The Kindred of Darkness (29 page)

The cities mentioned in both texts were the cities that had existed in 1360. Nothing of towns like Amsterdam and St Petersburg, which had grown up since.

Voices in the shop below. A woman's soft alto, with the sing-song inflection of an Anglo-Indian, asked for John Ogilvy's 1656 translation of the
Iliad
: ‘Pope's is all Pope, don't you know, not Homer in the least …'

He'd always had the impression that Artemus Sophister was a sort of hermit who spent most of his time brooding over his mountains of squalid arcana alone. Yet on and off, for most of the afternoon, he'd heard the distant tinkle of the shop bell, followed by requests for Munster's
Cosmographia
, or early editions of Donne.

The angle of the sunlight across the jumble of books, fragments of books, dirty plates and crumpled newspapers told him that it was approaching time to make his way to the Bag o' Nails, to meet Lydia for tea.

He glanced at his notes. Lydia would certainly pay a hundred and ninety pounds for the Prague printing, once Sophister had gone through the necessary legalities of returning the initial payment to Zahorec's last known address.
I'd better start tracking down the other known editions as well
.

Who set this type? Who arranged these paragraphs?
His fingers traced the woodcuts of Paris, the purported portrait of Vladislas, Master of Prague in the days of Charles IV (though the style of the woodcuts wasn't that of the fourteenth century, but of the late seventeenth when the book was printed).
What text did they work from? Who did the translation?
The Czech-riddled Latin was nothing that a Spanish student would have written in 1370.

The Paris printing had a completely different explanation for the origins of the vampire, putting them first in
the haunted valleys of the Land of Egypt, whence these dark spirits spread, first with the exodus of the Hebrew in the days of the Pharaoh Rameses,
later with the conquests of the land by the Assyrians, then the Greeks and Romans …

A long passage detailed the foundations and anecdotes of the nest which had existed in Rome under the Caesars, in terms suspiciously reminiscent of
The Last Days of Pompeii
. And yet … Elsewhere in the Paris printing he found passages in what was definitely fifteenth-century Latin, listing the masters of Bruges and Venice:

The master vampire most often chooses fledglings who have something he wants: property, or riches, or a skill which he seeks to use for his own protection or aggrandizement.
Above all else he seeks those whose hearts are strong enough to hold to life through death, and whose wills can encompass the deaths of the innocent rather than surrender the shadow of life which is all that remains to them
.

This wasn't in the older book.

It is the custom of many masters to keep these fledglings
(and here he used the much older Latin
pullae
, ‘chicks')
ignorant of practices and abilities which grow in the Undead with time and with the consumption of human lives, lest their children grow strong and turn against them. Yet when the masters perish, through mischance or the outrage of men, then the fledglings are left without this knowledge, and so cannot pass it in turn to their own unholy get
.

So comes it that I, Johanot of Valladolid, sinner and slave, come to write all that I have learned from the masters of the Undead, that this terrible knowledge, rather than that it be preserved only among these ancient minds without souls, shall come into the hands of the men who shall fight against them in the name of the Light which illumines the deeps of Time
.

Asher was still staring, startled, at this paragraph – the first and only reference he'd encountered to the author in either of the texts, let alone the testimony of the Spaniard himself – when he heard voices raised in the shop downstairs.

Shouting.

‘I tell you there's no one here …'

Damn it
.

Asher shoved both volumes into one of the half-dozen rucksacks that lay about in the mess, hooked the straps over his shoulder, grabbed his knobby old stick and made for the window. The stairway to the attic would carry the sound of his footsteps. A drainpipe ran a few feet to the left of the window – Asher never entered a building without checking all possible exits – and a swift scramble took him to the top. Keeping low, he went over the roofs, two houses north toward Eagle Street, his shoes slipping on wet moss and soot, then descended another drainpipe to a yard filled with the nameless clutter of a second-hand shop: broken boxes, rusted bicycles, a tangle of brass bedsteads and a wilderness of stray cats.

