not entrust such thoughts to any pages but these – as though we are surrounded by an air of impending disaster, that we are living through the long, hot, arid days which prefigure the coming of a storm.
And why do I find myself thinking with such frequency of the last words of the Professor before his collapse? Surely they were meaningless and phantastical? Yet they had the ring, did they not, of a warning? There can be nothing to them. Nothing at all.
FROM THE DIARY OF ARNOLD SALTER
14 November. The instincts of a good journalist never fade away. They might hibernate awhile but, in any hour of need, they always come roaring back to life.
I am nobody’s fool and nobody’s catspaw. And so today, in advance of a meeting due later in the week with a certain noble lord of my recent acquaintance, I made a familiar pilgrimage, to Number 14 Eden Street and the house of Mr Alistair Clay.
He was little changed since last I had seen him, at the end of the ’90s when he had provided me with that crucial item of information about Lord Ernsbrook and his dalliance with his neighbour’s cook. A slim, attentive man with the capacity for a sort of blank charm, Clay remains the ideal source for any inky-fingered excursion which might be necessary when dealing with the upper echelons of society.
He received me as graciously as ever, though I noticed he was shaky on his feet. There was an occasional tremor in his hands, and lines about his rheumy eyes which I had not seen before.
D—n me, if age isn’t a savage and uncaring business!
* * *
‘I was surprised to receive your note,’ he said once we were both sitting down, with a small glass of something strong set in front of us. His servant is a tall, handsome fellow who moved between us throughout the conversation as a model of discretion. ‘I thought you had retired.’
‘Who’s to say I haven’t? But I like to remain informed. I like to keep my ear to the ground.’
Clay looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Are you planning something?’
‘I’m too d—d old,’ I protested, ‘for planning anything except my own d—d funeral.’
He smiled, rather unhappily. ‘Tell me what you want from me.’
‘Lord Tanglemere,’ I said. ‘You know the man?’
Clay winced. ‘I know his reputation. And I have met him. On no more than four occasions. He moves in the very highest of circles, including several from which even I am perpetually barred.’
‘And what’s your appraisal of the fellow?’
‘A decent man. A patriot. Singularly determined…’
‘But?’
‘He is perhaps rather too old-fashioned in certain of his views.’
‘No such thing,’ I said stoutly.
‘And more than that…’
‘Yes?’
Clay hesitated, and in the moments that passed before his reply the young servant came again to both of us and replenished our glasses.
‘Of course, this is nothing more than a rumour – and of the most scurrilous kind…’
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘It’s rumoured that he longs for a master.’
‘Sorry. Don’t follow.’
‘His life has been one of service, you see, and he longs now to be led by another. The Council of Athelstan, of which he is a member, seemed once to offer such a possibility in the shape of Lord Godalming.’
‘I’ve heard of him,’ I said. ‘I remember his father. And I’ve heard the son is not all he might be. So who then is working with Tanglemere? Who is amongst his faction? And from where is this great leader meant to spring?’
Clay spread wide his trembling hands. ‘Who can say? I’ve not quite the connections I used to have, you know. I hear nowadays only gossip of the most ephemeral sort.’
‘But can you trust him?’ I asked. ‘Be honest now.’
‘I would,’ Clay said carefully. ‘I would trust him, but only if your ambitions happen to accord with his – namely, to turn back the years and see this England as she used to be.’
‘Then to that,’ I said, ‘I can most certainly drink.’
We made a toast and clinked our glasses. Even this action seemed to tire poor Clay and he sent me away not long afterwards, declaring himself to be exhausted. By the end of our conversation, his whole form seemed to twitch and shake, all quite beyond his control.
Yet what he said about Tanglemere and the Council stayed with me. I spy distinct possibilities. Yes. Distinct possibilities for change.
DR SEWARD’S DIARY
(kept in phonograph)
/>
15 November. During these past three days, I have observed within me to a marked degree a quality of melancholia. This I ascribe to the following events:
(i) The sad decline of Professor Abraham Van Helsing
(ii) My interview with Lord Godalming yesterday evening
(iii) Hardest to admit: the absence of a certain Miss Sarah-Ann Dowell.
