Perfect Shadows

chapter 4

After Geoffrey left the room, Nicolas fumbled with some books on the floor, and handed a large volume to me. “My journals,” he said simply, settling back by the fire. I glanced at the page, but could make nothing of it.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot make out your hand,” I said, handing the volume back. He gave me a sharp look, but said nothing. He thumbed the pages, reading aloud bits here and there that told of his feelings about me and the course that Rózsa had charted. He had not thought it likely, at first, that I would rise, but that had changed when he learned of the monstrous manner in which I had died. He told me of those endless nights before the inquest, when they knew not if I would rise, and the desperate plans to steal my body. My corpse—I realized with a sickening lurch of my stomach that this body had been a dead body, a defiled and unclean thing. I forced my attention back to his words, away from my morbid thoughts.

I felt shaky and sick, but still I sat as Nicolas related the details of the difficult journey that brought me, oblivious, to this house. Geoffrey had not been here; he arrived in mid August, the night I awoke from my catalepsy. With horrified fascination I listened to the account of my first “awakening”, how I had raped and nearly killed a serving wench. How I had been no more than a ravening beast, mad and slavering. . . I cried out in shock and disgust. I could hardly bear Nicolas’ look of sympathy. “Where is the girl?”

“She died,” he told me, then seeing the spasm that crossed my face at his words, grasped my arm. “No! Not by your hand! It was an accident, last month. She was trampled to death in Paris. What happened was not your fault, Kit. It was mine, or no one’s. Geoffrey was unsure, but I thought it was important for you to know why you have been kept bound, and why we thought it best to send Rózsa from here.” He got up heavily and left without another word, and I sat staring at my hands for many long minutes after he had gone. How right they had been to send Rózsa away! I could never have faced her if she had seen me so. I felt that I could not even face the servants, and slipped up to my room unseen, to lie waking until the day-trance claimed me.



I awoke the next evening to a light tap on the door, followed immediately by Nicolas’ kind face. He smiled to see me awake, and spoke over his shoulder as he stepped into the room. He was followed by Jehan and the serving-wench who had helped me on the stairs yesterday, both with their arms full of clothing. I blushed, remembering what I had learned the night before, but soon became interested in the finery spread before me.

“Ah,” Nicolas said with a smile. “I thought that you would enjoy this. You told me once that you never had the money to indulge yourself in the sort of wardrobe you would like, and how you hated it when your appearance marked you as lower class. Indeed, you were still wroth years later, at having been clapped into Newgate as a ‘yeoman’ rather than the ‘gentleman’ to which you were entitled by virtue of your university degrees.” If that were true, I thought, my values were seriously awry. Nicolas chose a shirt and breeches for me, and waited outside while I dressed, a little puzzled by the plainness of the selected garments.

I was soon enlightened, for Nicolas led me, not to the study as I had expected, but to a wing of the building that had been fitted as a salle d’armes. Geoffrey, clad in much the same fashion, awaited us there. “There are fine schools of fencing near Cambridge,” he said with a feral grin. “Made you any use of them?”

“We shall see,” I answered with a grin of my own, and strolled to the racks lining one wall to select my weapons. I found abated rapier whose length and weight pleased me, and a practice dagger, then turned to face Geoffrey, rapier in hand. I looked down in surprise, realizing with a start that I was left-handed. My grin faltered a moment, then returned as I glanced at Geoffrey.

“I trust this does not inconvenience you,” I said.

“Not at all,” Geoffrey answered, switching his own blade to his left hand and deftly leaning into the attack.

Two hours later I returned to my room, dripping with sweat and feeling as though I’d run to Paris and back. I was delighted to see that Jehan had prepared a bath for me, the wooden tub lined with linen. I wasted no time but quickly stripped and eased myself into the steaming water, enjoying the scents of costmary and lavender. My anatomy had been considerably altered from what I seemed to remember; only the occasional scar seemed the same. I had been only a bit above middle height, somewhat awkward and gangly; now I was tall, lean and muscular, and my strength, agility, and grace were extraordinary, or would be when I recovered from the months of enforced inactivity. But I was half blind, and was having to learn to compensate. Again and again Geoffrey would attack from my blind right side, and I, who would have been hard put to best him even with two good eyes, would overcompensate, allowing him an opening and receiving a blow that resulted in a spectacular bruise. Being yet unused to the ministrations of a body servant, I dismissed Jehan, and when the water began to cool I dried myself, reveling in the feel of the old soft linen against my sensitive skin. I dressed in the clothes that had been laid out for me, midnight-blue velvet doublet and breeches, pearl-grey silk shirt, and silver-lace band. I pulled on my boots, wandered down stairs, and, hearing quiet voices from the study, tapped on the door.

“Ah, Kit! Come in, my boy,” Nicolas called happily. “We were just discussing whether we should send someone to tip you out of that bath!” I laughed and took my usual seat between them. I stroked the velvet of my sleeve for a moment, then “What happened to my things?” I asked suddenly. Nicolas sighed. “I was unable to get them. Someone was there before me, from the council, I suspect. All of your personal belongings were attached by your landlord to pay your rent, and your friend Nashe rescued the manuscripts from being used for fire-starters, or to line pie-dishes. I believe that Thomas Walsingham has them now. Chapman is completing the Hero and Leander—” he broke off at my confused look. “It was the poem you were writing at the time of your death,” he explained gently.

“Oh, of course,” I said, and stretched, a little self-consciously, trying to cover my embarrassment. “My clothing would ill fit me now, anyway, I suppose. I rather think that I could pass unknown among my closest friends.”

