Renfield

by Barbara Hambly

  He knew the girls would never meet again.

  The roaring of flies filled his mind, the taste of them in his mouth. A thousand flies, a million, all mired in those sweet pools of treacle and all smiling up at him with Lucy Westenra’s face.

  He is hunting her. He is waiting for her to come.

  In those cool hours of release while the moon flooded Rushbrook’s lawns with wan silver, Renfield tried to tell himself that he knew nothing of the girl Lucy. She might be stuck-up and cruel, as calculating as her mother. She was, after all, about to marry a lord, and that sort of thing surely didn’t happen by accident. But this he could not believe. During the course of his second day of laudanum-induced visions, of the gloating, grinning presence of the Traveler in his mind, he glimpsed Lucy and her mother in the rock-walled garden of what seemed to be a small summer cottage, having tea with a golden young Apollo in Bond Street tailoring. Saw with what exquisite care and tact the girl dealt with her mother, fetching and carrying for her and laughingly denying that she did so out of worry.

  “Nonsense, darling. Arthur told me he liked helpful women and I’m trying very hard to impress him!” When she passed his chair, young Arthur’s gray-gloved hand sought hers. The look that passed between his blue eyes and hers tore Renfield’s heart.

  Such prey is the source of his strength, he thought, lying the next night on the thick canvas flooring of his cell, the reek of ancient filth and decades of carbolic rising dimly through it from the matted coir beneath. Without her death, there would be no life in his hands, to give out to those who serve him.

  Renfield pressed his face to the padded floor and wept. He wanted Catherine desperately, wanted only to see her smile again, to hear her voice. Where Life flows, Loki had sung—Wagner’s music had sung—in Water, Earth, and Air…What could a man find, mightier than the wonder of a woman’s worth?…In Water, Earth, and Air, the only Will is for love.

  How long had it been since her laughter had bubbled in his ears, sweet as spring rainfall? He could not even recall. Now it was only with terror that he thought of her at all, fearing that even in these dark hours, while Wotan’s mind was elsewhere, Wotan would somehow learn of her, somehow know where she and Vixie were hidden.

  Fearing that he would find them, as he would find Lucy no matter where she went.

  Renfield hugged himself, as if he could crush his bulky sixteen-stone-plus into a ball the size of an apple, the size of an apple-seed…too small to be found by those all-seeing crimson eyes. Hurting for comfort, he called to mind—just once, like a quick glance at a photograph hastily stowed in hiding again—Catherine’s face as last he had seen it, asleep and so peaceful, with her long dark lashes veiling those pansy-blue eyes and her red hair unraveled over the pillow.

  Beautiful Catherine. Beautiful Vixie, as delicate as Lucy but with Miss Mina’s exquisite darkness, laughing over some passage in her Latin lesson or holding out her finger in breathless wonder as a yellow butterfly floated in from the garden, landed on it with tiny pricking feet.

  Just let me be with them again, Renfield whispered to the God whom he knew Wotan would never allow him to petition. I know my sins are many, my offenses rank in your sight, but please, please, let me finish my task here, and return to their side.

  Day was coming. They would strap him up again, pour laudanum down his throat. He felt the Traveler’s mind, as the thing he knew as Wotan drew near to his lair in the rotting chapel at Carfax again, seeking the bed of earth upon which he must sleep. Why earth? he wondered. Why that particular earth, which he’d brought in such quantity upon the haunted ship? He wanted to ask, but dared not. He was there only to serve, only to do the bidding of the Master who, for all his terror, was his best and only hope.

  Seward had left the door of the padded room unlocked through most of the night—Renfield heard them whisper about it in the corridor. But beyond a flicker of contempt for such an obvious attempt at trapping him, he felt no interest in the matter. The Traveler was abroad in the night; of what use was it to knock upon the door of his empty house? And Renfield was weary, weary unto death, and hungry with a hunger that he knew could never be filled. No fly, no spider, not the smallest ant crept into the dreary canvas confines of the padded cell. Only, if he listened, deep beneath the matting he could hear the rustle of tiny creeping beetles, of crawling fleas.

