02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD ja-2

by Barbara Hambly

  Firelight picked out the sudden lines around his eyes, the set of the thin lips- a face no one would notice, thought Asher, except that it was not a nineteenth-century face, much less one that belonged to this newborn era. The muscles, the speech, the expressions that had formed the mouth and chin and the set of the cheeks were all from some earlier time, and the years had not changed them.

  "I can't repay you," he added softly. "I won't be seeing you, nor anyone known to you, ever again. I will owe you this favor, this boon, for all of time. But please make sure she gets home all right. Tell her-" His voice did not break but halted for a moment, almost as if he sought words. "Tell her that she is all that I ever wanted, and all that I ever had."

  Then he raised first the outer lid, then the inner, to reveal the woman sleeping within.

  The living dead, they had been called. By the fevered glare of the firelight she looked, indeed, both alive and dead: waxen, still, unbreathing, with her dark hair scattered about her, the linen of her gown not whiter than the flesh it covered. And beautiful, thought Asher. Beautiful beyond words.

  Looking up, he saw Ernchester's face, without expression, as though all expression had grown too much to be supported under the weight of endless years, save for his eyes.

  Ernchester bent a little to touch his wife's cheek, then leaned down to kiss her lips. To Asher he said, "She'll wake soon. Tell her that I love her. Always." Yellow light flared higher as flames ran along the roof of the main house. Asher turned, startled, in time to see a spindly figure move on the balcony, work and thrust itself to its feet, wobbling and off balance. Disheveled white hair caught the light, and the lenses of his spectacles made great rounds of burning amber as he turned his head. Staggering, Fairport began to descend the stairs. Asher shouldn't have been able to hear it under the roaring of the fire, but he did. Thin, silvery laughter, like the breaking of wafer-frail glass, and beneath that, the obscene toad-croak of a bass chuckle. They seemed to hover on the balcony, and on the stair, not quite touched by the fire's light, as if visibility were something to be put on or off at will, but at one point Asher thought that one of them wore a dress the color of web and moonlight. Fairport cried under the gag and fell, rolling down the stairs. They floated after him, half-seen migraine visions of alabaster faces, shining hands, eyes that caught the light as had those of the rats among the bones of St. Roche. At the foot of the steps he tried to get to his feet, falling heavily and trying again, and they ringed him, like porpoises playing, flickering shadows of a force he had entirely underestimated, following him as he scrabbled and heaved along the ground.

  They let him get quite some distance before they began to feed. With a roar, the roof of the stables fell in, curtains of flame leaping higher, yellower, beating upon yet somehow failing to completely illuminate what was happening in the court. Then a deeper roar, like a battery of eight-inch guns, and the earth jarred underfoot as the kerosene went up. Beside Asher, Anthea cried out, "Charles!" and sat up suddenly, her brown eyes wide with terror. Asher caught her hand. Her gaze met his, clouded with old dreams. "The stones. The stones exploded with the heat." Then she flinched and turned her face away, and Asher realized that for a moment she had thought she was still in London, many years before, when the whole of that city burned.

  She said again, "Charles," and when she looked at him then, her eyes were clear. "He's gone."

  She started to rise, and he closed his hand hard on hers, draw-ing her back and knowing he had no way to hold her if she simply wrenched herself free. She could have broken his wrist, or his neck, with very little effort. She looked at him again, questioning and pleading, her black curls a cloud around her face and shoulders, the flame a soaked gold in her eyes.

  "He told me to take you back to England," Asher said. "To see that you reached there safely. He said that he would not see me- and, I presume, you-again. He said that he loves you, always and forever."

  In the courtyard the vampires had sunk down in a ring around Fairport, whose frantic noises had risen to a muffled crescendo, then ceased. Asher wondered what he'd do if Anthea vanished, as Ernchester had, flickering away like a ghost in the woods to seek him. He'd never make it back to Vienna.

  For a moment he thought she would. Then she, too, glanced across at the dark shapes in the firelight. Just for a moment her pale tongue slipped out and brushed her lips.

