A Taste of Blood Wine

by Freda Warrington

  There was the merest touch of shiftiness in Pierre's face. Kristian tightened his grip. "Don't lie to me. Ilona told me you know where he is. It's very hard to understand why you failed to tell me."

  "No—you've got it wrong. For God's sake, let me go and listen to me!" Kristian did so and Pierre relaxed, gasping and holding his injured arm. The wounds were already beginning to heal. "It's Ilona who's lying. She knows, not me! Damn it, I wish you'd both keep your games to yourselves."

  "This is no game. What are you talking about?"

  Pierre steadied himself. "Ilona always makes it her business to know where Karl is. It's as if she doesn't feel safe unless she can find him. So why don't you ask her?"

  Kristian didn't reply. Horrible revelation, that Ilona could do such a thing without his permission. Deceitful. She's betrayed me… He said, "How dare she do this without telling me?"

  Pierre shrugged. "She's a madwoman. She's perverse. She hates Karl but she can't leave him alone… It's some game she's playing and I wish to God she had left me out of it!"

  Kristian's hands snaked out and he forced Pierre back against the hedge. The stiff branches yielded to his weight. "You will wish she had told you. It's time for Karl to come back, and you are going to find him for me."

  "Why don't you do you own dirty work?" Pierre said, struggling as uselessly as his victim had struggled. "You presume too much on love. You chose us for our spirits, yet when we desire a little freedom you crush us! Find Karl yourself!"

  Pierre's throat moved as he spoke, pale and gleaming in the folds of his shirt and coat. His words enraged Kristian so deeply that he felt himself enter a higher state of deadly calm insanity. "Not this time," said Kristian. "It would be according him far too much importance. I will have loyalty, Pierre. I will have obedience." Then he stabbed his fangs into Pierre's neck.

  He drew the dense, ice-bright vampire blood into his mouth and he went on swallowing and swallowing; wanting to steal not just the blood but Pierre's glittering defiance with it. To suck him dry and leave him humiliated, terrified, pleading forgiveness.

  At last he let go and Pierre slumped forward, catching at Kristian's stiff black clothing. His head drooped forward, brown curls dishevelled. "Yes," he gasped. "Anything for you."

  Kristian felt almost tender towards him then. He cupped his hand round the back of Pierre's head. This was the way of power; a vampire who could drink another's blood proved himself the stronger, and the stolen blood made him more powerful still, his victim weaker. Kristian had done this countless times to countless vampires who had defied him. He always won. Always. "I know, my dear beloved one," he said. "I know."

  "I am so thirsty. You must let me… " Pierre strained towards the man who lay slumped on the ground by their feet, but Kristian held him back.

  "Wait," he said. "I need to be sure you understand why I had to punish your defiance and your lies."

  Pierre looked up. His face was deadly white but his eyes shone feverishly. "Kristian, you know I would never do anything to hurt you. I swear I don't know where Karl is, but I'll find him, if it's what you want. Trust me, as I love you."

  "I do, my dearest friend."

  "But it would save us both trouble if you only asked Ilona."

  Kristian thought of Ilona, sleeping in the highest circle of the Crystal Ring. Again he saw her eyelids closing, their darkness whitened with frost; her stiff mouth uttering a last tantalizing lie, "Pierre knows… "

  "Impossible, at present. When you find Karl, don't approach him, and be careful not to let him know you are there. Just come back to me straight away. Then I will tell you how to proceed."

  "You are a hard master," said Pierre, with a half-hearted gleam of spirit. "But how can I refuse you?"

  Ah, how he loves me. "Regain your strength quickly. You'll need it." Kristian kissed him on both cheeks and dropped him. With a kind of affectionate disdain he watched Pierre crawl over to the unconscious victim and begin to suck back the strength that his master had taken from him.

  Now the man would die, for certain.