  And they did him no good at all.

  Catherine, my darling, he thought as he felt the Traveler’s mind begin sinking into its day-sleep, begin to burn like creeping fire at the edges of his own, dream of me now, between your sleep and your waking. Remember that I love you.

  He heard the key turn in the lock.

  Not many minutes after that he began to scream.

  Letter, Dr. Patrick Hennessey, M.D., M.R.C.S.,

  L.K.Q.C., P.I., etc., Rushbrook House, to Georgina,

  Lady Clayburne

  22 August

  Received your check. Many thanks.

  I searched through Seward’s correspondence again this week and found no attempt on the part of Catherine Renfield to get in touch with either her husband or Seward. Nor was there any letter in a hand that matched the sample you sent to me. I will continue to observe.

  R. M. R. has been under heavy restraint for two days, after an escape attempt on the 19th, and violent much of that time. So far as any of the attendants has heard, he has not uttered your sister’s name, nor given any clue as to her whereabouts or those of your niece.

  I will require another 10 s. per week, if I am to continue to collect information from the attendants.

  I remain, dear Madame,

  Your humble etc.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Letter, the Honorable Arthur Holmwood to

  Lord Godalming

  22 August

  Dearest Father,

  Please forgive my delay in coming up to Ring. I promised to escort Miss Westenra and her mother down to London, and if you could see the uncertain state of Mrs. Westenra’s health, I am sure you would agree with my course—nay, command me to it. I hope your own health is improved?

  I cannot wait for you to make Miss Westenra’s acquaintance. You will pronounce her—in Uncle Harry’s words—“sound as a roast.” (One inevitably wonders what sort of roast he has in mind?) The two days I have spent in Whitby with her, walking up to the Abbey on its overhanging cliffs, or rowing on the Esk, have been among the happiest of my life, for she seems to carry sunlight about with her. Her mother is a bit of a Tartar—I kept expecting her to tell me, à la Aunt Maude, that gentlemen do not wear double-breasted waistcoats—but good-hearted underneath. I think she fears to let Lucy go, for with her own failing health she has come to rely on her in a thousand ways.

  By the by, the Westenras are not, as Aunt Maude would have it, “nobodies.” Sir Clive Westenra left Lucy £1100 a year upon her marriage, a quite respectable sum—to anyone but Aunt Maude! Their villa—Hillingham—lies near Primrose Hill, a very quiet, countrified place, surrounded by the sort of old-fashioned garden that makes one think one is deep in the country indeed. I installed the two ladies there this afternoon, and spent a peaceful hour listening to Lucy play the piano. I kept thinking how her fingers would sound on the keys of your harpsichord at Ring, and hoping some day soon to hear the two of you talk about music together. (Her favorite is Brahms.)

  Tomorrow I have promised to take both ladies out on the Thames in the Guenivere, for it’s been far too long since I’ve had a tiller in my hands. I only wish you could be along as well, to wave at the little sailing-craft as we steam grandly past!

  Unless you need me, sir, I shall remain in London until the wedding, which as you know has been moved up to the 28th September. The change of date has made for a great deal of business, and though Lucy handles it all as adeptly as a matron of thirty, still if I can be of service to her and her mother here, I should like to put myself at their disposal.

  I look forward very much to seeing you here on the 20th, if that is still your plan. />
  Until then,

  Your loving son,

  Arthur

  He knows where she is!

  Through the heat of the endless summer afternoon Renfield twisted in his chains, emerging again and again from the cloudy delirium of laudanum to the horror of waking knowledge.

  He is only waiting for the night, to take her!

  He could not say it, could not speak. Wotan in his coffin would hear him, know his betrayal. But he could not keep silent, and like an animal, trapped in rage and in pain, he screamed, and kicked at that filthy gnome Langmore, the whiskey-smelling Hennessey, when they came into the padded room, to dump more laudanum down his throat.

  Don’t send me back there! If she is to die tonight I don’t want to see it!

