Noell saw that there was in this man a rage against the vampires which was not yet born in himself, and perhaps never would be, unless he were to suffer one day the kind of pain and degradation which the pirate had known. ‘I beg you to stop,’ he said, ‘for the sake of the good monks. You reminded me today that you must think further ahead than what you will do here. So must we. If, after you have gone, it becomes known that a vampire was tormented within these walls, Wellbelove will have no choice but to tear the abbey down, and the brothers will likely be burned as heretics by that Holy Office of which you spoke. They will be held guilty by association in the exact manner which you have argued.’
Langoisse was in no mood to listen kindly to this plea. ‘They belong to the True Faith,’ he said. ‘In the eyes of the Borgia pope and the Holy Office, they are heretics, and seditious too. What is your scholarship, Master Cordery, but pure heresy? Every time you turn a page in one of your forbidden books, you license your own burning, do you not?’
It was true, though it was not a way he liked to think of his work.
‘And in the eyes of the True Faith,’ Langoisse went on, his voice reduced to a seething hiss, ‘is it not the vampires who must burn, to redeem mankind?’
With this he turned away to the brazier. He wrapped a cloth around his hand, for the hilt of the knife which he took up was hot enough to burn him, and he went quickly to the lady, to lay it across her shoulder. There was an awful sound, which seemed to Noell very like the hiss that had been in the pirate’s voice, and then a stench of burning, which made the Turk laugh and clap his hands with glee. These were the first sounds which the creature had ever made in Noell’s hearing.
Leilah recoiled in dread, and Noell had to catch her in his arms, so that she could hide her eyes in his shoulder.
When Langoisse looked around, he seemed displeased to see them thus, and the look of angry triumph in his eyes wavered, but he smiled crookedly. He dropped the hot knife upon the floor, but unlike the Turk he could not seem delighted with what he had done.
He is human after all, thought Noell.
The Lady Cristelle made no sound, despite what was now a horrid wound upon her back, with the muscle over the shoulder-blade seeming half-molten in its calamity. Her body, though, had shuddered reflexively with the shock, and that made Noell shiver in sympathy.
The lady responded now for the first time, turning her head to look over the afflicted shoulder at her tormentor. The expression in her eyes was difficult to name, but had a certain malevolent contempt which made Noell glad that the gypsy girl could not see it. The Turk, Selim, could see it well enough, but it only made him chuckle the more. He feared no supernatural vengeance for what his master had done.
‘Will you burn her, inch by inch?’ asked Noell, hoarsely. ‘Is that what you intend?’
‘Why not?’ said Langoisse. ‘And injure her in any other way I can. Before she goes to sleep, I have promised the Turk and my loyal servant without that they may take their pleasure with her. Selim prefers boys, like your noble Prince of Grand Normandy, but will favour a female arse if the occasion takes his fancy. He has never had a vampire, and though my lady must have had many a common lover, I’ll hazard a guess that there was never one without a nose.’
The gypsy moaned, and gripped Noell’s shoulder more tightly.
‘For myself,’ said Langoisse, ‘I take only a measure of blood.’
He ran the fingers of his right hand up her spine, and then held up the bloodied tips much as the lady herself had held up bloodied fingers before, inviting him to taste them. What he would not take from her fingers before, he greedily sucked from his own. He looked again at Noell, and plainly found something objectionable in the boy’s stare.
‘I would that I could become a vampire,’ he said, bitterly. ‘For then I’d turn their own wrath back upon them with all due ferocity, and that coward Richard could no longer say, as once he did, that ’twould not be honourable to face me. I’d be as cruel, then, as their fabled Dragulya, and glad to be.’ But as he spoke these words, he did not seem so very glad, or so very certain of his own resolve, and he looked at the tips of his fingers thoughtfully. It did not appear to Noell that the blood had been as sweet to the pirate’s taste as he had anticipated.
