Instead of replying he merely gave another odd smile and pulled a tasseled cord. In moments Geneviève brought in a tray of cordial glasses and a bottle of Crème de Cassis. As she poured the syrupy reddish-purple liquid I noticed she was glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. As soon as I detected this she quickly turned away and left the room.
Lady Dunaway and I watched our host.
“Come now, isn’t there anything you’d like to ask me? Isn’t there something about the vampire you would like to know?”
A myriad of questions suddenly swept through my mind: the nature of their condition, the extent of their knowledge. In the kaleidoscope of my curiosity I once again saw a flash of lightning, a stone hand, the sunken eyes of the Alexandrian scribe. “Yes,” I said. “Tell us about Lodovico.”
A hesitant excitement spread over Lady Dunaway’s face. Her eyes widened fatuously behind the thick lenses of her spectacles.
“Ahhh, Lodovico. I knew I could draw you into a story. That is why I had the cordial brought in.” He took another rapturous inhalation from the hookah and blew the smoke out in a billowy cloud. The glassiness of his eyes increased. “I will tell you how I first learned of Lodovico. It was in the Middle Ages. To begin, I must tell you how I became a vampire.” His eyes flashed. “I know you won’t mind.” He nestled deeper into his pillow.
“It was very long ago... oh, so very long ago. As I have told you, I was born during the time of Charlemagne, and what a different world it was. Believe it or not, I was a simple man. My beginnings were very simple. I grew up in the beautiful valley of the Rhone River. My parents were freemen, but rented land from a wealthy baron who owned vineyards. We helped grow the grapes for the Burgundy the baron produced, a very good Burgundy, heady and sumptuously red. Even as a child I was fascinated with the process, with the growing of the grapes, the way the tendrils curled up the runners. The flowers. The buzzing of the bees, everywhere, over everything. I had a mind for such things.
“When I was a young man I took over my parents’ portion of the work. I married. I had children. I was still fascinated with the bees and I began to observe and understand their role in the vineyards. My mind burgeoned with ideas, and it wasn’t long before I was experimenting with the little insects, causing them selectively to pollinate various varieties of grapes. I did many incredible things, things that had never been seen before. I controlled the plants. I modified their growth and output, influenced their very chemistry, much like the baron controlled us. Only with passion. You see, I am of the opinion that plants are our dearest friends. I also believe they are the greatest little research laboratories in the world. If you have a rapport with them, know how to coax and pamper them, you can get them to do anything.
“Within a few years I doubled the quality of the baron’s wine and tripled his production. Word of my achievements spread throughout the valley and the provinces and soon other landowners were coming to visit me to learn of my methods.”
Des Esseintes’s voice became softer.
“Alas, the baron did not like this. He forbade me to reveal any of my secrete, but, alas, I did not like that. You see, at that time I felt the wisdom of nature was for all to share. I was angered and bitter. I continued to tell anyone who asked, knowing full well that the wrath of the baron would be severe.”
Des Esseintes took a final puff on the hookah and pushed it away. With this I noticed there was something visibly different about his face. His eyes were unusually shiny and a veritable hum of energy seemed to come from the tranquil visage. He leaned forward and poured us each another drink.
“What happened?” I asked. “Did the baron do anything?”
He shook his head. “No, he wasn’t able to.”
“Did you do something to stop him?”
“No. You see, civilization was even more primitive then than it is now. Pillaging was very much in vogue. Before the baron discovered my insobriety a roving horde of Magyars swept through the valley. They stormed the baronial castle. They burned down the houses and trampled the vineyards. I survived in a cellar, hiding behind a huge vat of wine for three days as they drank and reveled. Finally they were run out by a detachment of mounted knights loyal to the barony.” He smiled, an oddly dissociated smile, devoid of any emotion. “The baron was killed:’
For a few moments both Lady Dunaway and I shifted in our pillows.
“What happened to your wife, your children?” she finally asked.
“They were killed as well,” des Esseintes said bloodlessly.
Lady Dunaway regarded him with horror.
“Oh, please don’t judge me harshly just because I do not seem bereft. That is another thing you must realize about me. Just because I don’t seem to express emotion does not mean I am not feeling it, Hespeth, my dear. I simply deal with emotions in ways that are very different and very alien to the ways you have been taught to deal with them.
“To continue, late one evening just a few days after the mounted knights, a small group of monks arrived at my door. They were very kindly monks. They said they had heard of my work. They soothed me and told me what I had not yet articulated—that I was vastly different from the great mass of humanity; that I was a glimmer of consciousness, of genius, amid the dark and lurking beasts of my species. I offered them Burgundy, but they did not drink it. Instead, they only sniffed its bouquet.
“One of the monks also had a treasure, a grape without seeds, and they told me if I would visit their order they might share their secrets with me. They would teach me their alchemy. Dazzled by the proposition, I agreed to accompany them. However, they refused to travel by day. They said that it was safer in the darkness. At night one could smell the campfires of the roving Magyars and Norsemen, and thus avoid them. Also, these monks, Columban by order, said that due to the darkness of their monastery, they had developed the ability to see at night fully as well as I could see in the day.
