The Kindred of Darkness (35 page)

‘He does. He's looking for a vampire—'

‘
Looking
for one?'

‘To hire. To use as a paid bully-boy against the working men in his mines. Whether he'd do so if he knew his daughter was being courted by one I don't know. But the marriage will give Zahorec the upper hand. He'll use him – and he'll try to use me. And Stenmuir Castle – which belongs to Colwich's family – is close enough to Glasgow that within a few days Miranda could be taken anywhere, even out of the country …' She forced her voice steady, unnerved by the dark river of thought she could see racing behind those hard black eyes.

‘We can't give him that few days. We have to follow him now, immediately, before he has time to get his plans ready.' She turned to Simon. ‘Will you come with me?'

‘Unto the ends of the earth, Lady.' He kissed her hand.

‘God's blood!' Grippen stared at him, aghast with the dread that lived in every vampire's heart, dread of travel in daylight, boxed asleep in a coffin and knowing that the slightest accident would result in agonizing death. There was no animosity, no enmity, in his voice ‘You're mad, Simon.'

Simon bowed. ‘I need no heretic provincial to tell me so, Lionel. I assume – this house being a hiding place of yours – that you have a sub-cellar beneath the one in which Mistress Miranda has spent the past week, and a suitable trunk for travel?'

‘I thought you'd a house in Hertford?'

‘I cannot make arrangements for the journey – and for the disposal of Mr Grosvenor's motor car – and reach there by daybreak. Mistress …' He turned again to Lydia. ‘Wilt you await me here?'

She glanced at Grippen.

‘I should kill you now,' he growled. ‘T'would be simpler.'

‘No,' said Lydia calmly, and propped her spectacles more firmly on to the bridge of her nose. ‘Actually, it wouldn't. We need help, Lionel. Zahorec is strong – I think only another vampire can match him. I certainly can't.'

She got to her feet, stood looking up at him as she had on the mist-drowned bridge over the Cherwell, not angry now, nor even conscious of much fear.

‘The first trains to Scotland won't start running until nine. We can be there just after darkness falls. But we need your help.'

‘Nay.' His pockmarked face hardened, and his glance shifted to Simon. ‘You do as you like, man. But you'll not get me crated like salt beef hell-bound to the wilds of nowhere to meet that Bohemian blackguard. If you're off to St Albans to make arrangements for your journey I'll ride with you that far in that motor car, but I've an errand in London-town ere cock-light, and the night's waning fast. Lady …'

He took Lydia's hand, and kissed it with surprising grace. ‘I was wrong snatching your brat, and I admit of it. I'll do what I can to amend it, but go to Scotland I will not, and travel with any living soul I will not, not to speak of lying anywhere near a scheming liar of a Spanish whoreson for so much as five minutes, let alone the whole of a day. Good fortune to you.'

It was always difficult to see vampires move. One moment, it seemed to Lydia that she was standing, barefoot on the cold stone floor, with the Master of London on one side of her and Don Simon on the other. Then she was alone in the lantern-lit kitchen, hearing from the darkness outside the whisper of voices:

‘The least you can do is dispose of the motor car for me …'

‘You stole it;
you
drown it.'

‘Heretic …'

‘Papist cur …'

And they were gone.

I
n the dark frieze of houses, lights glimmered in kitchens, basements, areas: servants laying fires, making coffee, boiling water for shaving and baths.
Ysidro's agent at the Bank of England must have come through with the information.
Asher swerved past the glare of a trench where workers were laying electrical cable.
How did Zahorec get it from Lydia?

The vampire had obviously learned that Lydia was working against him, if he'd gone to steal Miranda from Grippen …
How? From her dreams
?

He tried not to think about what he'd find at Tufton Farm.
Oh, that Dr G, he's a close one
, Violet Scrooby had said to him, over a companionable pint at The Scythe.
If you ask me he's up to some lay. Many's the night he's come in here, and chatted with Henry quiet-like. But I will say, what he pays Henry makes all the difference to Henry's girls, bein' sent to a proper school, and to Daphne's mum getting the care she needs, and her bedridden with palsy
…

His comfort at the barmaid's description of Daphne Scrooby (
Lord, quiet as a mouse and no bigger than a minute, but she'd rip the leg off the man who laid a hand on one of her girls, and beat him to death with the soggy end
) faded in the conviction that hers would be one of several bodies he would find in St Albans. Hers and Nan Wellit's.

