The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar's Tale

by Reggie Oliver

  “Why should we not?”

  “Men like Xantho do not bargain with robbers. He is merely looking for a way to trap her; and she in turn is looking to trick him. Besides, it is only on my account that we have survived so long.”

  I looked at him enquiringly. He flicked his little round hand in the direction of the sleeping Armida. “My vow to the Lady Dolabella was a vain one. I have kept it in my heart, but not my body.” I was consumed with astonishment and jealousy. “We must make a plan of escape and watch for an opportunity.”

  “But where are we?”

  “High in the Carpathians. Seven miles as the crow flies from the town of Boltenia.”

  “But how—?”

  At this moment Armida stirred and opened her eyes. They fixed themselves upon myself and Razendoringer.

  “Have you two been talking?” she asked. Razendoringer and I remained silent. Then she beckoned to the dwarf who rose, bowed low and followed her into a deeply recessed part of the cave. I saw resignation on his face, but also a momentary smirk of complacency.

  Some days later the brigands came in with the spoils of some travellers whom they had waylaid. These unfortunates, they told us, had been hung from a nearby tree feet first and their throats cut. It struck me then how fortunate we were that some whim of Armida’s had spared us. Among the booty was a small wooden chest bound with brass which, when opened, revealed not gold, as the banditti had hoped, but a number of bottles, retorts, glass vials, a klyster, small knives and other instruments. In their anger the men were about to hurl the chest down the mountainside, but Armida stopped them.

  She asked me what this chest was. I told her that it was the equipment of a travelling apothecary or chirurgeon. She then took out one of the bottles (which contained salts of Mercury) and asked me what were the properties of its contents. I was rescued by Verney whose knowledge in this field was vastly greater than my own. To the amusement of the robbers and the delight of Armida he then dilated on the benefits and qualities of each substance in the chest with all the verve of the accomplished quacksalver. He even performed a few simple alchemical experiments in one of the retorts which excited much admiration and applause. But I noticed that there was one bottle to whose contents he did not refer.

  Armida then decreed that, in addition to Latin and Greek, these ruffians were now to take an hour’s lesson in the principles of alchemy. She asked Verney if he could transmute base metals into gold and he answered her mysteriously. Verney was a man who liked to attract attention while seeming utterly indifferent to it.

  Later that night he came to me and asked if I might hide a bottle among my books. The following day I heard that negotiations for our ransom were continuing; but the brigands showed ominous signs of impatience. Even Armida seemed restive. My Greek and Latin lessons were less assiduously attended to: the knowledge that you may soon have to execute your teacher not being conducive to close attention. Out of the corner of my eye I observed that Razendoringer and Verney were preparing the evening meal with more than their usual enthusiasm.

  The lessons were concluded in a more or less orderly fashion. The robbers had been enraptured by the story of Polyphemus and of how Odysseus, having made him drunk, pierced his eye with a sharpened stake of wood and thereby escaped unseen from the monster who had imprisoned him in his cave. When the story was over and some of the men had gone out of the cave to relieve themselves, Verney approached me. He handed me a small glass phial and told me to drink it.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Antidote,” he said. I drank it. The liquid was oily and unpleasant. I wanted to vomit, but held myself in check.

  Razendoringer and Verney had excelled themselves that night with a succulent hunter’s stew of game and vegetables. They indicated by signs that I should eat sparingly of it, but the rest, including Armida, gorged themselves upon its richness. There were many jokes to the effect that so good was the food that it would be a shame indeed to let us go. The phrase “let them go” was used so often and with so much laughter that I suspected some hidden meaning.

  It took some time for the drug to take effect, but it worked on all with a remarkable degree of simultaneity. Suddenly everyone in the cave was wrapped in a profound sleep. We had been trussed up for the night with ropes, but carelessly, and we cut our bonds with a scalpel which Verney had purloined from the apothecary’s chest. Quietly we gathered our belongings together.