  As if he lay naked, chained like Prometheus to the vulture-haunted rocks, Renfield could feel the passage of the sun across the sky, the inevitable approach of the night.

  Someone save her! Someone warn her!

  What I do not have yet, Wotan whispered, grinning with his sharp white teeth, shall I make you a present of, shameful one?

  How many flies will you have to devour, my little Mime, to gain all that one single drink of living blood will bestow?

  The blood is the life. You know this.

  In India, Renfield remembered, there were sects—whole villages in places—devoted to Kali, the many-handed black-skinned goddess who danced on the corpse of a dead demon, a necklace of human heads about her throat. They said she was the wife of Shiva, Lord of Change, but there was something in her that Renfield sensed was older, deeper, primal as the rotting flesh from which next year’s corn sprouted. He’d ridden out one night with a sergeant named Morehouse and a couple of Punjabi policemen to raid the camp of a robber-band along the Grand Trunk: they’d taken two men prisoners, and killed two others in the fighting. The rest had fled. In the camp they’d found the clothes and money of at least twenty-five travelers, some of whose bodies they’d located in ditches near the road the next day.

  Are they leftovers from the Mutiny? Renfield had asked, when the screaming, spitting robbers had been bound, gagged, loaded into one of their own bullock-carts for transport back to Calcutta and trial. Even then—thirty years ago almost—the great uprising against the British rulers had been over for a decade, but Renfield remembered it still: the grilling sun beating down on the empty parade-ground at Meerut, the horror of blood and hacked-up bodies he’d seen, when with the relieving troops he’d looked down the Well at Cawnpore.

  Narh, said Morehouse, and spit. They’s just robbers.

  And one of the Punjabis, a man named Akbar Singh, had said, They existed long before the uprising, Renfield Sahib. In those days they were called Thugs, and they were better organized, but it was much the same. Indeed, it was forbidden among them to rob the Gora-log, the English, proof enough that it was only money that interested them, though they claimed to have their Goddess’s blessing. It is a poor country, Sahib, and even if a man has a farm, or part of a farm that he shares with many brothers, he often cannot feed his family. Men of this brotherhood speak of harvesting travelers, as if they were wheat, standing in fields that the Goddess had given them. There are many such.

  In his years of living in India after that, Renfield had found that this was so.

  Singh’s words came back to him, through that endless day, as he felt the yellow fires of the Traveler God’s hunger seep into his dreams: harvesting. Harvesting.

  And in his dreams he caught glimpses of her, despite all he could do: running up the stairs with a tray of tea and muffins for her mother, who lay yet in bed; having a chat with the housekeeper—“I worry about her, Mrs. Dennis, she says she feels fine but I know she isn’t well…” Giving her maid a quick, friendly hug before she snatched up her broad-brimmed straw hat, skipped down the stairs to meet her handsome Arthur, waiting smiling in the hall, or sitting beneath the flapping sunshade of a small steam-launch that Arthur piloted up the river.

  The sun moved across the sky, and the Earth’s concealing shadow crawled over the curve of the world. Renfield screamed his despair, and in his mind Wotan only laughed.

  If you will turn aside from the harvest, will you then turn aside from the living bounty that it yields?

  He felt Wotan’s waking like the breaking of a strangler’s noose. It was dark in the padded room, and silent, for once, in the hall outside. The smelly air was warm and thick as dirty water. Renfield hung for a time, weeping, in the straps, but twisted his head to one side to dry his eyes on his shoulder when he heard Hardy’s footsteps in the corridor. He murmured a pleasant “Good-evening, Hardy—did you manage to beat Simmons at cribbage today?” and the attendant unlocked the straps, released the metal catches on the back of the strait-jacket, pulled the heavy garment from Renfield’s arms.

  “There, now, y’old villain, you gonna be good this evenin’?”

  “My dear Hardy…” Renfield widened his eyes at the big man. “Have I not been good as gold for three days now? Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I know not / They requite me evil for good, and my soul is forlorn.”

