“But it was no demon. It was the vampire who created those doors,”
It should have shocked me, the fact that the doors of one of the most famous churches in Christendom were built by creatures from our darkest mythology, creatures fully as strange as the gargoyles above our heads, but I was becoming numbed to the incredibility of des Esseintes’s world. “So vampires built the doors.”
“The doors and much of the church itself. My good Docteur, you owe it to yourself to do a little historical investigation. Often when the mortal architects of the Middle Ages were unable to finish their projects, others were called in, others who possessed knowledge far surpassing their human contemporaries. More often than not, your venerable old records list them as demons, as in the case of Biscornet. All over Prance are bridges attributed to these demons—the bridges of Beaugency, Pont de l’Arche, Vielle-Brioude, and Pont de Valentre, to name a few. There are ‘devil’s bridges’ all over England and Spain as well, and the Teufelsbrücke in Germany are exceedingly numerous. That is why the secret group of others first became known as stonemasons and freemasons, for they were the builders of the impossible monuments.”
“And all built by vampire?”
“To varying extents.”
“So what do you see when you gaze at the doors of Notre-Dame?”
“What do I see? I’ll tell you. After Lodovico vanished into the night and I moved to Paris, I searched the evening streets. And finally, when I discovered the great rose window and looked beneath it I saw all the secrets of the vampire revealed before me. You see, just as the elder vampire had hidden knowledge in code and cipher in the common Gospel books, so they had hidden great secrets in the hieroglyphics of those doors. Indeed, the entire history of the vampire is concealed in the iron and stonework of Notre-Dame. Do not grow anxious if you see nothing in the symbols, Monsieur le Docteur. You see, it takes a brain of a different order to perceive the hidden language of the doors. Not even all of the vampire possess this faculty.” He turned to me. “That is what I must communicate to you. As the bumblebee perceives the ultraviolet, as the migrating bird navigates by the stars even when it is cloudy, I move through a different world. It is more than just perception. I think differently, The very symbolic functionings of my brain have altered. I can immediately see meaning in patterns your brain can only understand as random. I may look human, but I am a separate species entirely. Just as the moth can never fully share the logic of the swallow, there are certain things I cannot convey to you.”
His eyes drifted back to the ancient structure, scanning the bell turrets and the winged monsters. “I know nothing of the spiritual. I don’t pretend to, but I do know one thing about the brain. There is evolution. There is change. If there is an afterlife, perhaps the same thing happens to you after you die. Perhaps we change because we do not die. All I know is that I have transformed. I was fortunate. It took me only five hundred years to mutate, to shed the last vestige of my humanity. That is why the abbés could not tell me certain things. They were waiting for my brain to be able to understand them. Lodovico saw I was changing. He assisted, but it was as I stood before the portals of Notre-Dame that I truly understood what it meant to see. To be illuminated. An illuminatus.”
Once again I regarded the complex and foliate decoration of the doors. Was I so blind? Were we mortals so piteously inadequate beside creatures such as des Esseintes? Try as I might, I could discern nothing in the symmetrical decorations that even faintly resembled a secret language. When I turned to des Esseintes, however, he appeared to be experiencing a distinct restlessness. He held himself with composure, but something feverish shone in his face. I was taken aback. It was the most emotion I had felt emanating from him since he had crackled with energy in our first encounter in the orchid conservatory. I looked again at the dark portals and still saw nothing. The trees flanking the church rustled.
“What do you see in the doors?” I beseeched the tall and pallid gentleman.
“What do I see?” he asked as he continued to gaze at the iron monoliths with a wandering and vacant air. He took a slow step forward. “Oh, so many things. I see the most incredible and carefully guarded alchemical secrets of the vampire. And more, I read my destiny. I perceive my purpose, my role in the work of the vampire.”
“And what is that?”
“To survive, Monsieur le Docteur. To preserve our culture and our learning.”
“But never to share that learning?”
He turned on me as if in a rage, but again his face was calm. “You are wrong. Have I given you that impression? We shared our knowledge. As I have said before, you owe us more of a debt than you have ever realized. When I arrived in Paris in the twelfth century there were already many special vampire living here. Like me they had been drawn and changed by the lodestone of the doors. All of this had been planned long ago by the Unknown Men and recorded here for us. We formed a center of learning for mortal and vampire alike. At night we met in the cloisters of this old church and held classes. As the years passed the number of our students grew. Within time it was known all over Europe that Notre-Dame was the haunt of alchemists. That is where you get your expression sub rosa or ‘under the rose,’ referring to a meeting held in secret. It was the school of Notre-Dame that ultimately became the University of Paris.”
“It was the vampire who taught at the school of Notre-Dame?”
“Yes.”
“Why hasn’t history recorded the names of the vampire teachers?”
“We kept our identities hidden, but really, Monsieur le Docteur, you know us by our students. Look at the names of those men who were pupils at the school of Notre-Dame, such distinguished intellectuals as Abelard, Albertus Magnus, John of Salisbury, Siger of Brabant, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, William of Occam—nearly the entire history of philosophy from 1100 to 1400.”
