She could not argue with that.
“I am leaving. Do you want to come with me?”
She looked upward. “What about him? We can’t leave without him.”
“Where are they keeping him?”
“There are rooms inside the house, secret rooms. He is locked in one of them.”
“Do you have any notion how we would get him out without arousing their attention?”
“We have to try. Surely you don’t expect me to leave him here.”
“My good Lady Dunaway, I do not expect you to do anything. I felt it was my moral obligation to ask you to accompany me. We would have to leave Ambrose here. As I have said, if you ever want your child back on your own terms, I feel this is your only chance. Will you come with me?”
I could see it in her eyes, thoughts of Lucien and her barren life in Cornwall. She could not go back. Was it possible that this had become her world, a dazzling and alien treasure trove for a woman misplaced and unhappy in her human existence? I braced myself for her refusal. Her lip quivered hesitantly.
“Yes,” she returned at length, and much to my surprise. “I will go with you.”
“Then it’s now or never,” I returned. “We must not give the falcon any indication of what we are about to do until the very last second. As Ilga has explained, the moment it realizes we intend to enter the conservatory it will attack. If we get in and start to make our way across it will immediately go around through the house and try to head us off. We must move with speed and precision.”
She nodded as we walked slowly toward the sitting room. The falcon followed dutifully. When we reached the chamber of turquoise and gilt we pretended to be examining the walls. Ilga still hovered in the corner, alabaster and mute. I glanced down at the falcon. It watched as it always watched, never tiring of its scrutiny. Always acute.
“The craftsmanship is superb,” I said, allowing my finger to drag along the wainscoting. We took a step back and toward the secret panel concealing the French doors. I gestured at the black-lacquered ceiling, taking still a further step backward.
Nictitating membranes flicked.
I glanced at Lady Dunaway. She watched intently. Casually I made a motion as if I were merely leaning against the wall. In an instant my hand hit the secret button I had seen des Esseintes hit One of the painted panels hissed out of sight, and as the pinions spread to fan the air we burst through the steam-covered doors.
The falcon gave a cry.
It was too late. It flapped helplessly beyond the threshold, oddly intimidated by des Esseintes’s bejeweled and balmy garden. We were on our way. I looked back only once to make sure the bird was not following. Beyond that every second was too important to spend time watching as the feathered devil set off on its own course of interception. After making our way through the diminutive jungle we darted through the conservatory entrance into the parlor. Lady Dunaway fell.
“My ankle!”
“Let me see.” I stooped beside her. She looked at me helplessly. I turned her white ankle around in my hand. She uttered a cry.
“It might be broken.”
“Yes,” she gasped halfheartedly.
I looked toward the door. “We must continue!”
“I don’t know—”
I grasped her gloved hand and pulled her upward with the full of my strength. We limped toward the cellar entrance.
“I don’t know!”
She leaned heavily upon my shoulder as I dragged her through the cellar doorway. I shut the door behind us, knowing it would do little good. It swung lightly on its hinges and there was nothing in sight with which to prop it shut. I struggled to help her down the steps. It was too much. She seemed helpless. “You’re not trying!” I hissed. My fingers gripped deep into the flesh of her arm as I pushed her on. “I’ve seen you put your weight on that foot. It’s not broken if you can do that You must continue.”
I harshly propelled her forward and she stumbled a few steps, but did not fall. She turned and glared at me with alarm. When we reached the cells I told her where Ilga had said to find the key, and sent her to the door leading to the sewers. I turned again, expecting them to discover us at any moment. I dashed into my cell to retrieve the necessary objects, a handkerchief, my papers and money clip, and my half-empty bottle of Lilac Vegetal.
As I turned to catch up with Lady Dunaway I was stunned to hear the flutter of wings, and see the demon’s eyes glint amber as it alighted. We had taken too long. Lady Dunaway’s fall had given it the few seconds it needed to catch up with us. I moved back.
It stepped forward into the light like a pompous little general. It strutted ludicrously, eyeing me with clear delight. I grabbed one of the torches from the wall, and the flame gave a windy sound as I brandished it at the bird. It hopped back, a hint of sudden concern in its glowing eyes. Its head swayed back and forth like a cobra’8 as it calculated my vulnerabilities.
