Liaison (4 page)

4

I awoke in an unfamiliar room. Dusty beams crossed the ceiling over my face, and the sun shone through a cheesecloth drape from the window above the side of the bed. I sat up and pushed aside a worn quilt that had been spread over me. Kneeling, I pushed aside the drape and looked outside, but the flowering brambles that grew against the glass were too thick to see past.

I didn’t know if it was the bedding or the room that was so pungent to my nostrils. Surveying the room, I saw herbs and bulbs of numerous varieties hung to dry from the higher beams in the center of the room. On the wall across from the bed was a small fireplace. Something aromatic that made my mouth water simmered in the brass cauldron that hung there. A table stood against the wall facing the bed’s footboard. I rose, thoughtful of my light-headedness, and stepped curiously to it.

There was a wide oil cloth laid atop it, and over this was strewn a hodgepodge of things: glass jars containing more herbs and liquids, mortars and pestles, stuffed leather pouches with securely knotted drawstrings, bowls filled with items such as clay, honey, moss, and the teeth from a variety of animals. There was a small white cabinet, like a child’s toy, painted over with delicate flowers and tiny dragons. A slender iron chain hung tautly between the handles of the doors, complete with a miniature iron lock.

Upon a circular wooden stand in the center of the table was a preserved human head. Had I not seen such displays in the homes of acquaintances who collected such morbid paraphernalia, I might have been shocked. It had evidently been meticulously preserved by whatever process had been implemented, so that the skin was imparted with only the slightest of tawny felt texture. The lips and nostrils had been sewn closed before the process, and the ears likewise at the entrance of the canals, but whatever gutting or thread had been used had been tailored from the inside, so that the outside of the orifices retained their basic original contours. What most fascinated me was the care given to the hair, eyebrows, and mustache. Whoever possessed this curiosity had just recently combed out the mustache and brows and the long flaxen head hair, and wound this last neatly around the wooden stand. I reached out to touch the shiny hair when the creak of door hinges sounded from behind me.

My resolve startled, I spun to find it was my servant, Weistreim, who stood at the entrance. But he did not enter until the woman with him crossed the threshold first. It was the white-haired woman in her beaten leather dress. Weistreim cast me a quick congenial smile. He did not speak, however, and I sensed his silence came from an intense and habituated deference toward the elderly woman. As she came to stand before me, an expectant quiet braced the entire room. Her bluish green eyes looked me up and down, the crow’s feet tightly drawn in the corners, and her mouth was pursed with an uncertain displeasure. My stomach knotted and the nape of my neck crawled, much like when I was a child about to be interrogated by the nuns who administered the school I had attended.

This sensation turned my next thought to the time. It was surely time for me to be headed to the classroom, if I wasn’t overdue already. I wondered if my pupils had arrived at the schoolhouse door and found it locked. Were they fretting over what had happened to me, or had someone already informed them that I was occupied elsewhere?

Then I remembered the one desk that would be absent of its pretty occupant . . . and my chest panged miserably.

“I am Irmhild, Monsieur Rolant. And I know you have seen my daughter’s child, Carina.”

Understanding now the nature of their relationship, I could not bring myself to speak of the passionate, heartrending incident with her. Instead, I feigned self-interest, “How did I come to be here, madam?”

“This boy found you, of course. He fetched Carina’s father to help bring you to me.”

I glanced at Weistreim, but he was staring at his feet. “I must thank you, then, for whatever—”

Irmhild cut me off briskly, “He thought you ill to be lying on the floor so pale and almost lifeless. But I have found no fever, no sign of illness. Tell me what quelled your strength, schoolmaster?”

As I rubbed the chafing tenseness from the back of my neck, she sighed and spoke something to the boy in a language I did not understand. At once Weistreim slipped out again and shut the door behind himself. The crone gestured to the bed.

“Sit.”

I started to protest that my pupils needed me, when she grasped my arm. She pressed me to comply, and I did not realize how very weak my body was until I relented the burden of standing. My head spun with relief as she walked over to the hearth and took a clay bowl from the stones. From the cauldron she ladled some soup into the bowl and brought this back to me.

