Empire of Fear

by Brian Stableford

  ‘There was another message too, which I was asked to bring to thee,’ she said. ‘Wilt thou see that the vampire lady and her maid are fed, but do not leave them together, for my master does not want the lady to have her ration of blood. Take Selim’s food too. He is guarding them.’

  Noell frowned, and became curt again, saying that he would do as he was asked. Then he sat down on the stool, and made it clear that he wanted her to go. She hesitated, but then Brother Martin came in, vespers having been concluded, and she quickly went away from his censorious glare. The monk looked sharply at Noell, too, but Noell took no heed of the appearance of displeasure. He hardly spared Martin a glance as he went to take up his station, seizing one of the levers with which he and the brother would haul the bags of food out of the cauldrons and away from the fire.

  Later, Noell took the food to the cells as he had been asked. He carried two trenchers, while one of the almoner’s boys carried a third for the Turk. First, he went in to Mary White, and though the door remained open, denying them any measure of privacy, she flew to him and took him by the shoulders as he laid down her food.

  ‘Oh Master Cordery,’ she said. ‘You must help us, for they mean to burn my lady, and I dare not think what will happen to me!’ She was terrified, and he knew that the presence of the man without a nose could only feed her fears with an extra measure of horror.

  He could not bring himself to offer her false comfort, though he knew it might be kinder if he did. He only replied: ‘I must see to the lady first, Mary. I will come back in a moment.’

  She let him go, and watched him while he closed her door, without setting the bolt back in place. The Turk, who was already shovelling food into his mouth, watched him but did not speak. Noell did not know whether Selim could speak English, or whether he could speak at all, so he said nothing to excuse or explain himself. He had to set the lady’s supper down while he removed the bar securing her cell, and he felt the Turk’s eyes upon his back as he opened the door and went in.

  The Lady Cristelle looked at the meat, not only without enthusiasm, but with suspicion. She was still seated on the bench, exactly as he had seen her earlier in the day. The scar on her face was already fading, and would soon be gone.

  ‘It is only meat, my lady,’ he said, interpreting her anxiety. ‘There is no poison in it. I saw it prepared, and no hand but mine has touched it.’

  She favoured him with a wan smile. ‘So they are less afraid of me now,’ she said. ‘They will let me regain my strength, because they think me helpless in my imprisonment. I think I would rather they persisted, so that I could take refuge in the deep sleep.’

  ‘Can you not?’ he asked, genuinely curious.

  She looked up at him, her expression unfathomable. ‘Have they sent you, then, to question me with cunning? In this case, it hardly matters. I cannot seek the deep sleep; it must seek me. It is not something that we do, but something which happens to us. If I am denied blood, as the pirate seems to intend, then I will eventually fall into the sleep, as I would if he fed me more poison. We are all, in our various fashions, prisoners of our being. But do not wait here, Master Cordery – Mary needs you more than I, and you must do what you can to help her.’

  He was suspicious of her apparent concern, not knowing whether it was mere show, intended to impress him. Vampire women were famed for the subtleties of their seductions and the heartlessness of their betrayals. He dared not take what she said at face value. If all he had been told of vampires was true, she could not care at all what happened to a common servant.

  He left the cell, and secured the door behind him. He looked at the Turk, who was stabbing the point of his knife into a piece of meat with surprising delicacy and precision. He went back into Mary White’s cell.

  She had not yet touched her food, and was waiting impatiently for his return. ‘What do they mean to do?’ she asked, in an agony of fearful anticipation. She did not come to take hold of him again, but stood five feet away, her hands on her shoulders, crossed over her breasts as if she were hugging herself.

  ‘I do not know,’ he told her. ‘But the monks would not see you harmed, and even a pirate crew has some respect for a house of God. Langoisse is not a rough man, and would not kill you simply for the sake of adding one more murder to his soul’s burden of sin.’

  ‘But you will help me, will you not? You will not let them hurt me?’

  Why, thought Noell, she thinks me one of them, an outlaw among outlaws!

  ‘I will do whatever I can to preserve you from harm,’ he told her.