  Standing at the mouth of the cave with a torch in his hand Verney looked at the brigands. ‘‘Well,’’ he said softly, “shall we cut their throats?” I was silent.

  Razendoringer’s eyes strayed towards Armida, once more stretched out like a Titian Venus.

  “No,” he said. “Best hurry. Leave it to those whose task it is.”

  With these words we plunged out of the mouth of the cave and into bright moonlight. Having been immured in noisome half-darkness for so long the contrast was dazzling. We might have stayed long on that lip of rock outside the cave looking down miles of silvered landscape had not fear been at our heels. We began to climb down the mountainside into Transylvania.

  VII

  Looking back, even from a short distance away we could see how well concealed the cave was behind a small belt of trees and bushes. From above, because a great rock overhung it, it was inaccessible. The only way down was a narrow path, barely traceable in the moonlight, with steps, occasionally and unobtrusively cut in the rock to aid access.

  Razendoringer led, and I asked him where we were going. He replied that we were making for the plain of Boltenia and the town of that name. Once we were at the bottom of the mountain we would find the road easily enough. I asked the dwarf how he knew all this but he was silent. And would we not be followed this way? I asked. Eventually perhaps, Razendoringer replied, but the drug would keep them from waking until noon at least.

  “What was the drug?” I asked.

  “Mandragora,” replied Verney. “Pure and distilled. I was lucky enough to find a flask of it in the apothecary’s chest. The only antidote is a grain of tartar emetic dissolved in oil of gold, of which latter I had secured a considerable supply before we escaped from the Emperor’s palace. The tartar emetic I found in the chest. No doubt you feel unwell at the moment. But it is better than being asleep.”

  This was true. Verney and I vomited many times as we made our way down. Razendoringer seemed quite unaffected. Perhaps there was something in his boast that, like Mithridates, he was immune to poisons. After an eternity of scrambling and retching we came to the base of the mountains.

  Red dawn was coming up and a storm approaching. We were surrounded by fields of yellow, waving wheat through which wound a dusty, rutted track. The weather, which had been clear the night before, became sultry and oppressive. Clouds grey and heavy as boulders, bent over the landscape. A few fat splashes of rain began to spot the dust of the road.

  Presently we were engulfed in a torrent of rain. We walked on, looking anxiously from side to side for any sign of shelter, but the plain was innocent of dwelling. Who then cultivated the land?

  As the rain eased off I thought I could hear the sound of horses and the speech of men. Careless of being caught we walked on until, over the brow of a slight incline, we saw a troop of horsemen come riding. We had no opportunity to conceal ourselves and so we stood in their way. There were about twenty of them, all of them except the leader, a thin, dark man, carrying lances. In an instant we were surrounded, the lance points turned on us. Helmets and cuirasses beaded with rain flashed in the freshly disclosed sun.

  “What are you doing on this road?” said the leader. “Do you not know it is forbidden to all at this time on pain of death? Who are you?”

  I recognised the thin, incisive voice. “Do you not know me, Ragul?” I said. “I am Martin Bellorius, doctor of the University of Wittenberg.”

  Ragul peered down at me from his horse with a fierce, ungrateful stare. “Then we have been looking for you,” he said. “You are the p
eople who have caused us much anxiety.”

  We explained the manner of our escape. He and his horsemen listened in silence. Then he asked how we had been so foolish as to get ourselves captured and put King Xantho to the indignity of a ransom demand. I answered boldly that it was because we had followed his instructions to the letter and taken the paths he had set down for us. There was again silence, punctuated only by the jingling of a bridle and the snort of a horse. Finally Ragul spoke.

  “This may be to our advantage. We have been trying to smoke these villains out for many months now. That is why we have had these plains evacuated. And you say a woman commands them? Can you lead us to her?” We nodded vigorously, more out of terror than eagerness.