Langoisse went to fetch the other knife. First, he wrapped the cloth around his hand as he had before. As he did so, he cleaned in a furtive manner what was left of the vampire’s blood from his fingers. But as he picked up the heated blade, another hand fell on Noell’s shoulder, and eased him aside from where he stood in the doorway. Noell looked around, and was glad to see that it was not the abbot, who would likely have fainted with the shock, but Quintus, who was made of sterner stuff.
‘Put down the knife, I beg you,’ said the monk, his voice soft but clear. The small man who had stood guard had come with him, but plainly had not mustered enough resolve to stop him.
‘Go to your dormitory,’ said Langoisse. ‘This is my own business.’ The pirate moved towards the vampire, but Quintus quickly crossed the space between them, and interposed himself between the torturer and his victim. He put out his hand, almost as if he were inviting Langoisse to place the red-hot dagger in his palm. The implied invitation was as startling to the pirate as to anyone, and he pulled the blade back to his own chest. His face was white, and Noell knew that the hot weapon must be hurting him even through the cloth.
In the end, Langoisse could not bring himself to strike at the monk, and he dropped the blade unused.
‘You are a guest here,’ said Quintus, steadily, ‘and you have no business of your own. What happens in our house, which is God’s house also, is our concern and His. In His name, I beg you to desist. Thief and murderer you are, but you are not yet excommunicate from the faith. . . . That is not your desire, I think, and I believe that the name of Christ still means something to you. Can you truly tell me that you long to be damned?’
Noell could not believe that the threat of excommunication meant much to Langoisse, but perhaps the laws of hospitality meant more. In any case, the pirate said and did nothing. Quintus had taken control.
‘I thank you for your mercy,’ Quintus said to Langoisse. ‘If you will take the Maroc lady and your giggling Turk away, I will see to matters here. I will stand watch until matins.’
But that was to ask too much. Langoisse said ‘No!’
For a few moments, the monk and the pirate tried to stare one another down. Though Langoisse had outfaced Ralph Heilyn with ease, Quintus proved a much stiffer test of his resolve. It was the monk who dropped his gaze, but he seemed to do it unforced.
Langoisse was pleased with this tiny victory. ‘The abbot has been kind to me,’ he said. ‘I have always been a friend of the True Church, and would not invite its wrath. You may go now; it is over.’
Quintus bowed, deliberately, and said: ‘I am content to take your word, sir, that you will not hurt the lady any more.’
‘Then have it, ’ retorted Langoisse, with as much mockery as he could muster. ‘But I’ll set my own watch upon her, nevertheless. If you want her wounds tended, Master Cordery can do it.’
‘Thank you,’ said Quintus, glancing briefly at Noell, who nodded. The gypsy had released her grip on Noell’s shoulder, and she thanked him with a look of profound relief, though he knew that he had done nothing - and would have achieved nothing, had not Quintus intervened.
He watched Langoisse lead the Turk from the cell. Selim and the little man went meekly enough. Then Noell turned to help Quintus, who was already trying to free the vampire’s hands. He felt sick in his stomach, and wanted to go out himself, to hide his eyes and his heart. But he had agreed that he would stay, and so he must, to show the mercy demanded by that Lord in whom he could not quite believe.
Langoisse, however, remained determined to make one last gesture of defiance, and when Quintus had gone, Noell heard the door of the cell close behind him. The bar which secured it fell dully into place, imprisoning him with the i
njured lady.
SEVEN
Noell helped the Lady Cristelle to lie face-downwards on the bench which served her for a bed. He dared not put a garment on her back, nor look for a blanket, but the flesh of her arms felt cold to him, and he was anxious on her behalf. The brazier was still in the room, however, and he hoped that its heat might soothe her now, instead of offering a means to injure her.
She was still conscious, and seemed racked with discomfort, though the baleful look which she had turned on her torturer was gone. It was plain to Noell that the power which this vampire had over her own pain was not quite absolute, and that the control which she exercised was not without its cost.
Nevertheless, she managed to speak to him. ‘Do not be afraid,’ she said. ‘I will not hurt you.’
He smiled, as if to deny that he was afraid, though he was certainly anxious.
‘Is there aught else which you need?’ he asked, thinking of water or ointment. He could not fetch ointment, but there was a flask of water by the side of the cot.
