Hyacinthe turned. Quickly, as she had at the altar, as if at a noise. Dark brows plunging …
She started to turn back toward her prey and halted again. ‘Who’s that?’
Silence, and a thousand empty eye-pits staring out of the darkness. The flicker of the lantern put movement in the hollows.
‘Who is it?’ She swung around with such violence that she staggered, cat-gleaming eyes sweeping the shadowy room. She moved her hand as if trying to find support or brush away something she could not see.
Greuze whispered, ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?’ and Asher tightened his hand on the cab-driver’s wrist.
Knowing what it was.
Knowing sudden and whole.
Hyacinthe stumbled toward the door of the chapel, thrashed again with her hands. ‘No!’ She turned and twisted, as if trying to break some invisible grip. ‘Don’t! DON’T!’ She flung herself to the floor, crawled toward one of the pillars, then reared up to her knees, struggling against some invisible force like a roped mare. ‘Don’t! Stop it! I’ll be good! I’ll serve you!’ She jerked to her feet, staggered toward the curtained door, sobbing now, screaming ‘Don’t!’ again and again. ‘No! I swear it, I’ll do whatever you say! Don’t! Stop it!’
She almost fell through the curtains and Asher could hear her in the twists of the lightless passageway, screaming in terror, begging as she fell against the walls, but, he guessed – he knew – making her way, slowly and inexorably, up toward the last of the evening sunlight in the vestibule.
With an almost stealthy movement Lydia pulled up her skirt and ripped a strip from the hem of her petticoat, crawled swiftly over to the guard Kraus, and made a pressure bandage on the wound in his neck. The whole darkness of the chapel stank of blood. Even in his pain the German knew enough not to make a noise, and even the layers of velvet curtain couldn’t muffle Hyacinthe’s sobs and pleas. ‘Don’t – oh, God help me, DON’T—!’
Asher could tell when she reached the last curtains, the last doorway; heard the dim clatter as she tried to cling to the curtains and instead ripped the rods off the wall.
He didn’t hear her open the door, but her shriek as the sunlight hit her flesh was like the damned falling, a thousand miles, into the burning lake of Hell.
Which he supposed – as Greuze’s grip crushed his arm in shock and horror at the sound – that that was exactly what it was.
Hyacinthe screamed for a long time. Even through half a dozen layers of velvet curtains, the smoke of charred flesh permeated the air.
The silence afterwards – as summer darkness fell outside – seemed to last even longer.
At length Lydia whispered, ‘We should go. We ought to get Sergeant Kraus to hospital – I do hope he’s got French credentials …’
Asher said, ‘No.’
‘I at least must go.’ Greuze sat back against the pillar – he had been crouched, as if ready to spring up and fight – and wiped the sweat from his face. ‘The word has gone out, my friends. Air-scouts confirm it: the German army has turned east at the Marne, trying to surround our troops. They have left a gap in their lines. Gallieni has put out a call for troops, reserves: it is our chance. We can take them in the flank! Stop them! The whole of the Twenty-First Corps is coming in, and more are marching in from the Third Army. Every truck and transport is already at the Front, so Gallieni has put out a call for every taxi in Paris to take men to the Front—’
‘Taxis?’
‘We will not charge them, of course,’ responded Greuze.
Lydia smiled. ‘I thought you despised the war.’
‘I do, madame. As I trust—’ he glanced from the bodies of the colonel and Mundt, bled out and motionless, at the foot of the altar – ‘that you despise these creatures with whom you have such dealings. One does what one must.’
‘One does what one must,’ Asher agreed quietly.
For King and country …
Hating the vampires – every single vampire – but glad to the core of his soul that Lydia was alive.
‘I will leave the truck here in the courtyard. If you go soon you can probably still make it out of Paris. I’ll even take this one here—’ he nodded at Kraus – ‘to hospital, so that you need not delay. It will be dark soon.’
Lydia glanced inquiringly at Asher.
‘We’ll wait,’ he said. ‘Ysidro will be here before long. There’s something here that he needs to do.’
