Diaries of the Family Dracul - The Covenant with the Vampire Part 7

I frowned, concerned that she might say something which would upset Zsuzsanna. I did not want to speak of Vlad or superst.i.tion or the impossible thing I had seen here in front of Zsuzsanna, who was already given to fancy. "Tell one of the men to fetch the doctor from Bistritz, then."

She nodded, pausing to cast a final, mute glance at Zsuzsanna, and in her intelligent young eyes I saw rage, fear, and loathing, the look of a woman who had been violated and would never forgive.

She left, and I sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the writing tray with the pen and bottle of ink. Poor Brutus nudged me, and I stroked his great, warm solid head, but the puckered gathers of skin on his troubled brow never relaxed. Zsuzsanna still did not sit up, but moved her hand swiftly to slide the overturned diary farther away, over the blankets, as though she feared I might s.n.a.t.c.h it from her and read.

I should have liked to. I was desperately curious to know what it said.

I gently rested a hand on her arm, and laid the other on her forehead. It was not at all warm, which surprised me, as I expected her glittering eyes were due to fever. Rather, it was quite cool, and I involuntarily thought of Vlad"s icy grip at the pomana. She shrank from my touch a little, still weakly smiling, but clearly eager to be rid of me.

"I don't need a doctor," she whispered again. "I only need to rest, and be alone."

"Nonsense," I said firmly. "Zsuzsanna, you are ill. You need care." I thought of the tray Dunya had been carrying, and realised in retrospect that the food thereon had been untouched. "Have you eaten anything?"

She shook her head, letting it loll weakly to one side. "I can't. It just seems such effort."

In reply, I shot a questioning glance at the writing implements. "I'll fetch you something from the kitchen myself. Some broth, perhaps, something that will go down easily." I began to rise.

As I did, Zsuzsanna absently raised a hand to the throat of her nightgown and tugged at the ribbon, loosening it a bit and worrying with her fingertips at the skin there. The fine white cotton fabric gaped, allowing me a glimpse of a small, red mark on her neck, just above the collarbone.

"My dear, you have scratched yourself," I said, and without thinking gently pulled away the fabric to examine the wound. My second impression, upon seeing the injury more clearly, was that she had accidentally pierced the skin with a brooch. There were two marks, not one, both of them small, dark red, and perfectly round, with tiny white centres at the exact spots the skin had been punctured. Just beneath one of the wounds, a drop of dried black blood had crusted.

My third impression consisted of a visual and an auditory memory: Vlad, standing by Zsuzsanna's bedroom window, bending low as he embraced her; and Dunya saying, He has bitten her...

It was of course ridiculous and impossible. My mind scoffed at such reasoning and dismissed the possibility at once, but I drew my hand away as swiftly as if I had uncovered a coiled serpent. While I sat staring at the wound, my heart began to pound, and a sense of unspeakable dread came over me. The child in my womb made a swift, violent movement.

An animal, I told myself. The marks had been made by an animal. Perhaps Brutus had scratched her-but no, these were puncture wounds, and I could not believe the gentle, doting creature had bitten her. Besides, these did not conform to the size and shape of a dog's mouth- nor did they conform to those of any animal with which I was familiar.

But they were the right size and distance to have come from a human-or inhuman- mouth...

My dismay must have been evident. Zsuzsanna lowered her heavy, coal-lashed lids and gave me a sidelong glance. Her fingers went back to the wound, her gaze straight ahead, and her expression- Her expression, as she fingered the marks, was the most profoundly disturbing sight of all.

Her colourless lips parted, and her chest began to heave as her breathing quickened; her eyes widened with a look of pure wonderment, followed by joy-then narrowed again with sly sensuality. She lowered her hand, languidly, voluptuously, letting her fingertips drag lightly over the curve of a breast, and remained absorbed in some private rapture at this revelation, as though I were not present.

I thought, She is mad, but surely she is not alone. Is Vlad any more sane? Am I, to consider that the old legends and superst.i.tions are true?

