by Paula Guran
But, straightaway, she named him a liar, and worse things, too, and made a grand show of having been stung through and through by her words.
“You murdered my mother, your own sister,” Eõrsebet whispered, her voice raw from tears and the wasted prayers. “I shall follow her, rather than submit and willingly permit thy seed to enter me. I shall make for thee a happy corpse, before I call thee husband or bear fresh imps to assume the strangling yoke of thy name.
“Only show me to the well,” she said, “for gladly will I go down into that gullet and be drowned. It would be a kinder fate than what you offer.”
“If this is as my belov’d wishes,” he replied, pretending to crushing disappointment. “If this is her last word on the matter, so be it. I will demonstrate to thee my complete adulation, in due course, and hold you here no more. I will break the shackles and throw open the door to this cell, and none shall risk my judgment by blocking thy retreat from me.”
Even in her agony and bewilderment, Eõrsebet was a girl wise beyond her ten and six years, and she saw through the boyar’s promises. Or, more precisely, she saw how it was that he said one thing and meant quite another, how it could be he would hold true to every syllable of these oaths he’d spoken, and still ensure her doom. It was only sport to him, a grim diversion which he would win even if he lost.
An old lobster once came near to guessing the truth of her, so she devoured him, leaving nothing but an empty shell to settle amongst the sausage weed and sea lettuce.
While Eõrsebet sat in her cell, awaiting whatever form her undoing would assume, the boyar called upon the dark gods to whom he’d always paid tribute. The true deities to which the Sárkány Lovagrend, King Sigismund’s Societas Draconistrarum, had long ago pledged itself, all the while hiding behind a proper papal mask. And by these agencies was the warlord and sorcerer István Vadas granted the power to rain down upon his daughter a terrible curse. He spoke it in her nightmares, as she managed to doze fitfully in that decrepit oubliette. He whispered in some unhallowed grove, and the winds brought his words into her dreams.
“Daughter,” he said, and “Dear heart,” and “Beloved.” Immediately, her dreaming mind did recognize that voice, but Eõrsebet found herself poisoned by some sedative potion and unable to awaken.
“Thou wouldst have darkness, which I have already gifted to thee, rather than look upon my face. Thou wouldst be drowned, against our marriage, and this request will I also honor. You shall be drowned, my sweet Eõrsebet, and so set free. But, in good conscience, I cannot commit thy soul to this garrison’s well, no. I will see thee to far more majestic waters.”
This is the secret that doomed the old lobster, and if it is known to any others within Poseidon’s mansions, they have wisely kept it to themselves.
“Now, my second gift to thee, Eõrsebet,” the boyar spoke within the confines of her dream. “For all eternity wilt thou wander the deep places of the world, carried to and fro by the whims of the tides. Thou wilt be of the water, and the water will be thy womb. But thou shalt hunger, as do those strigoi who must feed from off the living. Yet only once in every year may thee leave the sustaining waters to slake thine thirst on the blood you will ever more crave. And, even then, you may not wander far from the shore. This is my gift, daughter, in lieu of matrimony, though I fancy it makes of thee another sort of wife.”
So Eõrsebet’s prison was opened, and a coach made ready to receive her. But, before her departure, the jailer branded the girl’s back with such unnameable symbols as the dark gods had insisted to István she should hereafter wear, if the curse were to be lasting and irrevocable. She was dressed in a fine gown of golden threads, and driven away from the boyar’s keep, down from the mountains and into Wallachia. The coach saw her through to gates of Bucharest and to a bridge spanning the Dâmbovia River. Shackled in irons, she was cast upon the waters.
She has long since forgotten the drowning, the short fall from the bridge and the shock of hitting the icy torrent below. She cannot now recall the fire as her lungs filled, or the brief panic before her dissolution and rebirth. The Dâmbovia carried her to the Arge at Oltenia, which bore her forth to the Danube, her wide, rolling road towards the Black Sea, just south of the ancient city of Constana.