“So we traveled. Before dawn approached we took refuge in caves, and finally we made our way to the monastery, high in the Vosges Mountains. I was amazed by the monastery. It was even more fortified than a castle. The style of living was much different from what I was accustomed to. Pigs and fowl did not have the run of the house, and beds were elevated with feather mattresses. My first few evenings there were very strange. They were already performing some experiments with plants, with sweet peas, but they never tended them during the day. They only worked in the garden at night by the light of torches, and oftentimes as I meditated in my cell I heard the sound of secret passages and chanting.
“One evening while I was praying to a statue of the Virgin in the chapel of the monastery a small group of the brothers came to me. I wondered why the Virgin smiled so oddly; what malformation of her teeth could account for the peculiar curling of her upper lip. They told me many incredible things. They told me they were very learned alchemists, and that they possessed a number of magical secrets. One of these was the secret of immortality. They told me that I had been invited to join their order, and if I accepted, I too would be made deathless.”
Des Esseintes tilted his head back. “Memory of what happened next is misty. You see, I was given a drowsy syrup. The votive candles burned. The hooded figures closed in about me. I remember seeing an icon of the Passion. A gentle and brotherly kiss upon the neck. I was moved, deeply and spiritually moved... and strangely feverish. There was more of the drowsy syrup. I woke up the next evening with quite a hangover. It was several weeks before I noticed my teeth were changing.”
At the mention of the drowsy syrup I began to notice that the peacock walls had acquired a familiar gleam. I had just finished my second drink, and I was beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol. I wanted to ask about Lodovico, but another question came into my mind: “Was it the bite on the neck that turned you into a vampire? Is that what transforms you?”
“Oh, no, it is a little more complicated than that. Otherwise Geneviève and all the servants would be vampires. I discovered later t
hat in my delirium I had been given a transfusion of one of my comrade’s blood. They had matched our types previously and performed the task with a leather flask and a hypodermic needle fashioned out of a fishbone. The only time that one is lucky enough to become a vampire from a mere bite is if the vampire has an open sore in his mouth.”
“From that it would follow that vampirism is a disease?”
“I am pleased that you would articulate that, Monsieur le Docteur. It is nice that even though you are a human being, you have the interests of a physician—a virologist, as you say. You are quite correct in your observation. Vampirism has some of the aspects of a contagion, not unlike syphilis. But if it is a contagion, it’s a very strange one. No bacterium has ever been isolated as its cause. The common belief is that it is viral, but if it is, it is even a very strange virus. It has been discovered that the transfusion must be made with great speed, for the virulent blood only retains its ability to transform for a brief flicker of a second once it has been separated from a living body. It’s as if the virus needs to be close to the energy of the human metabolism to stay alive. We may thank the gods for that. Otherwise vampirism might have spread through Europe as the bubonic plague did— through the bites of fleas and rats. All the craven beasts of humanity would have been made immortal. Can you imagine a nineteenth-century Europe still swarming with Mongolians and Crusaders? What a hideous problem ‘rampant immortality’ would pose for humanity. As it was, before the secret of transference was discovered, our procreation was haphazard and extremely sporadic.”
“And when was the secret discovered?”
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t even tell you that. Suffice it to say that when I entered the monastery of the Vosges, the vampire already had a recorded history that dwarfed human records. Of course, we weren’t always called the vampire. Indeed, it was the roving bands of Magyars who began to spread that terminology, vampyr being a Magyar word. We were known by many names, depending upon which aspect of our character we were recognized by. Those who knew us from our dark side called us the lamia or lamya, from the ancient Greek term for vampire, lamiae. We’re mentioned in the first English translation of the Bible, Lamentations 4:3, circa A. D. 1382, as ‘The cruel beest is cleped (or called) lamya...’ Oddly enough, in the King James version someone has changed all of the references to the lamya to ‘sea monsters.’” He gave a strange little smirk.
“Among ourselves we were neither the vampire nor the lamya.”
“What were you?” Lady Dunaway asked, shifting excitedly in her pillow.
“Can’t you guess? You have heard the term before. Swirling amid the myths and legends of the Middle Ages there have always been rumors of a secret society of intellectuals, a society who possessed knowledge far beyond the human culture, who were immortal, great alchemists and philosophers, who secretly pulled the strings of history. And who were we? What is the name by which we knew ourselves?... the illuminati.” He recited the term with another grand flourish of smoke from the hookah. “Yes... we were the illuminati.”
With an obdurate sense of good manners des Esseintes once again filled our liqueur glasses with Crème de Cassis. As he turned around to set the decanter behind him I noticed Lady Dunaway clandestinely emptying her drink in the water tray of one of the palms. Obviously she was feeling as uncomfortable as I was under the increasing influence of the alcohol.
“I must warn you not to confuse the vampire illuminati with the various human organizations that subsequently stole the term. Many secret societies sprouted up and tried to mimic us. History is littered with their names— the Masons, the Freemasons, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Dionysiac Architects, and the Society of the Unknown Men. Although a number of these organizations were originally formed by vampires, the names were copied and corrupted by a host of imposters. In sixteenth-century Spain there was a group of mortal heretics who called themselves ‘the illuminati,’ as did an obscure human sect in seventeenth-century France during the reign of Louis XIII. None of these were the true illuminati as the monks in the Vosges were.”