  ***

  Charlotte slept badly and when morning came she lay in a restless doze, haunted by ridiculous and unpleasant dreams. She was married to Henry, but Henry was actually a teddy bear who sat brooding and moth-eaten in the corner of a huge, medieval hall. And at the far end of the hall hung a portrait of Karl, a luminous Pre-Raphaelite portrait with every detail painfully sharp. The eyes seemed alive, shining under the dark brows, swallowing her. Her breath quickened and a strange hot fear pulled at her stomach…

  "I tried to tell you he was just a painting," said Edward, pointing with his stick, "but no one would listen."

  She woke. A figure moving through the room had woken her. Someone pulled back the curtains and silver light spilled into the room, dazzling.

  "I surely hope you haven't a hangover," said Anne, "because it's a perfect morning to go riding."

  Charlotte felt a delicious sense of relief at escaping the dream; and then the memories of the previous day flowed back, a multicoloured patchwork of disasters. Yes, it would be good to avoid the ordeal of breakfast; having to listen to her family dissecting the party, having to be polite to the house guests… having to see Karl, or think about Henry. One good thing had come out of the party; her deepening friendship with Anne, which held her steady like a talisman against her fears.

  ***

  The park slanted before them, shining with watered-gold sunlight and silver-green shadow. They moved beneath the rustling branches of copper beeches and ash trees; Charlotte on a chestnut mare, Anne on a headstrong bay hunter. Birds broke upwards through the leaves as they passed; showers of birds, wheeling all together in a wave.

  Tonight I shall have to go back to Cambridge with Father; tomorrow, I shall have to face Henry. Now the laboratory will no longer be my refuge but a cage with two lions loose in it… Still, for now, nothing can touch me.

  "I can't wait to get home," said Anne, turning in the saddle to look at her. "I miss my horses desperately."

  Charlotte smiled. "I suppose Elizabeth's horses aren't quite the same."

  "Of course not. I still couldn't bear to go a day without riding. I came out with an ulterior motive, though; I want to go and look at the manor house. It will be ages before it's ready for David and me to move in. I don't think they've even started work on it yet, but I want a good look round without Elizabeth and half a dozen others talking my head off."

  "Wouldn't you rather have come with David?"

  Green-speckled tunnels of woodland drew them in. The horses' hooves thudded softly on the earth. "Well, it would have been nice if he'd come with us," Anne replied. "But the Prof asked him to take Karl on a tour of the estate."

  "Oh—to keep Karl away from Edward?"

  "And away from Madeleine, I think. I gather your father's none too pleased at the way she was flirting with him last night."

  Charlotte sighed. "That doesn't surprise me. But it's only a gesture. If Maddy wants something, I don't think it's in Father's power to stop her."

  "What did you make of Karl, now that you've met him properly?" Anne said, teasing her. "Didn't you find him attractive?"

  "I don't want anything to do with him!" Charlotte said vehemently.

  Anne seemed taken aback by her reaction. Then she said thoughtfully, "Too attractive, perhaps. You're right, I wouldn't trust him, either."

  "I wish Maddy had never met him. What was he doing at Fleur's party, anyway? I can't think what possessed Father… " she trailed off. "Oh, what's the point?"

  "The point is, Charli, there's no sense in upsetting yourself about Karl. Just keep reminding yourself, he's only a human being. He might be quite nice, when you get to know him."

  "You're right." Charlotte tried to shake off her unease. "I don't know why I'm such an idiot about these things."

  "That's better. You may have to get used to the idea of Karl being your brother-in-law. As your father seems to like him so much, I can't imagine he'll
object for long to Maddy seeing him. But I have this feeling… "

  "What?"

  "Men like Karl can be very charming, but they leave trails of broken hearts behind them. I'm afraid he might hurt Madeleine."

  "He'd better not!" Charlotte said fiercely. "I should kill him!"

  A mile along the woodland path they came in sight of the manor house. It rose stern and grey through a clearing in the trees, shouldering up through a covering of ivy and moss. Brambles massed around its flanks, spilling into drifts of cow parsley and willow herb. Charlotte and Anne halted the horses and looked up at its stone walls and leaded windows.

  "Pretty grim, isn't it?" said Anne. "At least they've cleared the path. It looks as if they're making a start."

