When I was a child, I spake as a child, I reasoned as a child, says the Apostle, but when I became a man I put away childish things. In my madness I consumed all life in the illusory pursuit of exactly those things that, in the vampire state, the blood and the life give unto me; but now I am not mad. I would like to say that I derive no pleasure from the drinking of human life, but oh, Catherine, oh my beloved, that would be a lie. It is a pleasure I will be glad to put by in the eternal sleep of death, but it is one that I can no more deny than I could deny the rages of my madness.
I am writing this in the back room of a little tavern near the waterfront, where Salaman is to meet me as soon as there is enough dawnlight to drive. I have my roll of earth-imbued bedding, and hope that I will be able to get at least a little rest during the daylight hours. Yet sleep is not for me, for I must watch the river, and the road, for my master’s enemies—and my own deliverers. Moreover, I must watch for the robbers who hear everything that goes on in the rough world of the river-traffic with the hinterlands, who will know that an Englishman is traveling with money and horses and only a single servant. In the hours of daylight I will be only as a man, and less strong than a living man in my own defense.
No wonder the Countess Elizabeth wanted a better servant than that incompetent poet Gelhorn, to defend her and her sister-wives in their journey to London! I can only assume that he lasted no longer than their arrival at Castle Dracula; I cannot imagine she would have found in him the material to create another vampire servant.
And there, but for my little Nomie’s friendship, go I.
Here is Salaman, framed in the doorway in a halo of chill river-fog.
My beloved, I remain,
Ever and forever,
Your husband,
R. M. Renfield
Letter, R. M. Renfield to his wife
The banks of the River Sereth, below Fundu
1 November
My beloved,
We have journeyed through the day and through the night, and still I have no sight of Van Helsing and his company. I have, however, found signs of their horses, and the occasional marks of a camp. They seem to be taking a more inland route where possible, following narrower trails that climb the rolling shoulders of the hills through which the river winds its way down from the mountains, the better to see ahead along the river itself.
In the calèche it is not possible to do this, owing to the steepness and broken nature of the ground. Thus we can only press on night and day. Only once did robbers—Szgany gypsies—attempt to molest us. Fortunately the time was dusk, and I was able to slip from the coach as a mist, and fall upon them from behind in the form of a wolf. They fled almost before the confrontation had begun. I reassured Salaman, who had thought me asleep in the calèche the whole of the time, and took the opportunity to hunt in the woods in the form of a bat, and to take advantage of the presence of bona fide evildoers to refresh my strength.
Would that I could so refresh the strength of the horses, and of my servant. He is a small man of Sudanese extraction, a slave for many years first in Arabia and then in Constantinople. He did not mention the wolf and may not have seen me in that form, but he has become silent since then, and watches me from the corner of his eye. He has taken to wearing about his neck a taviz, the silver tube-shaped amulet in which a verse of the Holy Koran is sealed. I find the painful radiance that emanates from it to be the same as that which imbues the crucifixes of the Christians. I long to know whether such an amulet would protect an Unbeliever, or a crucifix to guard a good Mohammedan or Hindoo, but know not who I could ask.
The Count himself, perhaps?
As we approach the mountains, the cold deepens, and at night the air smells of snow. Tonight when darkness falls, I shall ascend as high as possible in the form of a bat, and see if I can at least glimpse the red glimmer of the steam-launch’s smoke-stack ahead of me on the river in the blackness.
If the saved can pray for the damned, pray for me, my beloved.
Forever, your husband,
R. M. Renfield
Jonathan Harker’s Journal*
1 November—evening
No news all day; we have found nothing of the kind we seek. We have now passed into the Bistritza…We have overhauled every boat, big and little…Some of the Slovaks tell us that a big boat passed them, going at more than the usual speed as she had a double crew on board…
Dr. Seward’s Diary*
2 November
Three days on the road. No news, and no time to write it if there had been…
Letter, R. M. Renfield to his wife
2 November
My beloved Catherine,
My adored Vixie,
This is good-by. In the form of a bat I have seen Lord Godalming’s steam-launch upon the river, going much more slowly now owing to the narrowness of the Bistritza where it flows down out of the Carpathians, and the many rapids that result from the river’s greater fall. Likewise as the mountains close in around the river and the valley sides steepen and draw near, it is no longer possible for Quincey Morris and his party to range over so much countryside. They must be on the river road some ten miles ahead of me. I will overtake both boat and riders tomorrow.
