Perfect Shadows

chapter 3

I awoke in darkness, bound once more and this time gagged as well. As my consciousness returned so did memory, and memory was intolerable. My muscles knotted and I bucked against my bonds in convulsion, but my awareness did not forsake me. When the attack passed I remained conscious, though sweat-soaked and exhausted. Twice more the agony racked me, each time growing a little less savage. As I came out of the third seizure I realized the room was candlelit and I was no longer alone. Nicolas sat on the foot of the bed watching me compassionately. Restrained as I was, I could only look at him. After a few minutes had passed with no further paroxysms Nicolas stood and removed the gag. “Why?” I asked, in a voice cracked with fatigue.

“It was necessary, Kit, but you went into such violent convulsions that it was all Geoffrey could do to keep you out of the fireplace. He held you immobile for hours, until the convulsions eased enough for us to get you back upstairs. It happens that way sometimes.”

“Will you untie me?”

“No,” said Geoffrey from the doorway. “Not for a time yet. We have much to discuss, and you, I doubt not, have many questions.”

“I was . . . Frizer wouldn’t have stopped at half blinding me. He meant my death: I read it in his face.”

“Frizer murdered you while Skeres held you down and Poley kept watch at the door,” Nicolas said quietly. Another spasm, though again shorter and less furious, lashed through my bound and weary body. He fetched water and a cloth from the table and bathed my face. “One of my serving-men was in Deptford when it happened. He told me of your death.”

“I hope they hanged Frizer in Tom’s full sight!” I raged, then asked, ”What?” as Nicolas glanced at Geoffrey, who nodded slightly.

“He did not hang at all, Kit. The verdict at the inquest was self defense,” Nicolas told me softly, bracing himself as if he expected me to convulse again, but there was only a single fierce tremor before I brought myself back under control, laughing bitterly.

“Well, Tom was ever a better friend to him than to me. But how is it, then, that I live?” I looked first to Nicolas, then to Geoffrey, but it was Nicolas who finally spoke.

“You remember the night we met, and I read the markings in your hand for you? Yes, well, I did not tell you all that I saw. Rózsa saw it first. The line of your life broke off short: you would die young, and soon. A closer look revealed a star on the line of the head: you would die violently from a wound to the head—Rózsa was most upset. We are not as other folk, Kit. Have you heard of vampires?” I searched my ragged memory.

“Spirits that return from the dead to prey upon the living? But spirits have no flesh. . . .” I forced my mind from its path, my gaze flicking between Geoffrey and Nicolas as Nicolas spoke again.

“We are not spirits, Kit, or at least no more so than are other men. This—condition is passed from us to mortals by the exchange of blood.” He saw the hot color flood my face and laughed gently. “Oh, I know not the details, only that Rózsa found you apt and made such an exchange with you. She was wrong not to give you the choice, to make the exchange and leave you unaware of the possible consequences of your actions.”

“I would have chosen no differently if she had,” I reflected.

“And even so you might yet have died, Kit, for the exchange alone will not make the vampire. It is the will to live, the defiance of death itself that makes us so.

“So there you lay, to all appearances as dead as your enemies could wish you, and none knew that you yet might live save Rózsa and I. The inquest seemed to take an eternity, and we were nearly frantic; it was held on the first day of June, the third day since the murder, and on that night you would rise, if indeed you were not truly dead. We considered stealing your body if necessary, but as it happened, the inquest was swiftly over. We bribed the sexton, your body was secretly handed to us and a pauper lies in the unmarked grave meant for you.” I stared at him blankly for a few seconds then started to tremble. Nicolas started towards me, as if he thought another convulsion was coming on, until he realized I had collapsed against my restraints in helpless mirth, the tears streaming down my face.

“‘He gave them the cup, saying this is my blood . . . and on the third day he rose again from the dead’. . . .” I gasped when I could get a breath. Geoffrey and Nicolas glanced at each other, Geoffrey frowning, but Nicolas smiling indulgently, then Geoffrey stepped to the door. “Jehan,” he called softly, and the serving-man I had seen before entered. He was tall and graceful, with an air of barely-subdued strength. His face was handsome in an unusual, predatory way, with high cheekbones beneath tilted eyes of feral gold. I noticed he had the same curious aspect as Anneke: he seemed almost to glow.