This small inland sea was her first tomb, and for many decades it seemed to her a boundless vault of wonders, as tombs go. She found a voice she’d not had in life, and with it she trilled raging storms and canted days when the waters grew so becalmed all sails hung limp upon their masts. She sang to sailors and to fishermen from Sevastopol to Varna, from the coasts of Georgia to the port of Odessa. She appeared, sometimes, to suicides, inviting them, and with her melodies she did draw to their deaths men and woman and children, and even cattle and wild beasts, when the mood found her.
Sometimes, she would feel István’s eyes upon her again, for his evil doings and services had earned him strange powers and another sort of undeath. From broken minarets, where he now had only rats and beetles and quick green lizards for company, he watched her with eyes turned black as coal. And finding that gaze intolerable, his siren would seek out some convenient undertow and sink down and down, passing into silty, anoxic nights so dense that not even his eyes could penetrate them.
Once a year, and only once a year, she stepped from the waves and walked waterfronts and streets and alleyways, as any woman would. She chose her victims carefully, and stole away the salty crimson oceans locked up inside each and every one.
And this was the round and rut of her existence, until the thing that death and István’s spite and sorcery had fashioned of Eõrsebet found her way to the narrow straits of the Bosphorous. By this route, she came, slowly, to the Turkish Sea of Marmara and, finally, past Gallipoli and through the Dardanelles into the Aegean. But this was all so very long ago, as I have said, in the days and nights before she became a shade drifting through the perpetual Atlantic twilight, an oceanic phantom of kelp and driftwood.
She followed dolphins and mercurial shoals of fish to the stony shores of Crete, then into the Ionian Sea, where it is said the body of the son of Dyrrhachus was tossed, after his accidental murder at the hands of Heracles. She came to know the affection of whales, who also sang, though to other ends than her own. She followed pods of spermaceti from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, skirting the northern capes of African deserts, and was delivered, finally, to Gibraltar.
Perhaps it was only a matter of time (and she has no end of time, surely, excepting that one day the world might conclude and she with it) before storm waves and abyssal currents carried her north to the mouth of the Thames, and then west to London. In the year 1891, during the gloaming of Victoria’s England and more than three full centuries after the boyar’s men had shoved her from a bridge in Bucharest, Eõrsebet Soffia raised her head above the stinking, tainted waters of that river befouled by industry and sewage, and gazed sightlessly upon its fetid, teeming banks.
One day, a poet will write: “The river sweats/oil and tar.” But this day, it also sweats her, the boyar’s daughter, the sea’s prostitute. She wends her all-but silent way between the close-packed clipper hulls, and no one notices when she slips from the water and onto the noisome squalor of Saint Katherine’s Docks. Amid the bustle, there in the shadows of the ships and warehouses, who’s to take exception at the spectacle of one more bedraggled doxy? Who will look closely enough to note the scars where her eyes were, or a few barnacles dappling her gaunt cheeks or the backs of her hands? The docks are a riot of “…solid carters and porters; the dapper clerks, carrying pen and book; the Customs’ men moving slowly; the slouching sailors in gaudy holiday clothes; the skipper in shiny black that fits him uneasily, convoying parties of wondering ladies; negroes, Lascars, Portuguese, Frenchmen; grimy firemen, and (shadows in the throng) hungry-looking day-laborers…” Or so Doré and Jerrold described it nineteen years prior to the day of Eõrsebet’s arrival. She moves, barefoot, between baskets and crates, wagons and hogshead cas
ks, “through bales and bundles and grass-bags, over skins and rags and antlers, ores and dye-woods: now through pungent air, and now through a tallowy atmosphere, to the quay…” (once more quoting from the published memoir of Doré and Jerrold’s pilgrimage).