“Dr. Gladstone!” Lady Dunaway called.
“Stay there, the falcon.”
It hopped to one side and I swung around, keeping the torch between us. It continued to pitch back and forth in slow undulation as step by step it circled about me. I thrust the torch at it once again and it leaped back. A rasping screech came from the hook of darkness beneath the beak. It groused.
As I neared the exit it grew more frantic, spreading its pinions, and casting grotesque shadows against the wall. Suddenly, talons plummeted through the air and I batted the torch. The falcon flapped in an explosion of feathers and came at me again.
“Dr. Gladstone, please!” her voice echoed in the maze of tunnels beyond.
“Is there a boat, a flatboat?”
“Yes. Can’t you please hurry? What is happening?”
The very instant I started to involve a portion of my mind in answering Lady Dunaway’s questions the falcon perceived its chance and came at me again. This time I struck it soundly with the very brunt of the fire. There was a hideous crackling as it screamed and fell to the floor. The air filled with the stench of burned feathers. In a flash it was on its feet. A large area of its breast and neck were singed to its sickening gray flesh, but it was still intact. It was livid. The coppery irises of its eyes expanded and contracted in the changing light.
I moved.
I could almost feel it behind me. I swung savagely in the darkness and was wracked by the heavy thud of another impact. It gave a second iniquitous and riveting screech as I reached the entrance of the sewer and swung the door shut behind me. On the other side the falcon threw the whole of its weight desperately against the wood, and only my holding the planks kept the door from swinging open. It thrashed again.
“What do we do?” I heard my companion gasp. I turned to see her still garbed in evening gown and gloves and standing on the slimy edge of rock. A peeling and ancient flatboat rocked gently in the black and fetid waters of the Paris sewers. Beyond, as Ilga had described, stretched the openings of three dark passages. Water flowed through them like blood through an abattoir.
In the flatboat was a large squarish stone used as an anchor. Lady Dunaway brought it to me and I propped it solidly against the door. Again the falcon crashed against the wood, shrieking and floundering in rage.
Lady Dunaway started to get into the flatboat.
“No,” I said. I opened the bottle of Lilac Vegetal and emptied a small portion of it upon the seat of the boat. I wedged the torch upright in the prow and untied the raft. Giving it a shove, I sent it drifting downstream in the inky current. The flame illuminated the aged, vaulted arches of the sewer as the boat swiftly swept into the distance.
“No, we go this way,” I directed, pointing upstream. I motioned at the narrow parapet of ocher stone. I resealed the bottle of Lilac Vegetal and washed it in the filthy water.
“My foot is aching,” Lady Dunaway complained.
“Why are you doing this? You must continue.” She glanced anxiously at the door. Was she having second thoughts about leaving Ambrose? She reluctan
tly continued. We inched into the darkness.
I did not know how old the sewers of Paris were. Older than London’s. I recalled but a fragment of history about Henry II renovating them, and that was before Shakespeare was born. Without the torch it was difficult passing. We had to feel our way along the clammy, slime-encrusted walls. It was a necessary unpleasantness. We paused to listen and could hear nothing but the babble of the water and the ominous scurrying of the sewer vermin. Here and there dark shafts twisted upward through the vaulted tunnel and ended in the gratings of the gutters sixteen and twenty feet above our heads. A faint light shone enticingly through the slits.
Lady Dunaway slipped and nearly fell. “This damn gown!” she cursed.
At last we came to a shaft through which snaked a rusted ladder.
“Do you think you can make it?”
“Yes,” she sighed, slowly starting the climb.
I followed.
I was duly impressed when her strong arms pushed against the heavy metal plate and slid it adroitly upon the bricks of the street. She clambered out.
When I finally stood beside her I saw, as Ilga had predicted, that we were immediately before the footbridge leading to the Île de la Cité. I looked around. Surely they had discovered our absence by now. I only prayed that my ruse with the Lilac Vegetal had worked and they were following the wrong trail. If it had not worked we were lost. No carriages yet. We crossed the bridge.