She cast me another sidelong look from beneath a long, thick fringe of eyelashes, and her lips curved in a coy grin that made me think of her great-uncle at the pomana, of the wolf at my window. "It's only a little pinp.r.i.c.k, Mary. You mustn't worry so."

"Of course," I stammered, and straightened, murmuring, "Let me get you something from the kitchen, then. You need to eat," and I left, eager to be freed from the cloying, poisonous atmosphere of the room. I stepped over the threshold, shut the door behind me, and drew a deep breath of the purer air out in the hallway.

As I stood, trembling and confused, head bowed and one hand against the wall for support, I sensed movement at the far end of the corridor and glanced up to see Dunya."I sent Bogdan for the doctor," she said. Her eyes held a hint of fear, but that emotion was eclipsed by a more intense one: determination, which communicated itself in the firm set of her square jaw, the erectness of her posture. A tiny girl, a full head shorter than I, she nevertheless managed to project height. Her hands were curled into tight fists. At that moment, her cultural timidity was outdone by her natural willfulness, and I took comfort from the strength I saw in her expression.

I straightened, and forced myself to stop my foolish trembling. There is nothing I hate worse than weakness; had I been weak when Mother and Father died, I would not have survived. Dunya and I shared a grim look.

I said, "I saw her neck."

She nodded, understanding perfectly. "I found Brutus in the kitchen this morning again. I set him free so he could do his duty." She drew a breath, then said, in a rush, "He has broken the Schwur. "She seemed to think these words an explanation. At first I was confused, thinking she referred to the dog-and then an eerie certainty settled over me, and I knew, by the way she lowered her eyelids and voice furtively, by the way she glanced with that same fearful expression over her shoulder, that she referred to Vlad.

"I do not know this word," I said, recognising it as one she had used earlier.

"Schwur, Bund. " Dunya held my gaze with her own somber, unwavering one. Clearly she felt this matter so important that it transcended all show of servility. "He has broken it, and if we do not stop him, Zsuzsanna will die."

"Then we must stop him," I said, no longer sure what to believe, but knowing only one thing: that Vlad had harmed Zsuzsanna, and that he must not be permitted to do so ever again. "But what is the Schwur?"

"That he will not hurt us, so long as we obey him." She released a quick, troubled breath, her gaze wandering to a distant point, as though she were scrutinising some object she could not identify. "I do not understand why this has happened. He is strigoi, but has always behaved with honour. He has never hurt his own. But if he has bitten her..." She looked up swiftly at me, and I saw the flicker of fear in her eyes again. "None of us are safe, doamna.

Not even you and your husband."

Logically, I could not make much sense of her words, and a hundred rational questions crowded my mind all at once, but they were drowned out by one single, compelling, all- consuming phrase that seized my mind and soul and heart and would not release them: My child. My child. My child...

The thought of that monster laying a hand on my baby p.r.i.c.kled the skin on the back of my neck, my arms, caused a cold, hot chill to course the length of my body, through its centre. I thought I would sink to my feet; somehow, I managed to stand. In that moment, I allowed myself to enter Dunya's magical, superst.i.tious world, and I saw all too clearly, all too well.

I knew then why he had bitten his niece, why he wanted her gone. I had seen it at the pomana, in the flas.h.i.+ng red fury in his eyes, when Zsuzsanna had cried out that he must not go to England. Vlad would permit no one, not even a beloved relative, to interfere with his will.

So long as we obey...

I began to speak my thoughts aloud.

"You are saying Zsuzsanna will die if we do not stop him." "Die," Dunya agreed, "and herself become strigoi. Did you see, doamnai She is starting to change; already her back is beginning to straighten. But this has never been permitted; no strigoi but him, for the good of the people."

I raised a hand to my forehead, remembering Zsuzsanna's now-level shoulders, trying to cool feverish thoughts. "What can we do?"

"Let me help, doamna. Her room can be made safe so that he will not enter. She put the dog in the kitchen last night; she says he disturbs her with barking."

