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

by Reggie Oliver

  “It shall be so,” he said, “and we will also put an armed guard at your disposal.”

  “That will not only be unnecessary,” I replied, “but it will undoubtedly defeat our chances of overcoming this murony. For we need first to invite this unholy monster into our trap, and for that we need no armed men to frighten him away.”

  The King was evidently impressed by this speech and the barely sustained equanimity with which it was uttered. He nodded his assent. Razendoringer smiled at me, but Verney scowled. He was not eager to risk his position in this venture. Then Vlad stepped forward and bowed to Xantho.

  Knowing now what I did I found it astonishing that his resemblance to Ragul was not more noticed and talked about. It was not exactly a grace he possessed, for he was a painfully thin youth and his hooked nose was a prominent feature. There was awkwardness in his movements, but stillness and determination gave them a certain weight. One was conscious of an implacable will; and the first step towards subduing others is to give the impression that one cannot be subdued.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, “I beg you to allow me to join this expedition against the murony. For though I am young I have the stomach for it and want to learn.”

  I protested that it would not be safe and that a person of his age was particularly vulnerable to malign supernatural manifestations. I saw Ragul and the Queen look at one another. They seemed disposed to enter the argument on my side, but at the last moment they refrained. Alexander, however, remarked that being the King’s son he was proof against what might well affect ordinary boys. This argument seemed to sway Xantho for he nodded. I saw Mircea smile which tempted me to invite him to join the expedition, but I refrained.

  The King commanded that we should set off at sunset with the head man of the village. When I explained to Razendoringer and Verney that should I fail in this adventure their lives would be at risk even Verney understood the necessity of our working together. Razendoringer asked what grudge it was that Alexander had against me, but I only shook my head. I asked Verney if he had any plan for trapping this beast, and he looked indignant: why should he be expected to know about such things? Razendoringer was more forthcoming, but when he began to make suggestions Verney, almost in spite of himself, weighed in with his own. His knowledge of all things diabolical was extensive and alarming.

  So, near sunset, the three of us with Prince Vladimir, took the road down from Castle Dracula towards the village. We followed the headman who went at a sedate pace and said nothing. The evening was very close and hot, the woods were held in an ageless silence as we passed by. I heard a nightingale start to sing and then stop abruptly. The thud of our hooves sounded like heartbeats as we descended into the valley, surrounded by a pale, diffused golden light.

  The headman stopped in front of a small stone bothy with a thatched roof. It crouched on a rock overlooking Stroesti, a smoky collection of huts surrounding the onion dome of a wooden church. The headman contemplated it with some pride, then, indicating the bothy, he said:

  “The home of Pojok’s mother-in-law.” Having said this he bowed low and left us abruptly.

  I knocked on the door of the cottage and heard a half querulous, half fearful voice from within. We explained our business through a crack in the door which was finally opened with much creaking of rusty bolts. The woman who confronted us was a large elderly peasant with a suspicious look and a great wooden crucifix dangling about her neck. She evidently took me for a priest, for she bowed and scraped and kissed my ring; then she showed us where she lived which was no more than a single large room with a fireplace in one corner, a straw mattress in another and a few sticks of furniture.

  The place was immaculately tidy, but had a curious smell, derived partly from the old woman, partly from the scented candles she burnt. About the room was ranged a whole armoury of icons, crucifixes and religious relics.

  She showed these to us with evident satisfaction. Among her most prized possessions was a thumb of the most celebrated Holy Maiden of Borbik, famous for the many and ingenious ways in which she resisted attempts upon her virtue. These included howling like a dog and covering herself with dung. She died, notwithstanding, in the odour of sanctity.

  With this astonishing panoply of sacred materials about her I was amazed that any evil spirit had dared to penetrate the place. But Verney told me that nothing, unless properly consecrated and reverently used, was proof against the oupire and murony. Vlad and Razendoringer looked on in silent wonder.

