The Pierced Heart: A Novel

by Shepherd, Lynn

  Charles tosses two pennies on the counter and pushes the tankard away.

  “ ’Ere,” says the landlord, in wounded tones. “That’s my best ale, that is.”

  But Charles has already left.

  Back down Haymarket, across Trafalgar Square and towards the Strand, where he calls in at Buckingham Street for a few moments to check on his uncle, and then heads north through Covent Garden where the costers are just heading raucously home, women in twos and threes smoking clay pipes, and the men leading exhausted horses thankful for an empty cart. The noise dips as Charles passes the Bow Street police-station, where the pavements are (unsurprisingly) a little clearer of trodden cabbage and the doorsteps a little emptier of drunks, and once he has skirted the edge of Seven Dials and Tom-All-Alone’s the neighbourhood nicens and the passers-by with it, and having safely dodged the cabs and omnibuses on Oxford Street he’s very soon turning into Great Russell Street, and the serene classical colonnades of the British Museum. Well, perhaps not completely serene, since the façade will not be finally completed until 1852, and the shouts of the workmen and the clangs of hammers rise above the babble of the crowds gathered about the steps for one of the special Exhibition openings of the King’s Library. Charles has been coming to this building for years, and used to live only a few streets away, so he ably evades the straggling bystanders and makes his way inside. The reading room is cool and quiet after the heat outside. Double height, book-lined, with a gallery running round the upper levels, and an ornate coffered ceiling rather reminiscent of its counterpart at Castle Reisenberg. Though that particular resemblance Charles crushes before it can gain any mind.

  Most of the desks in the room are unoccupied, the sun having tempted even the scholars to laziness. There’s only one or two portly stalwarts Charles knows of old, and a much younger man, with dark red hair and a little pointed beard, who is just taking his seat. Charles goes to the desk at the far end of the room and asks for the attendant’s assistance in finding a work on the folktales of the countries of the central European continent. The pasty-faced librarian (who has certainly not been spending any time in the sun) looks thankful to have something useful to do, and after consulting various catalogues and running up and down various book-steps, returns to Charles’s side with a small but clearly very aged book. The edges of the pages are jagged and badly cut, the typeface heavy and Gothic, and the paper brown with dryness and years. More to the present point, at least, the title is in German. Charles is about to ask whether the man can help with translation as well as tracking down, when one of the senior librarians comes a few yards into the room and beckons the young assistant away.

  Charles sits down at the nearest desk with a sigh, reduced to the state of a child with a picture-book. Because there are, he discovers at once, pictures in this book, even if they are only woodcuts and many of them very crude. Charles smiles, rather loftily, at page after page of witches in pantomime pointed hats, some flying on broomsticks, some feeding their supposed feline familiars (the majority of which look no more menacing than Charles’s own cat), and others on their knees, lining up—as far as he can make out—to kiss the devil’s protruding arse. But his smile dies when he turns a page to find a young girl lying in an open grave with a stake driven through her heart, and a man taking an axe to her throat, as a huge bat hovers menacingly above him in a darkening sky, and a wolf-like dog-beast grovels in the dirt.

  Charles studies the illustration intently for a few minutes, making a note or two in his pocket-book, and glancing up every few moments to see if the librarian shows signs of returning. It’s then that he hears a discreet cough from his right, and sees the young man with the red hair is looking in his direction.

  “I could not help noticing,” the stranger says, in an undertone. “You appear to require some assistance, perhaps with the language of the book you have requested? I am fluent in the German tongue, and would be happy to assist you.”

  Charles gets to his feet at once, and moves along to the chair next to the young man’s desk.

  “I would indeed be most grateful. These are the pages that interest me,” he says, opening the book at the image of the grave.

  The young man scans the text, then glances at Charles, clearly intrigued at his choice of subject-matter.

  “I am writing a novel,” says Charles quickly. “I thought I might set my tale in some wild and remote region, where such ludicrous beliefs still hold sway. You know how avid the public is for sensation.”