  But Hardy, who did not appear to know more of the Bible than a few names and a Commandment or two (if that), only shook his head, and took his leave, to bring, Renfield knew, the usual unpalatable dinner of tepid stew and bread. So he stood in the corner farthest from the room’s tiny barred window, head down and hands folded in an attitude of passive dejection. When Hardy returned with the plate in his hand, he was ready for an attack, but Renfield only dodged past him, slammed the door on him, and shoved the bolt shut.

  The padded cell was on the ground floor: Hardy’s whistle shrilled in Renfield’s ears as he ran, but he knew the keepers would go first to the outer doors, not upstairs. He plunged up the small service flight, then along the hall, where the door of his own old room still stood open, awaiting the glaziers who would fix the casement he’d torn out. Let them catch him in time, if only he could reach the dark chapel, if only he could plead with Wotan to find someone else. Surely there were robbers and murderers in England, spiritual brothers of the Thugs, upon whom his hunger could feast?

  Darkness outside, the wild smells of summer night and freedom. Shrubs lashed his bare legs, damp grass like a carpet of velvet under his naked feet—it seemed to him almost that he was flying in a dream, flying like the Valkyries, with their wild music in his ears. It would be moonrise soon, moonrise when Wotan would walk out, would make his way to Hillingham House, where, Renfield knew, he had marked the very window of Lucy’s bedchamber.

  “Master, no!” He threw himself against the iron-strapped oak of the chapel doors. “Master, listen!”

  The next instant Seward and his attendants seized him, dragged him back from the door. Renfield screamed in frustration and rage, turned in their grip, and lunged at Seward. Fool and worse than fool, understanding nothing! You will be the death of that innocent girl, who never did you harm! But the anger that had all of Renfield’s life come and gone from his brain overwhelmed him in red blindness, and the sounds that came from his mouth were inchoate howls of fury. His hands closed around the mad-doctor’s skinny throat and he squeezed, twisted, knowing nothing beyond the fact that this man would thwart him, thwart him from doing what he knew to be right.

  And as the madness of anger swept over him, he heard laughter, far back down some dark corridor of his burning brain: the laughter of contempt.

  Then Wotan was gone.

  Renfield stood trembling, shivering, for in the fight his nightshirt had been ripped half off him, and sweat painted his body and soaked his hair. Hardy, Simmons, Hennessey, and Langmore clutched his arms, while Seward leaned against the corner of the chapel wall, gasping and clutching at the collar of his shirt, which had been all but torn away. These things Renfield noted distantly, of less importance than the black wheeling shape of a bat, flittering above their heads in the light of the dropped lanterns and the new-risen crescent moon.

  As Renfie
ld looked up, the bat circled overhead, and for one instant Renfield saw the red gleam of its eyes. Then it flew away, not erratically as such creatures fly, but straight, like a homing bird, westward toward London.

  Emptiness swept him, and despair.

  Langmore had his wrist clamped under his armpit while he pulled the sleeve of the strait-jacket over Renfield’s hand. Renfield looked around him at the men as if waking from a dream. There was so much fear, such deadly grimness in their faces, that it seemed to him almost comical, were it not that he knew what would happen, must happen, tonight.

  “It’s all right,” he said in a normal tone of voice. “You needn’t tie me. I shall go quietly.”

  Lucy Westenra’s Diary*

  Hillingham

  24 August

  …Last night I seemed to be dreaming again just as I was at Whitby. Perhaps it is the change of air, or getting home again. It is all dark and horrid to me, for I can remember nothing; but I am full of vague fear, and I feel so weak and worn out. When Arthur came to lunch, he looked quite grieved when he saw me, and I hadn’t the heart to try to be cheerful…

  CHAPTER TEN

  R. M. R.’s notes

  24 August

  4 flies

  25 August

  6 flies. Sugar and treacle.

  Won treacle from Hardy at riddles.

  A good man proclaimed by God and man,

  I sit with my family, two daughters, two wives,

  two sons.

  Each daughter with her only son,

  Each daughter’s son with his two sisters,

  With his father, his uncle, his nephew.

  Five chairs there are round the table

  And each has a chair, none stands.

  Who am I?

  26 August

  5 flies, 1 spider