The Secrets of Blood and Bone

by Rebecca Alexander

  “Thomazine?” Jack could hear the shuffling of Sadie’s soles at the top of the stairs.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “Thomazine Ratcliffe was the first herbalist to my family, more than four hundred years ago. Ellen inherited her papers.”

  “I’ll look out for them.”

  She stepped forward into the doorway, making him step back. He glanced up at the window again, as if he knew Sadie was up there somewhere. He felt in his pocket, and brought out a card.

  “My number is on there. If you find the herb—or Thomazine’s notes—please call. The matter is urgent.”

  She took it, the embossed card snowy white against her grubby fingers. “I’ll let you know.” The card had a small picture of the castle on it, the same one she had seen on the ruined legal papers.

  “Let me give you more of an incentive. My family would pay good money for the herb in the correct formulation. The last payment we made was for four thousand pounds. Given the urgency, I would be prepared to give you the same for the tincture, and a further twenty thousand for Thomazine’s notes. You can reach me at the castle, the number is on the card.”

  Jack was astonished. “Well, that sounds very generous.”

  “A member of my family is very ill: the need is great.” He crooked a finger to the driver, who opened the back door of the shining car for him. “If you need a good builder, as I suggest you do, John Cartwright in Hawkshead is very good. If you mention my name, he might be able to come a bit quicker.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know anyone in the area yet.”

  “And as we are going to be neighbors, perhaps you and your…friend might like to visit the castle sometime? Knowle Castle is our family seat.”

  “Thank you. I’d like to see it.”

  He stepped into the car, and the driver shut the door. The window slid down with the faintest of whines. “I mean it. Do come and meet Callum. Then you’ll understand the urgency. He doesn’t have much time left.”

  Chapter 4

  Venice is a place much beset by rogues and thieves, as I had the misfortune to find. While their victims are foreigners the authorities are amused, and turn their back upon the honest traveller. Your father must be ever vigilant to avoid such varlets and villains.

  —EDWARD KELLEY, personal letter to his daughter Elizabeth Jane Weston dated 16 March 1586, in the Czech collection, British Library

  I awoke in an alley much frequented, I felt, by cats and rats. My heavy jacket was gone, my boots also, which I much lamented when my head stopped banging like a drum. My luggage was stolen with my letters and notes and their leather case and all of my books: all were gone. I had retained within my small garments some little money in gold, a sketch of some importance to my mission, my letter of introduction from Lord Dannick, and my wits. These were not the least of my assets, so I put my stockinged foot to the cobbles and looked around me.

  The alley ran between two great houses, one end leading onto a narrow street, and the other upon a great canal. It seemed evening was drawing in, for the sky was a deep blue and I saw a few stars. A yellow glow upon the canal alerted me to the torches burning at the front of the houses, for the Venetians, as I have heard, account the waterside the grander entrance. Here, a jetty led from a great portico, which was in the classic style. Within the columns was a pair of doors, one opened, light spilling onto steps that ran into the water. I saw upon the waterway boats floating each way, many much decorated. I hid in the shadow of a column then crept toward the door. Peering in, I saw a great hall lit by lamps and a servant balanced upon a ladder, setting a taper to yet more branches of candles.

  The next moment, I was buffeted between the shoulders with a great blow, and staggered into the house. I turned in a second, reaching for my dagger—alas, also missing. The man looked me over, then laughed with a great bellow and spoke to me in rapid words that I could not comprehend.

  “Forgive me, sir, I am at a disadvantage.” I gave him some respect, as he was dressed in black velvets and long boots encased his thick calves. I repeated the words in German, then in Latin. Finally, his smile widened.

  “Who are you, that enters my house undressed, yet speaks Latin like a priest?”

  He was a big man with a deep chest and black beard, much of mine own age and coloring. That is, he had deeply tanned skin and dark eyes.

  “I am Sir Edward Kelley, come lately from England on an important mission.” I titled myself for I have often found this means I am treated with the respect I deserve. “I was beaten and robbed and my belongings and clothing were stolen. I awoke outside your house.”