She crosses a narrow canal bridge, which carries her from the docks, away from the anchored fleets and (to steal from the narrative of Doré and Jerrold one last time, I do promise) into “…shabby, slatternly places, by low and poor houses, amid shiftless riverside loungers…on to the eastern dock between Wapping and down Shadwell. Streets of poverty-marked tenements, gaudy public-houses and beer-shops, door-steps packed with lolling, heavy-eyed, half-naked children; low-browed and bare-armed women greasing the walls with their backs, and gossiping the while such gossip as scorches the ears; bullies of every kind walking as masters of the pavement, all sprinkled with drunkenness …”
There is almost in her a regret that the city has not made more of a challenge from this day, her one and only shore leave of the year. There are so many here who can be taken with the smallest bit of effort, the least premeditated and most lackadaisical of seductions, and how few among them would ever be missed? She could easily feast, slaughtering a dozen without any especial effort. She could forget her predator’s instinctual cautions and play the glutton; the hollow created by her plunder would be no more than that made when lifting a single grain of sand from off a dune.
Concealing herself within the stinking gloom of a side lane, she watches and breathes in all the heady, disorienting odors and tastes and sounds of these Citizens of the Crown. Eõrsebet’s senses are assailed, as though she’s come upon a single gigantic organism stranded by the river’s tidal retreat, stranded and rotting, though it is still very much alive; something too concerned with petty squabbles and daydreams and debauchery to even notice how near at hand it is to perishing.
But she’ll take only one. István made of her many sorts of demons, but all are creatures of habit. And habit dictates that only one in London shall die this day by her hand. Habit reminds her that taking more than one might have dire consequences. A mere scrap of the frightened Székely girl she once was asks if the consequences would truly be so unfortunate, discovery and her subsequent undoing. What sort of life is this? it asks. Sometimes, Eõrsebet listens to this voice. Sometimes, she allows it to speak at length, but only sometimes, as it inevitably fills her with melancholy and anger and memories she’s no longer sure are even her own. Today, she bids it be silent, if ever it wishes to be heard again. She shows it the outskirts of hellish regions of the mind, to which she might so easily banish that voice, were it her fancy to do so. Eõrsebet replies (speaking aloud, though not above whisper) that this is the sort of life for which she has been shaped. And there are too many lighthouses and sea caves remaining that she has not yet harrowed, too many ships she has not foundered, countless beating hearts not yet stilled by drowning, entire oceans left unexplored. But, also, there is the unending hunger, István’s hunger and her truest master, pulling her along like a cod hooked on an angler’s taut line.
“I am not finished,” she says, and her English is better now than when she came ashore at Dover the year before, or at Brighton, the year before that. She repeats the words, delivering them with more finality, “I am not finished.” Hearing this, both the meaning and the tone, that small ghost in her withdraws, and will not be heard again for very many months.
In short order, Eõrsebet Soffia espies a dingy young Irishman with eyes the color of the sky on a clear November day and hair like soot. He will do. He will be more than sufficient, and as the young man is somewhat worldly, and possessed of a famishment all his own, it is a simple enough matter to lure him into the side lane and to her. She knows ten times ten thousand songs, and each one is more beautiful that the last. She sings, in a voice pitched so that none but he will hear the melody, and he thinks this must be an angel’s voice. And so, as he draws near, what he sees is angelic beauty, not the ruin of her, not the demon. The concealing glamour is another facet of her father’s gift, though she may choose whether or not to don the mask. But it is easier to seduce a man to a warm embrace, and to lost brown eyes and lips that do not stink of estuary muck. Later, in the aftermost instant left to him, when she has been bedded and fucked and he is, for the moment, spent, she will cast aside the charade. He may see the truth of her at the end, and she has always thought this her own singular gift. Clarity at the brink of oblivion, largesse before the void. It is no manner of kindness, however, for what unimpeachable gift in this world may be kind? It is one honest breath, before her sharp yellow teeth and the saltwater flood that flows out of her from every pore and orifice.
Whoever finds the broken, oddly shriveled body, may wonder at the mattress and sheets drenched and reeking, at the gaping hole in the Irishman’s throat. That unlucky innkeeper may cross him- or herself, may mutter a prayer before calling upon a constabulary beadle or policeman. More likely, the corpse will be disposed of in a less sensational and less public fashion. Regardless, she has never been hunted, and has begun to doubt she ever shall be.