  ‘And my lady too?’ Her voice was doubtful, as if she dared not hope for reassurance.

  ‘It is not my wish to see anyone killed, or hurt,’ he told her, ‘not even the vampire. You must eat, if you can. The food will warm you, and give you strength.’

  She nodded, too eagerly, and sat down upon the bed, taking up the trencher from the floor where he had set it down. He went out of the cell, and after a moment’s pause, picked up the bar which sealed the door and slotted it in place. Then he looked again at the Turk, who was watching him incuriously while he ate. As Noell went back along the corridor he felt those eyes, made monstrous by their scarred and rutted setting, following the course of his retreat. The boy, who had waited for him, was almost trembling with fear as he walked alongside.

  In the refectory, where he was to take his own meal, Noell was called to the high table by the abbot. Langoisse was sitting on the abbot’s right hand, where Quintus was normally stationed, and the ancient Brother Innocent was displaced from his station by the pirate’s mistress.

  ‘I must ask you to undertake a mission on behalf of the abbey,’ said the abbot, in a tone whose evenness could not conceal an underlying anxiety. ‘Tomorrow, you must go into the town, to help in arranging a passage to Ireland for our … guests. It is undesirable to involve the bailiff or any of the tenant farmers who work the monastery lands, and we are agreed that you are the one most suited to the task. You will be provided with an appropriate letter of authority.’

  Noell glanced at Langoisse, who was watching him carefully. It was probable that the pirate had asked for him, though what the abbot said about the inadvisability of involving the bailiff, who normally acted as the intermediary in matters of monastery business, was undoubtedly true. It would be for the best if news of the abbey’s invasion could be kept securely within its walls. The reference to the tenant farmers was a veiled plea for circumspection and secrecy, though Noell had his own reasons for discretion whenever he went abroad. He felt that he was being subjected to a new trial, and that his performance would be under strict examination from all concerned.

  Why, he asked silently of an invisible witness, may I not simply be ignored, while all this vile business comes to its conclusion? Why is there no one here who has naught to ask of me?

  He told the abbot, politely, that he would be pleased to do as he was bid. After all, the thought that he might contrive to find a way to rid the abbey of its visitors was welcome. If only they could all be sent on their way, without trace of their sojourn remaining, then his world might regain its steady course.

  He went to his place to eat his meal, dreading that every eye in the room was upon him, and that those watchers who were not judging him were scheming instead, to draw him still further into a game of treason as deadly as the one which his father had played.

  FIVE

  Noell would have preferred to go to Cardigan alone to execute his commission on behalf of the pirates, but Langoisse insisted on accompanying him. The abbot told him which of the ships whose masters had dealings with the abbey were likely to be in the harbour at this time; those masters could be trusted to respond to the appeal for help which Noell carried. The abbey had sometimes lent money to Welsh fishermen and traders, and still had a part-share in a number of vessels – a legacy of more prosperous days. For this reason, Noell thought that the business might perfectly well be carried out quietly and expeditiously, by himself and no o
ther, but it seemed that the pirate did not trust him.

  Langoisse was unperturbed by Noell’s protest that it would be an altogether unnecessary risk for the pirate to show himself. ‘There are few here who would know my face,’ he said, ‘even if they knew enough to look for it in the crowd. In any case, I ought to see the vessel on which you intend to book my passage; I know these herring-fishers and wherries, and need something seaworthy. I must see her captain, too, to agree with him a place and time at which we might conveniently embark. I mean to get away cleanly if I can, but I cannot march the vampire to the harbour, even by night, and we will need to discover a quiet place where a sizeable ship might come discreetly close to shore.’

  So they set off, after prime, together. Langoisse took only a little trouble to hide his features, donning a straw hat such as chapmen often wore, and wearing nondescript clothing.

  The Abbey was closer to the sea than the town, and was on the north side of the Teifi, isolated on the crown of a low hill. From the north side of the church one could look across the green-and-yellow fields, and see the way the coast curved away from the river’s mouth, the fields gently sloping towards the dunes. Langoisse did not like it. ‘Too open,’ he said. ‘’Twould be better if there were sheltered bays, as you find in Gower. If it should come to a fight and a chase, I’d wish to find your hedgerows taller, and woods in which to hide.’