“You were the teachers of these great men?”
“I and my brethren.”
“What did you teach them?” I asked as a warm wind suddenly caught us up in a little devil’s eddy. Des Esseintes paused before answering as the trees enclosing the cathedral continued to whisper. He folded his arms and frowned. “I will tell you, but I fear we must start back. It is a little too hot out here for my blood.”
He returned to the hansom ahead of me.
For a moment I was swept with an impulse to run. I feared it would be my last chance to escape for quite some time, and yet I was torn. Something held me back.
Des Esseintes slowly turned around, arms still clasped. “You are doing well, Monsieur le Docteur,” he said with an utter calm. “Don’t ruin it now.”
I succumbed and followed him to the carriage.
“I do feel like walking,” he continued. “It is a short distance back to the house. Would you like to stroll?”
I nodded.
“You may return ahead of us,” he said to the boy in livery. “We’ve decided to walk.” The boy nodded and the horses pulled silently into the night, leaving us alone in the square. The vampire beckoned and I quickened my pace to catch up with him.
“You ask me what we taught our students. We taught them many things. As you might expect, we taught them how to make automata. You remember Sylvester II possessed a bronze mechanical head that could answer YES and NO questions. It is no coincidence that your history books record the Franciscan friar and sorcerer, Roger Bacon, also possessed such a head. So did the famous alchemist-philosopher, Albertus Magnus. Unfortunately for posterity, his more famous student Thomas Aquinas thought the device was diabolical and destroyed it after Albertus died.”
“And these clockwork heads would actually answer questions?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I’m sorry. I can believe in many things—hypodermic syringes and horticultural advances—but I find it difficult to believe even the vampire of the Middle Ages could create such a mechanical being.”
We rounded the back of the cathedra
l.
“Alas, but you do not recognize one thing, Monsieur le Docteur, one thing that you will find very difficult to comprehend. The twelfth century was quite different from today, different in a most special way. You see, the entire world believed in magic, and this affected things. It altered the world we perceived, everyone perceived, mortal and vampire alike. You will not be able to accept this, but it altered the very laws of physics. Magic was a little more real.” He suddenly fanned his hands in the darkness. “But I do not want to discuss this. We are opening a hornet’s nest if we do.”
I was enraptured. A thousand questions waited in line, but I suddenly realized he was drawing me in again. With his web of words he had made me so completely forget my anger, Lady Dunaway, Hatim’s taunting remarks. “So that is all that you read in the doors, to teach, to be the beneficient fathers.” I shook my head slowly. “I may be sadly limited in my powers of comprehension, but I do have some wits about me. I know that you are keeping things from me. There is more to the work of the vampire than you are letting on. I saw it in the eyes of that demon boy. It is not just the pursuit of knowledge. Thete is more, isn’t there?”
He turned to me as we entered the footbridge of the Île Saint-Louis. I stared deep into his pale, cold eyes. “Yes,” he said simply “What is the work of the vampire, will you tell me?” We continued to face one another. I could glean no hint of what he was thinking from his expression. His face was blank. How I wished to penetrate beyond those slow-blinking lids, wrest secrets from that skull. I was helpless. He knew it I knew it. A ricochet of energy passed back and forth between our eyes as my frustration mounted.
“No,” he said.
I was infuriated. I’m sure he felt it, felt the air turn icy with the pins of the quiver It did not matter. He slowly resumed his forward gaze. The warm wind traced through the chestnuts on the tree-lined street. It was an odd sensation walking beside him, this partner with a thousand-year-old mind. I could not run. I was trapped. Nothing had changed. If anything, the things he had told me created even more fear in my mind. I had always viewed the vampire as the interloper, but if they were so interwoven in our history, if they were responsible for many of our ancient churches and monuments, how must they view themselves? They were not homeless ghouls or wanderers. They communicated with one another in ways we could not fathom. What sense of possession must they feel for this world, and how must they view us mere scurrying mortals?
Monsieur des Esseintes’s intense self-possession betrayed him. There was no doubt that he viewed this world as his. What was most disturbing of all was that they were here, they moved among us, and no one knew. I looked around me. There were carriages gathered around the stately hotels, and not a few strollers on the residential streets. I looked at their faces. None of them had the faintest inkling that the gentleman accompanying me was not human. He could have walked right up to any one of them and asked the time. How often had I walked by vampire in the past, how often do we all walk by them completely unaware that the gentleman just a few feet away has senses that make ours look aboriginal, that the lady shopping a short distance from us is smugly aware that she is not human? What other manner of creature had assumed a comely shape and moved freely down our evening streets?
My footsteps set into a cadence with his own as we continued through the oblivious passersby. What did he experience as he strolled through this bustle of human life? A constant barrage of heartbeats like the resonance of so many drums? A dozen varying rhythms of breath amplified as through a deaf horn? I was so immersed in my thoughts I almost didn’t notice the figure of a woman moving through the sparse crowd. She approached on the opposite side of the street. Her dress was a plain brown cloak and hood, and she had a determined, forward lean in her stride.
