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

by Reggie Oliver

  “Young lady, am I to understand that you have received an offer of marriage?”

  “I have.”

  “Which you have refused.”

  “I have.”

  “Without consulting me?”

  “I did not think it important at the time.”

  “Not important! Do you not know that the most delicate negotiations are being conducted between Bohemia and Transylvania at this moment?”

  “How can my refusal affect that?”

  “How! I despair of you. You receive an offer from Mircea, the King’s son and you think it alters nothing to refuse!”

  “A very handsome and upstanding young man,” said his wife.

  “Silence, woman!” said Cantemir.

  “I do not love him,” said the girl.

  “Love him! What has that got to do with it? Do you think I loved your mother when I married her?”

  “Oh, husband!”

  “Silence, woman!”

  “And he does not love me,” said Rozelinda.

  “How do you know that?”

  “He proposed out of jealousy, to spite his brother Vladimir.”

  “Vladimir! What has Vladimir to do with it?”

  “They are attached,” said the Countess.

  “Why was I not informed? Now then, we can forget about Prince Vladimir. Prince Mircea has asked me for your hand. You will go to him and accept.”

  “No.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “No. I will marry as I choose.”

  “Child,” said the Countess, “your father knows best.”

  “Do you not realize that the alliance could rest on your consent? An alliance against the heathen Turk. At this moment the fate of Christendom could be in your hands.”

  “Nonsense, father. It is your career, not Christendom you are thinking of.”

  “How dare you speak to your father like that!” said her mother.

  “Please remember,” said the Count, “that you are a woman, a very young woman at that. You must learn submission and obedience. And you must learn that your views are of no importance. Will you accept this man as your husband?”

  “No.”

  “Think again, child.”

  “I cannot love him.”

  “My dear,” said the Count to his wife, “will you tie her to the chair? My girl, I am afraid I must use the book.”

  In an instant the girl’s face turned pale and the expression turned to one of abject terror. She mouthed the single word “No!” The Count looked down at her, his eyes boring into hers as if he were trying to break her spirit. The Countess meanwhile was bustling about. From a chest she took four red velvet straps with silver buckles with which she bound Rozelinda hand and foot to a chair. I watched the scene with fascinated confusion.

  What was this book of which the Count spoke?

  “We will leave you here alone,” said the Count slowly, “and you shall have the Story of the Egg.” Rozelinda let out a strangled little cry of abject terror. She had not the breath to scream; her exquisite breasts pumped up and down as her lungs struggled for air.

  “Not the Story of the Egg!” she whispered. The Count’s eyes were now fixed on hers with steady, resolute malignity.

  “And you shall stay here while the story repeats itself endlessly. The Story of the Egg. The Story of the Egg. It will go on, again, again until you go mad or agree to my wishes.” Then, with a slow priestlike gesture, he took from his pocket a small book, bound like a missal with green leather and encrusted with gems. This he laid on a table in front of Rozelinda and opened at the first page which was covered with tiny writing that I could not read.

  Having done this, he made a few passes in front of Rozelinda eyes with his hand and intoned the words “The Story of the Egg.” Rozelinda became still, her face frozen into an expression of pain and terror, only the heaving of her chest indicating that she was alive.

  The Count placed a candle on the table beside the open book then, taking the other and beckoning to his wife, he glided silently from the room, the Countess hurrying along in his wake.

  XVI

  For about a minute I watched the girl in that silent room, half expecting I do not know what. I was utterly perplexed, certain of only two things: that the Count possessed a power which he could assert at will over his unhappy daughter and that she was at this moment undergoing some strange, unimaginable form of inner torment from which I must try to rescue her. I came down from my hiding place and entered the room. Rozelinda was facing me as I did so, but her eyes did not seem to acknowledge my presence. I approached and called her name softly but she failed to respond. I shook her but this had no effect; she seemed lost in a waking dream.

  Then I had an inspiration: I took up the little book on the table and very deliberately closed it before her eyes. I thought I detected some flicker of response. She blinked when I called her name again and her breathing became less regular. I untied the straps which bound her to the chair; then I began to rub her hands which were as cold as ice. Slowly she began to recover her senses, but it was a long process. Her mind seemed to be fighting its way back to the waking world as a drowning man struggles to reach the surface from the bottomless depths of the ocean. When she was fully awake I told her what I had seen. She nodded.

  “I am not surprised at your perplexity,” she said: “I barely understand it myself. All I know is that my father can sometimes exert power over people by the use of words and gesture. It is as if they enter a waking sleep, or a waking dream would be more accurate. My mother is utterly under his spell. He practised his power on me from a very early age, but without complete success because I have a will as stubborn as his. Nevertheless he can use his power to inflict the most horrible punishment on me.”

  “How?”

  “When I was seven or eight I suffered from terrible nightmares and would wake up screaming. One in particular occurred again and again. I would find myself walking in a strange country. I think the look of it must have been taken from some paintings by Dutch masters which hung in an upper gallery of our castle in Bohemia. Whatever the reason, this landscape about which I dreamed was full of tall rocks like pinnacles, thick woods and soft green dells. The sun shone and there was nothing terrible to see, except that I knew what horrors were to happen next. I would be walking along a path between these high rocks, and high above me, infinitely high, a black bird of prey would be swinging in the clear air. I could hear no sound at all. It was like what I think it is to be deaf, like being a prisoner in your own head.