  We told the old lady that we had come from Castle Dracula to protect her and drive out the murony. She showed neither gratitude nor astonishment at this; indeed she remarked that it was high time something was done. She then fixed us with a stern glance and said that she assumed we would be fasting and praying through the night, so would require no refreshment of any kind. We nodded our assent, not eager to sample her hospitality.

  At this the old lady brought a crude wooden screen which was to separate our devotions from hers and, I suppose, protect her modesty, such as it was. The panels were painted with many curious scenes of a sacred character, among which Vlad pointed out his namesake St Vladimir the Strong who wrestled five days and nights with the Devil on the shores of Lake Krat and lived to be three hundred and fifty years old.

  Having settled us to her satisfaction the old woman set about her evening devotions, as she was evidently, in her own estimation at least, an extremely pious person.

  We stationed ourselves behind the screen and it was arranged that one of us should sleep while the other three stood guard. Presently there were no sounds but the faint patter of rain against the door — for the place was windowless — the click of a rosary and the mutter of prayer. Occasionally this monotony would be shattered when the old woman broke wind with sudden and terrible violence. The scented candles provided a suffocating heat, albeit some protection from the old lady’s odours. It might have been hard not to feel drowsy in such a place were it not for the great sense of fearful expectation that gripped us.

  I must have fallen into a doze, however, before I was suddenly roused to alertness by a scuffling noise. The room was dimmer now, as two of the candles had burnt into their sockets. Vlad slept, but Verney and the dwarf were wide awake. Verney signalled to us that we should be silent, but any noise we made was amply covered by the old lady who was now snoring. Verney took from his bag a jar which glowed slightly in the half lit room. Vlad started from his sleep and had to be restrained from crying out. He and I approached the screen and peered through the crack.

  In the ashes of the fireplace squatted a great rat which seemed to us the size of a small dog, its eyes flashing red as it looked cautiously from side to side. There was more than mere suspicion and animal cunning in its glance. I looked at Vlad and put a finger to my mouth to indicate silence. He mouthed the word “murony” and I nodded. The grey fur on the rat bristled. We hardly dared to breathe.

  Slowly it began to waddle towards the sleeping form of the old woman, its belly, splayed out on the floor, quivering a little. The woman slept on. It — and shall I call it Pojok from now on, for that was who it was — sniffed at her shoes. I noticed that the brown snout had only one nostril and remembered the saying that the oupire or murony may be identified by his monomycterous nose. The nostril twitched and drew in scent with a kind of relish, for I saw the teeth bared with anticipation.

  I wondered that Verney did not choose this moment to attack, but a kind of fascination had taken hold of all of us. The rat began to sniff at the hem of the old lady’s dress, and our sensibilities were now so sharpened by the strangeness of the spectacle that the sniffing seemed to be as loud as a cough. Then the snout twitched under the hem of the dress and, as we watched in horror, the whole body of the rat slipped beneath the skirt, which began to heave as Pojok made its way up towards the old woman. Still we remained paralyzed by astonishment.

  Then the old woman began to moan and shift from side to side. She muttered the names of old saints and
raved about a great pot filled with black, oily waters, how it pitched to and fro as it swung from huge chains, she said, and the men and women in it — thousands, millions of them! — were thrown against the sharp spikes that studded its sides. Some men, she said, speaking in a harsh unnatural voice quite unlike her own, chose not to stay in this pool but to take the form of animals and fly out into the upper world to plague men and women. Never would they return to those terrible regions, but stay for all eternity wandering the earth.

  The old woman’s body gave a great heave and she let out a piercing scream. Out from her dress ran the rat with blood on its snout and Verney, with a quickness that did him credit, emptied the contents of the jar he carried over it. The jar contained spirits of phosphorus so that the rat began to glow like white hot coals. It let out a shriek of rage, half human, half bestial and ran to the fireplace. Before we had time to advance upon it the creature was up the chimney.

