by James Becker
She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts, then spoke again. ‘If you search the literature, belief in vampires, or creatures that act in some way like vampires, seems to be endemic. Almost every culture, on every continent, has some kind of a legend of this type. And that includes places you wouldn’t normally expect, like Australasia and China, and even Mexico and the Caribbean.
‘And it wasn’t actually Bram Stoker who first wrote about it. In eighteen sixteen, almost a century before Stoker, Lord Byron was holidaying near Lake Geneva with friends and suggested they each write a ghost story. Byron came up with the idea of a tale about a vampire and one of his friends, in fact his personal physician, a man named John Polidori, picked it up and expanded it. This was the first time a vampyre — he spelt the word with a “y” instead of an “i” — had appeared in a piece of fiction written in English. But nearly a century earlier, in seventeen thirty-two, the word “vampyre” had first appeared in print in Britain, but then the word was being used as a political symbol.’
‘How come you know so much about vampires?’ Bronson demanded.
Angela grinned at him. ‘I read a lot,’ she said. ‘Anyway, what I was going to say was that even as late as the first millennium, the world was still a very mysterious place, and people were looking around for explanations for natural phenomena that we now understand perfectly. They still believed that prayers to a god or spirit, or even a sacrifice, were absolutely necessary to ensure the rising of the sun or a good harvest, and the end of winter was still greeted with relief and celebrations. That was the kind of climate in which belief in vampires first arose, when superstition and belief in supernatural events and beings were the norm, not the exception.’
‘But a bloodsucking creature of the night? Where the hell did that come from?’ Bronson objected.
‘Nobody knows. It’s been a part of the folklore of Europe, and especially of central Europe, since records began. But it’s possible that this kind of creature was first assumed to exist as a reasonable explanation for something that otherwise made no sense.’
‘Like what?’
‘Post-mortem changes to a body, for instance. If for any reason a grave was opened a short while after the burial had taken place, the people who looked at the corpse wouldn’t have understood what they were seeing. There might well be blood in and near the mouth, and the hair and nails would have grown, and the body would appear to be plump and well nourished. Medical science now knows exactly why these strange effects occur. After death, blood may be expelled from all orifices, not just the mouth, as a normal part of the decay process. The receding skin can make the hair and nails of the corpse appear longer, and the gases created by decomposition will bloat the body — you know that.’
Bronson nodded. As a policeman, he’d grown used to seeing corpses in varying stages of decay.
‘Now put yourself in the position of somebody who’s just opened a fresh grave. You see a corpse that looks well fed, with hair and nails growing, and with blood on the mouth and face. Knowing nothing about what is actually happening inside the dead body, the most reasonable explanation might be that the corpse isn’t a corpse at all, and that somehow it’s managing to escape from the grave at night and is feeding on the blood of living things, hence the blood around its mouth. And if somebody in the neighbourhood is suffering from anaemia or consumption or some other wasting disease, you might also conclude that that person was the victim. Even the unexplained deaths of cattle or sheep might be attributed to the actions of a vampire.
‘And that’s probably all it would take for the legend to be born. As far as I know, nobody knows exactly when belief in vampires first started, but it quickly spread all over Europe, and was concentrated in Hungary and the Slav countries in the early eighteenth century. It was probably those legends that Byron, and later Bram Stoker, picked up on. And we do know that the word “vampire” itself was derived from the Serbo-Croat word vampir, and it entered the English language through either French or German, probably also in the eighteenth century. It’s also true that many of the other Slavik and middle European languages, like Bulgarian and Croatian, had very similar words to describe the same phenomenon. But the actual root of the word probably comes from the Old Russian word upir, which was first recorded in the eleventh century.’
‘And what about crucifixes, garlic and a stake through the heart?’ Bronson asked.
‘You can thank Bram Stoker and Dracula for that,’ Angela said, ‘though I suppose the crucifix and the stake do make some kind of sense. A body arising from the grave to feed on the living is obviously demonic, and people might well think that such a creature would be frightened away by the symbol of the Christian religion. Driving a stake through the chest would destroy the heart and prevent it from circulating the blood, and that would kill the vampire as well. There’s another theory that impaling it with a stake would pin the vampire’s body to the earth and stop it moving.’
‘And garlic?’
‘I’ve no idea, but garlic was supposed to be a cure, or at least a preventative, for the plague, so there might be a link there. Actually, garlic’s been renowned as a deterrent against vampires in almost every culture that has legends about the creatures, but nobody seems to know why that should be. And before you ask, I’m fairly certain that vampires being destroyed by sunlight, not being visible in a mirror and not casting a shadow are all either creations of Mr Stoker’s imagination or embellishments added by later writers.’
‘Are you saying that vampires were linked to the plague?’ Bronson asked.