  “Then I began to hear sounds faintly, like music, though the melody was utterly strange. Always it seemed as if I was about to grasp how the piece of music was shaped when something changed the tune and I was lost again. But the sounds grew louder as I walked.

  “I came to a point where the path rounded a high rock. Turning the corner I found myself facing a high mound of green grass on which was perched a great egg, the size of a small cattle shed, cracked open at one end. Round its interior walls ran a narrow bench on which four or five peasant musicians were seated. One played the bagpipes, another a plucked instrument, the rest viols. I knew I should not go near it but I was drawn, as one is in a dream, without the possibility of escape, towards that concert in the egg.

  “I climbed into the egg, but the musicians ignored me and continued to play. The more I looked at them, the more they resembled strange insects, not people at all, and the more their instruments seemed like parts of their bodies, the bag pipes like a distended stomach, the fiddle bows like extended arms as thin as twigs. My fear grew and I struggled to get out of the egg but found my way barred by the long sprawling arms of these hideous beasts as they sawed away or blew out of their long pipe-like noses.

  “Outside the sky was darkening and I sensed a shadow coming nearer. It was a great bird from the high blue sky, and just as I was about to escape from the egg it swooped down and lifted the egg up into the air, myself in it together with the insect musi
cians who were now playing madly with no sense or harmony at all. We flew high over the land towards nightfall. Rapidly it became as grey and cold as death, then with a great croak the bird dropped the egg.

  “We came to land on a vast grey sea of ice. There was no land in sight so that it was hard to tell where the ice ended and the clouded grey sky began. The feeling of bitter and agonizing loneliness was so strong it could be felt, like a marble tomb on your chest. The insects played on, their senseless pod heads and bead eyes showing not one flicker of recognition for me. Then for one moment my heart was filled with hope, as I could see a group of skaters gliding rapidly over the ice towards us; but to my dismay I observed as they came nearer that they had the savage dumb heads of lizards and toads.

  “As soon as they had come up to us, snickering and chattering in their senseless way, they started to push the egg along the ice. The hole in the egg faced forward so that I could see where we were going. We were heading towards the edge of a fathomless abyss which descended into infinite darkness and then before I could think what to do we were pitched over it, I and the insect musicians. We fell long miles in an icy darkness spotted with pale leprous light and as we did so I saw that we had joined hundreds and thousands of men and beasts and inanimate objects like tables and candlesticks all falling through space at an infinite, heartbreaking speed. And as I fell, I saw my mother and my father, also falling faster and faster, but they did not see me. I reached out to them but we did not even touch, and then they were lost to me in a vast sweep of wind which blew across the falling millions.

  “It was at this point in the dream, usually, that I screamed myself awake.” Rozelinda paused, exhausted and bewildered. Then she continued more quietly. “One night when I had done so my father came to me and held me in his arms to comfort me, as I thought. I told him my dream, every detail of it, as it was fresh in my mind and he listened and consoled me. I curse the day I told him, because now by means of his power he turns that dream against me whenever I cross his will.” She pointed a trembling finger at the book. “He says that the whole story of the dream is locked in that book and he has only to open it for that hellish thing in my head to be released, and I am condemned to live it again. Somehow I believe him, and it happens. It’s stupid, I know, but I am more frightened of that book than of any other thing, alive or dead on this earth.”

  I picked up the little green bound volume and Rozelinda started back. I smiled to reassure her.

  “Apart from your father, have you told anyone else this dream?” I asked.

  “No-one,” she said.

  “Well, now you have told me,” I said. “Already it has lost some of its power because it is no longer a secret between you and your father. Now I shall break the spell even further: I am going to open the book.”

  Rozelinda shrank back into her chair. “No! No!” she said. “In Christ’s sweet name, don’t open it!”

  “Be brave,” I said. “Trust me. Together we shall break the spell.” I opened the book at the first page. There was writing on it, presumably in Cantemir’s hand. It was all in Latin and consisted of quotations jotted down from the obscener parts of Juvenal and Martial, Horace and Catullus. The rest of the pages were blank. Rozelinda was astonished at this: she had to look through the book several times before she could be thoroughly convinced.

  We tore out all the pages and put them in the fireplace, laying the binding on top of them; then we put the candle flame to the pages and watched them burn. Meanwhile I was telling Rozelinda the story of my adventure and how Dolabella was a prisoner in the Old Queen’s apartments.

  Rozelinda eyes blazed as she listened. I seemed to see courage and strength flooding back into her as the last of that book was eaten up by the flames.

  “That is the end of the Story of the Egg,” said Rozelinda when the book was finally a pile of ashes in the grate. “Now we must find Vlad and the dwarf. They are at supper. Get an axe and a crowbar. I will stay here.”

  “Hide yourself then in the picture, and warn us on our return if anyone has passed this way.” I showed her the secret passage behind the picture and left by the same door that Cantemir and his wife had used.