  There was scaffolding piled up by the front door, lengths of pipe and piles of brick left ready by the estate workmen. Anne and Charlotte dismounted and tethered the horses, then walked up four steps to the iron-clad front door. It was unlocked. It swung open to Anne's touch and an exhalation of damp and dust sighed out to meet them.

  "It's years since I last came here," said Charlotte, remembering childhood days.

  They stepped into the hall. The flags echoed under the heels of their riding boots. "You know this place, then?"

  "Oh, yes. When we came to stay with Aunt Lizzie, when my sisters were home from school, we often came to play up here."

  "Weren't you frightened?" Anne shivered.

  "Not really. I always liked it. Strange, isn't it? It must have been the only time Fleur and Maddy were scared, and I wasn't."

  Charlotte looked up into the lofty hall. It was all pale stone and dark wood, a medieval priory crystallized in time. A broad staircase swept up to a landing, lit by wedges of gossamer light from the windows. Dust lay thick on the sills, cobwebs curtained the banisters and the candelabras. The huge firegrate was full of ashes and shadows. The atmosphere lay heavy as if it had not been disturbed for centuries.

  "It seems such a shame to modernise it," said Charlotte. Anne hung behind her a little. "I have a confession to make. This place actually rather gives me the creeps."

  "You? I didn't think anything frightened you!"

  "I'm not frightened," Anne said crisply. "Just a bit… well it does have rather an atmosphere, doesn't it? I shall be glad when we have electric lights and all that. We shan't ruin it, Charli; the idea is to preserve it rather than let it fall down."

  "You won't be the first. I think it dates from the Wars of the Roses or before, but it's been lived in on and off since then. That's why you'll find Elizabethan and Georgian alterations. I think it was last inhabited before the beginning of the last century."

  Charlotte went up the stairs to the landing as she spoke and stood looking over the banister at the hall below and the ceiling arching above them. The black, ornately carved beams made her think of an ancient church; slightly sinister, intruding from a lost time. She remembered her sisters trying to terrify her with tales of hauntings, or by leaving her alone here; failing, because the house intrigued her more than it repelled her.

  Anne went past her, through a door to a solar. "There's a bed in here that looks as if it hasn't been slept in since the sixteenth century. The most beautiful tapestry cover and it's absolutely grey with dust… " There was the sound of flapping cloth, a cloud of dust billowed out and Anne emerged, coughing.

  "It will take an army to clean this place!" she said, waving a hand in front of her face. "The first thing I am going to do is have the chimneys cleaned and a fire lit in every grate and kept burning for as long as it takes to dry out the damp. That's the sort of thing men don't think of."

  Downstairs, they went into a dimly-lit kitchen with iron-grilled windows and store rooms in which the debris of centuries lay piled up. Anne became subdued. Presently Charlotte asked, "Are you sure you really want to live here?"

  "Of course! It's a challenge. Where does this lead?" Anne struggled with the latch of a cracked, age-darkened door.

  "It's the cellar," said Charlotte. "It's not very nice down there."

  "Unless you're a rat or a spider." The door came open and a stagnant scent rolled up, heavy as stone. Faint gauzy light spilled down the steps, forming oblongs barred with shadow, and across one of these oblongs Charlotte clearly saw the silhouette of a cat walking.

  It padded across the light and was gone. There was a moment of silence. Then Anne said, "Did you see that?"

  "A cat?" said Charlotte.

  Anne nodded. "How could it have got down there?"

  "I don't know, but we can't leave it." Charlotte started down the steps. She remembered coming down here as a child, caught between delicious terror and excitement at daring to brave the darkness. Now that feeling caught her again, electric.

  There is no cat, she thought.

  At the bottom, the steps turned round on themselves and into a dark space like the crypt of a church. She could see nothing, but peeing into the blackness she could feel the shape of the cellar, the weight of the walls and ceiling. The air was frosted with the stench of damp stone and age.

  "Charlotte!" Anne's voice came from half-way down the stairs. "It's silly to go down without a torch. If we just leave the door open, the stupid animal can come out on its own. Give me a dog any day."