By sunset, she has slipped back into the muddy river, regretting only that another year must past before she can again step foot on dry land and take her prey from amongst the breathing multitudes. But this one rides the tides, hardly more than a shade, and her mistress is the sea, as her father was a devil. Her belly full, she finds a wreck and coils herself in between the limpets and mussels, the oysters and thick growths of sponges. She will sleep for a few hours, or a day, or, more rarely, a fortnight. She will dream of the sun and high mountain villages, of meadows dotted with goats and sheep. Of rain. And then she will awaken, and slip away, unnoticed, except by the crabs and eels that wreath her like a winding shroud. The white, wheeling gulls may glance down to perceive her silhouette moving swiftly past just beneath the waves, and knowing what they see, sail higher.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BLACKWATER
Freda Warrington
Freda Warrington is the author of twenty-one fantasy novels including the Blood Wine series (Titan Books): A Taste of Blood Wine, A Dance in Blood Velvet, The Dark Blood of Poppies, and The Dark Arts of Blood. She has spent most of her life in Leicestershire, UK, where the atmospheric landscape inspired her to write otherworldly fiction, such as Elfland (winner of the 2009 Romantic Times award for Best Fantasy Novel). Her 1997 Dracula sequel Dracula the Undead—which views Stoker’s count from an entirely different perspective, while staying true to its Victorian forebear—won the Dracula Society’s award for Best Gothic Novel.
Vampires have fascinated her since childhood. (To learn more about the author, visit www.fredawarrington.com.) Her dark, gothic Blood Wine books began to evolve in the 1980s, long before the most recent explosion of vampire fiction. The main character in the story below, Sebastian, is also a major player in The Dark Blood of Poppies, and his experience here takes place before the novel begins—setting the scene, in a way…
She enters the room, luminous by the light of the candle she carries. In the darkness beyond her curtained bed, I wait unseen. No one ever sees me until I want them to; I’m less than a whisper, a dream. The bedroom is cavernous. Its heart glows orange from the fire banked in the grate, but this weak radiance cannot reach the massed black shadows around it.
She is luscious, barely eighteen. Her hair falls like honey over the white shoulders of her nightdress. She’s quite short, slightly plump; completely desirable. Her eyes are darkest violet, her mouth so deep a red it looks almost purple, like a ripe plum. Her name is Elizabeth.
She’s the only surviving child of her parents and they’ve arranged a marriage for her, so I’ve learned, to some cousin who will come here to live and thus secure the future of the family estate and fortune … A respectable Christian marriage, designed to provide mutual wealth, a place in society, a new dynasty … all that stuff. I don’t care for the dry details.
She’s a virgin, trembling on the chasm lip of marriage. That�
�s all we need to know.
She sets down the candle beside her bed and climbs in.
Clutching the sheets around her chin, she stares with those enormous pansy-petal eyes at her future. A pulse ticks in her temple. Can she sense me watching?
A maid bustles in, causing me to draw back with a faint hiss of annoyance. This young, freckly intruder chatters as she pokes the fire, then wipes her hands on her apron and fusses with the bedcovers even as my prey sits prettily against the pillows, waiting for her to leave. The maid brushes dangerously close to me as I draw back behind the heavy bed-curtains. She has no idea I’m there, inches from her. She says things like, “Ah, it’s soon you’ll be married! You look like a child still. Before you know it, your own children will be running around the place, and you a grand lady!”
The girl smiles enigmatically.
At last the maid is gone, taking her bustling energy with her. The fire fades to a red sulk. Elizabeth bends towards the candle, her lips pouting to blow it out—then she hesitates. Looking over her shoulder, she asks, “Who’s there?” She speaks lightly, as if she feels foolish at her own sudden fear.
If ever someone introduces himself to you by saying, “Don’t be afraid,” my advice is to run, run like the wind! Why would a stranger anticipate fear, unless it was they who posed a danger? Yet that is what I say. I even speak her name.
“Elizabeth. Don’t be afraid.”