Monsieur’s eyes didn’t look disgusted at the horrible taint of English blood, but the eyebrows were low over them, as though he were trying to understand something. “So Alix was your sister-in-law?”
“Oh, no, Monsieur. Not then.” He realized he was telling it all very badly and tried to explain. “No. She was, you see, raised with us... raised with me. She is a year younger than I, and my father died when we were little. I didn’t think much of it then,, because she was skinny and... and weak. And she always wanted to do the things I did, but she couldn’t and I had to help her. She was a very great nuisance.”
“Girls often are to little boys tasked with looking after them, but I presume she didn’t stay a nuisance forever.”
Rene sighed. “She went away for a year, to a school. Then she came back. This was... three years ago. And when she came back, Monsieur, she was a young lady.” He cleared his throat. “What I mean is she had a way of talking, and a way... a way of walking and... her figure...” He blushed and stopped.
And now D’Alban lips were curling upwards again, and the way he cleared his throat sounded uncommonly like a chuckle. “You need say no more,” he said. “I am aware of what you mean.”
“Well, yes, but... But she was closer to my age than to Pons’s,” he said. “And Pons said she was his affianced bride. And then,” he said, in a crescendo of indignation. “After they found us kissing in the pigeon loft, Pons had the gamekeeper thrash me with a cane, sir, as though I were a peasant, and he said that she was his affianced bride, and that I was not to go near her or be alone with her, ever. He said I was to go to seminary, and he would marry Alix.”
“I see,” D’Alban said, his face once more grave.
“Yes, monsieur.” Rene inclined his head, thinking of that sleety, cold morning when he’d been forced to the church to witness his brother marrying the woman Rene loved. Alix had looked pale and wan and Rene knew well that she’d been forced into consent by being starved within an inch of her life. There had been nothing Rene could do. In his mind, he’d been the brave Aramis. In his mind, he’d defended Alix, he’d ridden away with her, to live in bliss upon some distant land. In that world, there were no vampires, and no need for money or inheritance.
But in the real world there were vampires, and travel of any kind save in well-ordered caravans with armed guards detailed to keep the vampires at bay, was suicide. And money was more needed than ever in a France where half the domains or more had succumbed to the vampire onslaught. Vampires neither tended the grain nor made bread. Humans were left to starve or forage like animals in those lands. And to live in one of the still safe areas, one needed money and income, which Rene, the second son, did not have.
And so he’d let Alix slip between his fingers; slip from his arms. And he’d been packed off to the seminary of Notre Dame des Miracles, to become a priest who would be barred by vows from touching Alix ever again.
“Ever again?” D’Alban asked, with inconvenient perspicacity.
Sighing, Rene confessed. The stolen night, before Alix succumbed to the push for marriage. Already knowing she was lost, she’d determined to spend a night with her true love before consigning herself to a lifetime with the man she despised. He remembered her warm in his arms, her scent surrounding him, and he sighed, “And I can’t repent it, Monsieur. I can’t. I know I should, its being a grave sin to lie with my brother’s affianced wife, one of those sins that’s proscribed in the bible, one of the things ... Enfin, Monsieur, I’ve known my soul was damned from that moment.”
The bishop tugged at his lower lip, which seemed to be an unconscious gesture done while deep in thought. “There is so much sin to go around in that story, my son, that yours is neither the gravest nor the most damnable,” he said at last. He sighed. “It is true that in normal times, and were the church still whole, I would hesitate to confer priesthood upon you. Your love for that one woman, your inability to maintain your chastity... It would give me at the least very grave doubts about your ability to sustain your vocation. And bad priests, such as that one who called himself Cardinal, France does not need... But...” He resumed pacing. “The truth my son is that just like our alliance with those we formerly considered heretics, what the church needs as priests, and what a priest is, has changed in this new world. For one thing, if I ordain you, you cannot take a vow of chastity.” A smile responded to what must have been Rene’s look of surprise. “This does not mean I’m encouraging you to commit adultery with your sister-in-law. That I’m afraid you must give up, if not repent. But, my son, from now on clergy must be in hiding, and we have all, for the duration, been released from those vows of chastity that would make us conspicuous. We’ve also been given dispensation on fasting and clothing and other... other minor issues. It is of paramount importance that we stay hidden. It is of paramount importance that we continue to live among the people and provide for the needs of their souls. And that we fight vampires with the holy weapons at our disposal.”