  “English?” He stroked his beard, which was thick and sleek, and close cropped over a strong jaw.

  “I would be grateful for your help, sir, for I find myself the victim of villains.” I touched a hand to the tender lump on the back of my head.

  “Help you?” He grinned again, looking me up and down. “It’s treason to give haven to a foreigner without a witness from the council. It is treason even to speak to one.”

  “Then, are you not at risk of being accused?” I asked, a little sharply perhaps, because the cold was creeping up my ankles from the icy touch of the tiled floor.

  “I, little man, am not easily accused. Now tell me, what is your real reason for being in Venice and, more important, why were you left at my door?” He took pity upon my shivering and called out in his own tongue to the servant. “Come with me, Master Kelley.”

  I followed him up the cold stairs to a landing, much ornamented with a marble balustrade and decorated with many carved and painted doors, each a work of art. He turned the handle of one, and I followed him onto—God be praised—a carpet. Another servant appeared and listened to a command from his master.

  I spoke. “I would be grateful to know your name, sir.”

  He did not answer me, but poured two cups of wine, and handed me one. The glass was extraordinary, a beaker with decoration in the style of a family crest upon it. The wine, by contrast, was raw and acid. It was warming, and I looked up to see him staring at me.

  A sound from beyond the door heralded the entrance of other men in conversation. When I stood back, ashamed of my attire, one entered dressed in the robes of a priest of high degree.

  “Ah, Your Highness. Look at the gift the lagoon has brought me.” My bearded host bowed to me with a flourish. “I, my little friend, am known as Franco, Count Marinello. I am known to be the friend of several English visitors, which may explain your thief’s choice of benefactors. This is His Highness Prince Malipiero, the cardinal of the church of San Nicolò.”

  The older man, his bald head nodding on a thin neck, looked at me like a hawk eyes a mouse, his curved nose sniffing in my direction. He said something in a low voice and Marinello laughed. “Indeed, we should at least clean him up! Go with my manservant, Bartolomeo, Master Kelley. Then you can tell us your story.”

  I was taken to a chamber much decorated with pictures upon the walls and embroidered chairs, and a carved bed that could sleep a whole family. I was presented with a bowl of warm water and some soft soap, much as we use for washing clothes in England but better perfumed. The servant, who spoke no Latin nor Italian as far as I could divine, gave me fresh hose that were a little too long and wide for my taste. He then handed me a shirt to replace my own, now sadly stained by contact with the alley, and a suit of clothes as he himself was wearing. I excused myself to a narrow garderobe, to transfer my precious papers, and hastily dressed in the clean underclothes. When I returned to the chamber I had finally stopped shivering, and slid my feet into borrowed shoes for the servant to lace. Then I was beckoned to the door, and into a further room that I had not yet entered.

  It was a dining chamber, and the candlelight gilded every plate and glass. The napery was snowy white over the table, and draped almost to the floor. One end had many dishes of food, and the smells filled my mouth with water.

  “Ah, our young friend.” Even though Lord Marinello could not be much older tha
n myself, I bowed and allowed myself to be seated in a chair, my shoulder draped with a napkin, and to be served some fish, browned and curling in a plate of sauce. Lord Marinello lifted a tiny trident, much as we use their greater cousins to carve meat, and to my astonishment used it to spear a fish and take it to his mouth. Since I wished to be a good guest, I attempted the same. The food, some sort of pilchard, was delicious.

  The cardinal, who sat opposite me, ate sparingly of bread and a few fish. He cleared his mouth with a mouthful of wine from another decorated glass beaker and looked at me.

  “You were robbed, you say?” said His Eminence, his Latin much accented.

  “By a fat fellow and his servant.”

  Marinello leaned forward. “Describe him.”