“You must feed, Christopher, if you are to live. We have not fed you these several days, to sap the strength of your convulsions, but soon you will starve. You must now make your final choice,” Geoffrey said. “You must take the living blood from this man’s veins to nourish yourself, and sustain this life you have chanced upon, or refuse, and starve, to find yet the death you might have had.” Geoffrey’s face was impassive as he motioned to Nicolas and the two left the room. Jehan sat on the bed, close to me. I realized with sudden dread that I was expected to bite into a vein and drink the blood of this man, who was, it seemed, entirely in favor of the procedure. My stomach twisted and I viewed the man with some alarm.

“I am Jehan, Master Marlowe,” the big man said gently, and pressed the pulsing vein in his wrist to my dry lips. I had meant to turn my head away, but the scent of his living flesh overcame my reluctance, and instinctively my teeth caught the vein, penetrating the skin. My mouth filled with his warm sweet blood and my body with new strength as the liquid flowed like sparking fire down my throat. There was a different gratification suffusing me, not overwhelming, as when Rózsa had taken my blood, but a warmth of feeling that deepened as I drank. All too soon the wrist was forced from me. Geoffrey had returned and pulled Jehan away. Jehan, his eyes content and sleepy, leaned forward and kissed my lips, still wet with his blood, then turned to rest his head across my knees and sank into slumber. I felt the familiar lethargy claiming me, and I too, slept.

Awaking slowly some hours later, I jerked against the restraints, for the head that rested so warmly on me was not that of a man at all, but that of a large wolf. A very large wolf. The animal raised his head and eyed me with a lupine grin before spilling off the bed to the floor, where, before my unbelieving gaze, a mist seemed to envelop it, a mist that elongated then solidified into a man’s shape: Jehan. A very naked and well-built Jehan, who smiled at me, scooped up the tangle of his clothing from the floor by the bed, then left the room. Almost immediately, Geoffrey entered, crossed to the bed, and began to unknot my bonds. “Mayhap you should wait, for I may yet be mad!” I told him, and described what I had just seen, but he only nodded and finished his task.

“No, you are not mad; Jehan is a wolf, but he is also a man. His clan has served my family for centuries, an association of benefit to us both. His folk are easily swayed by their animal natures and would often run afoul of society if they had not someone to protect and guide them. They serve us in return. Now, do you dress yourself and come downstairs.” Geoffrey did not seem to think that I should require any assistance, and I was most eager to prove him right.

I dressed in the clothing I had worn before and started down the stairs. At the landing a wave of giddiness swept over me and I might have fallen, had not a serving-wench dropped the bundle she carried and caught me in her arms. She had the look of Jehan about her, the tip-tilted gold eyes and the dark burnished hair. She held me a moment then stepped back before the nearness of her, the vitality, could entice me further. She caught my right hand in both of hers and pressed a kiss into my palm before picking up her bundle and scurrying up the stairs. Bemused, I made my way to the study with no further mishap, and found Geoffrey and Nicolas awaiting me. I sat in the vacant chair between them, as I had before. “Tell me about vampires,” I said. Geoffrey gave me a long, considering stare before replying.

“There are several kinds of vampires,” he began. “Bloodlines, we call them. You may think of us as families, with many characteristics, some differing and some the same. Our bloodline is the Alexandrine, but more about that at another time.

“There are many myths about our kind, most of which have no factual basis. We breathe, but perhaps from force of habit rather than need, as a lack of air does not kill us. There is actually very little that may kill those of our family; fire, certainly, or decapitation; wood is harmful to us, but metal is not. Oh, a blade will cut our flesh and we will bleed for a short time, but we heal completely from the most grievous wounds, and do not die. If Frizer had used a wooden weapon you would indeed have died from the injury he inflicted; as it was you were much damaged, and will be healing for some time to come. It is often so, with the wounds that turn us from our former lives.

“We can starve, but that is rare, for our gifts are great. The attraction Rózsa exerted upon you, against your natural inclinations, is an example. It acts as a lure to call our chosen to us.”

“Where is Rózsa?” I broke in. “She said once that I called her, one night when I was unhappy and alone.” Geoffrey nodded thoughtfully.

“Yes, where we become emotionally involved a link may be forged. She is in Paris now. We sent her away when you first awoke last summer.”

“Last summer? But—”

“Anon, Kit. I will lend you my journals from the period. It was for the best, as you will see,” Nicolas counseled, and with that I had to be content as Geoffrey continued his discourse.

“We do reflect in mirrors, being, as you have pointed out, of solid flesh. That misconception came about, I believe, when men, knowing less of optics, thought that what a mirror reflected was the soul, and it is supposed we have none. The sun is not necessarily deadly to our kind, and still less so the older we are, but prolonged exposure can damage us past the point of healing ourselves without aid, and daylight is not our natural element: it can leave us sluggish and vulnerable. The lethargy it induces is heaviest when we are newly risen, and that is when we are at our most vulnerable.