‘Why, Master Cordery,’ she said, faintly and sweetly, ‘what I need above all else is a gift of thy blood.’
He recoiled in confusion, thinking at first that she might be teasing, but her dark eyes looked up into his with all seriousness, and he knew that she meant it.
‘I do not understand that need,’ he whispered. After a moment, he added: ‘It does not nourish you.’
‘It is need enough,’ she said, in a whisper. ‘It is a need I feel so sharply that I can hardly bear to debate the point. I would not try to force you, when you have been kind to me, but I swear that you have no cause to be afraid. There is no cost or hazard in such donation.’
He wished that the door were unbarred, and would have left her if he could. To cover his dismay he picked up the first of Langoisse’s daggers, which had grown cold now, from the stone floor.
‘Don’t go, Master Cordery,’ she said quickly, not knowing that the door was sealed. ‘Do you know what they have done to Mary? I think they might have hurt her.’
‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘I think they have let her alone.’ The fact that he did not know made him miserable because of his impotent promise to preserve her. Perhaps the girl had been hurt. Suddenly, it seemed alarming that he had heard no noise from the neighbouring cell.
Noell moved the other dagger with his foot, then picked it up, though it was still warm. He threw the two weapons into the corner of the bleak cell. The lantern-light flickered, sending his shadow dancing madly across the wall, as though it were some demonic apparition: a malign incubus, looming above the recumbent body of its intended victim.
‘They would not let my Mary come to me,’ said the Lady Cristelle, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘Langoisse told his man to silence her when she cried out. I fear that she may be dead.’
She came slowly to a sitting position, then, and drew her cloak about her to hide her nakedness. He winced at the thought of the hurt it must cause her ruined back, but then called himself fool for having forgotten that if she could control the pain of the cuts and the burns, the added friction of the woollen cloth could hardly hurt her. Even so, her face seemed very drawn and it was difficult to believe that she had not been agonised by her ordeal.
How do we really know, asked Noell of himself, what capacity for feeling she has? He wondered what it might be like to feel pain in its full measure, and yet be forced by duty not to acknowledge it. It could not be done, he concluded. No creature, whatever its nature, could have forborne to scream, had it really felt the full measure of the fire in that red-hot blade. And yet, who but a vampire could say what a vampire felt when its flesh was rent or burned? Still, she was distressed; might Langoisse be right, that she could have been made to tell what she knew, if in truth she knew anything of value?
He stood there looking at her, not knowing what to say.
‘You need not be sorry, Master Cordery,’ she said. ‘You owe me no pity. Richard will treat you as badly as the pirate has treated me, if ever he finds you.’
‘Why?’ asked Noell, suddenly emboldened. ‘Because I am kin to the man who destroyed a lady of his court, or because I know the secret of the making of the microscope?’
She seemed genuinely puzzled by his question. ‘What has the toy to do with it?’ she asked.
Noell felt that he must be careful, for there was no way of knowing for sure what would become of this lady when Langoisse removed her from the abbey. But he could not pursue his own curiosity without making some play with hers. She did not seem reluctant to talk. Perhaps the distraction was welcome to her, to help her forget her need for blood and the mutilation of her flesh.
‘My father thought that the instrument might tell us a great deal about the body and its fluids,’ said Noell. ‘He knew that Richard planned to have him killed, for fear of what he might discover concerning the nature of human and vampire flesh.’
Her gaze was steady as she looked at him, though her face was still drained of all colour. She had looked less vampire-like in her distress, as though her uncanny flesh were faintly tarnished, but now she had a grip upon herself again, and her composure was almost restored.
‘Edmund Cordery would have been arrested for his secret treason,’ she said. ‘What vanity can have made him believe that he could learn anything to his advantage through that strange spy-glass? Could it see men’s souls as well as the texture of their skin? Richard has that skrying-glass which John Dee and Edward Kelley used; I have looked into it, and thought perhaps I caught a glimpse of its host of angels, but even that glass could not instruct Master Kelley as to how he might become immortal.’
