02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD ja-2

by Barbara Hambly

  They crossed a plank bridge over water nearly invisible beneath low-lying fog, passed the wry, dark roofline of some very ancient church. In time they traversed a sordid alley behind a pub near the river and descended an areaway thick with garbage and the smell of cats. Though her eyes had grown used to darkness, Lydia saw only the moth flicker of pale hands before she heard the snick of a lock going over. Hinges creaked. Ysidro said "Come" again and stepped into absolute dark.

  A match scratched. Ysidro's narrow face appeared, outlined in saffron. "You need not concern yourself over rats."

  He touched the flame to a pair of guttered candles in a double branch. The plaster of the walls was black with mildew, falling away to reveal underlying brick. "Like cats, they are aware of what we are and know that though it is the human death we need to feed our minds, we can derive sustenance from the blood of any living thing."

  He lifted the branch. Twin lights called twin ghosts of shadow, merging and circling in a strange cotillion as he led her toward the back stair. "Anthea and Ernchester sleep seldom at the house on Savoy Walk these days. It is best to let memories lie. She scarce ever hunts this early in the night, but it may be that she has gone to her dressmaker."

  Lydia checked her watch again as they passed through a downstairs hall: peeling silk wall covering, doors blackly ajar. "I suppose this close to Christmas there'd be one open..."

  "If one has money, mistress, one always finds those willing to sell their sleep and their leisure. I have visited my bootmaker at midnight and never found him but that he was consumed with delight."

  "What do you tell him?" She couldn't imagine her aunt Harriet's modiste keeping open past seven for Queen Alexandra herself.

  Ysidro regarded her with eyes turned amber by the ruddy light. "That I will have none of this foolishness of two-colored shoes, nor buttons up the side." He turned to the room at the top of the stair. "So."

  Like Ysidro's house, the chamber held little furniture, and that furniture old. A tester bed with a curving footboard stood against the rotted wall panels, the counterpane as faded as the silk paper downstairs; on the other wall, a blackwood armoire, stained, chipped, thick with dust-choked carving and mottled with water damage. Its doors stood open. Petticoats, corsets, stockings lay across the bed, and with them-separated by the length of space that would have accounted for a large portmanteau-two dresses Lydia immediately recognized as unsuitable for travel, one because of its now-unfashionable leg-o'-mutton sleeves, the other because it was white, a color no sane woman, dead or Undead, would wear on a train.

  "She's gone after him," Lydia said, opening the armoire doors. The only dresses there in the current fashion were the decollete silks and sumptuous velvets of evening wear. No waists, no skirts- Lydia peered shortsightedly into the lower drawer, and Ysidro handed her eyeglasses back-and no walking shoes. "She packed in a hurry..."

  She halted, frowning, as her eyes adjusted to the sudden clarity and she realized that the tops of the dressers were in disorder: scarves, sleeves, kerchiefs caught in drawers that had been hastily closed.

  "The place has been searched." Ysidro, who had passed swiftly into the other room, returned, moving his head as if scenting the air. "Living men, days ago, before she packed, I think. The air still whispers of their tobacco and their blood." He crossed to the bed, studied the garments lying there. All the colors, as far as Lydia could tell in the low amber radiance of candlelight, that a dark woman would wear; everything of the highest quality- Swiss cotton, Melton wool, Italian silk. They were cut for a woman of Lydia 's height, with a waist like a stem and breasts like blown roses.

  "Her clothing." Ysidro turned a chemise over in one gray-gloved hand. "None of his. I like this not, Mistress Asher." He let the silk slither away. "For many years now it has only been love of her that has kept him on this earth. She is the strong one. He hunts in her shadow, brittle, like antique glass."

  "Might that be reason in itself?" Lydia turned from the dresser, where an ivory hair receiver and ivory-handled scissors spoke of other pieces of a matched toilet set now vanished: brush, comb, mirror. A glove box lay open, gloves of all colors lying like dried and flaccid spiders where they had been spilled. Ysidro lifted a brow.

  Lydia went on hesitantly, "Might he be fleeing her?"

  "To such sanctuary as the Austrian Empire would afford?" He moved around the corner of the bed, touched the imprint on the dusty counterpane where the portmanteau had rested, and his nostrils flared again, seeking clues from the alien scents of the air. "I would not have said so. She loves him, guards him; she is all in all to him."