Irmhild said nothing as I took it into my hands, but even to me the shaking of my hands was disconcerting. Still, I managed to blow on the soup and take two or three sips of the broth. My stomach spasmed painfully, but in a few moments I felt it settle.

“This might be your last meal, if you insist on keeping your secrets concerning Carina.”

I was shocked by her implication, and she went on, “No, it is not I whom you should fear, schoolmaster. But I see that those who have used my Carina have already commenced to thieve on your vitality—though I suspect it is not your body or blood they seek.”

I winced and listened as she continued in the same stony voice. “I can help you. I know who directs her, just as I know why she left no marks on you.”

I sipped on the broth again and tried to keep my emotions from my voice. “What is it you believe happened to me, madam?”

“My Carina told me of your demonstrated wish to court her—until she acknowledged an acceptance of the desire you feigned.”

The very lack of criticism in her tone sharpened my guilt.

“I was thoughtless, I apologize.” I felt pressed to give Carina’s grandmother some understanding of the cultural conflict that the encounter of which she referred had rattled in me. “You must understand, madam, in the world beyond this valley, such arduous expectations are considered imprudent.”

“Your world breeds senseless inhibitions, monsieur.” Irmhild paused, then said in a voice as brusquely compelling as that of any schoolmaster, “I feel you regret your decision—Am I correct?”

I flushed hotly. It was not that I would have dared contradict her, not now that I had my own resolutions concerning Carina, but her probing questions were almost as invasive as her mind had proved during the funeral. Thus, to give prelude to my own speculations regarding Carina, as well as sidetrack the old woman’s curiosity, I replied frankly, “Before I answer, you must tell me what you believe befell your granddaughter.”

The left corner of her mouth turned up to give me a derisive flash of age-darkened, but hardy, teeth. “We of the ancient ways are not the stupid chickens those of your society make of us. Your credentials were well reviewed before our councilmen decided you were the best candidate to teach our women. But it was not a man who made the final decision on your suitability, Marcel Rolant.”

Her telling gaze made me feel like a child. In her no-nonsense sage tone, she continued, “You know as well as I what has befallen Carina. She has fallen victim to that race known as the vampire.”

I blinked. According to everything I knew, vampires were no more than allegorical archetypes. Whether it was the infant-devouring Lilith or one of the countless legends of the vengeful spirit, erudition preached that these creatures were pure superstitions invented by the minds of the unsophisticated.

“They are real, schoolmaster. And were it not for Carina’s melancholy, they never would have dared take her. She was a priestess-guardian of ancient faith, one of the women who serve as living wards to our village against the beckon of the vampires that, in times past, lured our little children into danger. But Carina had never loved before, let alone ever been spurned, schoolmaster. I know how devastated she was. She had come home and told me of your practicality. She could not eat; she could not stop weeping. Thus did she set out to the wilds where she and her priestess sisters perform the old rite. I stopped her father from following after her, thinking she needed time to collect herself. But evidently, her self-doubt drew the vampires from their lofty lair.”

As wild as this tale was, self-reproach needled my gut. But it was the echo of the words
lofty lair
that quaked the foundations of my arcane education. For a moment, I could not see the wrinkled face before me, but instead heard the climatic scream uttered by Carina and her friends as they stood naked and shaking before the eastern summit of the gorge.

“These priestesses summoned the clouds over the fortress monastery,” I whispered. Startled by understanding, I nearly dropped the bowl. Carina’s grandmother righted it in my hands.

“So you watched them,” Irmhild sighed, “and still you did not see.”

She tut-tutted like a disgruntled mother, and chagrined, I finished the soup as she continued, “My people were avowed to the destruction of the vampire race ages before setting eyes upon this valley. There were six branches of the vampire family, all spawned passionlessly from the wombs of six of the Trickster’s seven malevolent daughters.”