“We do not change our shapes, but our servants do, accounting for that myth, I think. It is useful to us, is it not, that mortals are misled in so many particulars?” I stared pensively at the fire.

“That is not the first time that ‘mortals’ have been referred to. Are we, then, immortal?”

“Virtually, Kit, virtually,” Nicolas answered. “How old would you guess me to be?” I studied the figure before me.

“Fifty?” I hazarded. Von Poppelau nodded solemnly.

“So I was, and more, when I died more than ninety years ago.” He settled back in his chair to tell his story.

“I was in the Low Countries when I received the letter from Rózsa’s mother, Anna, my god-daughter,” he said. “She was in Barcelona with her husband, Adán Francisco de Salinas y Verdad. They had run afoul of the Inquisition, and she feared for their lives, and for their young daughter. I left immediately, but I came to Barcelona too late to save Anna and Adán: they had been burnt as heretics.

Rózsa, their daughter, was to be put to the question on her fourteenth birthday, late in October. She was imprisoned in a convent outside the city, and the Abbess agreed with me that her nuns would be much more edified by the sight of five hundred pieces of gold in the abbey coffers than by that of one more girl being burnt to the glory of God. I waited in the darkened chapel for the girl to be brought to me, fearing our capture, and knowing the penalties if they took us alive; I fingered my dagger and resolved that would not be. The Abbess brought the girl, pitifully thin and abused, and vanished with her gold.

“The convent priest surprised us as we were leaving. I thought for a moment that the Abbess had betrayed us, but no, he was alone. I was fast approaching my threescore years, but still hale and vigorous withal. I leapt upon him, knocking him to the ground. Rózsa had seemed distant, indifferent to what happened to her, but no more. She sprang on the priest, jerking the cord from his waist and swiftly binding his hands behind him. I stuffed his cowl into his mouth, knotting his rosary securely about it to gag him. Between us we wrestled him into the sanctuary and hid him in the shadows under the altar.

“Without a word we left the church and mounted the waiting horses, which I had hidden a little way off. We rode for the harbor, only pausing once, for Rózsa to change into the boy’s clothing I had brought for her. Her hair had already been cut short by the nuns.

“We went by sea as far as Genoa, and overland from there to Budapest, where I took Rózsa to her aunt’s house. The journey had taken almost two months, and the child looked much healthier, though still painfully thin. The bitch wouldn’t see us, just sent word by a servant that as far as the family was concerned Anna had died the day she had married a Spaniard, and the dead bear no children,” Nicolas shook his head. “Rózsa said nothing, just leant over and spat on the polished floor, then walked away without looking back.

“I took her with me to Prague and she became my daughter. But the time she had spent in the prison with her parents had taken its toll, and in the convent she had not been allowed to rest and regain her health, but rather made to do work too heavy for a child of her brittle strength. The winter following her fifteenth birthday I watched the signs of the consumption growing in her. I had seen it before in another dear one, and I could not bear it. The physicians said that mountain air would be good for her, so in the spring we traveled to Bavaria, and there we met Prince Geoffrey, who had taken a house there and asked us to stay with him.

“The hectic badge of her fatal illness continued to glow in her cheeks and I grieved, for I knew she would be taken from me, and I had come to love her dearly. But then I saw other signs, and these I put together with my observations of the prince, and one night I confronted him with my suspicions.’ My lord,’ I said ‘I think that you are a vampire, and that you are feeding upon my child.’ He did not deny it, but said that she would not live to be a woman without him, and that he had offered his gift to her, and that she had accepted him. ‘So now, Nicolas,’ he said to me ‘what would you?’ I told him I would stay with her, and become as he was, if he would extend his gift to me.

“He agreed, and a few weeks later, on Rózsa’s sixteenth birthday, we dosed her heavily with poppy syrup, and Geoffrey smothered her as she slept. She had no wound, no horror to fight through, you see. She slept, and then awakened. A few days later, when we were certain that Rózsa would live, I followed her.”

Nicolas fell silent, staring at the fire. I turned my attention to Geoffrey, who said nothing, for a time, then abruptly spoke.