  The land around the abbey was under intense cultivation, rather because of the need of the people than the greed of the monks. The population of the Welsh towns had grown rapidly these last fifty years or so, and this strip of land close to Cardigan Bay would bear good wheat if kindly treated, while the hilly country which lay inland was fit only for sheep. When Langoisse enquired what lands belonged to the Abbey, Noell explained that the abbot leased almost all of that land to yeomen, collecting rents and heriots through the bailiff; and that the monks nowadays tended only their vegetable plots and chicken-runs, being too old and too few to plough, plant and harvest an entire demesne.

  ‘Perhaps they should take to highway robbery, like the old brigand monks of Valle Crucis,’ Langoisse suggested, as they set off on the rough road which forked near to the abbey. The right-hand track would take them to the bridge, which spanned the Teifi two miles upriver of the town.

  After a while, the pirate complained that there was a stink in the air the like of which he had never known. Noell told him that it was always the case, whenever rain was followed by hot sunshine. ‘We are too far away from the Gower quarries for the farmers to buy cheap lime to fertilise the fields,’ he explained. ‘They use seaweed from the shore, chopped fine and rotted, for their manuring. Even now, when the crops are high, the scent comes out.’

  Soon, when they made the descent towards the bridge, they could see the town arrayed on the distant slope above the harbour, with its castle towering over the cottages like a great Norman carbuncle in frail Welsh flesh. The castle was not much of a fortress, its purpose being to defend its Norman lords against the Welshmen rather than to guard the town against an invasion from the sea. It had never been attacked in earnest, even in the time of Owain Glyn Dwr’s rebellion, which had been the last serious attempt in any part of Britain to oppose the vampire empire.

  Quintus had told Noell soon after his arrival in Cardigan that what the Welsh resented in Norman rule was not so much the fact that they belonged to an Imperium ruled by Attila’s kin, but rather that English landlords and magistrates had been set over them. Had Glyn Dwr been made a vampire, the monk opined, Wales might easily have been made a loyal enclave of the Imperium; as it was, the descendants of Owen Tudor were among the most devout enemies of Richard, and would talk treasonously of themselves as the rightful royal family of the British nation. Some that were loyal to the Tudors called them the scions of Arthur, linking them thereby to a heroic kingdom of legend, but that was mere romancing. But when all the miseries of the Welsh were counted up, still the present holder of Cardigan Castle did not entirely belie his family name, which was Wellbelove, and there was no very fierce resentment of his tenancy, though even landless labourers spoke of him as ‘the Norman cuckoo’.

  The road into Cardigan was busy. Though it was not market day, there was a continual trickle of oxcarts carrying various goods into the town, and men on horseback. There were dozens of men afoot, humping packs of all shapes and sizes. Noell was not unhappy to find that there were so many others about, because he thought it easier to attract no attention in the midst of a throng of strangers. Langoisse seemed less enthusiastic about the crowd, which he seemed to like as little as the fields.

  ‘How full the world must be of fools!’ he exclaimed, as a little cart loaded with leeks, cabbages and onions rattled past, followed by a greater one pulled by two horses, which was loaded with coal. Between them the carts had raised an uncomfortable cloud of dust, which made the travellers on foot guard their faces with their hands.

  ‘How so?’ asked Noell. ‘But for honest toilers like these, there’d be none to feed a pirate his ration of plunder, or vampires their ration of blood. You should take heart, as Richard would, from the sight of advances in wealth and industry.’

  Langoisse gave him a black look on hearing his name coupled with Richard’s. Noell could see that the special spite which existed between the two of them was not exaggerated by the stories which told of it.

  ‘Richard would like to see his subjects prosper, no doubt,’ answered the pirate sourly, ‘for he likes to strut the part of a statesman hero, and is ever annoyed when any fail to honour or to like him. Did you know him, in London?’

  Noell laughed. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘My father was a mechanician, not a courtier. I kept company with servants like Mary White, not the grand people.’