  But when she turned to him, her eyes were a woman's eyes. "Do you know where he's gone?"

  Ten

  "Thursday." Lydia stared blankly at the newspaper by the glare of the station lights. "Thursday night. We were still in Paris."

  Margaret whispered, "Oh, my God," through hands pressed to her mouth.

  "I thought... I thought I'd have a little more time to catch up with him. That things wouldn't happen so quickly."

  Ysidro reappeared at their side, trailed by a laconic individual in a Slovak's baggy white britches who, at his command, loaded Ysidro's trunk and portmanteau, Margaret's satchel, and Lydia's voluminous possessions onto a trolley that he pushed away in the direction of the doors. The vampire tweaked the newspaper from Lydia's hands, and read.

  DOCTOR PERISHES IN SANITARIUM FIRE Early yesterday evening the well-known sanitarium "Fruhlingzeit" burned to the ground in a conflagration of epic proportions, claiming the life of the man who had made it his life-work and monument. The body of the most distinguished English specialist in rejuvenatory medicine, Dr. Bedford Fairport, whose work has contributed to the comfort and healing of hundreds of men and women in Vienna over the past eighteen years, was found in the smoking ruins by police constables and firefighters in the early hours of Friday morning. According to the Vienna police, foul play is suspected.

  The bodies of a coachman and a laborer were also found.

  No patients were present at the sanitarium when it burned, Dr. Fairport having temporarily closed the premises last week. The distinguished Herr Hofrat Theobald Beidenstunde, of the Imperial-and-Royal Austrian Coal Board, undergoing treatment for a nervous condition at Fruhlmgzeit last week, states that Herr Professor Doktor Fairport requested that all patients return to their homes due to repairs on the foundations of the main building. Complete financial recompense was made to all patients so affected.

  It is believed that the fire started in the laboratory where a generator was positioned too dose to stores of kerosene, and later spread to the main villa. However, since all three bodies bore marks of violence, arson is being considered as a possibility. Further investigation by the Vienna police is under way.

  "Behold an Englishman," murmured Ysidro. "The good Hofrat Beidenstunde should thank his stars he was reimbursed. The old Queen would never have approved such request for funds." He folded the newspaper and bestowed it in the pocket of his cloak.

  "Victoria?" Margaret Potton asked in surprise.

  "Elizabeth. There is nothing there which proves your husband's fate, mistress. This way."

  The Slovak was waiting for them in the square outside, on the seat of a gaily painted wagon. Ysidro helped the two women in-lifting Lydia with unnerving ease from the pavement-and without wasted words they proceeded into the winding network of high-walled ways that made up the most ancient part of the Altstadt. "Who- besides Fairport-would Jamie seek out in Vienna?"

  "Three years ago it was a man named Halliwell." Ysidro turned his head, as if listening for some sound below or between the myriad voices and threads of stray music that clamored all around them on the bustling streets. "I have no more recent knowledge than that, nor am I sure where the Department has its headquarters these days. The embassy would be the place to inquire. Say that you seek your husband, that you wish to speak with Halliwell."

  "They won't be there on a Sunday," Margaret pointed out worriedly.

  "At least we can rent a carriage and go out to the rums of the sanitarium."

  Lydia brought the newspaper up close enough to her nose to make out something other than vague blocks of gray. "It may not say anything about Jamie, b
ut considering it was Fairport I came to warn him against, the coincidence is a little marked. I expect we could find the address in a city directory."

  "I expect every jehu in the town will know its location," Ysidro remarked. "From what I know of human nature, the place will have been trampled by curiosity seekers ere the ashes cooled."

  Palaces crowded them on all sides, the darkness patched and painted by a thousand glowing windows whose reflections gilded the scrollwork of doorways with careless brush strokes of light, the faces of the marble angels rendered curiously kin to Ysidro's still, thin features as the vampire turned his head again, seeking whatever it was that he sought.