  Then he mounted us behind three troopers and we took a path to the left through the standing corn. Within a few minutes we were inside the ramparts of a palisaded camp that had been dug out of the field. Some thirty or more troopers were cooking and polishing in the fitful sunshine.

  Our stay in that camp was not long. We were given food and dry clothing. Then we were set on horses and with almost the whole detachment — some fifty lancers — we set off towards the mountains. Ragul wished to destroy the robbers that morning. He was a man who allowed as little time as possible to elapse between decision and action. On reaching the foothills, which abounded in oaks and elms, the men tethered their horses and we began the dreadful climb to the robbers’ cave.

  The way in broad daylight seemed different, but between the three of us we succeeded in tracing the hidden path. There were enough clues if you knew where to look for them. It had once more clouded over and the weather was thick and sultry. No breath of wind penetrated the dense woods through which we passed and I began to droop with exhaustion.

  Ragul and the men followed us in silence. The troopers seemed as afraid of Ragul as we were; certainly they were among the best disciplined soldiers I had yet encountered. They had abandoned their lances, but carried short slashing broadswords. Six or seven had crossbows, and there were two arquebuses. With their helmets and cuirasses they must have been as exhausted as we were after a few hours climbing. But Ragul, who showed no sign of weariness, would allow no respite. An hour after midday Razendoringer indicated to Ragul that we were almost in sight of the cave. Ragul nodded and thanked him — almost cordially — then he called a halt. Verney and I lay down on a bank of pine needles and were instantly asleep.

  The next moment, it seemed, cold water was being dashed in our faces to waken us. The effect in that sultry atmosphere was most refreshing, but now every limb of ours was aching from our exertions. I saw Razendoringer at some distance from us in earnest discussion with Ragul: they were planning the attack.

  Once more we set off, the three of us pointing the way, but this time with even greater silence and circumspection. When we arrived at a place where we could see the concealed mouth of the cave we halted again and divided into three groups.

  Ragul, Razendoringer and the main body of about twenty would approach by the main path down which we had escaped. This sloped gently away from the right hand side of the cave’s mouth. Verney with fifteen and most of the crossbow men would approach from the left by a difficult but passable route.

  I, with fifteen men, would survey the scene from a small outcrop of rock on the right of the cave and would stand in reserve to mop up any who struggled free from the jaws of this trap.

  And so it came about that from a vantage point of safety I witnessed the end of Armida and her brigands. The operation was meticulously planned but might, as it turned out, have been accomplished with fifteen rather than fifty.

  It was mid-afternoon. The sun shone now through a hazy sky. Below me I saw Ragul and his men coming stealthily up the main pathway. On the rock platform in front of the cave I occasionally caught glimpses between the screens of undergrowth of two blear-eyed robbers keeping an unwary watch.

  There was some sort of confusion in the cave, for I occasionally saw figures emerging and then retreating. Items were being piled up outside its mouth. At one point three piglets were driven out and started to wander distractedly about squealing. Evidently our disappearance had been noted and Armida was planning a rapid emigration, anticipating the discovery of the cave and retribution, but she had not expected the swiftness with which it would come.

  Ragul’s men were moving up the path, still unseen by the guards when I noticed that one of the piglets was wandering down towards them. The narrow path only allowed one to pass at a time and Ragul knocked the piglet out of his way off the path so that it fell down into the branches of a tree below. There it began to squeal violently. This alerted the attention of one of the guards, a huge bearded fellow named Gakork, remarkable for cruelty even among that crew. He carried a great axe.

  Gakork saw Ragul an instant before the latter was aware of his presence. He swung his axe and Ragul, sword in hand, stumbled backwards. The axe caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder and dented his cuirass. Then the men behind Ragul launched themselves forward on the brigand who was now roaring his head off, at which Ragul recovered and thrust his sword in the man’s face. Gakork toppled from the rock ledge and crashed through the trees, almost dislodging the piglet in his fall. He recovered when he reached the ground and made as if to run off but was dispatched by a crossbow man from my reserve.