  He paused for a long time, his face half turned from her, inexpressive as the level softness of his voice. "But it is true that one may hate one's all in all at the same time that one loves. This was something..." Another pause, debating; then he went on, "This was something I never understood as a living man." He met her eyes, expressionless, and she could not reply.

  After a time he said, "The Calais Mail departs Charing Cross at nine. I doubt we can prepare swiftly enough to make tonight's. Meet me tomorrow night at eight on the platform, you and your maid. I shall wire my own arrangements to Paris beforehand; I can-"

  "I'm not taking a maid!" Lydia said, shocked.

  Ysidro's brows lifted again, colorless against his colorless face. "Naturally, she shall know nothing of me, save as a chance-met companion on the train."

  "No."

  "Mistress Asher-"

  "This is not a matter for discussion, Don Simon." Frightened as she was at the thought of traveling to Vienna -of dealing with one or possibly several vampires- the thought of journeying in company with one unnerved her still more. And as for putting Ellen or anyone else in similar danger...

  "I came to you for advice in dealing with vampires, specifically with Lord Ernchester. There isn't a great deal of reliable information on the subject, you know." She saw the flare of genuine exasperation in his eyes behind the vampire stillness, and rather to her own surprise it didn't frighten her as it had.

  "But I would not take anyone-certainly not a woman who's been my friend and servant for nearly fifteen years-into that situation without telling her what kind of danger she may be facing, which, on the face of it, is impossible." "A woman of your station does not travel alone."

  "Nonsense. My friend Josetta Beyerly travels by herself all the time. So does-"

  "You will not." Ysidro's voice did not grow louder, nor his expression change, but she felt his irritation like a wave of cold off a block of ice. "In my day no woman traveled alone, save peasants and women of the streets."

  "Well, when I encounter a roving band of paid-off mercenary soldiers between here and Calais, I'll certainly wish I'd taken your advice."

  "Don't talk foolishness. You might trace Karolyi but you would never get near Ernchester, and it is Ernchester to whom I must speak on this matter."

  "You're the one who's talking foolishness," retorted Lydia, though she knew he was right. "This is the twentieth century, not the sixteenth. I will certainly appreciate whatever advice you can give me..."

  "Advice will gain you little against either Karolyi or Ernchester. If you wish to warn your husband of his danger, you must travel with me-and travel I will, to prevent Charles from doing this thing, whatever his motives."

  Lydia was silent for a moment, unnerved beyond words at the thought of such a journey but remembering how utterly unprepared she had been to encounter him in the crypt. "If you must," she said slowly, her dream of fanged white faces returning to her. "Thank you... but I am not taking my maid into the situation she'd face if we meet Ernchester, and I'm not exposing her to the chance of finding out inconvenient things about you. Which she'd do," added Lydia. "Ellen's got an inquisitive streak, and she's smarter than she appears. I won't do that to her."

  "Hire one for the journey, then."

  "So that you can kill her when the journey is done? And kill me, too, for that matter?" she added, her mind making a tardy leap to th
e ultimate danger of traveling with the dead. She knew too much already-even her admission of knowing where his lairs lay had violated the lines so carefully drawn when James and Ysidro had parted a year ago in the burning house on Harley Street.

  He needs a human companion, she thought, in his search for Ernchester, someone who could deal with such problems as might overtake him when daylight was near; and he needs someone who knows James well enough to track him, to guess his movements, and through him, Karolyi and Ernchester.

  She'd told Ellen and Mrs. Grimes she was visiting her cousins in Maida Vale. It would be weeks before she was even missed.

  She kept her eyes on his, positive she resembled nothing so much as a myopic rabbit attempting to stare down a dragon.

  Slowly, the vampire said, "You need have no fear of me, mistress. Nor will your woman, so long as she keeps from asking about that which does not concern her."

  "No."

  James had told her of the vampire ability to touch living minds, a cold grip, the dreadful sensation of steely will. But his power extended to blanking and smothering thought, to diverting attention... not to changing resolve. It was a predator's power, a spy's and a fugitive's, not that of one who must negotiate with humankind. She saw that realization dawn in his eyes, and his mouth tightened with annoyance.