  ‘The prince was not so proud, in certain moods,’ said Langoisse blackly. ‘A handsome youth like you might have aspired to be a vampire, had you caught his foul yellow eye.’ Richard’s eyes were an odd colour, for a vampire, but Noell had not heard them described in quite that way before. It was in his mind to reply that Langoisse might have been a handsome youth himself, once upon a time, but he did not dare. Instead, he said: ‘It is no ambition of mine to become a vampire.’

  Langoisse laughed, sarcastically. ‘A man of the people! No need to be a hypocrite, boy. There’s no shame in yearning for eternal youth, even though you hate the noble rabble which has so meanly hoarded the gift to support their tyranny. No one truly seeks to see vampirism exterminated, save a handful of Gregorian fanatics and puritans. Fight against the legion of immortals, by all means, but fight meanwhile for thine own immortality. That’s what I’d tell my own son, if son I had.’

  ‘Perhaps Leilah will bear you one,’ muttered Noell, turning away with a cough from the dust of another heavy cart.

  ‘I do not think so,’ Langoisse replied, calmly. ‘She bore a child while still a slave, when she was no more than twelve years old. It nearly killed her, and I do not think she can ever bear another.’

  Noell looked at him in astonishment, but said nothing.

  ‘How do you like my little princess?’ asked Langoisse, mockingly. ‘She is very pretty, is she not?’

  ‘Yes, she is,’ answered Noell. ‘She told me she had been a slave, and that you set her free.’

  ‘I killed the man that owned her,’ agreed Langoisse. ‘I cannot say that I did it in any noble spirit, for it was a matter of necessity. But I would not keep her as a slave, and told her she was free. She seemed delighted by the news, though I cannot say that she has learned to act the part. Perhaps you should seduce her, to teach her what freedom really means.’

  Noell blushed, which amused the pirate.

  ‘Ah,’ said Langoisse, ‘I see you have not the passion for it. She is pretty, but not beautiful, like the Lady Cristelle.’

  ‘I am not … ’ Noell began, but realised that he did not know exactly what he was, or what he was not, and felt miserable in his confusion. But Langoisse relented in his mockery, and went on in
a different way.

  ‘The beauty of the vampire ladies is the most cunning instrument of their rule. The officers of their armies are won over by mere ambition, but they have many more loyal servants secured by the passion these ladies inspire. I think it a marvellous cleverness that so many comely girls are inducted into vampirism, and what I know of vampires suggests to me that they cannot take the same pleasure in their ladies as common men would. They are not all like Richard, of course, any more than all Turks are like my faithful Selim, but long life makes them very cold and deadens their desire. They create vampire ladies, I think, not for their own amusement but to bemuse and captivate love-struck boys and passionate men. Admire the likes of Cristelle d’Urfé if you must, but always remember that she is the lure in a deadly trap, and learn to hate rather than to love her. Mark me, Master Cordery, I know whereof I speak.’

  ‘My father had a different account,’ said Noell. ‘He told me … ’

  Langoisse interrupted, his voice grown harsh again. ‘Your father had every reason to offer another account. I do not mean to malign him in your eyes, but he did not see such matters straightly. I know that he killed the lady in the end, but I think that he served the vampires all his life, more honestly and more productively than he knew. Why God gave vampire ladies such charms, I cannot tell, but I know how the vampire lords and princes use those charms, and I tell you again that the wise man learns to hate instead of love. Instruct your heart, Master Cordery, and make it learn the lesson well, else it will betray you, and bring your life to an end on a traitor’s scaffold or a heretic’s pyre.’

  Noell saw well enough the force of the pirate’s argument, but he was by no means ready to accept it. ‘My father knew the vampires well,’ he said. ‘He understood better than anyone what manner of being they are, and how their empire of fear is built. The rule of so few over so many is not secured easily, even though the few are so difficult to destroy. They always pretend that they completely control the way by which vampires are made, but my father was not so sure. His opinion was that they would make more if they could, to make certain of their empire. He told me once that the vampires might be as much slaves to superstition as we are, and that even Attila may not fully understand the way by which vampires are made. There may be less design in all of this than you assume.’