The word
Trickster
was a pagan term I thought I’d heard somewhere before. My unspoken concern, however, for once outweighed my selfish curiosity, and I listened attentively as she went on, “My forefathers were avowed to eradicate one of these branches entirely, the spawn of Griselda—to slay them, destroy their every lair for the honor of the gods we worship. The bloodless matriarch, Griselda, is mad as are all the Trickster’s self-propagated daughters. She is mother to vampires, and yet she is more. Unlike the life-hating chaos from which the Trickster came, Griselda is a being of corrupted mortal desires. This is as the Trickster designed; bringing himself into the flesh of one who is neither male nor female, yet both, that he might self-propagate. The daughters he bore—these six by self-conception, leastwise—are human abominations, corruptions, mockeries of mortal needs and desires. These six were born to his designations; beings of insatiable desires and self-interests that they might be a plague to humankind.”

Irmhild paused a moment, and a single fearful furrow crossed her brow. “There was a seventh, sired by an even more abhorrent method. But this one did the Trickster so misuse she evolved into a force so frightful that even her father cowers at her approach. She is not one of the vampire mothers but a dark and brooding leech upon mortal life in another way, and which no man or magic may stop.”

I was piqued once again, but before I could ask of this seventh daughter, Irmhild continued, “Griselda was the Trickster’s first offspring, his favorite, the testament to his own powers. So proud of this feat of self-perpetuation, the Trickster transmuted into a peacock after her birth and assaulted the first peahen he came across, therefore placing an anathema upon the tragic offspring of that union. Even to this day the doomed peahen’s descendants live constrained to lionize Griselda’s creation with their morbid call.

“But as the Trickster’s other self-conceived daughters, Griselda has no maternal instinct. She did, however, have need of an army of unswayable allegiance. Thus did she conceive her brood through the seed of a dead man. And these undead children she has nurtured to believe themselves unworthy to share in the very delights for which they were sired. Loathing their existence, they remain torn between the perpetual desire to feed on the flesh and the need to serve her in shame of themselves while clutching to the futile desire to gain her maternal love.

“When our ancient seers discovered she had led her vampire brood over the Alps in the quest of finding fresh pillage, they pursued. Griselda and her brood managed to elude them during a blinding snowstorm and came to this province while our forebears were forced to wait out the winter in icy caverns.

“But they are crafty, these descendants of the Trickster, and knew their trackers would pursue them until the end of time if need be. Thus did their matriarch instruct them to act on the political animosity felt at that time toward the familial prince of the province, Duke Boheme. Toward this aim, the vampires sought to gain the favor of the king of this land. The duke was not Christian, you see, his power reliant entirely and vulnerably on his ancient bloodline. The vampires discovered that if they aligned themselves with the Church of Rome and took the vows of the faith, they could more easily gain the king’s favor. This they accomplished; and that king, happy to have sympathetic ears and eyes ready to spy upon his rival, had built for them a holy fortress. He recruited masons educated in the antediluvian knowledge of how to build a sanctuary that would serve—unknown to the king—as a sanctuary to the vampires. And so, when my people at last reached the province, it was to the discovery they could not enter the lair of the vampires or even trespass its property without consequence of immediate death.

“We remained, however, safeguarding the province from the vampires’ unholy hunger. As well, we are indebted to the descendants of Duke Boheme, for it is he who gave us this valley in which to settle. Throughout the generations, his descendants have braved hostility and censure to defend us from the scourge of the Church. The Dukes protect us, and in exchange, we protect their family and people.”

The room was silent except for the distant voices of children from beyond the bramble-covered window. The talk of vampires with unholy hunger echoed brutally against their laughter and blithe chatter.

Irmhild’s anger softened her tone, “I knew they had taken Carina when I saw the marks on her throat. But I could not say this until there was undeniable proof. And you, monsieur, are the testament of what she has become. But tell me, did she come to you alone?”

At the hesitant flush in my cheeks, she pressed on, “How do I know Carina came to you? There is no manner of illness that drains the vitality as I see has been drained from your aura. She will kill you, perhaps even unwittingly, monsieur, unless there is intervention. But I would like to know first her manner of draining your vitality.”