THIRTY-ONE
It seemed like hours, after Greuze left, before Ysidro appeared, though Asher calculated later that it was only about ninety minutes. Lydia found the heart-shaped reliquary in the far corner of the chapel where Hyacinthe had left it when she went to drag the bodies of Mundt and the colonel to a less visible spot. Even her experience with cadavers hadn’t inured her completely to the presence of corpses, if they could be tidied away somewhere.
‘You knew she’d pretend to leave, to see if Schaumm was lying about me being dead, didn’t you?’ she asked, shaking bits of broken glass out of her skirt hem as she returned to sit beside the pillar. ‘I mean, that story he came up with sounded fishy even to me.’
‘I was pretty sure she’d guess what was going on, yes.’ Asher’s chest and back felt as if he’d been through peine forte et dure and he doubted that he’d make it to Bordeaux without the pneumonia coming on again. At the moment it was good just to lie on the uneven stone of the floor with his head on Lydia’s thigh and the momentary, peaceful certainty that the only vampire left in Paris was not going to murder them.
He wondered if the Twenty-First Corps would make it to the Marne in time to take on the Germans – von Kluck’s forces must be stumbling with exhaustion by this time, after thirty solid days of marching, along with fighting and murdering Belgian civilians. He wondered if this would be enough to turn the tide.
Or at least hold it off until he and Lydia could reach England.
If they could get past the submarines in the Channel.
After a little time Lydia said, ‘Jamie … after we get to England … you know I’m coming back.’
‘I know.’ His hand tightened over hers.
‘It isn’t that I don’t love you,’ she went on hesitantly. ‘Or that I don’t love Miranda. It isn’t that I even want to. But there are so many of them. Thousands and thousands. A quarter of a million, the newspapers said. And it’s only been a few weeks. With Schaumm gone the spy charges can be dealt with, and I know Dr Théodule will help me get a place.’
‘You don’t have to explain it, best beloved.’ He looked up into her eyes, huge insectile rounds of spectacle glass in the dimness. He heard the tired bitterness in his own voice as he added, ‘I think we’re both going to be back.’
‘Oh,’ she said softly. ‘Oh, Jamie …’
He shook his head, knowing there was nothing to be done. Knowing that, like the hospitals, the Department was going to need every pair of hands – every brain and pair of eyes – and wasn’t about to waste a trained man.
And he would go, for King and country, putting aside all that he knew and felt about them as he put aside all that he knew about Ysidro, when Lydia was in danger.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry for Miranda, who’s going to have a very strange childhood because of it. Like our friend Greuze, one does what one must.’
Lydia sighed, and for a long time held his hands tightly as the world outside grew dark.
At length she said, ‘So the relic that shattered – the thing that was supposed to contain starlight from the Christmas star … that was the true one?’ She glanced toward the altar, the shards of broken glass around it twinkling dimly in the lantern’s failing light. ‘And now that it’s broken – it looks as if it was a glass ball painted with quicksilver on the inside – does that mean Elysée has lost her hold over her fledglings?’
Behind the grilles still closed, fragments of lantern-light slipped over the gleam of gold, the dark flare of jewels. The two open niches seemed to echo the empty black
gaze of the skulls that surrounded them. Wall, altar, glass, and the stone of the floor were flecked with blood.
‘What was it, anyway?’ Lydia’s voice was hesitant. ‘I mean, really? Did you ever even find out?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ He reached up – it took all his remaining strength – and touched her cheek. ‘But it has nothing to do with the Masters of Paris.’ He moved his head a little and saw Ysidro standing just within the black curtain of the doorway. He didn’t know how long he’d been there. ‘Does it?’
Ysidro whispered, ‘No.’
He started to come into the chapel, then turned his steps aside and walked to the altar. And stood almost where Hyacinthe had stood, just to the right of the altar, looking at the wall of skulls.
Asher said softly, ‘Do you know which one it is?’
Ysidro reached for one of the skulls – a little larger than the others – set about half a head above his own eye level. But before he could touch it he folded his long fingers together and stepped back, his fist against his lips.
Only stood looking up into the sockets of the empty eyes.
