The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life (51 page)

“Up there!” I shouted.

We jerked our horses into the grass. The slope before us was steep and we had difficulty making the ascent. When we finally reached the top we glanced anxiously around. As far as the eye could see lay the fabled green valleys of Tuscany. To the east stretched the mountains. To the west unrolled a checkerboard of undulating plowlands and emerald hills. It was a landscape straight from Leonardo, atmospheric in its lushness and haunting in the otherworldliness of its escarpments and groves of cypress. We spotted her in the distance, a flourish of brown and black moving along one of the plowlands.

We dug in our heels.

She proved herself a rider of formidable skill, leaping hedges and walls like a champion steeplechaser. As we thundered along, I kept my eyes fastened on her. Everything else was nonexistent. The green unfurled beneath me, and through my mind flashed the history of this magical land. These were the hills that had brought forth Dante. Somewhere in the haze of time they had belonged to the Medici, and before that the Romans had built their villas here. It did not end, the story of these ancient hills. Far, far back in the silky veils of time the Etruscans scattered a mysterious civilization among their ridges and strategic valleys. Isolated ravines still harbored their tombs, and many a farmer’s field still surrendered their broken spears.

She had taken quite a lead on us, but we were driven by our own individual obsessions. We had to hold on, somehow draw closer to this impossible creature. She veered southwest and to my horror headed for a thicket of pines. Again we demanded more of our poor horses.

We reached the grove and saw a flush of ebony through the trees. We almost had her. I ducked to miss a bough. Branches swept against our legs. A lather of sweat drenched our legs, gluing our clothing to our bodies. Ursula’s horse hammered a jut of rock and went stumbling. She lurched forward, grappling its neck to keep from falling. Her head narrowly missed another low-hanging branch and went crashing through its fringe of needles. We were there. Just a few lengths more. The large woman turned and for a brief instant our eyes met—hers now possessed that same dead scrutiny that characterized the vampire. Neither fear nor pleasure. Her broad white face was frighteningly blank. Suddenly, a dull thud of pain resounded in my chest. The sky somersaulted around me and the next thing I knew I was lying on my back on the ground. My entire body was vibrating. My head was ringing like a tuning fork.

“Father!” I heard Ursula cry My horse whinnied.

She came running to my side. “Father, are you all right?”

Was I feeling pain? A wave of strange nausea swept through me. My mouth filled with saliva. I grew suddenly, blissfully tired.

“
Father!
”

I felt a hand against my cheek. I fought the drowsiness. Was I paralyzed? Had I broken my spine? I flexed my fingers, struggling to pull myself back into the world. In an almost weightless euphoria I sat up. Our horses trotted in a slow canter around us.

If anything was broken I did not yet feel it. In astonishment I noticed Ursula was crying. Tsars were streaming down her flushed cheeks.

“We must continue.”

“Are you sure? Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

I fought another ripple of drowsiness. My nervous system seemed electrified. Everything was still ringing.

We got on our horses and resumed our speed We paused when we broke into the clearing. The warm breeze rustled through the cypresses lining the green tunnel of the hills. There was a buzzing of flies. There was another sound: the distant tattoo of hooves.

Was it coming from the west? There was no time to deliberate. We kicked our horses into a run and moved ahead. Over the crest of the hill we spotted her making a beeline through the valley beyond. My thoughts were still clouded, but slowly something began to seep into my consciousness. I had noticed something, but I could not yet articulate it. I only sensed its vague presence.

The constant pounding of my horse lulled me, tried to entice me once again into unconsciousness. I fought it. I don’t know how far we traveled. It must have been miles, for at length in the distance the green velvet shelf ended abruptly in a vast rocky precipice. My feeling grew. Beyond loomed the Tyrrhenian, impossibly blue, that extremity of blue found only in the Mediterranean. Olive trees embroidered the cliffs. My head swam. Where were we? I gazed again at the sea. Somewhere beyond the ultramarine horizon was Corsica, brick-dust and white stucco slaked with water.

My feeling congealed.

As we sped along the grassy promontory, I remembered. It was her face. Just before I had fallen I had seen something in her face.