  But Charlotte moved deeper into the cellar. It was a compulsion. The wintry cold penetrated her riding clothes and she hugged herself. She was afraid now, not of the darkness but of what it contained; layers and layers of age, lost lives and energies still weighing down the air with their echoes. Yet she had to push herself on through it. There was a vibration in the air, like the reverberation of a distant door clanging shut; yet no sound had preceded it, and it went on and on.

  Again the voice above her. "Charlotte? Don't blame me if you break your leg!" A pause. Then, more anxious, "Oh, do come out. What are you doing?"

  "Yes, I'm coming," she said. But she spoke so softly that Anne could not have heard her. Her fingers brushed a pillar that felt cold as a stalagmite. More vibrations seemed to be released into the air, deep beyond the range of hearing. Trails of goosepimples ran over her. "It's the same," she murmured. "You're still here… "

  A sudden circle of light splayed across the wall in front of her. Anne was coming down the steps with a lamp. And where the light fell she saw the cat again; just a shadow walking with nothing to cast it.

  Charlotte felt Anne approaching, but she didn't look round. As the light brightened the cat vanished and the torch beam glistened on stacks of barrels and wine jars crusted with dirt.

  "There isn't a cat, Anne," she said. "It's a ghost. I used to see it when we came here years ago. We always used to see the shadow but never the cat. I wanted to see if it was still here."

  Then she looked round and found not Anne behind her, but Karl. She jumped violently and stepped away, heart pounding with shock.

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," he said. The torchlight lit red sparks in his dark mass of hair, and his eyes were amber glass flecked with gold.

  "You frightened the life out of me!" she exclaimed.

  "I apologise. I thought you knew I was there." But his lips elongated with a trace of amusement and she thought he was mocking her. She held herself rigidly away from him. It was strange to see him in everyday clothes, a suit and a dark coat and hat, though he looked no less elegant. It was as though he would be at ease in anything he wore, like a slender hand in a black silk glove.

  "Where's Anne?" she asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

  "In the kitchen," he said, as if to say, It's all right, I have not murdered her. "David has been showing me round the estate and he invited me to see the house. We saw your horses outside. Anne seemed a little worried about you being down here and David had a torch, so I offered to bring it to you."

  She became aware of voices upstairs and realised that it was Anne and David talking. She let go of the breath she had been holding. "Oh, I see." How do I escape?

  "What was it you were saying
about ghosts?" He offered her the torch and as she took it his fingertips brushed her palm, cool as satin. The touch sent shocks racing along her nerves. She recoiled inwardly. He raised more fear in her than any ghost. One thing saved her from appearing a complete stammering fool; she recalled what they were to be to each other. Colleagues in research.

  "Did you see the cat?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Then you can't tell me ghosts don't exist." She spoke sharply, not giving him another chance to laugh at her. She went to the far wall, picking her way through debris and scampering shadows.

  "I was not going to. I believe that people see things."

  "Have you thought what a ghost might be?" She spread her fingers on the wall, feeling the granular texture pricking her skin. "Perhaps not a soul who can't find rest, but an image we can call back. This stone is full of crystals. Some crystals have electrical and magnetic fields, and they vibrate in response to a stimulus. What if they could absorb certain wavelengths and produce them again when disturbed—by the light through the door, for example? Every time the light falls in here, each individual crystal is stimulated to give back photons in a particular pattern—and we think we see a cat."

  Karl had followed her. He was looking at her as if he had never seen her before, and he no longer looked remotely amused.

  "A cat that has not hunted here for hundreds of years. It is an interesting theory," he said. "But why should the crystals pick up that particular image and not another? Why no nervous rats?"

  She smiled. She had forgotten to be self-conscious. "Perhaps it wasn't a cat, just our eyes trying to make sense of a cloud of energy. Or it may be that certain events produce enough energy to register in the crystal structure. Or I might be talking nonsense, because ghosts are more than visual."

  "Yes, they are emotional," said Karl. "Do you see others?"

  "My mother; but it's different, I feel her more than see her… " she stopped. It was becoming too personal. "I mean, there is some reaction between the human mind and a certain place. Thoughts are only another kind of energy. Do you think it sounds completely unscientific?"