The night is very cold, the mountains that rise up on all sides of us thickly wreathed in snow-clouds. The road is in such ill repair, washed-out and undermined by repeated winter rains and floods, that a carriage cannot proceed farther in any case. I have paid Salaman off, and sent him away with the calèche and horses. He did not ask what I intend to do alone in this wilderness in the darkness before morning, but looked at me strangely when I said, “Go with Allah, my friend.”
I am alone, as I have not been since I lay dead in Highgate Cemetery; since I knelt in such peace at your side.
Tomorrow night, in the form of a bat, I will overtake Lord Godalming’s steam-launch, and will follow it until the hour when the tide turns, when it will be possible for me to go aboard. I know not how much crew they have, if any, nor exactly how long I will have before the tide’s ebb in the distant ocean traps me aboard.
If the crew is small, it will be the work of moments to disable the pump that supplies water to the boilers and, if possible, to open the drains on the boilers themselves. I doubt, with Godalming’s careful operation of the launch, that the boilers will remain untended so long as to explode, but they will certainly be damaged by being run dry for even a short length of time.
Then even the Count cannot punish Nomie, for deserting her task.
And that done, I shall be free. In what remains of the night I will seek out the shore-party of riders, show myself to them, and ask them what I asked Dr. Seward as we rode the Orient Express: for the quietus of death.
When the Count reaches his Castle, he will send out his call to me again, and if I still exist, I will have no choice but to go. To live as his servant always—to endure the company of the frightful Countess, the savage Sarike—surely even Hell cannot be more terrible.
And so my beloved ones, good-by. I shall, I hope, see you soon, if only briefly, but it will be a great comfort to me to know that you and I are at least on the same side of the great Veil that separates the living from the dead, and from the Un-Dead. I will miss my dear friend Nomie, and pray—if the damned can pray in Hell—for her eventual release.
Whatever happens tomorrow night, please know that throughout, my thoughts are only of you. When I die, it will be with your names on my lips.
With all my love, forever,
R. M. Renfield
CHAPTER THIRTY
Renfield wondered, at various times during the following day, if the curious inability to enter any dwelling uninvited extended to boats, and if so, what he was to do about that. As he trotted along through the woods with the steady lope of a wolf—for it was in the form of a wolf that he ran—he glimpsed, down on the road, the tight band of a half-dozen horses, and what he thought were two men. But he could not see clearly in the brightness of the daylight, a
nd dared not stop.
There would be time, he thought, to return to them, in the dark of the night.
When they’d skirted the town of Fundu, where the Bistritza River ran into the Sereth, it had looked to him sufficiently large and modern to support a coal-yard. Godalming would have stocked up there. Perhaps, Renfield reflected, he could have hired river-pirates there to attack the launch, but he doubted it. He didn’t speak Slovak, for one thing, and for another, the rough back-country men who comprised the population of both boatmen and river-pirates seemed to have a wary instinct for the supernatural.
This was something, he thought, that he’d have to do alone.
For many nights now he’d timed the length of that sensation of power, of heightened strength, that came at the turning of the far-off tide, just as, during his days of enforced wakefulness on the way up to Veresti with Nomie in her earth-box, he’d timed the period of his ability to change his shape at noon. Part of Dracula’s skill, Nomie had told him once, was simply his experience. He knew to the split instant when the tide would turn, and was ready for it; could feel the dawn coming with the exactness of a chronometer, and was poised to attack or retreat when the final sliver of sunlight vanished behind the shadow of the earth.
