He realized he must have fallen asleep mid-conversation, and opened his eyes.
She was standing beside the bed.
I’m still dreaming. They’re not real.
It was clearly hours later. Lydia remained seated, keeping herself between him and Lady Montadour. ‘Was it an oversight on your part that he survived, or was this supposed to be a warning of some kind?’
‘Et alors, child, you don’t think I had anything to do with his misfortune!’ She reached out a hand gloved in lilac kid, and Lydia moved a little, to keep her from touching him.
The black eyebrows curved up. Her voice was childishly sweet and high, her French slightly old-fashioned. Asher remembered it from his dream. ‘I promise you, had I wished to kill him he would not have left my hôtel, much less made it all the way to Saint …’ She hesitated, for just a fraction of a moment too long. ‘Where did he fall from?’
‘He was found in the old churchyard of St Clare’s.’
He knew that new voice, too – male, whispering – and a shudder went through him. Simon, the vampire from his dreams … Simon, who had been given poison to drink by the other vampires, who had been carried to the top of the hill of Montmartre and left to watch the rising of the sun. Now he stood at Lydia’s side – had he been there a moment ago? – calm and slender and as at home in a Jermyn Street suit as he had been in the dark velvet of seventeenth-century Paris. ‘We thought – Mistress Asher and I – that you might have had something to do with it.’
‘And what would I have been doing in that part of town, en effet?’ She gestured her disbelief, hand-floreos like a flamenco dancer. ‘Bourgeoisie who go to bed at nine every night—’
‘What did he ask of you when he came calling, madame?’
‘He said he came to warn me.’ Madame de Montadour pouted with lips like a blood-gout in snow. ‘He said one of my little ones, my nestlings, my little blood-spawn – or maybe more than one – was plotting with the Germans to betray me. I told him not to be a fool.’
The slight flicker of one of Simon’s eyebrows embodied a world of disbelief, and she stamped her foot. ‘They do not betray me! They are mine – I hold their souls in my hand! It is impossible for them to betray me! Impossible for them to drive me out!’
‘Did he say which one?’ inquired Ysidro politely.
‘He didn’t know.’
Asher studied her face, her throat, looking for … what?
A burn?
He remembered his hand wrapped in silver chain, striking flesh. Remembered a woman screaming curses as she jerked away from him. He didn’t think it was this one.
‘Or mention that whoever it was has made their own fledglings?’
Her green eyes widened with shocked fury. ‘That’s a lie!’
‘Unless you’ve begotten new fledglings since last I walked in Paris, Elysée … homely ones, too. I know the beautiful Serge, the equally handsome Augustin, Évariste, Baptiste, Marin, Theo … Have you ever created a homely fledgling?’
‘And why would I do that?’ For a moment her eyes smouldered. ‘There are as many handsome rich boys as there are ugly ones.’
‘Let us not forget Hyacinthe and Marie-Jeanne. Though I haven’t encountered Marie-Jeanne.’
‘She came to misfortune.’ Madame spoke the words like the chop of a cleaver beheading a chicken. ‘Three years ago, it was. A stupid girl, though useful. Greedy and brainless. Who are these others you’ve seen?’ Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment the silken pale youth of her face turned ugly, as if a mask had slipped to show what lay beneath. ‘And where?’
‘Montmartre.’ He spoke the name of the hill without visible emotion. Was it only a dream, that he had been left there, paralysed, to die? Is THIS a dream? Exhaustion and lassitude dragged at Asher’s thoughts so it was difficult to be sure of anything. It has to be …
Yet he was glad of it, because there was something that he needed to ask the vampire Simon. Something that Simon knew, that he himself had forgotten. Something important.
The war, he thought cloudily. The war has started so it’s doubly important. Vital tenfold …
How could it affect the course of the war if it happened in Paris at the start of the seventeenth century?
‘A man and a girl, hunting together,’ said Simon. ‘The man’s a tough, and big. I suppose one could call him handsome, though not in your style, my dear Elysée. The girl’s a child still, ten or eleven, by the look of her clothes a nymphe du pavé.’