“That is frequently the case, and understandable when you consider that we undergo tremendous physical changes. It is only logical that some of them are external. It also serves our survival if we do not look exactly as we did in life; it precludes some embarrassing questions.” We sat in silence for a time, each considering the changes in our lives. I toyed with the ring I wore and tried to remember. I had probably never had much in the way of jewelry, I thought, and then suddenly remembered a pearl earring Tom had given me . . . I started to reach up, even though logic told me it was gone.

“They took it, Kit, and gave it to Poley for part of his pay,” Nicolas said quietly. I hastily asked him if he had taken vengeance upon those responsible for Rózsa’s illness and the loss of her family. Nicolas settled back into his chair and gazed keenly at me for a moment, then nodded.

“Yes, I too had my scores to settle,” he said. “Oh, I could not kill the Inquisition, much as I would enjoy doing so, but I could, and did seek out the individuals responsible for Rózsa’s imprisonment, and the death of her parents. The Abbess who had tried to work her to death had died herself that winter, and so was beyond our reach, but Rózsa’s aunt paid full measure, though only indirectly with her life.

“In my lifetime I was very successful in business matters, so I looked into the interests of the family, and within only a few years we owned it all: Rózsa’s aunt lived out her life on her niece’s charity.” Nicolas’ grin was no less gloating and wolfish, but his memoir was interrupted by a soft knock on the door, and Anneke’s entrance. Once again I noted the glow about her, a glow that I did not see in Geoffrey or Nicolas, or, come to that, in myself. While I was musing on this the couple excused themselves, leaving me alone with Geoffrey. I asked about that glow.

“It is that they have not died, Christopher, and we have. They possess what we need to survive, and we see it, you may call it the life-force, as that glow, although the longer you are . . . undead, the less you will notice it unless you actively desire to.”

“What we need to survive?”

“It is not just a question of blood, you see, but of the vitality, the life. We can survive on the blood of animals, but it is repugnant, suggestive of bestiality, and, at any rate, cannot fill our needs for long. Our feeding is a sensual experience, for ourselves no less than for our chosen, and we are very sensual beings, though this can lead us into danger. We must be very careful when we feed, neither to take too much, nor yet too often, from one person. We do not require much, a few ounces only, but we must feed at least twice a week, more if we are injured. As the experience is pleasurable to us as well, the temptation is always with us, to feed more often than need requires. When you were with Rózsa, how often did you lie with her?”

“Two or three times a week,” I answered, feeling my face flush.

“And how often did she feed from you, do you think?”

“Uh, not so often after the first two times, but later—” I broke off.

“Yes, later she fed more and more often, a need that comes upon us if an exchange is to be made. I fed from Nicolas every night in the week before I killed him. He feeds from Anneke only once or twice a month, now, but if she decides to join him, to become one of us, he will feed more often until they make the exchange.

“We cannot, of course, feed for nourishment from one another, there being none of the requisite life-force we require, but such a feeding, undead from undead, confers dominance among us, sapping the will of the fed-upon, bending him toward obedience. It will do the same with mortals, and to a much stronger degree, though it should not be exploited, used rather only for our safety.

“We can still take the pleasure of our bodies. Our afterlife would be bleak indeed if we could no longer enjoy our changed loves!” Geoffrey made a sound deep in his throat, and reached out to caress the back of my hand, then took it, and finding no resistance, raised it to his lips. His piercing grey eyes held mine as he pressed his lips to my acquiescent palm. “While I lived, I would have slain anyone who suggested that I, like my brother Richard, might enjoy the taking of a man in my bed as much as a woman,” he murmured in a voice suddenly grown hoarse. I found myself leaning towards him, my breath coming faster, the desire spreading from the pit of my stomach, making me feel light-headed and weak-kneed. Geoffrey also leaned forward, catching my chin in his hand and kissing me, gently at first, then deeply. “Share my bed, Christopher,” he said softly, his smoldering eyes never leaving mine as he stroked my hair. Not trusting my voice, I nodded dumbly, and followed him from the room.



Later, naked and nervous in his bed, I laughed softly, startling an inquiring look from the disrobing Geoffrey. “I was—remembering,” I said.

“Tell me.”

“No, it’s gone again,” I said in distress. “It was something about a lover, something unpleasant, I think. Will I ever remember everything? Or will it always just come like this, in sudden shards? Ice, piercing and melting away.” Geoffrey turned to me, shaking his head.

“You are healing, Christopher, but how far it will take you, no one may say. These things that you do remember are the things that are the most likely to rankle. We cannot allow these things to fester within us, for over as many years as we have to live, these things can drive us mad, and a mad vampire is a fearful creature indeed, I assure you.” The merest echo of a threat hovered between us, and I shivered. “But now,” he added, and took my chin in his hand, forcing my head back, silencing me with his lips. I smiled and leaned into an intense kiss, closing my eyes against the pleasure I felt at that touch, and of his insistent hands roaming my body.

Geoffrey was neither a gentle nor a considerate lover. I had had no previous experience in the submissive role, but I quickly learned not to resist him. In the confusion of waking the next evening, I stretched gingerly, not knowing quite where I was, nor why I felt so battered and tired. I turned to find Geoffrey was awake and watching me. I reached for him, both desiring and fearing him, but he batted my hand away. “We should dress now, and go downstairs, or poor Nicolas will think he has been abandoned. Jehan has arranged a bath for you in your chamber,” he said sharply. I felt dismissed, and left to clean up and dress.

I joined Geoffrey on the stairs about a half-hour later and did not meet his eyes. I well understood the object lesson in last night’s act: Geoffrey was master, and had exerted his dominion, bending his own nature to secure my absolute submission to his authority in the most basic way conceivable, a way to which my sodomite temperament must perforce respond. I was ashamed, as I had never been before, but grateful too, that he had not felt his authority needs must be enforced by feeding from me.