‘Did you know?’
The vampire shook his head, a slight motion. ‘I – began to guess,’ he said. ‘When my memories began appearing in your dreams. Constantine was the only one who would have been able to walk into my thoughts. And it made sense.’
‘Because Cauchemar took over as Master of Paris?’
‘He shouldn’t have been able to,’ said Ysidro. ‘He was just not that strong a vampire. In truth …’ He fell silent.
‘In truth,’ said Asher, ‘it wasn’t Cauchemar or Gabrielle Batoux or François de Montadour who were the Masters of Paris in their turn. The Master of Paris was always – and is still, I suppose – Constantine Angelus.’
Ysidro closed his eyes. Lydia, who had risen as if to go to his side, sat down again hastily, shock visible on her face.
After a time Ysidro said, ‘Father Jeffrey said that he was the last enemy of the Faith that the Church would have me kill for them. The last foe of my portion of the battle against unbelief. I knew that without hunting I probably would not live long, but I would have the comfort of salvation when I died. That was important to me, then.
‘I think Cauchemar followed me that night,’ he went on. ‘’Twas he who – who told me that Constantine had tortured my servant Timothy before he killed him. Looking back I cannot imagine that he would have done so, even if he did indeed kill him … as I believe he did. But I was angry, shocked, shaken, a condition in which it is easy to believe plausible lies. Cauchemar followed me, the only person who could have gotten close enough to Constantine to stab him with a poisoned blade. And when I left the house, Cauchemar took him – paralysed, conscious, betrayed – back to Emeric’s workroom, which he had taken over. There he created his own Facinum. He took for himself the power Constantine had over the vampires of Paris by enslaving him physically. By cutting him in pieces, and dissolving the flesh off his bones.’
‘Alive?’ whispered Lydia. ‘I mean …’
‘’Tis well-nigh impossible for us to die,’ returned Ysidro in a voice like the passage of wind across ruins. ‘Save in the light of the sun. Nor do we lose consciousness, during the hours of the night. Even in the daytime our sleep is not sleep as the living understand it.’
‘Elysée said that she used a power here in the chapel to focus her own thoughts,’ said Asher. ‘To … to guide the souls of the fledglings she made to that place of power, rather than holding them herself. When Cauchemar was killed, Gabrielle took possession of the – skull? Are there more bones here?’
‘I sense only the skull.’ Ysidro put his hand out again to touch the brown curve of the brow, but again drew it back. ‘There may have been more at one time. She must have known ’twas the source of her power and destroyed the rest lest one of her fledglings steal one and use it for the same purposes. Obviously Elysée did not know, so I think her husband didn’t, either. Only that the Hôtel Batoux was in some fashion the heart and center from whence their power flowed.’
‘When I spoke of the Facinum she scoffed,’ said Asher. ‘But she got her minion Saint-Vrain to start looking for it …’
‘He knew you.’ He turned to regard Asher, and some of the stricken stillness seemed to pass from his expression. ‘Constantine.’
‘I saw that skull – that particular skull – when I was here in the chapel, hiding from the guards. The others were the skulls of the nuns – many of them young girls – but physiologically I could tell this was a man’s. I was drawn to it …’
‘I have often thought,’ remarked Ysidro, ‘that you and he would have dealt well together – despite your vow to destroy us all.’
‘He must have known, then, that you knew me.’
‘He saw deep into the thoughts of both the living and the Undead – even the Undead not of his own begetting. Like me, he was not a man to let his servants come to harm.’ With great care, then, Ysidro worked loose the skull from its place in the wall by the altar. The dark gap seemed to Asher like one more hollow eye socket among all those other skulls, each of them a girl whose life had been dedicated to what her parents and preceptors had considered holy, or at least convenient for themselves. Like their sisters in the catacombs that joined the church of Sainte-Clare with this place, they had lived and died within those walls, and what they had thought of that life – or how they had looked upon the world – flickered with the movement of the lantern flame within the watching sockets of their empty eyes.
Like his own parents, reflected Asher, and what they had wanted for him.