I felt a strange rush of feeling as we made a wide path around Notre-Dame. Half a millennium ago, a gathering place of alchemists. A monument to the vampire filled with strange symbol and cipher. At one and the same time it represented an awesome and fascinating secret and the last vestige of my imprisonment.
Winded, we reached a battery of police wagons lining the street outside the Prefecture. Some were emptying new patrons and others were just pulling out. We slowed our pace and tried to look as casual and dignified as possible. In the darkness the spattering of sludge and filth upon our handsome clothing was somewhat invisible.
Lady Dunaway looked at me curiously as I ripped the handkerchief I had brought into shreds and surreptitiously tied one onto the back railing of one of the empty wagons. Next I dribbled a generous portion of the remaining cologne upon the remnant. I proceeded to do the same to the next wagon.
“You cannot do that,” she said sternly.
“Why not?”
“We do not have the time.”
“This is our only hope. You know as well as I do we will have no chance if they catch up with us.”
“Hein? Que faites-vous?”exclaimed a voice as a figure in the familiar blue rounded cap and cape of the police rounded the corner.
“Admiring the horses, my good fellow,” I said in my most chipper English.
His expression changed from anger to mere irritation. “Vous êtes anglais. Quel un casse-pieds, uous anglais —”
“Yes, yes, terrible pests, we English. But tell me, if we were attending a coronation would we wear teacups or armchairs?”
“I speak perfect English,” the officer said to my surprise. “You are speaking absurdities.”
“Most absurd, we English. Which way to the Champs-Élysées?”
He pointed his baton toward the river. “That way, monsieur.” He regarded the muddy bottom of Lady Dunaway’s gown with perplexity. He walked away shaking his head.
Lady Dunaway said nothing as I tied another shred to a wagon farther back and doused the shred with cologne. I paused in my work as a group of officers stepped into the first wagon and pulled onto the cobblestones. The shred of handkerchief wafted in the wind. I was about to do another when a sound caught our attention.
We turned.
In the distance along the avenue of paraffin lamps rolled a fashionable black coach drawn by Hackney stallions. My heart froze. “Up on the steps,” I ordered as we passed between the police wagons and ascended. The coach approached slowly.
Are we safe, I thought? Surely they would not dare follow us into the Prefecture. The seconds ticked by slowly. I gazed at the hooves of the horses. They clopped loudly on the stone. Too loudly. The wagon glided by. The driver was oblivious. In the back a middle-aged gentleman, very drunk, laughed and rolled a doxy in his arms.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I looked at Lady Dunaway. She was not relieved, but worried. The evidence was too telling, her complaints about her ankle, her apprehensive glances. Either consciously or unconsciously she was trying to slow us down.
“Let’s go into the station,” I said.
Lady Dunaway frowned at me suspiciously. “You’re not going to turn des Esseintes in?”
“No.”
Still mistrustful, she followed.
I knew what I had to do. I knew that within hours after our escape des Esseintes would temporarily suspend “the work” of the vampire in every corner of the city. As Ilga had said, time was of the essence. I also knew that I had to move alone, and Lady Dunaway would never willingly submit to that. She was too strong-willed.
When we approached the bench the desk officer looked down at us wearily.
“Monsieur l’Agent,” I began. “I discovered this poor creature trying to commit suicide. She was walking into the Seine, but I forcefully rescued her. Could you please see to it that she is protected from herself?”
Lady Dunaway turned upon me with such rage she was speechless. She swung about as if to run when her eyes came to rest on the four-barreled pocket pistols of the two approaching officers. She returned her gaze to me, her eyes filled with such venom I almost regretted my action. But she had betrayed me in her secrecy about Ambrose. At least my betrayal was for her own welfare.
“Vraiment,” said the desk officer as the agents led her away.
Once out of the Prefecture I was heartened to see that another one of the wagons tied with a scrap of handkerchief had pulled out of the station.