I recognized her walk, something about her form, immediately. As if guided by a hidden power she looked up and her face became visible beyond the crescent shadow of her hood. It was Ursula. She had come to Paris.
I tried to conceal my shock, but as calm as I remained outwardly, there was no keeping my emotions from des Esseintes. He turned to me at once. “Is anything the matter?”
In the flash of a second I had transferred my gaze to a gentleman on our side of the street and then to another— all the time trying to maintain my previous anger as a smokescreen. I prayed that Ursula would have the presence of mind to look away as well, to continue to walk on, but I dared not look in her direction to see what her reaction was.
It seemed to work. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my companion scan the street. Could even the vampire sort out the noise of so many heartbeats and discover the one significant rhythm in the crowd? He looked back at me, tried to peer a little closer into my soul, and I luxuriated in another wave of anger. I ran through my mind everything he had said that had frustrated me. I tried to focus on anything and everything except the unexpected appearance of Ursula. With every ounce of self-control I possessed I upheld my brooding composure and glowered at des Esseintes. I did not answer, hoping he would be fooled by my reticence.
Impossibly, he seemed to dismiss the occurrence. I resumed my forward glare. Of course, he was so adept at controlling his façade it was impossible to determine what was going on behind his blue eyes. And yet, every intuition in my body told me my subterfuge had been successful. I was certain he had not noticed my recognition of Ursula. I was elated. So he was not infallible. So even des Esseintes had his limits. I, a blind and stupid mortal, had performed a brief but unseen sleight of hand. It gave me new hope, and yet I dared not even ponder the victory for fear of arousing des Esseintes’s suspicions.
At length we arrived at the familiar street, and des Esseintes withdrew his keys. He opened the large oak door and allowed me to pass before him. Inside, the lavender foyer was quiet. The sinuous rosewood staircase stood empty and it was apparent that all of the human servants were sleeping or busy elsewhere. Perhaps it was exposure to the vampire that gave me a heightened awareness of my senses. Whatever it was, I was swept with the second surprise of the evening. The air still possessed a tinge of mold. It was filled with the smell of the scullery, and the always present heaviness of the orchids. Even so, I discerned several new smells, smells that had not been there before. A lingering aroma of various colognes and tobacco. The house had been filled with people.
“Who has been here?” I asked.
“Friends,” des Esseintes said without batting an eye. The intruding scents were perhaps as obvious to him as photographs.
“What friends?”
“Vampire friends. There are more than a few of us in Paris, you know. They use my house as a meeting place. They’ve wanted to remain unseen until we knew a little more about what to expect from you.”
“I don’t suppose it would do me any good to inquire what their meetings are about?”
“No good at all.”
“As I thought.”
“You are catching on, Monsieur le Docteur,” he said, smiling as he replaced his jacket and cane.
“More than you imagine,” I returned.
Of course, he would not give me the pleasure of seeing him raise an eyebrow, but I was confident I had struck a note of curiosity within him.
It was only in the privacy of my room that I allowed myself to experience my full surprise at seeing Ursula. Lady Dunaway was not in. Grelot had informed me that it was her turn to be given the freedom of the house, and I was worried about her. God protect her from that falcon and that terrible boy. I wondered what Ursula had done after she found me. She was an intelligent young woman. Certainly she had assessed the situation and understood I was in trouble. I also thanked God she had walked on without rushing into the very midst of des Esseintes’s realm of power. But afterward, had she followed us? Had she watched from a safe distance until she spotted the house and even now was contacting the agents of the Sûreté? I paced my cell excitedly with this new hope. What would happen to des Esseintes? I did not want to expose or hurt him, but I would also do anyt
hing to continue my search for Camille. I was suddenly jolted by the possibility that he would ferret Lady Dunaway and me away so that the authorities would find nothing. Des Esseintes had survived a very long time in the human world. Surely, he had had encounters with the authorities before. No doubt he had a countermove for every situation that might intrude upon his territory. And yet I dared not allow myself to consider it. I could only wait.
XXI
It was in my hands now. My mind was heavy with one desire, to discover at any cost what had caused Lady Dunaway’s alienation from me. I did not see her until the next evening, when Grelot came and woke us up. To my surprise, he announced we would both be given the freedom of the house. We were to be separated. He was to guard my companion. I, by virtue of some hideous whimsy, was once again left in the care of the vampire familiar, the falcon. As we made our way to the first floor I tried to get Lady Dunaway’s attention, but she was clearly reluctant to look in my eyes. She seemed numbed, as if she had been drugged. When she finally did look for one fleeting second her expression revealed the same vapid regret. I surreptitiously scanned her throat for bite marks. In my reading I remembered the vampire sometimes bit behind the ear. Her raven-black hair was drawn tightly behind her head and I got a clear view of her chalky skin. There were no visible markings. We reached the foyer. I watched as Grelot led Lady Dunaway off to some other part of the immense old home.
The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life Page 28