Elysée de Montadour’s red lip lifted like a dog’s, to show a fox-sharp fang beneath.
‘So if one of your get is creating fledglings,’ went on Simon, ‘I should say you might have done better to pay more attention to James’s warning of an upcoming betrayal.’
Asher’s thoughts slid away then, as if he were trying to crawl up the bank of a river with the water rising around him, sweeping him away. He was climbing the hill of Montmartre with Jürgen (Father must be having a frozen fit of rage that I disobeyed him … ). He almost turned back, knowing the man would take his outrage out on his wife, but they were climbing the long flights of the Rue Foyatier, and looking down all he could see was the rooftops of the eighteenth arrondissement. Surely these steps weren’t here in 1602.
‘It’s four thirty.’ Schaumm checked his watch again. ‘The other vampires must have fled by this time, so we can ask him what we need to know without interruption.’ In their summers together under Rebbe Karlebach’s tutelage Asher had found the gnome-like little German’s obsessive collection of data amusing, but with the sky staining gray to the east above the Marne and the smell of dawn filling the air he felt a kind of angry distaste, even if, presumably, the vampire who lay on the hilltop waiting helplessly for the fire had murdered hundreds of people in the fifty years or so of his Undead existence.
But Schaumm scrambled up the steps ahead of him, and when Asher reached the top he found that it was, in fact, 1602. The white domes of the Sacré-Coeur were gone. There existed no trace of the Place du Tertre or the Lapin Agile cabaret or the myriad of bistros that formed the neighborhood. Only the church of St Peter crowned the stony hilltop, and a few thin trees concealed the dugout entrances to the gypsum mines that riddled the hills all around. A sort of outcrop of the native rock of the hill shouldered up from the soil a dozen yards before the church, like an altar, and on it the vampire Simon lay motionless. Beside him stood Brother Thomas, arms outstretched toward the east: ‘Come, ye children, hearken unto me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good?… For the arms of the wicked shall be broken … the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs … into smoke shall they consume away.’
‘The other vampires must be gone by this time,’ said Schaumm briskly. ‘We’d better hurry or we won’t be in time …’
He scuttled toward the altar-like stone, calling out in his schoolboyish French, ‘You there, pastor! Hullo …’
Asher glanced around him – even though he knew in his heart there weren’t real vampires, since this was a dream there was still a good chance that there were, despite Schaumm’s insistence – and followed. But when Schaumm had only covered half the distance from the top of the steps and the stone, a figure appeared beside Brother Thomas, seemingly out of nowhere, a tall man in plain gray clothing, his long hair like a cloak of blackness on his shoulders. He caught Brother Thomas from behind, by one shoulder and his jaw, and with an effortless movement snapped his neck. As the victim jerked in dying spasms at the foot of the rock the newcomer scooped up the vampire Simon in his arms, and in what looked like a few effortless strides reached the church.
Schaumm cried protestingly ‘Hey, now! Wait!’ and ran after them. Asher followed more slowly, boots squeaking in the thin snow.
I know him. I’ve seen him …
Holding out ink-stained claws …
When he reached the church door, the sanctuary was empty.
&nb
sp; A church … Panic flooded him at the memory of another lightless sanctuary. The memory of gleaming eyes, of hands gripping his arms …
‘They’ll be down in the crypt,’ surmised Schaumm, polishing his thick-lensed spectacles where they’d steamed from the warmth indoors. ‘Sunlight won’t get them there.’
‘Jürgen, vampires don’t really exist,’ pointed out Asher, and his fellow student dashed ahead of him across the open stone of the sanctuary floor.
‘Yes, but if they did exist, that’s where they’d be.’
Run, Asher thought, for a moment unable to move either forward or back. They’re waiting for you in the shadows. You can maybe get out through the tower …
I DID climb the tower … They were between me and the door.
Was that this church, or my father’s in Wychford? Or another, in another dream …?
He couldn’t remember. In any case they don’t really exist. He forced himself to cross the threshold, and by the time he reached the small crypt door beside the altar, Schaumm had vanished, as people appear and vanish in dreams. Asher descended the winding stair alone.