  The wagon drew up before a tall yellow house in the Bakkersgasse, like an excessively garlanded wedding cake in butter-colored stucco. Ysidro accompanied the two women inside, watching as the Slovak unloaded Lydia's trunks, portmanteau, satchel, and hatboxes, but when that was finished, he returned to his own luggage, still on the cart, and drove away with it into the darkness. An hour later he returned, afoot and uncommunicative as ever, for picquet in a salon that was a miniature Versailles above a shop selling silk.

  "I made arrangements ere departing London," he said, shuffling the cards. "It is necessary to know the existence of such places, which can be had in any city for a price. You will find a cook and chambermaid at your disposal in the morning, though they speak no English and little German. Still, I am assured that the cook is up to the most exacting of standards. Certainly, for English, she will suffice."

  Margaret said, "It's too good of you..."

  "Assured by whom?" Lydia wanted to know. Ysidro picked up his cards. "One whose business it is to know. You are the elder hand, mistress."

  Ysidro's estimate of human nature proved a distressingly accurate one. When Lydia and Miss Potton arrived by rented fiacre at the smoke-stained wall around what was left of Fruhlingzeit Sanitarium the following afternoon, they found at least five other carnages there, the drivers seated comfortably on the low stone wall across the road chatting among themselves, and a large number of fashionably dressed men and women prowling around the trampled weeds or engaged in argument with a couple of sturdy gentlemen who seemed to be guarding the gates.

  "I do not see that you have the authority to turn us away," a slim man in an overemphatic waistcoat was saying as Lydia hesitantly crossed the road. "I do not see this at all."

  "Can't do anything about that, sir." The sturdy gentleman pushed back his flat cloth cap and remained blocking the entry. Even through the comforting blur of myopia, the glimpse of blackened rafters and fallen-in walls was horrible, and the smell of cold ash lay thin and gritty on the chill air.

  "I shall write to the Neue Freie Presse about this."

  "You do that, sir."

  Lydia stepped forward hesitantly as the slim man stormed away to rejoin his party by the carriages; the sturdy gentleman fixed her with a jaundiced eye and said, in not-very-good German, "Nobody allowed in, ma'am."

  "Is... is a Mr. Halliwell here?" asked Lydia. If Dr. Fairport were officially an agent of Britain, it stood to reason the burning of his sanitarium would not go uninvestigated by the Department. It only surprised her they'd still be at it three days later. She saw the man's stance shift at the sound of the name and said, Could you tell him a Mrs. Asher is here to see him? Mrs. James Asher."

  Without her spectacles, Mr. Halliwell proved to be a magpie behemoth, a series of circles of blacks, whites, pinks, and gleaming reflections that resolved itself at four feet into a heavy, pug-nacious face and brightly humorous green eyes behind small oval lenses. A big damp hand gripped Lydia's while a second patted it moistly; the little clusters of would-be sightseers across the road glowered at this favoritism.

  "My dear Mrs. Asher!"

  "My friend, Miss Potton."

  Halliwell bowed again, an awesome sight.

  "Strange business. Deuced strange business. Your husband didn't send for you, did he?" He glanced down sidelong at her from his height, but she noticed his voice was barely above a whisper.

  She shook her head. "But the telegram he sent me on his way here gave me reason to believe that he might be in trouble. He... he wasn't here when this happened... was he?"

  The green eyes narrowed. "Why would you think he was?"

  "Because..." Lydia took a deep breath. In broad daylight and in front of half a dozen argumentative Viennese, she thought, they couldn't very well drag her away in a closed carriage. She said, very softly, "Because he said he was coming to Dr. Fairport. And because I have reason to believe Dr. Fairport was in the pay of the Austrians."

  His glance flicked across the road, then to Miss Potton- discreetly out of earshot- and back. "You don't happen," he said equally quiet, "to have mentioned this to anyone else?"

  "No. Not even to Miss Potton," she remembered to add, mindful of her companion's safety. "But I think it's true. I take it," she went on slowly, "that you haven't spoken with Dr. Asher on the subject."

  Halliwell fingered his short-clipped beard, studying her as if matching the eggplant taffeta of her gown, the mint and ecru frills of her hat, against other things. Lydia wondered how James could possibly have played at spies for as long as he had: This business of not knowing what to say or whom to say it to was both wearing and unnerving. Presumably, Ysidro would come to her rescue if Halliwell were a double agent also, provided Margaret had the wits to run for it...