“But if the vampire kept their identities hidden, how did such human organizations learn about you to copy you?” Lady Dunaway inquired.
“We kept our secrets hidden, but we were not so hidden. You can still find accounts of these things in the old records. I was out for a stroll one evening a few weeks ago when I came upon some bookstalls still open in the park next to the Bibliotheque Nationale. I discovered a book written about thirty years ago by a native Parisian, a man named Eliphas Levi. He called the book Histoire de la Magie. In it he quoted several medieval chroniclers on their accounts of a thirteenth-century French monk named Jechiele who possessed ‘a dazzling lamp that lighted itself.’ It was a lamp without oil or wick, and Jechiele sometimes put it in his window at night, much to the fascination of his mortal contemporaries. Although he was accredited at the court of King Louis IX and even served as an adviser, Jechiele never revealed the secret of his lamp.
“According to his chroniclers Jechiele also possessed a very special device for discouraging unwanted visitors who knocked at his door. He ‘touched a nail driven into the wall of his study, and a crackling, bluish spark immediately leapt forth. Woe to anyone who touched the iron knocker at that moment: He would bend double, howling as if the earth were about to swallow him up, and then he would run away as fast as his legs could carry him.’ In this way, by the terror he aroused, Jechiele saw to it that he was left in peace. I was amused by my discovery of the account, for I knew Jechiele. He was a vampire, as we all were. We kept our pointed teeth and culinary habits hidden, but all of Europe knew of the illuminati. We were not so hidden then as we are today. Medieval humans were much easier to intimidate and control. There were many advantages in putting on a sort of show with our knowledge.”
“What other secrets did the vampire possess?” I asked.
“Oh, many things. For example, the vampire of the Vosges possessed an advanced knowledge of horticulture. In a time when the tools of justice were the caldron of burning oil, and the wheel, and barnyard animals were brought to trial for witchcraft, they were grafting different species of plants together, and creating plant mutations. You may be more intrigued by their other avenue of research, and that was automata. Fully five centuries before the clock of Strasbourg, there were vampires at the monastery who could build mechanical clocks with dozens of moving figures. They also possessed a diminutive mechanical horse that whinnied, stamped, and reared up in a manner exactly as if a real horse had been shrunk to such size. Perhaps most magical of all they possessed a clockwork bee of gold and jewels that crept on flowers and even flew around the room.”
“Were all of these things kept secret from the mortal world?”
“Yes.”
“When you worked for the baron, you believed knowledge was for all to share. You even risked your life. Why did you choose to keep these things secret?”
“You misunderstand me, Monsieur le Docteur. You see, they were kept from most of the vampire as well. When I entered the monastery of the Vosges I learned there was a very rigid hierarchy of secrecy among my new brethren. It was not unlike an ancient mystery institution. One had to pass through various levels of initiation. Puzzles were unfolded slowly, and oh, what puzzles there were.
“Par exemple, I discovered of all the monks at the monastery, few were over three centuries old and most hovered around two. None of these younger vampire knew why this was so. The older vampire, the abbés of the monastery, kept secret council and seemed to know much more about the ‘grand design behind it all’ It was generally recognized there was a vast and complex organization behind our kind; that somehow populations of vampire communicated all over Europe. Emissaries were even venturing into the Orient. And yet, we younger vampire did not know how this communication was going on, It was rare that visitors ever passed to or from our monastery, save for the mortal members
of the Church bringing letters from the human powers, and exchanging common manuscripts. When we had such mortal visitors we were instructed to leave our research and go through the actions of more normal Church functions. We chanted. We copied liturgies. We read the mundane and religious manuscripts. Nonetheless, being so high in the mountains, visitors were rare. We were as isolated and aloof from the world as the stars. And still, the abbés told us what was happening among the Lombards and the Britons. They informed us of advancements made in the lesser alchemies, and occasionally brought compliments on our own discoveries from that mysterious network.
“It was at this time that I heard of the Unknown Men. It was an expression I heard often. On one occasion one of the abbés gathered us together and announced simply, ‘One of the Unknown Men has been slain.’ On another occasion was the decree, ‘An Unknown Man has been revealed.’ It did no good to inquire further on these cryptic remarks, for the abbés would say nothing, and otherwise a general ignorance prevailed. Were the Unknown Men leaders? Were they older vampire? Or special vampire, changed or mutated in some unique way? Were there many of them? Were there few? Were the abbés Unknown Men? Were there any among us? No one seemed to know, and all possible rumors and theories circulated on the matter. Throughout all of this, one name became a whispered legend, an enigma, a mystery. It was mentioned as often as the Unknown Men, although no one knew why, or what their connection was. That was the name Lodovico.”
XVIII
With this des Esseintes suddenly jumped up from his pillows and announced, “Let’s go look at the orchids!” Lady Dunaway and I looked at each other.
The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life Page 22