  Leaving the old woman to her screams we rushed outside the cottage. There on the roof crouched the glowing, phosphorescent rat-form of Pojok, his eyes glittering with malevolent red fire. Razendoringer aimed his crossbow and fired at the rat. It missed, but the creature snarled with rage and streaked down the roof onto an upended water-butt. From that it leaped onto the path which led down the mountainside towards the village.

  We set off in pursuit. It was a hard chase, for Pojok was very cunning. Many times he darted under hedgerows or into cattle sheds in the hope of concealing himself, but each time the glow of phosphorus gave him away. We began to tire, but so did Pojok who seemed almost to lose his wits in the hunt. Once he doubled back and ran through us. Vlad had his hands on him for a moment, but Verney told him to let the beast go, as the bite of a murony is most dangerous. Besides, the object was to let the creature lead us to his resting place. So the chase went on, with Razendoringer and I lagging behind, Verney ahead shouting instructions and Vlad leaping after the thing like a young greyhound. Twice round the village we went, through thickets and briars, over rocks and roof tops. Only we dared follow. The villagers cowered indoors while all the dogs and cats of the place fled in terror before Pojok the rat.

  Then Pojok began to flag noticeably, and we, exhausted though we were, began to catch up with him. We followed over a bridge, along a path and towards a deserted mill. A sudden turn to the right through a copse and we were in a small field, once cultivated but now overgrown. There at last we saw the rat at bay, crouching on a mound of earth, its phosphorescent fur heaving with exhaustion. Verney commanded us to stand round it and do nothing. We had little breath left to do anything else.

  Presently the rat’s shape began to sway and swim before our eyes. I wondered if my sight was failing, but I felt unusually alert. The glowing animal form began to turn to dense grey smoke which was slowly sucked through a hole in the ground. As the last puff of smoke disappeared we heard a cock crowing and saw in the East the rosy fingers of dawn.

  Verney took a stake of ash from the nearby copse and planted it in the place where the smoke had disappeared. Then, leaving Razendoringer and Vlad to guard the place Verney and I went towards the village. We sat down in front of the church and waited for the sun to come up fully and for people to emerge.

  Within half an hour a group of curious villagers had gathered round us while we said nothing. Presently I stood up and ordered them to collect dry hawthorn twigs and bring them to where we sat to make a fire. By mid morning we had a great pyre erected in front of the church. Then I told all the able-bodied men to fetch spades and follow me.

  They came with me to the place where Pojok had disappeared and I told them to dig where the ash stake was planted. A few feet down they encountered the corpse of a man. It was in a healthy condition, bloated and flushed, but not at all putrefying. This was Pojok. The grin on his fat face was wide; trickles of blood escaped the corners of his blubber lips while the eyeballs seemed to start from their sockets in defiance. A more horrible sight I never saw.

  I ordered that they put the corpse on a hurdle and bring it to the pyre in the village. So they did, and having put it on the hawthorn twigs, we set light to them. As the flames began to lick the corpse we saw the most terrible sight of all. The body on the fire began to twitch. It leaped up with a little shriek and began a strange kind of dance on the pyre. It was not a human dance, more like a puppet, such as I have seen in Italy, that is suspended on strings and thrown this way and that by its puppet-master. All the time it emitted futile squeaks, like those of a giant rat.

  That dance, I think, was forgotten by no-one who saw it, for it was truly a Dance of Death, but what froze the blood was its terrible futility. It seemed to say: all life is a travesty and cheat, one moment is as good as another, folly is wisdom, good is evil and evil good.

  Presently the writhing corpse was engulfed in a merciful sheet of flame. We did not leave the village until the whole pyre was a pile of ashes and the ashes had been cast in individual handfuls to the winds or scattered upon the waters of the stream.