“About my living days there is little to be said. Much was done, or so I’ve read, of which I am less than proud now, but given the circumstances I would most likely not do any differently, saving only accepting horse and armor from my brother John!” His smile was brief and bitter. “Richard was always hell-bent,” he continued, “desiring only the glory of battle—no, not even the battle, but rather the conquest, the forcing of others to do his will against theirs. It was meat and drink to him. It’s whispered about that he loved only boys,” Geoffrey’s cool gaze lit on me, and I shifted a little in my chair. “That’s not true, of course. Richard loved only Richard. He took boys, and men, because women were not, in his eyes, powerful enough to make the taking worthwhile. He married a woman who could but intensify his belief in the worthlessness of her sex. Had he married Constance of Brittany in my stead, she would have taught him his folly, and they would probably have ruled the world! She was a strong woman, and hated us all equally, but always held an eye for the main chance. Mother, on the other hand, Richard never believed was human at all. But there, I am wandering; you must bring me up short, or you will learn more about my family than you ever imagined in your worst nightmare.”

I realized with a start that Geoffrey was talking of the Lionheart, that this man had been alive then, four hundred years ago, had lived the stories I had been raised upon. I shook my head and compelled my attention back to the discourse.

“ . . . a tournament in Paris. John had made me a gift of a beautiful destrier. I had looked the beast over, as would anyone who’d had so long an acquaintance with my younger brother, and I could find no fault with him, nor yet with the harness. But, in the mounted mêlée, I heard a strange and piercing whistle, and the stallion reared suddenly, twisting in a peculiar fashion; the cleverly contrived harness sundered and I was thrown. I knew as I touched the ground that it was a plot, for the beast whirled and trampled me. I felt the grinding of my ribs and the pain as a lung collapsed, then a flash of shattered light as I received the death blow to my head.” He fell silent for a time, before continuing. “You know well enough the state in which I found myself upon waking. I marveled at being alive, and at last began to believe some of the outlandish tales my mistress of five months had told me.

“She was beautiful beyond telling, this woman. Her name was Alyssa of Byzantium, and she stood out among the blond belles of the French court like as able flame, an exotic black lily in a field of meadow flowers.”

Geoffrey fell silent, staring at the dying embers of the fire for a moment before continuing. “I began to hear rumors about her, that she was a witch and practiced dark arts, but so enamored was I that this only made her seem the better match for my own dark and witch-tainted Angevin blood; I secretly began to hope that the rumors were true. I never saw her before nightfall, and I never learned where she dwelt, though I begged her to come and live openly with me, but she would only laugh and turn away.

“I commenced to have a recurring nightmare about then, that I was attending a funeral, and when I looked upon the body it was my own, broken and torn almost beyond recognition. I told Alyssa, and she was troubled enough to trust me with the mystery of her nature and to offer her gift to me. The dreams continued and worsened. I not only saw myself, but members of my family and their reactions to my death: my father bewildered, my mother grieved, my wife relieved, Richard unconcerned, and John gloating. One night, a month before the tournament, I accepted her gift. I did not know if I believed her, but I would take what assurances I could. The dreams stopped on that night and never returned.

“After the fatal tournament, I woke bound and blind, fighting my restraints like an animal, but soon settling to the sound of her voice. I, like you, had a severe injury to the brain, and had taken a long, long time to heal to the point of awareness, but made a rapid recovery from that point.”

“How is it that your body was not missed?”

“Mine was not the only mangled corpse upon the field that day, and once the surcoat is changed, one broken body is very like another. People see what they want to see. I think that my mother did suspect, for when I visited her later she did not seem surprised.

“Eleven years passed before I was healed enough to take up the threads of my life, and much had changed in that time. Richard was pursuing his war with Philip and building his beloved castle Galliard. John was out of my reach, as Richard was keeping too close an eye on him. And I learned that I had a son, so I went back to Brittany. Alyssa had returned to Constantinople, but had left me well provided for. I watched Arthur, my son, grow into a young man, watched him learn to hate his dead father and all his father’s family.

“When Richard met his ignominious end I was in Prague; by the time I had returned to France, my son was in a fair way to be murdered, and by the same hand that had engineered my own demise. I saved my son, but I learned that John could do what I could not—I could not slay my own brother, however much he deserved it. Even though I could not accomplish it outright, I knew that it was not the defiance of death or the will to live that occasioned my renascence, but the desire for revenge. This, I think, you share.” I felt the blood drain from my face as I thought of Frizer and his taunting laughter when he drove the dagger into me, his helpless victim, oh so slowly, prolonging my agony as much as possible: Oh, yes, I wanted revenge, and not just on the minions. My pallor and clenched fists gave the answer I could not force past the knot in my throat. Geoffrey nodded and stood, offering me his hand. “Good, then tomorrow we will start teaching you to be not only vampire, but an Alexandrine prince.”