  The young man nods: Charles’s rather grubby hands and ill-matched clothes clearly pass muster for a writer, and especially an unpublished one.

  “I see,” he says with a smile. “All is thus easily explained!”

  Turning to the book again he flicks backwards a few pages, then forwards again. “This section of the volume treats of a species of evil spirit known as stregoica. They are the souls of the Undead, condemned to walk the earth forever and know no rest. They are able, if need arise, to run as a wolf, or fly as a bat, or pass through walls like the mist of the air, but preserve in all other outward respects the form and appearance of their human incarnation. They betray themselves only by the fact that they cast no shadow, can abide no mirror, and are never seen to eat the food of the earth.”

  The young man turns another page. “These spirits may be destroyed only by filling the mouth with the flowers of the garlic plant, and by taking such brutal means as you see depicted here. Those who resort to such methods act only in pity and compassion. To permit the souls of those they love to rest as true dead, and take their place among the angels.” He smiles. “Or so such simple people believe.”

  “And a stake pierced through the heart—that is the only method that may be employed?”

  The young man shakes his head. “No, it is equally efficacious to remove the heart altogether and burn it. These measures—it is believed—will prevent the stregoica from leaving the grave wherein they are first laid, and prevent them from commencing their unholy predation upon the bodies of the living.”

  “And how do they do that—what form does that take?”

  The young man raises an eyebrow. “You do not know? I had assumed you had already discovered as much. The stregoica draw their sustenance by drinking blood, sinking their teeth into the throats of their hapless victims, and rendering them, in their turn, accursed. The Undead may thus be identified by the small puncture wounds which may be observed upon their necks, which do not close, and do not heal. It is the blood of young women the stregoica desire most, and that of untouched virgins that savours sweetest of all. They will spare no effort to come by it. Or so it says here.”

  Charles sits back. If it wasn’t clear to him before, it is now. “Vampires,” he says softly, shaking his head. “Vampires.”

  So much is his mind working, that it’s a moment before he realises the young man is still watching him.

  “It is the ideal topic,” he says hastily, flushing a little. “Indeed I am surprised it has not been chosen before.”

  “But did not the Lord Byron commence such a tale? I seem to recall a title of that kind.”

  Charles says nothing; he happens to have rather an extensive knowledge—of that summer on Lake Geneva when The Vampyre was begun, and how both that and another far more famous book came to be written, but it is not a subject he will discuss with strangers. Not now, not ever.

  “You are correct,” he answers eventually. “Lord Byron’s story was completed some time later, by his doctor, John Polidori. But that novel is of a wholly different order. It is—quite literally—bloodless compared with what you have just told me. Compared with what a modern writer might make of it. As I said, the public is avid for sensation—or at least the female component thereof. I cannot believe any rational or educated man would give credence to such absurd and outdated superstition.”

  The two of them exchange a smile—being, of course, both rational and educated men—and the stranger hands Charles back the book. It’s a sma
ll volume, and their fingers touch, and there’s a moment of clumsiness—a moment when neither draws back, and then both look away. And when Charles does at last glance up and their eyes meet there is—something, some unspoken message that makes him redden and pull back, just as the other man appears to be making a movement, so slight as to be almost imperceptible, towards him. Both are blushing now, and the young man covers his own embarrassment by making a great fuss of extracting his card from the pocket of his coat.

  “If I may be of further assistance, please do not hesitate. I will be in London until my own work here is concluded.”

  Charles looks at it, then tucks the card into the pocket of his coat. “I am afraid I have omitted to bring my own cards with me this morning. But I am indebted to you for your help.”