  But if Margaret had been foolish enough to believe Ysidro's farrago about previous lifetimes, goodness knew what she'd do in a crisis.

  "I'm inclined to agree with you," the fat man said abruptly. "And I was starting to think so before you turned up. Just the fact that the Kundschafts Stelle hasn't let us into this place until this morning tells me there's something fishy, though of course we can't come out and say the man was working for us." He glanced again at the loitering tourists across the road. "Would you ladies be so good as to meet me for dinner at Donizetti's on the Herrengasse this evening at eight? We'll be able to talk there." He nodded back toward the burnt-out shell of the house, where another man could be seen slowly picking his way through the mess of collapsed beams and bricks. "I can tell you now no one's found any trace of your husband... and what we have found is not anything a lady should see."

  "God knows what the Kundschafts Stelle found before they let us in." Halliwell's small, rather womanish mouth pursed as he removed his gloves. In the saffron- drenched Renoir of color that was Donizetti's without spectacles, he seemed to fit in, becoming curiously invisible in a way that he hadn't in the unfamiliar environment of open air and bare woods. He reminded Lydia rather of some of her uncles, who grew like fleshy pale pot plants in their London clubs and never emerged into the light of day.

  "I'll tell you the truth, Mrs. Asher-if your husband were at Fruhhngzeit when it burned, nobody's said anything about it to us. They've had the place closed off for two days. It was twenty-four hours before they even let the police in.

  Typical. When the Emperor's son blew his brains out twenty years ago, taking a seventeen-year-old girl with him for reasons best known to himself, the original story was that he'd died of 'heart failure.' Government agents and the girl's own uncle propped her corpse into a carriage with a broom handle up her back to keep reporters from learning two bodies instead of one were found at the scene.

  "How did your husband know this Farren fellow, and how did you find out about Fairport?"

  At this point the table captain appeared again, waiter and boy in tow, and a long and Byzantine discussion ensued concerning the concoction of Tafelspitz and how the canard Strasbourg was prepared this evening, and the relative tartness of the sour cherry soup. Rather to Lydia's surprise, Margaret, who had all day been her tongue-tied self, plunged into the conversation with the absorbed interest of a fellow gourmet, winning the approval of both Halliwell and the table captain-the Herr Ober, Halliwell called him-with her opinions on capers and beurre brule. It was, Lydia reflected, an entirely new side to her travelin
g companion than she had so far seen.

  Only when the little train of servitors was gone did Halliwell turn back to her.

  Lydia, after a moment's pause to collect her thoughts, sketched a bowdlerized version of the telegrams she had received, the articles they had prompted her to read, her realization that Fairport would certainly be interested in Ernchester's pathology and almost as certainly would be working for, or with, Karolyi. "I don't know what, or how much, of Farren's abilities are connected with his belief that he is a vampire," she concluded carefully. "But I know Dr. Asher considered him a very dangerous man, dangerous enough to warrant his dropping everything to pursue him to Paris to keep him from selling his services to the Emperor."

  "Hmm. For which he got small thanks from old Streatham, I daresay. How did you know to come to me? Asher didn't know my name until he arrived."

  "A friend of my husband's," Lydia said, not sure whether she was telling the truth or not.

  "Your husband had dinner with me in this cafe Tuesday night," said Halliwell.

  "There'd been trouble in Paris, one of our operatives was killed. Your husband seemed to think this Farren had done it, but word got to the police that your husband had something to do with it, even before the French police sent for him. Karolyi's work, of course. Asher spent the night in jail, which isn't as uncomfortable as it would be in London, and was going to stay the night at the sanitarium after he'd had a look around the Altstadt Wednesday. That was usual- the place was a safe house. Your husband had stayed there before."

  "And did he?" She picked a little at the delicate crepe on the plate before her, her appetite gone.

  "I gather he didn't. Fairport showed up at the firm in the morning asking if Asher had been heard from."