Angela nodded. ‘At one time, almost everything was linked to the plague. The Black Death arrived in Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century, and nobody had the slightest idea what caused it. All they knew was that it was incredibly contagious, and that once you’d got it, it was effectively a death sentence. Wild theories abounded about the possible cause, everything from an unfavourable alignment of the planets to earthquakes that released foul air from the interior of the earth, and even a kind of ethnic cleansing orchestrated by aliens.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m not. There were numerous reports of evil-looking, black-clad figures standing at the edges of towns waving a kind of wand that emitted a noxious fog, and anyone that the substance touched subsequently died of the plague. The accounts sound remarkably like descriptions of men wearing protective suits dispensing a chemical or biological weapon through some sort of pressurized dispersal system. Witnesses described the strangers as acting as if they were scything, swinging the wand from side to side, and it’s actually that image which gave us the expression “the grim reaper”.’
‘Your breadth of knowledge never ceases to amaze me,’ Bronson said.
Angela smiled at him. ‘Well, history is my thing,’ she said. ‘It’s the minutiae, the details, which have always fascinated me. In some countries, particularly in Germany and Switzerland, the Jews were blamed for the plague, and records show that there were several massacres in which they were rounded up and killed, sometimes by being burned alive. Religious zealots believed the plague had been sent by God, and for some time flagellation became a popular cure. Travelling bands of flagellants roamed Europe, flogging themselves in the name of God, and in many cases very efficiently helping to spread the plague at the same time.
‘Perhaps the most common belief was that it was somehow caused by a miasma, by corrupted air, which harks back to that grim reaper image, and many of the preventative measures put in place were intended to combat this, to try to purify the air that people were breathing. So houses were washed with scented water, timber that was known to give off a pleasant smell, like juniper, was burned in fireplaces, and people carried garlic and vinegar to ward off the contagion. But, bizarrely, other people believed that the plague was spread by vampires, and extraordinary measures were taken to try to combat this.’
‘So we’ve come full circle,’ Bronson suggested. ‘We’re back to the woman in the grave
.’
‘Exactly,’ Angela agreed. ‘The death toll from the Black Death was simply enormous. For obvious reasons, no accurate figures have survived, but it’s been conservatively estimated that in some towns where the plague took hold, as much as half, sometimes even two thirds, of the population died. This meant that individual burial of bodies was simply impossible. The dead were tossed into huge communal graves — plague pits. But for anyone suspected of being a vampire, special precautions had to be taken, to avoid the vampire feeding on the other victims buried alongside it in the pit. And perhaps the commonest preventative measure was to jam a brick between the vampire’s jaws.
‘Two or three years ago, right here in Venice, a plague pit was discovered and excavated, and one of the skulls from a female skeleton was recovered intact, with the brick still jammed into her mouth. That body dated from the sixteenth century, because although the Black Death was at its height in Europe in the fourteenth century, there were recurrences of the epidemic right up to the eighteenth century, and mass graves have been found that date from this whole period.’
‘Do you think somebody believed that the woman in the grave we saw tonight on the Isola di San Michele was a vampire, and applied an ancient remedy to ensure that she would stay dead and buried? So why did they also cut off her head?’
‘That was another traditional way of killing a vampire. Because they sucked blood from their victims, removing the head from the body would prevent them from feeding.’
‘So in her case it was a kind of belt and braces — the brick in the mouth and decapitation.’
Angela nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘According to legend, most vampires were heretics, criminals or victims of suicide, and in most cases such people would be denied burial in a Christian graveyard because of religious sensibilities. The tomb that cracked open was quite an expensive burial chamber and, as far as I could see, she was the only occupant. If she had been suspected of being a vampire in life, even if she came from a wealthy and aristocratic family, she would probably have been buried in an unmarked grave on unconsecrated ground. That’s the first point.
‘The other thing that struck me was that the vertebra in her neck had crumbled when it was smashed. I’m not a forensic pathologist, obviously, but that suggests to me that the body was already at least partially skeletonized when the head was removed.’
‘So you think she was just buried in the usual way, and then several years later somebody decided that she might have been a vampire, cracked open the tomb, and did their best to ensure that she would stay there for eternity.’
‘That makes sense,’ Angela said, ‘except for three things. Did you notice anything odd about the grave?’
‘You mean apart from the decapitated body and the skull with the brick rammed into its jaw? No, not really.’
Angela sighed. ‘Almost every tomb I looked at on that island had either a crucifix inscribed on the slab covering the grave or a separate stone cross standing at one end of it. That grave had neither, and that’s unusual.’
Bronson looked puzzled, but didn’t say anything.
‘And the remains of those pottery jars we saw in the grave suggest something slightly different about the original burial,’ Angela went on. ‘I have a feeling that she probably was buried as a vampire, but by people who didn’t find that concept in any way offensive, a kind of vampire cult, if you like.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I think those jars were deliberately smashed when the grave was opened later. Pottery was never normally placed inside Christian tombs, but if it had been, in a sealed environment, it should have remained intact. The fact that those jars — there were at least two of them — were broken suggests a deliberate act. And why would a pair of sealed pottery vessels be placed in a tomb? To me, the only thing that makes sense is that they were there for the benefit of the dead woman. And if they thought she was a vampire, they would probably have contained blood, most likely human blood. I’d love to get my hands on them and analyse what’s left of the contents.’
‘Are you serious?’ Bronson asked, startled. ‘A vampire cult?’