  I struggled to explain the extraordinary fellow. Clean-shaven, certainly, older than myself but no graybeard, round in stature but agile on small feet, and he wore red shoes with high heels. His doublet, I recalled, was red and yellow and much slashed and decorated. He wore hose gathered at the knee with many ribbons.

  Marinello nodded to the cardinal. “Bezio.”

  “He has my papers and books.” I was indignant. “My money, everything.”

  “And he left you at my door, instead of rolling you into the canal.”

  I looked at him, but his beard concealed his expression well. The cardinal choked a laugh, and muttered something in, I supposed, Venetian. The bigger man laughed back before turning to me.

  “Bezio knows that the greatest value of stolen goods is to the original owner.” He shrugged. “I would expect him to offer them back to you—at the right price.”

  I choked on my wine. The impudence of it! I rolled Marinello’s words around my mind. “So, why would he choose your house, my lord? Is it that I am English?”

  “That is what I was wondering, little man.” He waved servants away, and the great carved doors shut with a clunk. “Speak sooth, my man, and gently. I do not want to be overheard. What was your purpose in coming to Venice?”

  “I am a seeker of knowledge, a scientist. I was hoping to confer with other scholars upon the subject of a medical nature.” Half-truths are always preferable to outright lies.

  He drank the last of his wine and spoke to the cardinal in words I could not catch. The cardinal seemed to raise himself from half sleep to stare at me with malice in his gaze. I heard him hiss the word Inquisizione, a word to put the hairs up on my neck. The lord laughed at him, waving away such a suggestion.

  “Master Kelley. I shall offer you hospitality, for where else shall you go, penniless and a foreigner? But you may have to be questioned by the council, and must come up with better lies than the ones you offer me.”

  “My Lord Marinello,” I stammered. “I have a commission from a powerful and wealthy English family. They gave me gold and letters of introduction. In truth, I seek the answer to a medical question.”

  “Then you must make your introductions.” He poured more wine from a decanter, which sparkled with gold wires embedded within the rose-colored glass. “But first, I think we must negotiate with Bezio for your belongings.”

  Chapter 5

  PRESENT DAY: NEW ORLEANS

  Felix looked around the office of Gina Larabie, professor of cultural anthropology. Lining the walls were glass cases of bondage equipment, instruments of torture and a variety of leather masks.

  “Sexual behavior is your area of research?”

  “Currently.” She carried a cup of coffee over to him, and set it on the desk. “I have funding for exploring sexual fetishes that carry specific risks to participants. Including the sharing of blood.”

  He looked at the objects, some based on medieval torture. Some had a function that he couldn’t even guess at. “It’s a fascinating area.” He looked at her over the cup. “I found your name in a database of researchers into vampirism. Then I realized you also had an interest in John Dee and Edward Kelley.”

  She smiled. “Vampires are big at the moment. The sexual-fetish vampires get mixed up with the energy-exchange vampires and the blood drinkers. But Dee was the real deal, a sorcerer. As you describe in your books, they looked at the magical properties of imbibing blood.”

  “Dee was believed to be very powerful, at the time, but Kelley went on to become more influential in the field of magic.” He looked around the room again. It was much bigger than his own office, and much neater, journals arranged by title and date, books under the window in precise rows. Some had lurid titles like Vampires Today! and Blood: The Ultimate High. “Dee wrote about the border between life and death. He certainly had an interest in blood’s magical properties. Is vampirism very prevalent as a phenomenon?” He watched her as she sipped her coffee.

  “Not huge.” She looked up, and smiled, her dark eyes narrowing. “There are maybe ten or twelve thousand energy vampires in the US, we think. Maybe the same number of fetishists, but it’s hard to get numbers. Most don’t actually drink blood, except symbolically.”

  “But some do?”

  She chose her words carefully. “Some believe they are dependent on blood to sustain themselves. There is a subculture of blood givers, donors, which is another of my areas of interest. In some ways it is the ultimate submission, to literally become food as a way of entering another person.” She shrugged. “The line between fetish- and belief-based behavior is a blurred one, in some cases.”