  "If we are to be companions in this enterprise, I will not have you traveling alone abroad like a jauntering slut," he said. "I think your husband would agree with me in that."

  "What my husband thinks is my husband's business, and neither yours nor mine," said Lydia. "And I would rather be taken for a jauntering slut than betray a woman who's dependent on me. And if it doesn't suit you, I'll travel by myself."

  Ysidro bent and kissed her hand, his lips like silk left outside on a dry night of hard frost. "Bon voyage, then, mistress. And bonne chance in your dealings with the Undead."

  With a sensation like waking up, Lydia found herself alone.

  It was not, in fact, terribly late to be abandoned in a completely unfamiliar part of London. Though the fog had thickened and the night was growing colder, the streets were still populous, albeit with foreign laborers from the sweatshops that abounded in the neighborhood and with sailors who seemed to accept Ysidro's outdated presumption that a woman on her own was a jauntering slut, at least as far as Lydia could understand their idiomatic references to Master John Thursday and pintle jigs. Evidently, Josetta's suffragist doctrines had yet to penetrate this far. Lydia made a mental note to let her know.

  As she had guessed, she wasn't far from the river, and on the broad, electric lit thoroughfare of the Embankment, she had no trouble in finding a cab to take her back to the small hotel near the museum where she had left her luggage.

  Taken in the balance, she thought-removing her gloves and unpinning cook's nondescript hat-she was more glad than sorry that Ysidro would not be accompanying her to Vienna. People did travel alone, of course, and there was no reason why she shouldn't, Ysidro's antiquated notions notwithstanding: The world abounded with policemen to be appealed to, porters to be tipped, cabs, guides, travel bureaus, quality hotels with obliging managers, and shops in which to purchase anything she might forget to pack. The lack of a maid would engender certain difficulties, of course, but that was what hotel chambermaids were for.

  It was unlikely she would catch up with James before he reached Vienna, but with luck, his cautious nature might keep him out of immediate peril until she could arrive and apprise him of the fact that he was dealing with a double agent-if worse came to worst, she could inform whoever was in charge of the Vienna Department that Dr. Fairport's sanitarium in the Vienna Woods was the likeliest place to search for a clue to James' whereabouts.

  If whoever was in charge wasn't taking money from the Austrians as well.

  From what James had told her, that was at least a possibility, and Lydia wondered how on earth she'd be able to tell.

  Forcing down her sense of panic again, she reviewed such of her luggage as she had unpacked for the night: peignoir, two pairs of slippers-the prettier but far less comfortable ones in case any of the hotel staff came in-rose water and glycerine for her hands, distilled water of green pineapples to alleviate the incipient wrinkles Aunt Harriet had always assured her excessive reading would bring on, silver-backed hairbrush, comb, toothbrush, nail file, curling irons, frizzing irons, hairpins, several sets of underwear, corsetry, petticoats, an array of silver table knives whetted to as deadly an edge as silver would take, and a.38 caliber revolver containing the silver bullets she had had made last year.

  Lydia had felt like the heroine of a penny dreadful, packing that along with the talcum, rice powder, rouge, lotions, and perfumes.

  There was also the market basket that she'd bought in Covent Garden that afternoon, containing thick braids of garlic bulbs, packets of aconite and whitethorn, branches of wild rose. She wreathed her pillow with them and hung them in the single window of the unheated little back bedroom, and as she undressed and unlaced herself-there were disadvantages to staying in hotels where she was unlikely to meet anyone she or her family knew- she turned over in her mind her other options.

  Confide in one of her friends and take her as a companion? Josetta understood politics and feared nothing but, Lydia knew from experience, wasn't particularly practical: she always seemed outraged at being arrested for suffragist activities which, though certainly necessary for the overall strategy of that movement, flagrantly violated the law. Her other close friend, Anne Gresholm, wiser and more intelligent, had lectures and students of her own to tend to, and her health was not good. In any case, the danger remained the same. Lydia was also aware that she had a certain amount of sufferance from Ysidro as long as she told no one of the existence of vampires. If she violated that secret, or if Josetta or Anne guessed-which they surely would-she could not answer for their safety or her own on their return.

