The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life (23 page)

Inside was a large and very high-ceilinged foyer. The walls were of a dark and elaborately embossed brocade, and several candelabra shone faintly. It was also cluttered with a cacophony of furniture and strange objects: gilt and bronze rococo trimmed chests and bookcases, large glass globes containing wax flowers, bullrushes and stuffed birds, a black harmonium (played at untold weddings and funerals?), barometers and crucifixes, seashells and medieval icons. At the back of the foyer was a sinuous tower of carved rosewood, an art nouveau sculpture of a staircase, swirling up the balcony overhead.

The house was moldy with the odor of decay There was a dampness in it, a heaviness. It was the stuffiness of rooms never ventilated. Oddly enough, there was seemingly the smell of uncounted meals that had been cooked in the house, the stink of the kitchen and the scullery. These mixed with another smell, a faint miasma of strange and fragrant scents; and all these ghosts bombarded the senses in a silent and choking confusion.

A number of closed doors led off of the foyer, both at the ground level and from the balcony overhead. As we stood there listening the house was still, almost cavernously silent. Then we heard the crying.

Lady Dunaway turned to me, her eyes wide and breathless.

It came from deep within the massive house, distant and plaintive. It was not sobbing or tearful crying. It was a short, piercing wail, repeated over and over. There was something weak and futile about the sound, not quite human. It was like the whine of an animal caught helplessly in the steel jaws of a trap, and it sent a terrified chill to our very marrow.

Madly and without thinking we both charged up the swirling staircase and in the direction of the cry. From the second floor we could see many doors surrounding the balcony, and two other staircases led even farther up into the house. The wail repeated.

“Up there!” I gasped as I led Lady Dunaway down the hall and up another set of stairs. We followed the sound up through the dark labyrinth, past walls covered with strange gimcrack and huge portraits covered with sheets, and finally to a narrow and twisted staircase apparently leading to one of the turret rooms. The wallpaper here was wet and peeling and the wooden steps were half rotted from the dampness. Once again we heard the short cry.

“He’s up there,” Lady Dunaway said in a hush. Her eyes were glassy and I could see she was half insane with fear and horror. She quickly bolted for the steps, but I held her arm.

“Let me go first,” I said.

“No, I’m coming with you.”

We carefully made our way up the rotting steps, and the lines in Lady Dunaway’s forehead deepened as I turned the brass knob in its collar. The hinges creaked as I pushed into the room.

The crying stopped the moment we opened the door Everything was black. Something rustled in the darkness.

“Ambrose?” Lady Dunaway called.

No one answered.

I fumbled in my pocket until I found a match and struck it against the wall. A faint circle of light illuminated the room. From what we could see it was sparsely furnished. The floor was polished black, as if it had been paced many times. A soiled mattress sat in a corner, bare and with its ticking ripped, and the white, fibrous stuffing spilling out. Across the room sat a plain wooden table, and a strange pair of leather gloves. There was something else in the room. There was a hideous stench, like the smell in the den of an animal.

I held the match higher so we could see more when suddenly something moved through the darkness. There was a rushing of air, and the piteous cry sounded once again. Something flailed and hit us, but lightly, strangely, a jerky, feathery something. I quickly lit another match and then we saw. There on the floor was a bird, a falcon. There was a leather hood tied around its small head, securely covering its eyes, and yet, still it had seemed to know our exact position in the room. It tilted its head, listening.

“It can hear us,” I said, and instantly the falcon turned in our direction. Even though blinded it waited for another sound, a final coordinate of our position so it could attack once again.

I quickly pulled Lady Dunaway out of the room and shut the door. There was a thrashing of wings against the wood.

“Oh,” she cried and buried her face in my arm, as much out of disappointment as of fear. Suddenly the decayed wood gave a little and we both fell to the bottom of the steps with a thud. At the same instant it seemed that there was the sound of a door opening or shutting.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered.

We both listened. At first there didn’t seem to be anything. Then, at last, there was the discernible sound of footsteps.

“This house is so big,” I said under my breath, “someone could come in, hang up their coat, and wander about through the rooms before we’d hear them up here.”