‘They’re not unknown,’ Angela said, ‘though I’m not aware of any operating in Venice around the time our woman was buried. The inscription on the lid of her tomb was badly weathered, but I did take a few pictures of it, and I’m pretty sure the year she died was eighteen twenty-five. At least that bit of the inscription was still legible. And I’m guessing that the grave was opened again before the end of the nineteenth century, and that the ritual killing of the vampire inside it took place then.’
Bronson leaned back and stretched. The chair he was sitting in was cramped and really too small for him. ‘It seems to me that you’re deducing the existence of an entire — and pretty bizarre — secret society on the basis of a few bits of smashed pottery and one crumbled neck vertebra on a two-hundred-year-old skeleton.’
‘No, there’s something else.’ Angela reached into her handbag, and pulled out a small, heavily discoloured black object, which appeared to be bound in leather. ‘This was lying under the body,’ she said. ‘I think it was originally inside a wooden box, probably placed under the coffin, but over the centuries both the coffin and the box rotted away. I spotted what was left of the box underneath the skeleton, but when I touched it, the wood crumbled away to nothing and I saw this.’
‘So now you’re a grave robber,’ Bronson said.
‘I trained as an archaeologist,’ Angela replied, ‘and “archaeologist” is just a polite word for a tomb raider. It’s what we do. And if I hadn’t picked it up, it would have either been sealed up again in the grave or taken by some tourist who would have no idea what it was.’
‘And what is it?’
‘I think,’ Angela said, ‘it’s a kind of diary.’
5
The dark blue powerboat was speeding through the inky darkness of the Venetian night, heading south, past San Clemente, towards a small island situated some distance from its nearest neighbour.
This island only covered three or four acres, and was dominated by a large and impressive Venetian mansion, a five-storey edifice in grey stone that sat at its highest point. Directly below the house was a substantial stone-built jetty capable of berthing perhaps a dozen powerboats. At first sight, the jetty seemed ridiculously large, but the lagoon provided the only means of access to and from the property.
Four other vessels were already secured to the bollards that edged the jetty, but the driver of the blue powerboat had plenty of space to manoeuvre. He brought the boat alongside the landing stage, put the gearbox into reverse, and expertly stopped the vessel close enough for one of the other men to step ashore. In moments, both mooring lines were secured and the engine shut down.
The driver assisted his two passengers in manhandling the rolled carpet on to the jetty, where they lowered it to the ground.
‘I think she can walk from here,’ one of the men said, unrolling the carpet and pulling Marietta Perini to her feet. The man with the taser checked her wrists were still securely bound, ripped off her gag, then aimed the weapon at her and squeezed the trigger. The girl shrank back as the evil blue spark jumped from one electrode to the other with an audible crack.
‘What do you want with me?’ she said, her voice trembling with fear.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ the man snapped. ‘Now, do exactly what we tell you, or-’ He triggered the taser again, then pointed towards the house. ‘Go up there,’ he ordered.
Marietta stared around her, at the small island with its grass-covered slopes, clumps of bushes and occasional small trees, and at the house itself. Beyond it lay the waters of the Venetian lagoon. Pockets of mist were drifting over the surface, driven by light breezes. She looked at the pitiless faces of the three men who had abducted her from the city of her birth. A surge of pure terror coursed through her b
ody as she realized she was beyond help.
‘I have a friend,’ she said desperately. ‘I was on my way to visit him. When I don’t arrive, he’ll call the police.’
The man with the taser smiled at her, but it was not a smile of amusement. ‘I’ve no doubt he will, and I’m sure the carabinieri will make all the right noises and do their best to reassure him. But we left no clues, and nobody saw what we did. It’s as if you simply vanished from the face of the earth. The police will never find us, or you. And even if they did,’ he added, ‘it wouldn’t make any difference, because you’re not the first.’
Marietta stared at him, and then she screamed, a cry of terror that stopped only when the last vestige of breath had been driven from her lungs.
‘Feel better now? Get moving. We have people waiting for you.’
Marietta gasped for breath and stared round again, looking desperately for anything or anyone that might offer her some hope. But there was nothing.
6
‘A diary? You mean a vampire diary?’ Bronson asked. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I’ve only had a very quick look at it,’ Angela said, ‘but as far as I can tell it contains a list of dates and events, which is pretty much a definition of a diary, I suppose.’
‘So what are these events? If they’re written in Italian, you’ll probably need my help to translate them.’
‘Actually, I won’t,’ Angela said, ‘unless you’ve added Latin to your repertoire of languages. At the time this burial originally took place, Latin was still being used as an international language, and it remained the language of classical scholarship right through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even today some documents and treatises are composed in Latin, and of course it’s still the official written language of the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican.’
She leaned forward and handed the book carefully to Bronson.
‘Our woman was buried in the first half of the nineteenth century. If she came from an educated and aristocratic family, which she probably did if her tomb is anything to go by, she might well have spoken Italian or a local dialect in daily life, but she would certainly have been able to read Latin, and probably would have used it for all her letters and written communications. Frankly, I’d have been amazed if the language in the book was anything other than Latin.’