“Oh,” Rene said, and nothing more, because he wasn’t sure he understood it. “But I haven’t completed all my studies. I’m not sure–”
“The few rituals you’ll need to know,” the bishop said, “and how to administer the sacraments, I can teach you here, in a day. You look like a man of quick understanding. Perhaps you’ll not understand all the theology, but you’ll have time to learn that, and we do circulate treatises and such, clandestinely. For now, more important is for you to know that you’ll have to be willing to risk your life. For being a priest is punishable with death, or being forced to become a vampire, should you be caught.”
Rene cleared his throat. “But isn’t that the penalty for being a human in this poor France of ours?”
Again the appreciative smile. “Perhaps, but as a priest you’ll be hunted, sniffed out. They’ll be looking for you. It is their primary purpose to kill or destroy all the priests. You will be a particular target. As a mere man, you might be able to hide. As a priest, you’ll be searched for. People will be rewarded for turning you in. Do you understand?”
Rene nodded. He understood. But he wasn’t a man, and if he was going to fight the vampires, ironically, he’d do it by becoming the priest his brother had thought was a quiet and out of the way occupation for his weakling of a brother.
“Yes, Monsieur, I understand.”
“And are you willing?”
“Yes, Monsieur, I am willing,” And then, because he thought he’d need a lot of that, “So help me God.”
And thus, in a basement that smelled of soup and old wine, Rene D’Herblay became the priest, Monsieur D’Herblay, without the careful study, the fasting, the vigil and the panoply of ritual and pomp that would have attended his ordination had he agreed to go through with it even a year ago. And the next morning he left, back to his domains.
***
“It is very important,” Monsieur D’Alban had told him, “That you not do anything you’d not have done if we’d never met. Let’s suppose you didn’t meet me in that alley last night. What would you have done, supposing you could have secured boots, breeches and a cloak?”
“Gone home,” Rene had said unhesitatingly. And, to the bishop’s raised eyebrow. “Well, what else could I have done, Monsieur? I am a second son, and if I weren’t going to be a priest...” He let the thought hang in the air.
Monsieur D’Alban nodded at length. “Very well. Go then. Go back to your brother’s domains and dispense what comfort you can in our beleaguered land without getting yourself put to death. You’re more use to the church alive. If you should come to Paris ever again and wish to contact me, or others of ... of us in hiding, come to the publican. He’ll know how to send a message. And for now, go with God’s blessing.”
And so, Rene had taken God’s blessing with him on an ox cart headed out of the city. To be honest for his progress he was more indebted to the bishop’s coin than the bishop’s blessing. Monsieur D’Alban had given Rene two louis d’or which meant that Rene had been
able to sleep well enough in secure inns for two nights and to have solid meals during the day, even if his rides were on farmers’ conveyances in caravans of merchants and farmers.
At the last village before his brother’s domains, Rene, knowing the surrounding countryside, had chosen not to bolt himself in for the night, but, instead, to go on to his ancestral home. There weren’t many vampires hereabouts, anyway, though Rene suspected it would come to this region, too, in time. And besides, he wanted to see Alix, though he told himself he would avoid grave sin. He wanted only to see her, he told himself, and assure himself she’d grown reconciled to her fate. He arrived at his brother’s domain at near midnight and found the house well lighted. This surprised him. Perhaps it should not have, but Pons had been ever so parsimonious with candles – justifiably, Rene supposed, since the domain, never wealthy, was even poorer with many of the outlying lands lost to vampires. Pons had decreed that the house should only stay up an hour or two after sundown, before all the candles were snuffed and everyone sent to bed.