I will kill him
, thought Asher calmly.
Zahorec, Grippen … all their filthy get
.

Carts and vans filled with fruit and flowers from the countryside dotted Islington High Street, lanterns swaying as Asher flashed past them. The outbound road lay empty.

Karlebach was right. Millward – ass that he is – is right
.

Blue dawn light showed him neat villas, standing apart each in its own garden. Then the long slope of Golders Hill, rolling green countryside and the smell of hay and livestock.

Blood and darkness spread wherever they touch. Even the innocent – who don't even know what they are or that they exist – are pulled into that darkness and devoured
.

The church steeple of Barnet showed above the trees. Stone park gates to his right, guarding a glimpse of Restoration stonework, the blink of water reflecting brightening sky. Along the roadsides, between the fields, lines of stumps where the elm trees of his childhood had been cut down, sacrificed to the pressing economies of twentieth-century agriculture.
What does Ysidro think, of the England that is not the England he knew as a living man? What does Grippen think?

Or is that something that vanishes, when they pass into shadow?

Did the original book, the book that had actually been written by that wandering scholar of Valladolid (
And what was a Spaniard doing studying in Prague anyway
?) speak of that? And his dream returned to him, of the wooded hillsides of Spain that was now yellowed scrub.

A square church tower and the ruins of a Roman wall, then a high street of sweet shops and greengrocers just stirring into life. The Hatfield Road, trees and hedgerows holding the damp chill of last night. A railway whistle sounded.

If anything happens to Miranda, can we find our way back from that?

Lydia after her second miscarriage, shattered and withdrawn …

Movement in the hedge. A flutter in the corner of his vision as he swept by, a figure with arms upraised. Even before he realized that the words she cried were, ‘Professor Asher, sir!' his mind registered her dark skirt, white blouse, dark cape, and he skidded the motorbike to a halt – even taking his weight on his left foot, not his right: the jolt was agony.

‘Professor Asher, sir! Oh, lord, is that you?'

She was running down the shadowed road to him as he turned the bike around, gunned back to her (
It can't be a vampire's illusion, it's broad daylight
)– and caught her as she flung herself into his arms.

‘Professor Asher, sir! I did my best, sir, I did! I tried, sir, I tried …'

It was Nan Wellit.

He knew he should say,
It's all right, you're safe, I'm here
, for the girl was obviously terrified and exhausted, her hair tangled with leaves and her creased skirt a mess of stains and twigs from spending the night in the hedges. But the first thing he could say was, ‘
Where is she?
' and the words came out at a desperate almost-shout.

The young nursemaid burst into tears, and for an instant the world stood still between the future and death.

‘I don't know, sir! I don't know! They took her—'

Took her.
She's alive.

‘Who took her, Nan?' Calm flooded him.
If they took her they mean to keep her, at least for the moment
… He stroked her tangled hair, as he had stroked Lydia's the first time he'd found that lovely and fragile schoolgirl weeping in the summer house at Willoughby Close, at the news that she was to be sent away from England. ‘It's all right. We'll find her …'

‘I don't know who it was, sir.' She straightened and stepped back from him, as if aware that one didn't clutch one's employer. From her sleeve she produced a handkerchief, to wipe her eyes. ‘It was a lady and a gentleman. I heard him call her Para-something … Parady-vogel?'

‘
Paradeisvogel
,' said Asher. ‘It means “bird of paradise” in German.'

‘
Mein Paradeisvogel
, he said. I was …' She wiped her eyes again, her hands shaking.

‘Where was this? At the farm?'

‘No, sir. That's just it. I'd run away, I'd got us out—'

‘Is there anyone there now?'
Lydia
, he thought,
Lydia was ahead of me
…

‘I don't know, sir. They fell asleep – Mrs Daphne, and Mick, and Reggie. All at once, they just put their heads down on the table … It was just the same as happened at your house, sir, the night we was took – taken,' she corrected herself. ‘Mrs Brock just fell asleep sitting in front of the fire, and I got so sleepy myself, just like they say when you're little, that the Sandman comes and blows magic dust in your eyes … Poof! I was asleep. Was it sleeping gas, sir? It doesn't seem to have hurt Miranda afterwards …'

‘Don't worry about it now,' said Asher. ‘Tell me what happened.'