  It’s a lie—or at least part of it is, since he has those cards in his pocket just now. And even though he is genuinely grateful for the young man’s help, he has no desire to see him again, far less tell him where he lives. Out on the steps he takes a deep breath and tries to collect his thoughts. It’s all nonsense—clearly it’s all nonsense, but he can see exactly what the likes of O’Riordan will make of it, and pure reason is no antidote to that sort of idiocy. No, the only way to confound this ludicrous theory is by finding a better one. The real one. And in the meantime he can at least put a question in O’Riordan’s mind—make him think twice before he makes a public and permanent fool of himself. Because that’s what he’ll do, Charles has no doubt of that. But far better for all concerned to end this madness before it ever gets that far—tell O’Riordan there was nothing even remotely resembling bite marks on that corpse in the Vine Street morgue and put a stop to his mischief-making once and for all. But to do that, he’ll have to go back and check the body again. And find some good excuse for doing so. Because the one thing he can’t afford to do is admit the truth. Even Sam would laugh in his face if he knew what he was looking for. He can hardly believe it himself.

  His leg is aching now, and he elects to get an omnibus back across town, forgetful, in his haste, how slow a journey that’s likely to be. The ’bus rumbles jerkily, stopping every few yards, down Oxford Street and into Leicester Square. Piccadilly is still in full mercantile mode. The gas-lights are glowing golden in the windows of some of the city’s most fashionable and expensive shops, and those stopping to browse are equally so, in their silks, and satins, and scents. But less than half a mile away, as Charles well knows, it’s a very different story, in the unlit alleys and passage-ways mazing between the main street and the Market, where two of the girls were found, and one of them, Charles is sure, met her death.

  It’s gone six when he finally gets to Vine Street, and the attendant does look at him a bit oddly when he asks to be let into the morgue for the second time that day.

  “I was just locking up, sir. You can’t be too careful.”

  “I know, Pye, and I’m sorry. But I will only be a few minutes.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve extinguished the lamps—”

  “Don’t worry—if you can find me a bull’s-eye lantern, that will more than suffice.”

  “Very well, sir. I’ll be waiting for you in the front office.”

  And had you been with him, a few minutes later, when he pushed open the door to the darkened morgue, you might have been forgiven for believing—just for a moment—in the possibility of undeath. For as the swing of his lamp sends spectral shadows leering from wall to wall, the corpses under their stained sheets seem to move, and flinch, and yearn for life, and the dull eyes of the dead faces glitter suddenly with an impossible wakefulness. Charles hesitates a moment in the doorway, then swallows hard and makes his way—careful in the dimness on the slime-slopped floor—to where the headless girl’s remains still lie.

  He stands the lantern on the edge of the slab, and lifts the sheet. Then takes a deep breath and bends over her. It’s almost unbearable to breathe so close, but he has to have proof, not just supposition, however rationally founded. He has to look O’Riordan in the face and refute his ridiculous theory with actual observation. And at first, it is exactly as he remembered—so little left of the neck it’s unlikely any such marks could remain, even if they had once been there, and the rest so blotched with dirt and putrefaction that he would never have seen them anyway. It’s tempting to leave it at that—to get out of this disgusting place as quickly as he can—but he is a scientist, and a purist, and he will do this properly or not at all. He goes across to a table that holds a jug and basin, and dips his handkerchief in the water. Then he carries it, dripping, back to the corpse, and starts to ease the filth from the base of the neck. And as the muck lifts away he finds himself staring—staring in a desperate disbelief—

  “What the bloody ’ell are you doin’ ’ere?”

  The door is open, and standing in its streaming light is Sam. Sam and behind him the attendant and two red-faced young constables, carrying a stretcher.

  “I—I—Well—”

  But he is saved from further immediate embarrassment, when one of the young constables loses his grip for a moment and the stretcher tilts dangerously.

  “Watch what yer doin’ there, Madsen,” says Sam quickly, with all the sternness of newly acquired rank. “Let’s get ’er onto a slab, shall we, before there’s a mis’ap.”

  The two officers manoeuvre the stretcher around the cadavers to one of the few empty spaces, and then retreat smartly to the door. The younger is already looking greenish, and coughing into his handkerchief.