He climbed over the fence into the mews, cursing himself for having left his motorcycle at the Temperance Hotel.
I can get a cab in Red Lion Square …

A man stepped around the corner, blocking his way. Asher turned in time to see a second man behind him, near the narrow gate that led back into Sophister's yard.

‘Mr Armistead wants to see you.' The first man's flat accent reminded Asher sharply of the poor thug Wirt. Asher guessed he was armed, but not about to use a weapon in the middle of London.

‘So your friend Wirt told me,' he returned, in the shrill and slightly querulous tones of a man twenty years his senior. He slumped unobtrusively, peering at the men sidelong through his phoney spectacles and leaning on his stick. ‘I'd like to see him, too, but not with a lot of tame banditti standing around. Is he here?'

‘He's in the car, yes.'

‘Good,' said Asher. ‘He can drive to Lincoln's Inn Fields and meet me by the north-east corner of the park. There are plenty of places there to sit.'

The man smiled a little. ‘Anybody'd think you had something on your conscience, old timer.'

‘I'm only worried about what might be on yours, young man. Or your employer's.' He turned, and with the slightly wobbly-legged gait of senescence, stumped off in the direction of the Inns of Court.

The shorter thug moved to stop him; the taller one waved him off. ‘Go tell the boss that's where we're headed, Dougie. But honest,' he added, falling into step with Asher as he turned the corner into Eagle Street, ‘all the boss wants is to talk to you.'

‘Hmph. So your friend told me.' Asher dropped the stick, and under cover of retrieving it – the bigger thug simply stepped back from him, as if expecting a trick of some kind – pulled his gloves from his jacket pocket and put them on, fussily, as if particular about the dirt rather than hiding the fact that his hands were twenty years younger than his face or hair or voice.

‘What happened to Wirt?'

‘Since I object to being threatened, I eluded him in the dark. Last I saw him, he was standing out in the middle of the Erith marshes blaspheming his Creator's name and all his works.'

Evidently his reading of Wirt's character was close enough to the truth to convince his new companion: the man's expression changed from suspicion to disgust, and he shrugged. ‘Bastard spent too much time chasin' Wobblies,' he grunted. ‘Thinks the only way of dealin' with people is breaking heads. I told him a dozen times, that act won't play in England.' He nodded at Asher's rucksack. ‘Them the books the boss has been after?'

‘Not unless he's in quest of Donne's prose
Aeneid
and a French translation of Honorius of Autun's
Elucidarium
.'

A glib, detailed, and immediate answer, Asher had found, was often mistaken for truth. After dealing with the German Auswärtiges Amt and the Russian Third Section, lying to an American plug-ugly was like playing peek-a-boo with a baby. The man laughed. ‘Crazy, if you ask me … But he's the boss.'

A big closed Daimler glided past them on their way along Red Lion Street. Only the shadow of a man was visible in its back seat. The vehicle waited for them in front of Lincoln's Inn, a tall man beside it, square, powerful, and ugly in a highly American suit. The man called Dougie stood beside him, with another of the same type, both smoking cheap cigars.

Asher regarded them without offering his hand to shake. ‘Mr Armistead? Mr Wirt told me you wanted to talk to me.'

‘You know what happened to him?'

‘If there's any truth in the Bible, I assume God struck him dead with lightning, but that may be only wishful thinking on my part.'

Those cold brown eyes – small, and set too close together on either side of a nose that had been long ago broken – narrowed as they gauged him, but Blackie Wirt's fate obviously wasn't a point that made much difference to the American.

‘Let's take a walk, Mr …'

‘Wilson,' replied Asher. He turned and stumped away up the nearest path.

Traffic had thickened on Serle Street; with the ending of the day's session at the Inns of Court, robed barristers gestured as they strode the paths beneath the lengthening shadows of the trees. Armistead offered Asher a cigar – far better quality than those smoked by his henchmen – and when Asher refused, lit it up himself.

‘Wirt tell you why I wanted to see you?'

‘He seemed to think I'd be willing to help you find someone.'

‘Are you?'

‘No,' said Asher. ‘I think you're a damned fool.'