The olive trees wafted in the wind from the sea. There was a hint of bergamot in the air. Impossibly, our quarry picked up speed as she rode to the top of the ridge before the cliffs and looked back again. Her horse struggled against its reins, as exhausted by the ordeal as ours. She vanished beneath the summit.

Our horses could not take it much longer. They stumbled, snorting as we forced them up the steep incline. Each inch was agonizing. On the invisible shore the ocean frothed, licked its wounds, a vast and liquid jewel.

And then, at the edge of the green hills and resting upon the very brink of the cliffs themselves, we came upon the villa.

I have read in
The Illustrated London News
of the discoveries of sumptuous villas in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the villas of Cicero and Hadrian and the mysterious Villa of the Papyri still buried beneath the impenetrable silt of Vesuvius and protected in its tomb by poisonous gases. One of the most impressive aspects of these villas was their imperial proportions. Often they covered a dozen city blocks, dwarfing even the palaces of the Medici, and equaled only by the most lordly homes in England. As I gazed at the size of the edifice before us I realized I was looking at such a villa, only preserved, carefully tended, and protected against the ravages of time. It was immense. Even the wall that surrounded the villa was monumental. It was constructed of massive stone blocks and topped with stuccoed capitals. It towered twenty feet into the air and wound through hills enclosing an imposing expanse of land. It did not line the cliff side of the estate, for the soaring precipice upon which the villa rested was obstacle enough for any would-be intruders. On either side of the villa itself the grounds ended in numerous gardens and terraces, and beyond stretched the blue Tyrrhenian.

The villa itself was a sprawling complex of white stucco buildings with roofs of terra-cotta tile. In the Roman fashion it seldom towered over two stories, and the anarchical arrangement of its many wings, colonnades, enclosed courtyards, and vine-encumbered pavilions indicated that it had grown like an ancestral manor, expanding and distending from generations of additions and changes. It was engulfed in sinuous masses of vines and surrounded by stately cypresses, Lebanese cedars, umbrella pines, and olive trees, all meticulously landscaped. The majestic green lawns were also immaculately kept and huge pots of bergamot swayed in the Tyrrhenian breezes. Although well kept, the gardens, the arbors and vineyards, the stables, and the extensive workers’ quarters were deathly silent and void of life. Only one figure sped toward the compound, and one sound, the dull echo of hooves, broke the tranquil, even desolate calm.

So she was one of Lodovico’s emissaries as well. Trust no one. Nothing is as it seems.

How old was she?

Had she knelt in basilicas of gold? Had she loved before the first European hand touched silk? Tasted blood before the first Muslim bowed his head toward Mecca? How did she fit into the puzzle?

We rushed in, but when we reached the villa we found her just standing there, the late-afternoon sunlight full upon her broad white face. We jumped down from our horses, but then we paused. We did not know what we should do. I was certain the vampire had never wanted the virus. From the solemn resignation of her breathing it was apparent she had given up. She could run no farther. But she was waiting for something. She wanted us to see something before we proceeded. What?

We stood there for many long moments, watching, wondering. She stared back. And then the final realization came to me. I understood what I had seen in her face. There is an ineffable something that comes from a woman. An élan. A magnetism that emanates from within and embues her simplest act with a fascinating quality—the combing of the hair, the lighting of a candle. It goes beyond beauty. It comes from young and old. I had always felt it coming from Lady Dunaway, and then Dr. von Neefe, from the first day of our meeting to our final exchange outside of Victoria Station. But now it was gone. That was what had troubled me when our eyes had met in the pines. The face was no longer that of a woman.