“Or come out of a room on one of the other floors.”

Something clicked, the distant ring of metal striking wood.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said, looking at me.

We made our way down a set of stairs and saw the rosewood balcony at one end of the hall. Someone was definitely walking on the first floor. “We must hide,” I said as I pulled my partner back and the footsteps stopped abruptly. In horror I remembered Madame Villehardouin hearing me at such an incredible distance. What inhuman ears twitched now; what head tilted up, and with undreamed-of senses determined our exact location in the house?

With all the stealth we could muster we inched down the hall away from the rosewood balcony. In the faint light I discovered a door that was slightly ajar and we slipped in silently. To my surprise, the windows were not boarded, as in the turret room, and there was moonlight seeping in. In the meager glow we could see it was a playroom of sorts. Ornate circus ornaments, music boxes, and wooden toys lined the walls. The floor was also cluttered with many objects—-puppets and balls and several eighteenth-century French carousel horses. By the window was an immense dollhouse.

We quickly crossed over to the dollhouse and I examined it. The back façade was open like a pair of shutters, and we crouched behind the thin layer of tiny rooms.

For a while we did not hear the walking.

Then there came a strange sound, as of a man mumbling in monotone. The footsteps continued. We heard the distinctive creak of the rosewood staircase. The mumbling became louder.

Lady Dunaway gripped my hand.

Down the hall he came, slow and measured, pausing now and then at other doors. Through all of this the man’s voice continued the mumbling. Words finally formed in the low grumble, and I could hardly believe my ears.

“
Ad coenam agni providi
,” came the chant, “
et stolis albis candidi.
”

It was Latin, a religious chant, something about the Lamb in white garments, about Christ.

The door to the playroom swung open.

Through one of the miniature windows of the dollhouse and divided by so many minuscule panes I saw the silhouette of a robed figure. In his hands he held a censer on a long chain, and it gave out wispy fingers of incense.

The figure walked into the room and continued to swing the censer. He paused, scarcely inches from the tiny window, and turned around. Suddenly he dropped down, and a thin face filled the window like a giant’s.

“
Tiens,
” purred a voice in French. “You don’t look like mice.” The man stood once again and stepped back. “They’re in here!” he called.

We stood up.

My first impulse was to run, but the appearance of our discoverer was so genial and unintimidating I was put strangely at ease. In the dim light for the oil lamps in the hall I could see he was tall and thin and wearing the simple brown robes of a monk. He had a drawn and bony, even birdlike face, with a prominent beaked nose, pale blue eyes, and monkishly cropped brown hair. His ears were rather large, his arms lanky and fingers long and slender, and still there was a dandyish elegance about him. Even in robes and carrying a heavy censer he stood like a fine gentleman. As for his age, he seemed to be in his early thirties. His face was youthful. His skin was satin smooth and white, without age spots or veins, but there was something very old about his eyes. They were not sunken like the statue of Lodovico, but there was something penetrating in them, an uncanny steadiness of gaze.

“Yes,” he said in his forceful but pleasant voice, “I have the white-blue eye of my Gallic ancestors, their narrow skull, and their clumsiness in fighting. I find my clothes as barbarous as theirs. Only I don’t butter my hair.”

And then he chuckled, a private joke.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

“I’m Dr. Gladstone and this is Lady Dunaway,” I introduced ludicrously, feeling somewhat like a polite burglar.

“And what makes you think your children are here?”

“We heard the falcon,” I replied quickly. “We thought it was the cry of a child.”

The ears pricked and the intense blue eyes leveled upon the rapid pulse of my temples.