Rene had hesitated, knit with the trees, on the path leading up to the front door. Perhaps Alix’ inheritance had allowed them to spend a little more, to be a little freer with money? But he didn’t feel that was true, and his mind spun on the idea. Pons spend more than needed? Never.
After a long time, hesitating, he approached instead the kitchen, at the back of the house. He’d been raised as much by the cook and the housekeeper as by his brother. No, more so, as those worthy ladies had taken it upon themselves to feed and care for the waif, for whom neither father nor brother had bothered to appoint so much as a nursemaid.
His father, the cook, Irenie had told him, had wanted to send Rene to one of the outlying farms, to be raised by the farm wife. An unusual arrangement for the family, but not uncommon for noblemen in general. Irenie had thought the problem was that the old gentleman, as she called Rene’s father, had feared being reminded of the wife he’d adored and lost. But his brother had intervened and said, instead, he could be raised by the servants, and in the end, if Irenie hadn’t found him a willing nursemaid among the village women, he’d likely have been fed on bread softened in cow milk, and just as likely died. As was, it was Irenie, and Madame Adelaide, the housekeeper, who had overseen Rene’s travails with childhood illness and comforted him when he was distraught.
Going around the back, he was surprised to find the kitchen dark, when the rest of the house was blazing with light. He knocked at the door twice, though, and waited.
At length it was opened by Irenie, wearing a nightgown, with her salt-and-pepper hair loose down her back, and carrying a candle in a candlestick. Her moment of total blank surprise was broken by a breath like a sob, and “Rene. Oh, my lamb!” And the next he knew he was pulled into a warm embrace that smelled of freshly baked bread and spices and he felt about three years old and quite safe.
At length she stepped back and held him at arm’s length, “Monsieur D’Herblay I should have said, should I not?” she said, with a little smile, and before he had time to answer, “You’ve grown quite a lot in two years? And how fine you are, tall and broad of shoulder. And what brings you back home, I’m sure I don’t know but a good thing you’ve come. And a good thing, too if no one should know.” She shrugged. “Not, that is, until you’re ready.”
He raised his eyebrows at her, unable to put the question any more clearly. And he realized there were tears in her eyes, shimmering, and a look to her face, as though... As though she were waiting to appraise him of deaths.
“Irenie! What do you mean? What has been happening in my absence?”
“What hasn’t been happening,” Irenie said, and wiped her eyes with the edge of her apron. Your brother, and she, poor lamb–”
“Alix?”
“Aye, as she was. Poor lamb, she–” The cook shrugged. “Come in, monsieur, come in. I have some soup kept by and some bread for myself and... And my friends as they come by. Come in Monsieur. Safer if we go to my quarters.”
***
Her quarters, which she had always called that were in fact a small room, smaller than the confessionaire at the seminary. Just a little longer than would take for Rene to lie down to his full length and a little shorter than it would take for Rene to lie down across its width. But Irenie had indeed outfitted it as though it were not just a bedroom but real quarters, with the narrow bed pushed up against the wall, and in the center of the room two chairs and a table. At this Adelaide and Irenie would sit, Rene remembered, for their long conversations in which not just their master and his whole family, but most of the village came under examination and often censure. Rene remembered playing on the floor at their feet while they talked and drank hot chocolate. Now, he sat on one of the chairs. And presently Irenie brought him bread and butter and broth, and ate some of the bread and butter herself, presumably to support herself through the sad tale she had to tell.
It started with Rene asking the question that had been bedeviling him, since he’d heard Irenie’s talk of Alix, “Irenie, now, what happened to Alix? Did she die?”
Her eyes answered him before her mouth could. Woebegone and dark, they seemed to say if that were all it would almost be cause for celebration, “Aye, and in a manner of speaking, she did. And it was all that devil’s fault, monsieur, and none of her asking for it, I assure you.”