‘It was not a magic thing,’ Noell told her. ‘My father did not believe that there is any magic in the making of vampires, but simply a mechanism to be revealed.’
‘How like a mechanician,’ she said, with a faint attempt at lightness, ‘to imagine the world and the flesh as a mere nest of machines. But what was his intention? Did he hope to find a way to destroy vampires, or a way to become one?’
Noell could not be certain of the answer to that, but he answered as if he were. ‘He found a way to destroy one vampire,’ he said. ‘With time, and the microscope to show him the world of seeds and corpuscles, he might have killed you all.’
‘He was a very foolish man,’ replied Cristelle. ‘No vampire save Carmilla Bourdillon has yet been killed, but ordinary men and women are dying in the London streets. The reputation of this disease was ill-deserved. Like all others, it harms humans far more than it harms vampires.’
‘And yet Carmilla Bourdillon is dead,’ he countered.
‘Are you proud of that, Master Cordery? To have put a brutal end to a lovely thing, which might have endured for a thousand years? Do you know how old Carmilla was?’
‘Six hundred years and three,’ said Noell, too promptly, realising too late that his knowledge would reveal that he had read The Vampires of Europe, the forbidden book where the histories of many vampires were recorded.
But she only smiled, and said: ‘Perhaps you imagine that you can understand what it is like to live, as my kind does, in the shadow of eternity. Perhaps you think that it is only like your own life, but longer, and no more than that. No doubt you think it a trivial matter, too, that we may live apart from pain, apart from sorrow, and apart from wrath. Yet you cannot imagine how different we truly are. You have no notion of our nature or our heritage, poor little mayfly … brief flicker of shadowy life.’
‘I understand how cruel you are,’ he said. ‘I understand how your own immunity from pain makes you casual in inflicting it on others, so that there is no part of the Imperium of Gaul where torture is not a commonplace infliction. I know the tales they tell of Attila, of Dragulya. You Gaulish vampires pretend to be a better breed, maintaining Charlemagne’s code of chivalry, pretending mercy and modesty and nobility of spirit. Yet things happen even now within the precincts of the Tower which are a shame upon its builders, and all the gibbets in L
ondon are well-supplied with victims. Why should I reckon you, or any other vampire lady, better than Erszabet Bathory, who bathed in the blood of children, because she thought it would make her fair enough of face to be empress of the east? I know the evil that is in you, so do not mistake what I have tried to do for you this night. Perhaps the fault in this is mine, that I have not stronger stomach yet for Langoisse’s work.’
She seemed surprised by this outburst of anger. ‘We are not wantonly cruel,’ she told him, with apparent sincerity. ‘Erszabet Bathory was condemned for her crimes, even in Attila’s empire. They walled her up in her castle — did you not know?’
‘But they could not pay her in her own coin,’ said Noell, bitterly. ‘They could not make her suffer as she caused suffering in others. Cast alive into the tomb she simply went to sleep, and might wake up at any time in a thousand years, quite ready to resume her life. How long would it take her to die, do you think? Or can she withstand starvation forever?’
‘I do not know,’ said Cristelle. ‘But she is paying for what she did, under the law. There must be law, to keep the world in balance, and if the world were ruled by common men the estates of men would be disordered, and law much harder to sustain. Do the Mohammedans have no torturers? Are they legendary for their gentleness? There would not be one hundredth of the suffering that there is in the world if common men could be content with the estate which God has ordered for them. They are promised a happy immortality of their own, in the kingdom of Heaven, if they will only live as they should.’
‘Hypocrisy!’ said Noell. ‘Vampires are no true followers of Christ, and love cruelty more than merely human beings could ever do. My father told me more than once how you treated Everard Digby for his part in the gunpowder plot. He was dragged through the streets by horses, hung from the gibbet, castrated and quartered. Do you imagine that men could have done so foul a thing had he tried to murder a common princeling? Your lust for human blood and human pain is the most terrible thing on earth, and cannot be ordered by God no matter what your puppet pope may say. Would Christ have given you leave to drink the blood of men?’
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