‘Because I believe these creatures exist? Or because I want to hire one?'

Asher stopped, faced him on the graveled path. ‘Is that why you came to Europe? To find a vampire?'

‘I didn't believe in them when I came over.' The mine owner blew a cloud of smoke. ‘Thought they were a lot of hooey. Indians at the Peru mine talked some hogwash about 'em. My wife's grandma swore they'd lived in the mountains behind Lima back in Spanish days. But Indians think elves live in the forest and believe their lamas can talk to them. This's the twentieth century – well, it was still the nineteenth, then. But since I've been in Europe, I've read stuff that's changed my mind.'

Still those cold little brown eyes studied his face. Looking for something.

He didn't, Asher noted, ask him how he'd come by the knowledge that Armistead assumed he had.

‘You ever heard of them in the United States?'

Armistead shook his head. ‘I wasn't looking, then. But it's a big ocean. Even your fastest liner takes four days to cross it. That's a lot of running water. Running water
does
bug 'em, doesn't it? I'd hate to get back there and find they all live here.'

‘And I should hate for you to get back there with your new employee and spread the curse of these things to two entire continents that have been free of them hitherto.'

‘Oh, I wouldn't have any of that. No making more vampires. The man works for me, he'll do what I say.'

‘Oh, will he?' retorted Asher. ‘And what exactly will you say?
You kill whoever I tell you to and I'll hide you from the police
? Because if you don't think the police are going to take notice when the heads of every union that objects to fourteen-hour shifts and slave wages disappears, I suspect you're underestimating even their limited intelligence.'

‘For one thing –' the American's grin was worse than his scowls – ‘it ain't possible to underestimate the so-called intelligence of the American cop. And for another … even if they figured it out, you think they'd
care
? As long as they can't pin it on
me
– and I'm told these vampires can make sure it don't get pinned on
them
– I'm happy, the cops are happy, and I'll see to it the spooks are happy, too. Why not take orders from me? If you're gettin' your garters in a twist about this thing gettin' out of hand, I can promise you, buddy, it won't. Why should it? Anything they need, I'll give 'em and welcome.'

He took the cigar from his mouth, gestured with it. ‘People who work for me don't lose by it, Mr Wilson. Ask anybody in the United States Senate.'

Freedom
, Grippen had sneered.
They couldn't pick it out of a basket of apples
…

‘We're not talking about a person.' Asher's voice lowered, as the shadows lengthened across the leafy walks and the angle of the sun shifted in the gothic windows of the Great Hall. ‘We're talking about a blood-drinking corpse inhabited by the spirit of someone who thinks it's perfectly all right to kill the innocent in order to prolong his own life.'

‘It ain't the innocent I'm asking him to kill. Just Wobblies and Communists who'd as soon chuck a bomb at you as look at you, the lazy sons-of-bitches. Now, do you know such a person, or don't you?'

‘If I did –' Asher's gaze held Armistead's – ‘is that really someone you want to know? Someone you want to bring in contact with your daughter?'

Sudden fury blazed in the cold eyes. ‘He ain't gonna know I
have
a daughter.' For a moment Asher had the impression the American would strike him for speaking of Cece. ‘She'll be staying here in England—'

‘He'll know. They do.'

‘And what do you know about it, old man?'

‘I know them, Armistead. I've killed them, I've played cards with them, I've read their poetry and had them drink my blood. Don't let one of them into any aspect of your life or you will be the sorriest man on the face of this planet. And so will every member of your family.'

He turned away. Armistead caught his arm with a rage that was almost desperate. Asher had to remind himself that he was a gray-haired and slightly hobbling old man, and only turned back to glare at the American with an old man's futile anger.

‘You let me be the judge of what's best for me and my family. Just give me a name, and an address.' From his pocket with his free hand Armistead took a slim packet of banknotes, and slipped them into Asher's breast pocket. ‘Where'd you meet them?' He'd collected himself again under a mask of calm, but Asher could hear the tension in that grating voice. ‘They really what the book says?'