  “Found this one in the Market not an hour since,” continues Sam, seemingly unaware of his friend’s discomfiture, or his unaccustomed silence. “Fort it’d could o’ been anovver one for a minute. We’ve got extra men patrollin’ there at the moment, not just ’cause of the killin’s but ’cause the knobs want the town to look all clean ’n’ tidy for all these bloody tourists. No-one wants to trip over a tart while they’re out shoppin’ for souvenirs, least of all the old hags that do the Park at night. Sooner the soddin’ Exhibition’s over and done wiv the better if you ask me. Ain’t been nuffin’ but more bloody work, and that’s a fact. Though when you look at the state those old crones are in I don’t know why our killer didn’t pick on one of ’em. None of ’em are in any state to put up much of a struggle. It must be young ones he wants, though why he does what ’e does to ’em, Gawd alone knows.”

  “You said this wasn’t another victim, though?” asks Charles, recovering some composure and moving towards the body.

  “I were there meself, as it ’appens. We were just movin’ on one of the old tarts when anovver of ’em comes staggerin’ out of a side alley, screamin’ and pointin’ back behind her as if all the devils in ’ell were after ’er. By the time I got to ’er she were collapsed on the ground, babblin’ and sayin’ she’d seen some bloke runnin’ off towards Piccadilly. And that’s when I saw this one. She were lyin’ further along the alley, face-down in the dirt. Can’t o’ been long ’cause she were still warm.”

  He takes the sacking from the body. Her dress is poor-quality fabric, and there’s a little flower tattoo on her ankle. You wouldn’t need to be a detective to deduce this woman’s profession. She must have been pretty, living, but her red lips are twisted in pain, and her eyes wide in terror. Her dyed hair is lurid in the glare and her skin is as white as leprosy; “The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she.”

  “The tattoo might ’elp us identify ’er, at least,” says Sam. “But there were no blood at the scene, and no signs of injury, not that I could see. And given that this one is most definitely still in possession of ’er ’ead I fink we can safely assume this ain’t got nuffin’ to do wiv our killer.”

  But that’s not what Charles is staring at. For there, on her neck, are two small round holes. White at the edges. And unhealed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lucy’s journal

  THE NORTH OF ENGLAND, 23 MARCH

  IT IS MANY days since I have written in this journal, days in which we have tra
velled across Europe by train and carriage, and seen, once again, the cities that peopled my childhood. Prague, Leipzig, Heidelberg, Paris. I have felt so much better since we left Vienna—felt so much more myself—that I would have lingered far longer in Paris, in the hopes that my recovery might be supported by surroundings I always loved, but my father would not hear of it, saying that we had passages booked for England, and business to be conducted there, though what that business was he did not say, assuring me only that he had arranged no spectacle and planned no performance. It was the following day that we set out once more, north to Ostende, and the ship for England. Three days we were at sea, the water calm and the winds gentle, until the captain came to us one morning as we breakfasted, saying he believed the weather might be set to change, and though he hoped to make landfall before the storm came, we should secure our possessions as well as we might, and make ready to retire belowdecks should need demand it. I found it hard to believe so great a tempest could be coming, seeing the white mares’ tails high in the pearly blue sky and the wide sweep of sea barely rippling in the breeze, but the man had some knowledge that I did not possess, for by sunset the clouds had amassed into great heaving battlements of every colour—red, violet, orange, and green, flaming at the west in the dying sun, and darkening behind us as the storm gathered pace. We could see, far ahead in the distance, the lights of the little town my father told me was our destination, and as the wind began to rise the captain rigged the ship as high as he dared, desperate to outrun the storm and make port before nightfall. But there was no time. There was a moment of deathly stillness, when the wind seemed to die in the sails, and then all at once we were struggling to descend the steps to our quarters, as the ship climbed and plummeted in waves twenty feet high, and water bucketed over the gunwales. I could hear sea-birds wailing like lost spirits above our heads, and the deafening boom boom boom as the prow thundered repeatedly against the sea. The captain had by then lashed himself to the helm, for fear of being swept overboard, and it must have taken a will of iron to remain there, at his post, as the ship raced madly towards shore. The entrance to the harbour was narrow and perilous, and I clung to my father as the wind threw us, again and again, towards a great flat reef on which so many past ships had foundered.