Still, for a novice vampire, Renfield didn’t feel he did at all badly. He overtook the launch shortly after sunset, trotting through the underbrush of the bank as the darkness thickened on the water. Icy wind flowed down from the mountains, and the men on the few barges that he passed wore sheepskin coats and hats of wolf or rabbit fur. The road here was little more than a tow-path, and a badly eroded one at that. Here on the higher river the current was stronger, and the launch’s engines labored, though Renfield could see she was running at full steam. Now and then a soot-black figure would emerge from the engine-room; in the ruddy glare from the door Renfield saw the young, clerkish face beneath hair growing rapidly as white as an old man’s.
Jonathan Harker.
And if he is stoking, is it likely there will be a hired crew?
Wolf-Renfield watched, and for a long time saw no one else. Then Godalming appeared, from the tiny cabin that was all the shelter on the launch’s deck, roughly clothed in a bargee’s heavy jersey with a knitted cap over his golden hair. He looked dirty and rumpled, and given the small size of the launch, Renfield’s suspicion was confirmed. There were only the two of them.
Van Helsing must be ashore then, with Morris.
He felt it, the instant the tide began to turn. The launch had overtaken a small barge hauling iron, cloth, salt, and other goods upriver toward the settlements of the foothills; Godalming turned the bright electric searchlight on them, while Harker minded the tiller. The glare of the searchlight showed the big Romanian flag prominently displayed on the launch’s jackstaff. Renfield wondered whom Godalming had paid for that, and how much.
Mist already lay on the river, so it was the easiest thing in the world to slip into it, and so across. Renfield didn’t resume his human form until he was in the cramped dark of the engine-room. He’d been aboard a hundred such little steamers on the Hooghly and the Ganges, and found the pump without difficulty, at the far end of the battery of cylindrical black boilers. With a screwdriver from the neatly stowed repair kit, he ripped and shredded the leather drive-belt nearly through, then opened the cocks on half a dozen of the boilers, to let the water drain away.
In the dark of the engine-hold it might be hours before any problem was detected.
As mist, he flowed up onto the deck. The little Romanian barge was disappearing behind them in the freezing darkness. Godalming said, “We can’t have taken the wrong way! If the Count continued up the Sereth instead of coming this way, he’ll add fifty or sixty miles to the overland part of his journey. In country like this, and weather like this, that could be the better part of a week!”
“He can command the weather,” replied Harker quietly. “And to some extent, he can command men. But Mina was right. Though he’s paralyzed on running water, it’s still the safest way for him to travel.” His hand stroked the hilt of the huge knife at his belt.
Get closer to him! urged Renfield frantically. The two men stood six or eight feet apart, Godalming at the prow beside the electric searchlight, Harker amidships at the wheel. Get closer and I can take you both!
Neither moved; the moments of freedom and mobility were sliding away. Stay in the hopes of being able to strike both and run the launch aground, or flee to avoid being trapped…?
His nerve broke. For an awful moment he thought he’d waited too long as it was, that he wouldn’t be able to leave the boat: couldn’t summon the will, the physical ability, to cross the water.
If they find me aboard, they’ll know the engines have been tampered with.
Nomie will be the one to suffer for it, if I cannot kill them both almost at once.
If I throw myself into the river, I suppose I can wade out in twelve hours when the tide turns again…
He flung himself forward, with a sensation of icy tearing, of bitter cold somewhere in his chest. Then his flittering bat-wings bore him up, and he flopped, trembling, onto the river-bank.
With a great sloshing of her screws, the steam-launch churned on toward the next set of rapids. Renfield sat up in the wet weeds, chilled and exhausted from his daylong trot, wanting only rest and knowing there would be none for him, for he had left his earthen bed-roll far behind.
But he had succeeded, he thought. He had accomplished what the Count had ordered him and Nomie to accomplish—the first time the launch tried to climb rapids, she’d tear her engine to pieces. Now, in the few days at most that remained before the Count reached out to summon him to service once again, he was free, to seek what doom he could.