He half expected to find himself in the bone chapel again, but at the bottom lay only a tiny crypt. From its door he could see them – also in the fashion of dreams, for there was neither torch nor window in the dark little chamber. Not only the tall vampire in gray and the white-haired young Spaniard he had laid down on a carven sarcophagus that occupied the center of the cramped vault, but the others who had been in the streets of Paris, Brother Esdras with his bristling beard, freckled gangly Brother Emeric, and the two women who had held Simon’s arms while the poison was poured down his throat. Black-clothed, hands folded, weird parodies of righteousness in their sober dark clothing, hair streaming loose over their shoulders.
Evil, he thought, his heart hammering. Killers who drink the lives of the innocent. He had seen them do so … When? In other dreams?
‘You will listen to me,’ said the gray-clothed vampire, ‘and once and for all you will do as I say. I will have no conflict between Catholic and Protestant in my domain. None. I will have no war among the Undead.’
‘Just because—’ began the taller of the two women. The dark-haired vampire turned his gaze upon her, and the words were choked in her throat as if by a garrote.
‘And what gives you the right—’
He turned his gaze on Brother Esdras at these words, cold, terrible, with the infinite power of an angel. ‘Paris is mine,’ said the gray-clothed one. ‘It is mine by right; it is mine by virtue of my master who gave it to me. If you will not have it so, Esdras de Colle, you are free to leave it, if you think you can govern these my children who choose for the moment to follow you and your vision of God.’
His glance went for one moment to the taller woman, the other man, and they looked aside from him, abashed.
‘But while you are in Paris – and should you travel to any of the other cities where I am Master, Bordeaux or Rheims or Brussels or Liège – you will remember that there will be no war among the Undead. Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan or Buddhist, it matters not to me. We are all damned alike. We have all sought to circumvent the will of the God who decreed that men must die. Let us not be like the Christian fools who will continue to fight amongst themselves about the date of Easter when both are chained to the same rowers’ bench in a Turkish galley. I will not have it. Do you understand?’
Esdras de Colle raised his chin under its stiff dark beard. ‘I understand the God who delivered the unbeliever King Sihon unto the swords of the Israelites, the God who commanded Moses to avenge the children of Israel upon the Midianites, the God who delivered Jericho into the hands of Joshua whose belief was faithful and true,’ he said. ‘A man’s heart is his own, Constantine Angelus, and God’s. It isn’t to bow to the belief of another man, much less to a devil such as yourself.’
‘As long as we’re quoting scripture,’ returned the dark-haired vampire, ‘I suppose I would be obvious if I spoke about sins and throwing stones.’
‘I was made as I am against my will.’
‘I made you,’ returned Angelus. ‘And I felt your will – your soul – your self clutch on to my mind with the grip of a starving child. When I offered you the refuge within my mind, while your heart ceased beating and your own brain died, there was nothing against your will—’
‘I was a sinner then. I understood nothing of God. Now I have heard the good news of the Reformed Church, I will seek salvation.’ De Colle staggered suddenly, head lolling. Asher could see his three minions had already sought the black corners of the crypt and lay sleeping on the bare stone of the floor. Thickly, the Protestant vampire continued, ‘And the day will come when I shake the dust of this town from my feet … go into the wilderness … damned Spaniard …’
He lurched away, to lie down in the darkness.
The sun must have risen. Several of Rebbe Karlebach’s books on the supernatural stated that vampires slept during the daytime. If I’m going to dream about them, by all means let’s follow the rules …
So that’s Constantine Angelus, is it? Where do I know that name from?
Angelus turned to the young man he had saved, laid a clawed hand on his chest. ‘What is your name, friend?’
Through numbed lips, Simon mumbled, ‘Simon Xavier Christian Morado de la Cadeña-Ysidro.’