There were no cabs in sight so I proceeded on foot. They would be looking for two of us, two of us running, or a speeding hansom. They might ignore a solitary figure. I threw the remains of the bottle of Lilac Vegetal into the Seine as I messed my hair and ruffled up my dirty coat. I hunched over and ambled as much like one of the clochards as I could master as I crossed over to Quai Montebello and headed south.
Once a hansom sped by me, swiftly and silently. I paid it no heed, not wanting to arouse attention. I do not know if it carried my pursuers. As I neared the Sorbonne the streets became more active, filled with students out reveling and cluttering the cafés. It was on the Boulevard St. Michel that I recognized a carriage of the vampire. Sitting sedately in the back was the same man with a Hapsburg mustache and young woman I had seen at the party. I skulked quietly into a little bistro and watched from the window. I did not think they saw me.
The carriage stopped and they stepped casually to the street. Again I noticed how unobtrusively they melded with the other young people, just another couple in the crowd. Who would dare imagine they had walked these same streets with Thomas Aquinas or Becket?
With no particular sense of purpose they crossed.
I scanned the bar. It was thinning out. A woman in a black-and-lace-fringed dress stood behind the mirrored counter and only a few tables remained occupied. It would be difficult to hide. I glanced again at the street. They were approaching the door.
I made my way to the back exit.
As I neared the door a hand reached out and latched onto my arm.
“Pardon, monsieur...
In terror I searched the young gentleman’s face. Had he been at the party? His eyes were hazel, his beard black. Was there age in his eyes? They certainly sparkled. His cheeks were pale.
I laid my hand against the flesh of his arm and was swept with relief to feel that it was warm.
I pulled quickly away.
“His lace is untied,” I heard him say incredulously behind me. “Mon Dieu, only his lace.”
I burst into the narrow alley. It was time to run. Above the narrow warren
of tenements I saw the stately dome of the Sorbonne. I kept to the alleys. I continued south. It was beneath a stone ledge closely flanked with a wrought-iron fence that I stumbled into a rubbish pail and sent it clattering down the bricks. The sound roused another presence. I heard movement, but I could not see what it was.
In a panic I stupidly tripped over still another pail and made my way toward the narrowest pass between the ledge and the fence. Something else also made its way.
It was tight, not meant for human passage.
There was a rushing of air.
I burst into a little square centered by a fountain. Behind me came the sound of wings. A shadow swooped above. I was too terrified to scream. I merely lurched forward, stumbling and trying to protect my head. It was then that I saw my pursuer.
Pigeons! A flock of pigeons disturbed by my clamor. They spread out over the fountain and alighted on the cornice of an opposite building. There was only the gentle sound of water splashing. Above that, silence. The square was empty.
The farther south I traveled the more secure I felt. They could not cover the entire city. It was some time before I reached the Rue de la Glacière. I strolled along the neat row of houses until I came to No. 24. It was a quaint little structure backed by arbors and a minuscule garden. The house was dark. In the garden was a tiny shed. I stepped over the fence and crept along the rows of convolvulus and poppies. I looked through the glass window of the shed. In the moonlight I made out a perimeter of counters covered with bell jars and scientific equipment. It was a makeshift laboratory. I moved to another window and discerned a desk, a shelf of books, and papers. It was difficult to focus, for a thick wire mesh had been placed over the window and played tricks with my eyes. I leaned against the door of the shed and my fingers brushed against something cool and metallic. I glanced down to see a row of no less than eight locks spanning the various latches of the door. Either there was something very important in that laboratory, or it was run by a very frightened person. Or both.
I flashed back to Chiswick... Dr Chiswick... the grates over the windows, the paranoia of the locks. I tried to recall everything Cletus had told me in our last meeting. A doctor going mad in Liverpool. An airship capable of carrying tremendous cargoes. What was it they all had in common? Each one was a scientist. Each one had made a discovery. And what was the most sought-after thing of these cold-blooded creatures? Knowledge. But why had every one of them gone mad? Was it because the vampire was such a different order of being, prolonged interaction with them caused mere mortals to lose their minds? No... that was not it. It was something much more deliberate. More sinister.
The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life Page 33