  I found myself in a part of Castle Dracula that was strange to me. They must have been royal apartments for they were candlelit and lavish to a degree. Hangings and tapestries caressed the walls. Gold and silver gleamed on chests and tables. Fires had been lit in many of the hearths. I could write a book on the wonders I saw as I passed through. Many times I had to tell myself not to stop. One thing, however, I did note with some alarm. Many of the most beautiful objects were not of European origin. There were rugs from Bokhara, ornamental ewers from Turkestan, polished stones incised with ancient Persian designs of lions and hunters, glazed earthenware horses from Cathay, and strange silver globes pierced and chased, which were incense burners from Armenia. All this told of a traffic with the East that I had never guessed at and I wondered what it could mean.

  It was some time before I awoke to the fact that I had no idea where I was going. A man could lose himself in Castle Dracula and not find his way out for days. Yet I calculated on one thing being my salvation, that the royal apartments could not be far from the Great Hall. Presently my instincts were rewarded by the faint noise of revelry and, closer still, the sound of music. I found myself in a vaulted corridor, plain and innocent of decoration or relief except for one door. I opened it and entered.

  Suddenly I found myself in a confined space with seven other men, overlooking the Great Hall where the King and his guests feasted. I was in the minstrels’ gallery, and in entering I had nearly knocked over one of the viol players. There were three viol players, two hautboys, one theorbo, and one man — the only seated player — at the virginals. The virginalist was Xantho’s master of music, an Italian called Giardini, a fussy little person, but an accomplished virtuoso and a passable composer.

  He raised one hand from his instrument and made frantic gestures for me to leave. I tried to explain in turn, by means of gesture, that I wanted to get down to the Hall. He either could not or would not understand and his hand returned to the instrument which continued to discourse sweetly, but his red little face was contorted with rage. I knew that rage so well. It is the madness that overtakes people when they are interrupted in the work that they live for: the lover with his love disturbed by a third party, the scholar in his books, the hunter called home from the chase.

  My hands made placatory gestures. There was a slight rest in the music in which I heard a kind of groaning, creaking sound which seemed to come from beneath me. In the pause Giardini told me brusquely to go at once. I explained that I was trying to find my way to the hall, but the last part of my explanation was drowned by the opening of a lively galliard. I tried to make my problem known to the viol player who stood next to me, but he showed me only the blank, empty face of one who is absorbed in other things and will not listen. Then I heard the creaking and groaning again, but much louder this time.

  I should explain that the minstrel’s gallery at Castle Dracula was not so much a gallery as a wooden balcony attached to one of the sides of the Hall and overlooking it. It gave the appearance of being almost a room by having a heavy wooden canopy over it on which sported two gigantic carved dragons. The canopy was upheld by two wooden pedestals at the corners of the gallery and the whole construction was sustained underneath by a number of wooden struts attached to the wall. It was these struts that, in those interminable, brief moments, finally gave way under the combined weights of myself, the musicians and the carved dragons. I knew what was about to happen an instant before disaster struck, and had only the time to shout a warning. I can remember as if it were yesterday the short moment of descent during which the closeness of death made my thoughts very clear. The prevailing sensation was one of anger and indignation that, after all that effort and suffering, the brave Lady Dolabella would not be saved from Mircea’s cruelty.

  Owing to the disposition of weight in the g
allery and the fact that the support struts collapsed inwards, the platform on which we stood did not fall straight downwards but rather outwards. As a result, being the one nearest the wall at the time of the collapse, my fall on impact with the floor was cushioned by the other musicians. In short, I fell on top of them. There was a moment of unconsciousness, due mainly to the shock of it all, and then I struggled up.

  The Hall was in pandemonium and my still heightened senses told me I must take advantage of the confusion to spirit Vlad and Razendoringer away. I noticed two reactions to the catastrophe that had occurred: one was to scream and rush about in panic and alarm; the other was to sit in dumbstruck silence at the spectacle. It was those who did the latter who proved most useful in the subsequent operations of salvage and rescue, and it was in this group that I found the two I was looking for.

  Vlad and Razendoringer were startled by my appearance, for I was covered in dust and plaster from the fractured wall, but they did what I told them.

  Once out of the Hall, the three of us first made our way to the armoury for materials that would help us release Dolabella. Stanislaus, Captain of the Guard and friend to Razendoringer, obliged us unquestioningly, and so, equipped with axe and crowbar we went on our way. It occurred to me that I would find it difficult to retrace my steps to the Old Queen’s room from the Royal Apartments. After all, my arrival in the Great Hall had been by an unorthodox and now impassable route. Unwilling as I was to leave Rozelinda where she was, I knew that she was at least safe and hidden. We had to get to Dolabella through the library, but the climb up to it in Glem’s tower had never seemed so arduous as the shock of my recent experiences was beginning to tell. However, Vlad helped me up the last few steps and we burst into the tower room hardly thinking what we might find there.

  In the chair which I usually occupied sat Prince Mircea, bolt upright, his face as white as mine was from the dust and plaster. His only apparent movement was a convulsive shaking which Alexander of G1em, who stood beside him, was trying to control.