Ysidro crossed the little room and put his friend’s skull into Lydia’s hands. ‘Will you do me a great kindness, Mistress?’ he said. ‘And him also, I think. When dawn comes, would you smash this into pieces and leave them where first light will strike? They should burn quickly. And then he should be free to go where he is destined to go. If such a thing as Purgatory exists, and sin may be expiated by suffering, I suspect out of all of the Undead, Constantine alone stands a chance of finding his foot upon an ascending stair. He would make notes of the experience, if he could.’
A fragment of a half-remembered dream, a man in the chapel doorway, holding out his hand. Help me …
You must destroy this …
‘We’ll see it done,’ Asher promised.
‘Thank you.’ The vampire hesitated, then extended thin, cold fingers to touch Asher’s hand. ‘With your permission I shall accompany you to the outskirts of Paris and do what I can to get you passed through the ranks of the Twenty-First Corps as they converge. Then I shall leave you. In the absence of our good Jehu I believe Mistress Lydia will have occupation enough getting a stricken husband to Bordeaux, without the further complication of explaining a coffin in the back of the truck. If the German army has indeed been turned aside at the Marne, I expect Elysée and her minions will return to Paris by Christmas. The sight of the ensuing struggle for mastery of this city, though perhaps entertaining, will probably be more than I can stomach. I will make my own arrangements, and depart.’
‘Will you be—’ Lydia stopped herself, confused. Not wanting, Asher knew, to say, Will you be all right? Knowing – as they both knew – what was necessary for a vampire to be all right. Knowing that he could not be other than he was.
But she looked into his eyes, caught, as she always was, between what she knew and what she felt.
‘Come.’ Ysidro took her hand as she stood clasping the skull to her middle. ‘The nights lengthen, but still the dawn will be here too soon, and we have far yet to travel by starlight.’ He bent and kissed her hand. ‘What I shall be, Mistress, is at your service until the final sunrise of my life.’
Stooping, he drew Asher up and supported him to the darkness of the shrouded corridor, rank with the stink of burned flesh. Lydia picked up the lantern and came behind, her feet crunching Hyacinthe’s calcined ashes, the skull of the Master of Paris cradled in her arm.
&
nbsp; Years later, on an afternoon in Oxford, Asher recalled suddenly a dream he’d had – in Paris, he thought, at the beginning of the war, though his recollections of August 1914 were never completely clear. At times he felt as if he’d journeyed to Paris in the calm noon of one century and wakened there, startled and disoriented, deep in the heart of another.
He had dreamed, he thought, of the dark streets of Paris, and of Don Simon knocking at the door of Father Jeffrey’s lodging in the Rue de l’Épée de Bois. It must have been early in the night, for a servant admitted him and showed him upstairs. Cardinal Montevierde, somber and smelling of dirty blood, was practically gloating with glee. He had clasped the vampire’s hands. ‘It is excellent!’ he said. ‘The word has come from a dozen quarters that he’s gone.’
‘Then I have paid my debt?’ Simon asked in a constrained voice.
The Italian’s dark brows shot up. ‘Debt? One doesn’t speak of the salvation of one’s soul as some kind of … of market transaction. You have proven yourself a good and faithful servant of the Holy Father, and he is extremely pleased with you. He – and I – have great faith that your next foe, your next target, will be worthy of your skills. Henri, the Duc de Rohan, is rising in leadership of the schismatics, particularly in the south. His forces will soon become a threat to the Faith in this kingdom.’
‘Henri of Rohan?’ Simon looked from the cardinal to the priest. ‘He has nothing to do with the Undead. Nothing to do with—’
‘He is an enemy of the Faith!’ retorted Montevierde. ‘That is all that you need to know, my friend.’ He draped a familiar arm around Simon’s shoulders. ‘The falcon asks not at which game his master sets him to fly.’
Simon looked as if he might have said something else, but didn’t. In the candles’ wavering light Montevierde was smiling as if the matter were a fait accompli; Father Jeffrey hastily rose from his chair, took Simon’s arm, and led him to the darkness of the hall outside the room.
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