  Go to Ysidro, then, and ask him to accompany her after all? It would only resurrect the issue of a maid. She wouldn't endanger Ellen, and a chance-hired stranger would be in the same peril and might be more inquisitive and less reliable to boot.

  Lydia sighed, slipped the revolver under her single, paltry pillow, and at length drifted into sleep among blankets strewed with wolfsbane, railway timetables, and guidebooks to the eastern reaches of the Austrian lands. It must be the smell of the garlic, she thought, aware that she was dreaming and that the dream was far more vivid-lurid, even- than anything she had dreamed at home. The garlic, or that house in the fog...

  She stood on the terrace of a tall mansion, a glory of half-timbering and ornamental stone, with a moon-drenched garden maze on one hand and lighted windows of many-paned glass on the other. Looking in, she saw courtiers in the stiff velvets, the soft-glowing pearls of Elizabeth 's reign. They were dancing, and she could hear the swift and complex run of the music: hands linking, farthingales flouncing, the men all wearing little Shakespearean chin beards and looking silly beyond description in tights and trunk hose and bulging peasecod doublets, the women in skirts hooped out like kitchen tables and in collars of upstanding, wired lace.

  A woman stood near the windows, whom Lydia noticed because she was wearing modern garments, a plain brown serge that didn't fit her particularly well and certainly didn't become her. She was plain-faced, with a slightly receding chin, of medium height, and rather pear-shaped without being fat; a wealth of curly black hair lay loose upon her narrow shoulders. Sometimes when Lydia 's eyes left her and returned, she'd be wearing Elizabethan clothing, dull-colored and worked

  high to the neck. A servant's gown, or a poor relation's. Her small hands fussed with the jet buttons of her sleeves. Then, very softly, Ysidro spoke.

  "You would think, the way they danced, they'd wear something more suited to the exercise, would you not?"

  His voice was so quiet Lydia wondered that she could hear it through the glass and over the music. She saw him then, standing at the brown woman's side. His black velvet doublet
, his knee-length breeches, his high, supple boots, harked just enough to a later period to avoid the inherent ridiculousness of male Elizabethan garb without appearing anachronistic, and his hueless hair seemed warmer in the torchlight, darkened almost to honey. The girl replied, maudibly, but it made Ysidro laugh, as if he were playing the part of someone else. Can't she see it? wondered Lydia, terrified. Can't she see what he is? For a time they stood shoulder to shoulder watching the dancers in their fairy-tale costumes, the vampire and the girl.

  Lydia 's dreams changed, fleeted. She saw them again, this time in another garden, wide parterres of topiary and tapis verte, when he taught the dark-haired girl to waltz in the moonlight under the blank eyes of marble gods. Saw them later kiss beneath the gargoyles of an archway, among crowded houses built on a bridge, torchlight and lamplight from the windows above them red as jewels in Ysidro's eyes. Through another window-two windows, for Lydia herself was in a dark room across an alley that plunged sixty feet down into a canyon of night-she saw Ysidro lying wounded on the girl's sparse bed, the girl bending over him in some kind of old-fashioned garb, knotting dressings over a sword cut in his chest that would have killed a living man. Ysidro moved his hand a little, and the girl bent down to press her lips to his.

  "You are different from all these others," she heard him say, in the curtained embrasure of a palace window, the sound of violins like fragile perfume amid the talk and laughter of dancers. Palace of Versailles, Lydia guessed vaguely from the cut of Ysidro's plum-colored silk coat. "How sick I have grown of them, through all eternity. I had not thought to find a woman like you." He raised the girl's hand to his lips.

  "We have known one another, loved one another, down through endless time." He wrapped the girl in the dense velvet weight of his cloak as they stood alone in winter-locked woodlands, moonlight shiny on a meringue of snow beyond the barred shadows of the copse in which they stood. The girl's hair was disheveled, her gown torn, and Lydia knew that Ysidro had rescued her from some peril, and that the bodies of dead men lay out of sight in the gully by a winter-silent stream. Lydia 's own feet were cold in shoes wet with slush as she stood behind a tree with the wet weight of her skirt sticking to her ankles. "Do you not remember?" The girl in brown-it was the same brown dress as before, with the puffed sleeves and wide collar ten years behind current mode-whispered, "I remember, Simon. I remember... everything," and their mouths met in the zebra moonlight.