  Men were now pouring out of the cave in no order and these were either dispatched by arquebuses and crossbows from the left or hacked down by Ragul’s swordsmen. Some of them fought wildly but, in essence, it was a massacre.

  Twenty or so of them were killed in this way but a few, in abject terror, gave themselves up. These Ragul had summarily executed. The heads of all the brigands who had died were then cut off and thrown into a sack.

  By the end of this action the rock ledge where the killing took place was dark with blood. I am told that it is stained to this day. It is also said that on moonlit nights the ghosts of these brigands dance headless before their cave where no trees now grow. With unnatural shrieks they toss their heads high into the air. But these are the legends of an ignorant and superstitious people.

  The one live captive was Armida. She fought bravely to the last, knowing that a captive death would be crueler than one suffered in battle. Her prowess with the sword was such that she killed three men before she was overpowered. And these were the only men Ragul lost. Even in bonds she struggled. Along with her much plunder was taken down from the cave, strapped to the miscellany of pack animals that the villains had acquired in their raids.

  My sole action in this successful campaign was one of mercy. The piglet which had fallen off the edge of the cliff into the tree was still held fast there and was crying out most piteously for release. I managed to secure it from above by means of a rope noose and pull it to safety, much to the amusement of Ragul’s men. Even Ragul himself could not suppress a smile. And the piglet was named Bellorius in my honour. The next day it was roasted and eaten.

  We were a motley and disordered group that came down the mountainside with the collected spoils of Armida’s brigands, piled onto hapless, blinking pack animals and, tied onto one, two bulging, bloodstained sacks full of heads. Armida herself, tethered to a long rope, stumbled ahead of the whole group. There was no jeering — Ragul’s men were too disciplined for that — but the silence in which she was forced onwards was all the more ominous.

  I have seen many men and women under sentence of death and agony before now, and there comes a point when the experience is too painful for them. They retreat into a sort of numb indifference, as if closing down the shutters on the real world. They lock the door to the outside and throw away the key, which is why, if they are granted a reprieve, they rarely live long afterwards.

  But with Armida it was different. She remained agonisingly alive. Every jolt of the rope, every step she made towards what was to be her public execution was full of pain for her. At every moment we saw that she was looking for a chance to escape. Perhaps this hope of escape ke
pt her alive, but it also fed her fears. Often she would look at us, Razendoringer in particular, as if to say: “Did not my conduct toward you merit some pity, some assistance?”

  It was hard, in these circumstances, not to feel pity. Cruelty, after all, is never eradicated by yet more cruelty. But there would be justice in her death. This frightened but somehow defiant creature had shown no mercy. Reason and justice could offer her little consolation, only perhaps that strange, blind compassion which overrides everything.

  We spent the night in the encampment and early the following morning we set out for Boltenia, a small town overlooked by a fortress in whose dungeon Armida was placed. Meanwhile Boltenia’s inhabitants were informed of the brigands’ destruction. This was met with general rejoicing, for the people had suffered terribly from their ravages.

  A great scaffold was set up in the town square for the execution of Armida and round it, on sharpened wooden stakes, were placed the heads of her thirty or so followers. In the middle of the scaffold was set another stake, longer and thinner than the others, and sharpened to a grim point.

  Then I learnt that it was the custom of these people to impale their condemned and leave them there to die. I had seen men and women burned, hanged and decapitated — in the case of one witch I saw at Augsburg, all three — but this seemed to be the cruellest of ends and too near in manner to the crucifixion of Our Saviour to lie easy on the conscience of a Christian. And all this for a woman. Yet, coward that I was, I had no stomach to appeal for clemency.

  Perhaps I knew that such an appeal would be useless. We had been lodged at the local inn and I, at least, spent the greater part of the day in sleeping, eating and recovering my strength. Towards evening Razendoringer came to me and said: “We are going to visit the prisoner.”

  “Armida? Why?”

  “To rescue her.”

  “Are you mad?”