Suddenly a swarm of people carrying candles scurried down the hall and crowded outside the door. I recognized one of them as the other woman who had accompanied the tall and monkish man when he had seen Madame Villehardouin home. Now, in these closer quarters, I could examine her more closely. She was a brown-haired Slavic woman, short and with a stocky frame. Her face was the face of a peasant, plain and round, with unusually wide and limpid gray eyes. Her hands were clenched. She swayed just a little within the folds of her simple brown dress, as if she were as frightened as we were by the encounter. Her skin was strangely soft and sagging, and yet she was not fat. At certain joints and contours of her body her large bones seemed about to push and jut through her very skin, and still, the way the flesh hung on her chin and arms suggested great weight. It suddenly struck me that at one time she had been a very heavy woman, but the mass was all gone now, drawn away by her supernatural condition. It was difficult to decipher how many centuries were hidden in her eyes. They were much too empty and frightened, like the eyes of a shell-shocked soldier. I wondered what had reduced her to such a shy fawn of a woman.

Behind her gathered a bevy of people in night clothing nervously holding their candles and whispering among themselves; a straw-haired young girl with a waxen complexion; another young woman, homely, with a short and rounded figure; several teenage boys and a young boy about seven or eight; a tall and lanky man with hunched shoulders, and apparently his plump, blond-haired wife; and a tall, thin, middle-aged woman with long, straight brown hair. Only the lanky gentleman was dressed—in the livery of a butler.

The most distinctive feature of the adults and older children were the things they wore on their necks. The women and girls all wore wide velvet chokers fastened with brooches and cameos. The man and older boys all wore white handkerchiefs. The middle-aged woman with long, straight brown hair, however, wore a contraption of bandages and gauze around her neck, apparently holding a poultice against a fresh wound. A streak of dark, dried blood trickled down from the poultice and flaked across her pale and freckled breast She reached nervously to try to conceal the wound.

I quickly looked away, but it was clear to our discoverer that I had seen it. In a panic I grabbed Lady Dunaway’s hand and rushed toward the window With lightning swiftness the thin hands of the monk reached out and clamped on my shoulders like steel vises. My entire body snapped from the force as he spun me about and stood me up like some toy soldier. I was terrified and stunned.

“So you speak English,” he said, unperturbed. He nodded at the butler, and the elderly gentleman searched us quickly for weapons. “That is much to your credit,” the vampire said when they found nothing. He nodded to the man again and he slipped quietly out the door. The vampire turned once again toward us. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you. And please don’t waste my time by panicking or lying. You’re the ones who snatched the scarf from the neck of Madame Villehardouin’s maid, and then chased Madame all over the city, aren’t you? You gave her quite a scare.”

He glanced once again at the rate of the pulse in my temples.

I didn’t answer.

“And now you’ve seen my own servants.” He smiled, eccentrically, benignly, as if he were not at all disturbed by our blundering in. “Won’t you accompany me to my study so we can sort this all out?”

I was shocked by how amiable he was, and once again I wanted to ask the question I had first asked Niccolo:
Are we in danger?
I looked at the face of the man who had just manipulated me with the strength of three men, but I was unable to read our situation in his expression. As it was, the monk had one of those countenances into which any sentiment could be read. It was impossible to tell whether his smirk was gentle or sinister. The distracted twinkle of his eyes might just as easily have belonged to a fool as it could to a “brain of the first order” I was even suspicious of his clothing. Were they the garments of a humble personality, or were they another ruse, a seduction?

“Well?” he urged.

I wanted to run, but the inhuman muscles flexed. We were like mice in the hands of the Gallic gentleman. We were completely at his mercy. I looked at Lady Dunaway, and to my surprise I saw she was not afraid, but more spellbound by what was happening. I, too, was hypnotized by certain aspects of our capture, by the incredible strength and acute senses of these beings, by the metabolisms that could produce such effects. All the curiosity I had felt with Niccolo came surging back, all the questions that had gone through my mind since he left Did our captor know anything about the whereabouts of Camille and Ambrose? Did he know Lodovico? If not, what did he do? What secrets did he possess? And how ancient were he and the strange Slavic woman?

“Are we in danger?” I blurted out “Only if you put yourself in danger You will have complete control over that matter.”

I frowned, not quite knowing what he meant It was a moot point “Lead on,” I said.

“
Tres bien,
” he returned, smiling. “Then everyone else to bed.” He motioned at the human servants. He quickly scanned their faces until he located the blond-haired girl with the waxen complexion. “Except for you, Geneviève. Go fetch us all some tea.”