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that, in sending her away, I have made the only morally correct decision that was available. I could no longer continue to avoid acknowledging those feelings which she invoked in me or to accept how the sight of her sweet face, haloed with blonde tresses, kindled in my breast passions which have slumbered ever since I was widowed. To have acted upon those emotions in any way would have been thoroughly wrong and against my professional responsibilities. Even were this not so, she is more than twenty years my junior, and so strikingly pretty that even were I a very much younger man I should have had not the slightest chance of winning her.
I have sent her from me both so that she might do good at the Harkers’ home and to spare myself from acting in the manner of some latter-day Malvolio. There is no doubt – no doubt at all – that I have behaved with decorum and made, if perhaps a little later than might ideally have been the case, a correct and proper judgement.
Concerning point (ii) – my meeting with Lord Godalming. We had supper together last night at Boodle’s, just one of a clutch of clubs of which the noble lord is a member. It struck me at once how pale and ill at ease he seemed, how unlike his usual self. He is, naturally, kept extremely busy by his duties in the House. Indeed, he was late to the table, having had to chair a meeting of some Council or other of which he is a hereditary member. Yet this alone is scarcely sufficient to explain his visible diminution. I had no wish to add to his burdens, yet in her letter Mina did give me my orders which I should never have dared to disobey.
Over wine, I provided him with a précis of Van Helsing’s persisting condition.
He nodded gravely and, speaking with that thoughtfulness which has in recent years come to characterise him, said: ‘I suppose that his life has been a full and a rich one. He can have few regrets. He has wrought much good in the world and done more than most to stamp out evil.’
At this, he gave me a level, meaningful look – for we both knew full well to what he was referring. For an instant it was as though our surroundings had dropped away and we were back in the thick of our battle against the Transylvanian, both of us young once more. Then the effect vanished and we were in the twentieth century and again sober, sensible, methodical gentlemen of middle years.
I could tell that something troubled him beyond what was set before us. He has, after all, lately received the very happiest of news, although his behaviour is far from that which might be expected of any imminent father. Indeed, he seemed unwilling at first to respond to my enquiries concerning Caroline’s wellbeing, or their future hopes and plans. As our supper was brought to us and much was drunk, Art would speak only of work matters, his labours at the parliamentary coalface, his efforts to reshape and modernise the system.
To all this I listened with that brand of calm patience which has for a pair of decades formed the cornerstone of my professional practice. At length, however, I grew tired of his prevarications and asked him, with a directness and intensity which would have been impossible were it not for the nature of our shared experiences, to state the reason for his sorrowful and distracted air. My words were almost harsh in tenor yet his response was dazed, like a man awakening.
‘Forgive me, Jack. I ought to have been candid with you from the first.’
‘But what is it? Tell me.’
‘It’s Carrie and the life which grows within her. Being with child… it does not seem to suit her. Not to suit her, you understand, at all.’
‘Oh? What exactly are her symptoms?’
‘She weeps often. She insists on being by herself for great stretches of the day. And she says… she says the very strangest things.’
‘To you?’
‘No, not to me. To herself, I think. Or perhaps to God. At least she does so when she believes me to be out of earshot.’
I gave him my most reassuring look. ‘Such cases are not uncommon. The process is always a vexing one, all the more so for a woman with the history that your wife possesses.’
At this, Art looked but little comforted.
‘Would you like me to see her?’ I asked. ‘To speak to her? To see if I can’t get to the root of the problem?’
This was evidently the suggestion for which he had been waiting.
‘Thank you,’ he said, then added anxiously: ‘There’s nothing unorthodox in it, is there? I mean. After all…’ He paused, swallowed and seemed almost to flinch before continuing. ‘You were her doctor once before.’
‘Of course,’ I said. A silence settled between us, most uncomfortable in nature.
Eventually conversation resumed and we spoke of other things, general and impersonal, although with a feigned carelessness which would have fooled none but the most casual observer. We arranged for Carrie to visit me at the surgery on the morning of the seventeenth. Arthur mentioned a desire to see the Professor in the very near future, an event which, for obvious reasons, I was considerably less than helpful in fixing immediately in my diary. Of this, I am far from proud.