Drawing a deep breath, Renfield shifted that portion of his consciousness that controlled his shape, and felt himself melt again into the guise of a wolf. With luck, he thought, he’d be dead—truly dead—by morning.
Though it was after midnight, the shore party was still on the move, some ten miles behind the barge. Wolf-Renfield heard and smelled the horses before they came into sight in the broken and heavily wooded country of the banks; smelled Quincey Morris’s chewing-tobacco and the more bitter stench of cigarettes. The scents of the night, the attenuated moonlight flickering on the water, were wildly exhilarating, and he found himself wondering if he could kill both men before he remembered that there was no longer any need for him to do so.
He was free. The night was his. His single dread was that the Count would feel himself safe enough to reestablish contact and control before Renfield could hail his deliverers.
He saw them now, from the shelter of the woods above the road. Six horses, two men, riding as swiftly as the dim moonlight would permit. The moon would set soon, and as bad as the road was, Renfield guessed they’d camp. Quincey Morris hadn’t ridden the American cattle-trails for as long as he had without learning how easy it was to break a horse’s leg in the darkness. A little to Renfield’s surprise, he saw that the other rider was Dr. Seward, not Van Helsing as he had supposed.
Which can’t be right, he thought, alarm-bells ringing in his mind. Any of the men could have been left back in Galatz to guard Mrs. Harker. The logical guard is Seward: Harker knows the ground around Castle Dracula, Godalming can pilot the launch, Morris is the best rider and shot. They are the Rooks and the Knights…and they send a Pawn out, to do the work of the Queen-piece that the Persians call the Vizier?
Where is Van Helsing? Were they really so foolish as to leave Mrs. Harker alone, or under the guard of hired help?
The horses would react to the smell of a wolf, the men, to the sight of a bat fluttering along in their wake. As mist, Renfield flowed down close to the river-bank, drifting and curling between water and road, listening for the voices of the men. Both were dog-tired, for they had been riding, Renfield guessed, almost steadily for three days, most of it without benefit of grooms to do the added work of looking after six horses. Once Morris�
��s horse—a scrubby little Hungarian beast who looked ridiculously tiny beneath the Texan’s six-feet-plus height—shied, and that soft Texas voice drawled, “Don’t you go jigger on me, you slab-sided vinigaroon, I been scrapped with by real two-dollar Mexican plugs and you ain’t even in it,” and Seward made a ghost of a chuckle. But neither man spoke to the other until the crescent moon sank into the cloud-banks above the mountains.
“That’s it.” Morris drew rein. “Damn blast it to fucken hell. How they look?”
Seward dismounted, kindled a lantern that had been tied to the back of his saddle. “They seem all right.” He moved among the other horses, feeling legs and withers. “I don’t like this cold, though, nor the smell of the wind.”
“Too damn much like Siberia. Or Montana.” Morris kindled a lantern of his own, led his mount to a spot sheltered by rocks from the wind, and proceeded to cut and yank at the weeds and brush, to clear a spot for a fire. “Van Helsing and Mrs. Harker’ll be higher up than we by this time, and God knows what the road’s like up Borgo Pass, this time of year. All the guns in the world won’t help, if they get caught in a deep cold and Mrs. Harker freezes to death. I wish a thousand times we’d left her in Galatz.”
Seward said, “And I,” but Renfield hardly heard him.
Borgo Pass? A qualm passed through him of sickness, of shock.
Van Helsing was going up the Borgo Pass.
That would mean…
“I understand that he has to do it,” Seward went on. “You know it’s useless to pursue a fox unless his earth has been stopped before him.” He slipped bit and bridle from his horse’s mouth, pulled free the saddle. The springing color of Morris’s firelight made Seward’s unshaven face look younger, thin and strange and very different from the neat, self-contained doctor Renfield had first encountered in the office of Rushbrook Asylum in the spring.
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