  “It’s the possible side effects of drinking blood that interest me.”

  “Side effects? Other than the obvious infection risks?” She stretched back in her chair.

  He was aware of a wave of attraction to the woman, her skin a creamy brown, dark hair sleeked over her shoulders, and her curvy figure. She couldn’t be more different to Jack: cultured, mature, educated. Jack was…in the past. She had rejected him completely, and he was a free agent.

  He nodded. “I’m specifically interested in people who believe blood improves their health.”

  “We have interviewed a few individuals who believe that blood is the only thing that makes them feel they have energy.” She smoothed her hair. “They believe it can heal terminal illnesses, even restrict the aging process.”

  “I was hoping that, through your research, you might know someone who would be willing to discuss it with me.”

  “Ah.” She smiled, wider this time, her teeth perfectly white and straight. “But these are the most private people I know. They would not want to be written or even talked about. And my studies were completely confidential.”

  “My interest is on behalf of someone who has taken blood, and there is some evidence that she is biologically dependent on it.”

  “I’m not sure that is even medically possible, though some do believe it—” She opened a drawer in her desk, and took out a pen and pad. “What are her symptoms?”

  “She suffered from extreme weakness and coldness. When she was admitted to the hospital they diagnosed her with hypothermia, but she said she had lived with those symptoms for years.” He remembered her teeth clamped upon his forearm, sucking hungrily at the cut. He touched the wound, which in three months hadn’t completely healed. “With even a small amount of blood her basal temperature returned to near normal, she had more energy, more color.” He stood, and walked in front of the exhibits. It was a struggle to put his fears into words. “She belongs to a European tradition which believes that people can avoid death with the use of sorcery.”

  “That sounds like the mythology of medieval revenants, the stories that gave rise to the first legends of vampires.” Her voice was soft, sympathetic. “Many of my modern-day ‘vampires’ talk about those traditions, and they follow research into vampire burials and folklore. They even fund it.”

  “My own involvement is through the necromantic work of Dee and Kelley.” The picture of Jack, vulnerable after her battle with a sadistic serial killer, flew into his mind. “My friend describes her condition as ‘living on borrowed time.’ Dee and Kelley described similar cases in the 1580s in East
ern Europe.”

  The chair creaked as Gina stood and stepped closer to him. A wave of her scent hit him, and he turned. She was close to his own height, and the fabric of her dress draped over her curves. He turned back to the instruments of torture.

  “I’m intrigued,” she said. “I’ve always had an interest in Kelley. He was more adventurous in his experiments.” She leaned one hip on the edge of the desk beside him. “Here, the belief about the creation of revenants through blood rituals is called ‘ascension.’ ”

  “Do you know anyone who understands this belief system?”

  “I do—but to understand the taking of blood, its effects, you need to meet people who actually do it,” she said. “You need to immerse yourself in that culture, because they are very secretive.”

  “I thought it was a well-known subculture? There are a million references on the Internet, anyway.”

  “Sure, on the surface. But you need to disentangle the mainly sexually motivated members and role players from the others, the energy vampires. There are subgroups even within those communities: sanguinarians and spiritual vampires, for example.”

  Felix suddenly felt very tired. Watching Jack step away from him over the last few months had been exhausting. “Sanguinarians being involved in blood taking?”

  “Either symbolically or literally, but they are reluctant to talk about it. Some interpretations of the Bible suggest that any blood rituals are dangerous and against God’s ordinances. My contacts have to avoid exposure to religious groups.” She smiled wryly. “In some states, American culture is getting less inclusive, more conservative.”

  “It would help to interview someone who has knowledge of drinking blood.” He shrugged. “It sounds crazy when I say it like that.”

  She smiled and opened one of the glass doors to a display case. “There is one person who might be interested in an exchange of knowledge. He may not want to meet you on your own.” She pulled out an oval object, dotted with metal studs. “He’ll talk to me, though. If you come along, and don’t act so—British—he might get you into one of the clubs.” She handed him the piece.