‘And did you hear what I said unto Esdras, Simon Ysidro? That I am Master of Paris. That Catholic or Protestant, I will have no quarrels among us, no madness of vampire slaying vampire. Not in Paris, not in any city whose night-hunters I have begotten, and my domain stretches from Flanders to the Garonne. I have given you your life, Simon Ysidro. Knowing nothing of you, only that you stood at the gate of fire, and cried in your heart to be saved. If God had put forth his hand to cover you in impenetrable shadow and let you live, would you give your life over to God?’
Simon Ysidro whispered, ‘I would.’
Angelus looked down into Simon’s yellow eyes. Into his heart, Asher thought. Into his life, his thoughts, his soul. Seeing all that he had seen, in life and in death. Knowing all that he knew.
‘And would you give your life over to me?’
Again Simon whispered, ‘I would. I do.’
‘Then I say to you, so long as you remain in Paris, you are to me as if I had begotten you in blood, and taken your soul into my heart to carry you over the abyss of death. Do you consent to this?’
With agonizing effort, Simon moved his fingers, to touch the cold strong claws that rested nearby. ‘I consent.’
‘Sleep then.’ Constantine Angelus laid a hand on his forehead. ‘As you have no doubt learned by now, God has played a great joke on us all, we who were coward enough to barter our souls for the pottage of what we thought would be immortality. But though the day is full of arrows, and pestilences walk the night, rest as peacefully as you might, my brother. While I rule Paris, at least we who hunt the night will not have to fear one another.’
Asher opened his eyes in darkness. Only the glow of the light from the hall outlined Simon Ysidro’s aquiline profile, and caught bronze glints in Lydia’s red hair.
They are real.
The weight of that understanding fell on him like the beam of a stone temple, crushing his heart.
They exist. And I have indeed sworn to destroy them, for all that they have done.
Including Simon Ysidro.
Lydia was asleep. She lay across the foot of his bed, her hand curled under her cheek. With infinite gentleness, Ysidro removed her glasses from her face, folded them, and carefully held them in his long thin fingers as he sat back in his straight hospital chair. His face was expressionless as he looked down at her, but to the marrow of his bones Asher knew that she was safe in the vampire’s presence.
What was it Solomon Karlebach had said to him? That for every day that he withheld from killing the vampire, the blood of the vampire’s victims would be on his hands. Killing people was what vampires did.
&nbs
p; Yet it didn’t seem to matter to Ysidro, as he watched over Lydia’s sleep, whether Asher had vowed to kill him or not.
They are real.
Beyond the black windows, the rumble of trucks in the Rue Saint-Antoine went on, bearing men north into the mouth of war.
NINE
‘Who is the vile little man with the spectacles?’ inquired Ysidro the following night.
Asher turned his head a little, but for a long time did not speak. Lydia watched him closely in the night hours when she was at the hospital. He was still very weak, and subject to crippling nausea and to falling asleep instantaneously and unexpectedly, and Lydia suspected that the other patients and their daytime visitors were giving him newspapers despite her insistence that he be kept absolutely quiet. (No wonder he’s having headaches!)
But she saw, too, that there was something else, a deep and weary watchfulness when Ysidro was present, as he looked not only at the vampire but at the shadows within himself. He would not, she knew, ask her to make a choice; he knew what side she must choose, if choice were given, and how deeply that choice would hurt her. But the matter at the moment was moot, and this, too, she read in his silence, and the occasional flicker of vexed irony in his brown eyes.
Nevertheless he seemed better tonight. The sweeper woman Fantine had even brought him water to shave with, though Thérèse Sabatier had taken from her the three francs Lydia had paid for that kindness. (‘The help aren’t permitted to accept tips.’)That evening when Lydia had arrived, she had found him sitting up in the straight-backed wooden chair beside his bed. He had risen, very carefully, and kissed her, though the effort drained the color from his face as if he’d had his throat cut, and he had recognized Ysidro when the vampire materialized out of the shadows at his bedside after Dr Théodule had finished his round in the ward and gone on his way.
‘Vile little man?’ He seemed to come back from his thoughts – to put aside the darkness – and frowned.
‘You’ve dreamed of him four times now, and he does not seem to fit the context of your dreams.’
Darkness on His Bones Page 8