I was speechless. Was it possible? Incredulously, I recalled the incongruous hallmarks of her character, her large frame, her powerful hands, and the deep and resonant voice. I examined her features. Nothing had actually changed, the broad cheekbones, the long, black hair. But the face had lost its alien beauty and was more stern and mannish. Even the long hair took on a more masculine cast. She removed her spectacles. No longer magnified, a new quality came into her eyes. That had been the purpose of the spectacles all along. Having the aquiline vision of a vampire, she had had no true need for spectacles. She had worn them only to conceal what would have been instantly recognized. Once the spectacles were removed, her eyes seemed to sink back into their sockets. With a magisterial gesture she thrust her long, straight arm before us and began to peel off her gloves. Had I ever seen her without her gloves? I looked at the hands. I returned my gaze to the eyes. They were no longer human. I don’t know whether they were the eyes of a demon or a god, but they were far from human, far even from any vampire’s eyes I had yet seen. Out of them streamed voices and black thunder. They pulled, like wind swirling through a tunnel. Across the hand was a scar, a scar identical in every detail to the blemish I had seen on the severed marble hand.

“The game is over,” boomed the voice. “Won’t you come into my home? Your child is waiting.”

Lodovico

Was it possible that the legendary one, the oligarch of the vampire had been with me all along? It had to be, for the evidence was before us, and yet I could not accept it, accept that the feminine movements, every feeling and emanation that had conveyed themselves to me, had all been a masquerade. Even as I looked at the unfamiliar individual before us I found it difficult to utter the name, Lodovico.

All of the confusion I had felt, all of the rage and bewilderment swelled up within me as we stood there. I could contain myself no longer. “Why?” I screamed.

He turned and as his eyes passed us by it was as if an actual force swept through our bodies. I could tell Ursula felt it as well from the shudder she displayed. It was undeniable. As I have repeated over and over, I had always tried to understand vampirism as a disease, but I now knew I had been wrong. It displayed certain pathological characteristics, but it was a complexity, an awesome and uncategorizable something that transcended all of the pigeonholes in which I ordered my world. I did not know what it was. I could only say that it was beyond our present realm of knowledge, for something unfathomable flooded forth from those eyes. It is difficult to put the experience into words. It was not a color. It could not be pinpointed in the white or the striations of the iris. It was similar to the luminous hum of energy I had sensed coming from des Esseintes in the orchid conservatory, but it was not a luminescence. It was a distortion, a quality of the air that had its origin in his gaze and ended in the human nervous system.

I looked at Ursula. She was as stupefied by what was going on as I was, but I saw something else in her expression. She was rabid with curiosity. It was more than just bedazzlement. It was as if what was transpiring had some special importance to her, as if the danger of the situation was irrelevant and some other unknown factor of the outcome would somehow decide the very course of her life.

He pushed the door open.

I did not have to consider what to do next. I knew that, blindly, we both had to follow.

Inside we found ourselves in a frescoed anteroom devoid of furniture and sealed off from the rest of the house. Oblivious of our presence, a scurry of human servants rushed in from side doors to retrieve Lodovico’s castoff clothing as he strode through. They bowed humbly, as if not wishing to look in his face, and quickly backed away. As the doors shut behind us there was a soft cushioning sound and a rush of air. I wondered what made it necessary for the inner chambers to be so completely sealed off from the outside world. A second set of doors, immense sculpted bronze doors, opened before us with a low whir of machinery. A surge of fresh, cool air enveloped us, and the mellifluous sound of an unknown operatic tenor coming from the horn of a Berliner gramophone. I found it odd that the gramophone was playing. It seemed that someone had just been there listening to it. But that person was gone now. On the floor was a richly woven carpet of the type one might expect to find in the home of the Medici, and the walls were covered with a hodgepodge of old masters in gilded frames.

Beyond this anteroom was the massive peristylium of a Roman villa, a court supported by pillars with a honeycombed dome of leaded glass. I noticed that the glass was tinged blue and the sunlight that flooded down possessed a distinctly aquamarine tint. A fountain splashed in the center of the enclosed garden and everywhere there were birds, most peculiar birds. My attention focused on these creatures, for they were more caricatures than birds. Their large bodies were absurdly out of proportion with their stubby wings and proboscidian faces. They were like oversized turkeys and ambled here and there amid the pillars. I had seen such birds before, but not in any field or zoo. It was with continued discoricertion that I began to suspect they were creatures out of mythology.

A young man in the livery of a servant padded in and draped our host in a purple toga. Our host’s large, strangely feminine hands motioned toward the door at the opposite end of the peristylium. The birds waddled nervously out of our path as we continued.