He felt cold, cold to his core, as he said, “She was turned? Alix is a vampire?”
“Aye, Monsieur.” Irenie sighed. “And I’m sure as we could blame her more, but Monsieur, well...” She took a deep breath. “First of all, I want to tell you, Monsieur, that your son is well and not turned.”
“My–” Rene stopped, staring and wondering which of them had gone insane.
“Well, your nephew I should say, but between us we need have no pretense, and the boy looks like you, Monsieur, and none of your brother, but your mother’s side, all blond and slight. And milady, Alix, as she was, told your brother that it was because he was born so early and so weak, but now that he’s walking and... well, it’s hard not to tell whose he is, but I want you to know he’s safe and unturned. I have him with Marie out in the village, she who is the niece of the one who nursed you. There’s nothing for you to worry about. We took him away the very night she was turned, and she’s never looked for him, though your brother did before he went to Paris. But madame... aye, well, as I said, we could blame her more, only we couldn’t, because she was so thin and wan, and always weak and sickly after the babe was born and your brother– You know what he was like. And he went away and he came back turned and... Only he’s left for Paris, to work for the Cardinal, and it’s only her here.”
Rene’s mind reeled. “Alix is a vampire. And Pons has gone to Paris? And when did all this happen, Irenie? The village didn’t know it yet.”
Irenie nodded. “Just this week, Monsieur,” she said. “And your brother will, I don’t doubt, come back with a party of others of them, and then we shall all be damned, but for now...” She wiped her eyes to the apron again. “For now, she amuses herself turning the stable boys and... It’s just you see, she’s well, and she hasn’t been well in two years.” Then the lines of her face hardened. “Only it can’t go on, Monsieur. It can’t go on, and she’s destroying young men, what haven’t done any harm. And now there’s three of them who guard her wherever they go, and one of us has to stay up all night, to make sure the rest of the staff is protected and...”
“But... good heavens,” Rene said. “There’s more of you than there is of them. Why haven’t you destroyed them?”
“Monsieur. She’s still Madame Alix, as she was. I raised her as I raised you.”
“Are you telling me you don’t have the courage?”
“Well, monsieur. Perhaps it is vampire glamour at that. They say as vampires have that. But I think it is just that... well... she’s Madame Alix.” She gave a deep sigh.
“That,” she said. “And you know how strong they are. Any one or two of us who goes up again
st them shall be killed. The only way we could be sure of winning the battle would be to abandon the house and set fire to it. And even so, they might escape.”
“And so you see, Monsieur, why I’m so grateful you’ve come back.” She looked at Rene. “You’ll do what must be done. You always did.”
***
He didn’t know whence Irenie’s confidence came, but he scouted the house. First, he’d seen the other servants. It was impossible to avoid them. They came creeping into Irenie’s room by twos and threes, as though warned by some mysterious force – a force it was, just not mysterious, since Irenie had talked when she got him his dinner – of his presence. They’d come to plead with him, to see him, to reassure themselves one of their masters wasn’t a vampire. Adelaide, whose son had been turned, had squeezed his hand hard, “Only do what you have to do Monsieur. I can’t say he’s any longer my son.”
And then Rene had gone to his room, creeping through the servant stairs. From his room he heard Alix’s laugh, and it made him pause, as memory rushed upon him, at the sound of that high, tinkling laugh.
But he armed himself. Knives and a sword. His still broken wrist was bound. It still hurt like living fire, but he’d be able to use it. He thought of the vampire in the alleyway, and of the corruption pouring out of him, and he wondered if he would be able to kill her – to kill Alix – when his entire being called out to her.
He walked out, fully armed, along the hallways to the lighted salon from which music and laughter came. Alix was sitting at the spinet, playing a tinkling tune.
She looked well, Alix. A little paler than she had been, and thinner, but her eyes sparkled more brightly than ever, and she looked happy. Alix hadn’t looked happy since she’d found out she was to marry Pons.
Here Be Dragons: A collection of short stories Page 4