‘Oh, yes, sir. We were playing cards at the table – they'd often come down to do so. Mrs Daphne was so fond of Miss Miranda, and told me all about her own daughters … So when I saw Mick, and Mrs Daphne, both fall asleep, just like that – and I felt myself so sleepy too – I thought,
This is the same as happened before
. So I got one of the forks out of the bureau and stabbed myself in the hand with it, to stay awake, and I got Miranda and went upstairs, and there was Reggie in the kitchen sound asleep too. And I felt queer, as if something terrible were about to happen, though that may just have been that I'd been down that cellar for so long. I … Oh!'

She turned sharply, and looking around, Asher saw Lydia emerge from a farm track a hundred feet further along the lane. Lydia in a dress of faded red-and-blue calico that was far too short for her, red hair bare and spectacles flashing in the dappled brightness.

She saw them, snatched up her skirts and ran toward them; shouted ‘Jamie!' when she got near enough to be heard. And then, ‘
NAN!
Oh, God, Nan!'

Asher saw her slow, as she took in the fact that no child made up part of the little group in the lane. Her face convulsed with anxiety as she threw herself into his arms, then turned and caught Nan in an embrace of joy and relief. ‘What happened? Did they let you go …?'

‘No, ma'am. I was telling Professor Asher, they fell asleep, and I took Miss Miranda and got out of the house.' The nursery maid turned huge blue eyes back to Asher. ‘It was dark, there wasn't a moon, but I swear I saw no one in the field. I looked, sir, I really did! Miranda was still asleep, and I felt so queer, like there was danger all around, that I didn't dare wake her lest she make a noise. I could barely to keep awake myself. All that time we were down that cellar, I'd creep up to the door and listen to their voices in the kitchen, and try to put together everything they said about what was around the house. I knew we had to be close to a railway line, because I could sometimes hear the trains when I did that. And they'd talk about there being woods nearby, and hedges and fields and a road into town, though it sounded like a fair distance to town itself because they'd take the motor car, every time.

‘But I ran across the field making for the hedgerow, because I knew we could hide in the hedges, and follow them to the road. But it was like – it was like I'd tripped, only I don't remember tripping.' Her voice shook again and she blew her nose on her handkerchief once more. ‘It's like I fell asleep on my feet. All of a sudden I was lying on the ground, and I looked up and saw this lady with Miranda in her arms—'

‘Dark lady?' asked Asher.

‘Yes, sir. Dressed fancy, in silk with beads all over it that shined in the starlight, and a big necklace of diamonds and pearls—'

‘That's what Cece was wearing,' said Lydia.

‘And there was a man with her, a tall man in evening dress. His hair was black, sir, and he was handsome, and young. I couldn't see his eyes in the dark, but I could feel he was looking down at me.'

‘And because Cece was with him,' said Asher softly, ‘he couldn't let her see him … harm … an innocent girl.'

‘I stayed quiet, sir.' Nan's glance, terrified and miserable, went from Asher to Lydia, then back. ‘I wanted to shout out,
Give her back to me
, but I knew they wouldn't, and there was two of them. And the gentleman, for all he was so handsome, he looked like a bad customer. He took Miranda from the lady – she was wrapped up in the quilt, and I don't think she waked, the whole time – and they went off across the field, to the gate that led to the lane. The minute they were out of sight I followed, but I heard a motor car start up, and drive away down the lane.

‘I didn't know what else to do, sir. I thought Reggie and Mick would be out hunting for me, so I hid in the hedgerow until it got light. Then I started walking toward town, whatever town it is …'

Asher looked down at her, small and plump and seventeen years old, at her first job as nursery maid. She hadn't panicked, she hadn't put a foot wrong, she'd kept her head and would have made her escape – with her charge in her arms – had she not been hopelessly outmatched. He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘You did splendidly, Nan. We know who took her.'