  That was the end of Pojok, the murony of Stroesti, and the story is told to this day. As a result I managed to acquire some small fame in the court and beyond and was known as Bellorius Vrajitor which means Bellorius the Wizard. I tried to tell the truth which was that Verney and Razendoringer had been the chief architects of Pojok’s destruction, but the people would have none of it. I was reckoned to be solely responsible, which confirms the famous saying of Marsiglio Ficinus in his “De Vita Coelitus Comparanda” that though boasting is rarely credited, so truth-telling when it inclines to modesty is also never believed.

  XV

  On our return we were well received by all except Alexander of Glem who maintained a sullen silence, but this was attributed to his being much occupied with Demetrius Cantemir and the Bohemian treaty. The rest of the court was in a curious state of tension. The weather was hot. The feelings of Ragul and the Queen seemed to have reached a new pitch of intensity. Was I the only one who noticed the glances, the touching of hands, the furtive conversations? Mircea often absented himself to go on hunting expeditions with Razendoringer. Hunting was his main distraction now that women temporarily were not to his liking.

  Occasionally Prince Vladimir too would absent himself from my instruction, a thing he had never done before. I hesitated to report this truancy at first because I knew it would reflect badly upon my reputation as a teacher. As he never told me where he was going I would search for him throughout the castle. One day I was lucky enough to find him.

  Castle Dracula, as I have said, was more like a walled town than a castle and one might easily lose oneself among its courtyards and passageways. One morning when both my pupils were absent without leave I began to search for them. Having no particular hope of discovery I resolved to make the most of it.

  There was a rose garden in a little open courtyard somewhere on the Southern side of the castle which was approached by a long covered cloister steeply vaulted in the manner of two centuries back. Many of the roses had withered but some, especially those in the little bowers, were still blooming. Rose petals almost obscured the stone paths so that they were slippery to the feet. The leaves and blooms glittered with water drops from a recent shower, but the sun was now shining. A rich heavy smell steamed up from the earth and the flowers. It was sweet but, in that confined sunlit space, almost oppressive. Cloisters bordered the garden on two sides; the curtain walls of the main keep formed the opposite corner. In a little bower tucked into this corner sat a lady whom I recognized as Demetrius Cantemir’s wife. She appeared to be unoccupied and the smile on her face showed that this was a familiar and, to her, pleasurable state of affairs.

  Walking further along the cloister I began to hear voices, soft and low. They came from a bower which backed onto the cloister. I came to a halt directly behind it and saw through the tracery of leaves and petals the back of two heads. One belonged to Vlad, the other to Cantemir’s daughter, the Lady Rozelinda.

  Vlad was telling her the story
of how Pojok, the murony of Stroesti, was destroyed. I wondered at the subtlety with which he told the tale, firstly by stripping it of the indecency with which reality had endowed it, secondly by making his own part in the affair seem so significant without in any way appearing boastful. He was full of a judicious praise for me while Verney and Razendoringer barely featured in his narrative. I would have been more flattered had there been less calculation in his words.

  The girl listened to all this in wonder. Fourteen is not an age when you discern subtlety, though you may employ it yourself. But if Vlad’s story had calculation in it, the expressions of passion that followed had not. I heard the authentic accents of love.

  This troubled me. From my boyhood onwards I had been engrossed in study and the pursuit of knowledge. I had known the stirrings of the flesh but I had never known the devotion to one human object which is its most sublime offspring. Either I had excluded it deliberately, or it had simply not happened to me. And yet, as I heard these two talking, I felt I knew what this passion was. I felt a longing for my own youth which had lost itself in diligence and the cultivation of intellect. I had not been unhappy in my studies, but I now saw their emptiness because, though I knew many sciences, the science of the human heart had never been taught me. In this understanding I was greener than the Prince and I blushed for shame at it.

  While my own thoughts tried to accept this revelation the talk of the two young lovers went on. Unlike me, they had nothing to regret: that was to come later.

  “Do you like this castle?” asked the Prince.

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to live here?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “If I take the thorns off the stem, will you wear this rose for me?”

  “Why?”

  “Is there any reason why you shouldn’t?”