We parted early, on good terms but, as is ever the case, with a very great deal left unsaid. I have busied myself since with work in the hope that these exertions will dispel the cloud which seems to hang over me with such malign insistence.
* * *
Later. I have just woken from dreams of the most frank sort. I cannot recall having experienced such lurid intensity since I was a boy. As I speak, I am all but quivering with shame. What a fool I have become. What a prematurely aged fool.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM
15 November. Love leads one to the strangest of places, into the darkest dells and to the highest and most windswept plateaus.
The day after our meeting in The Gored Stag, everything proceeded as had already been decided. We settled our bills in the hotel (in this, Mr Shone was most generous) and we both did our utmost when replying to the landlady’s questions concerning our next destination to deploy only tactful evasions. Even with the use of my own rusted talent, I doubt that she was entirely fooled, though she wished us well and made us promise – like schoolboys! – to say our prayers every night before bed.
As we left, each with a single suitcase (how very light we travel for modern men!), I saw that simple, stout-hearted woman make the sign of the cross, floridly and with feeling.
We spoke then only of fripperies and of beauteous things, the last such conversation we have to date enjoyed. We met Ileana at the appointed place and at the appointed hour. I believe that I hid my disappointment successfully when her svelte form stepped from the shadows and she smiled hungrily at us both.
‘Are you ready? Truly ready in your hearts to step out of the known world and go into the wild? Are you prepared to be thrusting aside the veil of civilisation and entering the forbidden?’
‘We are,’ Gabriel declared, at which her smile only widened.
For myself, I said nothing, and she must have taken silence to betoken my consent. She turned away from us, then beckoned us to join her and almost hissed the words ‘Come with me’.
We walked out of Brasov and into what lies beyond.
How to describe the days that followed without recourse to needless drama or to language of a garish sort? I shall do my best to be both accurate and brisk. Yet the task is not so simple, for time in this dark and rustic place seems to run rather differently than it does in the well-lit thoroughfares of the town. It seems tangled and mirrored, and many details of the last days seem now to me to be distant and confused, almost as if I had not lived through them at all.
Of any discourse that was shared between we three I can recall but shreds and fragments
. Ileana, when she turns her full, attentive gaze upon you, has in abundance a soothing quality which makes all of one’s fears and concerns seem trivial and transitory.
This is how our journey began. We moved from the outskirts of the town, past The Gored Stag, off the stony road and onto grass which lies towards the edges of the forest.
As we approached the trees, Ileana warned us: ‘Stay on the path. Never be leaving it except with my permission.’
Beneath that canopy was another world entirely. It was quiet and damp and cool. At first, the silence was broken only by the busy rustlings of the undergrowth, by the small creatures dwelling there who, startled by our arrival, fled at our approach.
Ileana strode ahead, a lithe, determined silhouette amongst the trees. She beckoned. ‘Come. You must be made ready before we go further. You must be prepared.’
Gabriel and I traded glances, and I felt instantaneously something in the way of a resurgence of that species of amused and witty kinship which had characterised our first meeting. His expression soon hardened as he pressed on and I followed.
We must have walked for two hours along the narrow path, through thick-penned ranks of trees, at the end of which Ileana was still just as she had been when we had set out, just as pale and beguiling. Gabriel perspired lightly and showed some signs of slight fatigue, while I was wheezing and desperate to stop. My suit had been made sopping and gross. We came at last to a clearing, at the fringes of which there seemed to be an encampment.
The place was arranged in an approximate crescent, a shape made also by a trinity of wagons, all of them painted a dark shade of red. A fire smouldered in the centre, and around it slouched four young men. At our arrival, more such strangers appeared, most of them male although there were amongst them some careworn women. A dozen of these individuals watched our approach with suspicious eyes. All were dressed in filthy clothes, tangle-haired and unkempt. They were dirty-faced and low-browed, a study for Lombroso in the cranial characteristics of those people whom we prefer to call—