"Then we must see that he sleeps with her tonight."

"Yes," Dunya said. "And there are other things to keep the strigoi from her room."

"What?" I recovered a shred of my former sensibility; whatever Dunya did, it would have to be subtle enough that my husband would not find out and become incensed. I knew that I was terribly frightened, but I also knew that I was not certain yet what I believed, and wanted to do nothing to add to Arkady's unhappiness.

"The k.n.o.blauch, "she said. "I will put it by the window. And the crucifix round her neck, and see that the dog sleeps with her. That is all-all that we can do now. It will be enough for now, as long as she lives. But you must know, doamna-if ever in the years after this she becomes ill and dies..."

She broke off, unwilling to state what she felt was obvious. But I did not follow, and frowned at her, puzzled. Finally, after an extended silence, I demanded, "What if she becomes ill and dies?"

"She will become strigoi, like him. There is something which can prevent it, and spare her life."

Again, silence, and I prompted: "And what is that?"

"To kill him, doamna, with the stake and the knife. It is the only way."

I do not know what to say, what to think, what to feel. At times, I laugh at myself for yielding to Dunya's ridiculous request, and think: I had an evil nightmare about Vlad because I am so distraught over discovering his affair with Zsuzsanna. It is only that, and my mind's exposure to the peasant's upsetting superst.i.tions, and the stress of travel and Arkady's father's death. Men do not metamorphose into wolves. And Zsuzsanna has merely accidentally p.r.i.c.ked her neck with a pin, just as she said.

At other times I think: I know what I saw outside Zsuzsanna's window; I was as awake then as now. I remember the hypnotic lure of Vlad's eyes, and the revulsion I felt. I remember the icy touch of his tongue upon my skin.

No pin, no brooch, no dog makes marks like those.

When the doctor came, I thought, Here is an educated man. He will explain the marks, explain Zsuzsanna's sudden weakness, reveal my concerns for the absurdities they are. I escorted him up to her bedroom and remained for the examination. He was middle-aged, middle-cla.s.s, apparently intelligent and rational. But the moment I received him into the house I saw his unease; and when I led him into Zsuzsanna's bedroom and questioned him about the marks on her throat, that unease turned to fear. He gave a prescription as to her diet, and made her drink a draught to bring sleep, but when I questioned him candidly out in the corridor, he remained evasive as to the cause of her malady and would not meet my gaze.

At least he did not cross himself like the servants.

It can do no harm to let Dunya have her way, so long as Arkady does not know. After he had left for the castle and the doctor had paid his visit, Dunya and I set to work. Poor Brutus watched, his ponderous jowls resting on his paws, as we festooned Zsuzsanna's window with wreaths of garlic-the k.n.o.blauch-while she lay, grey and immobile as a corpse thanks to the doctor's sedative. Barking will not disturb her now.

When we finished our strange task and moved towards the bed where his mistress lay, to fasten the crucifix round her wounded throat, Brutus did not challenge us, but thumped his tail approvingly.

I asked Dunya if she wished to stay at the manor, since it was already so late. She said she could not, that her aged father would be terribly worried, so I had one of the men drive her home. She has promised to stay here tomorrow night to watch, with Brutus, over Zsuzsanna. For some reason, her presence is an enormous comfort to me. After she left, I grew frightened all over again.

But when Arkady returned home, I forgot all about myself, for he was clearly trying to hide his own terrible nervous state. I finally asked him directly what was troubling him. He said it was nothing, that when he was returning home a wolf had come very close to the horses, giving him and them a start, but rea.s.sured me lone wolves were cowardly and would not attack without the protection of the pack.

I did not entirely believe him. I think it has to do with Vlad.

At other times, I think: It is only grief. He has lost his father but recently; give him time to recover, do not press.

I cannot tell him: The legends are all true; your uncle is a vampire, and soon your sister will be one unless we kill him...

But yesterday evening, I located a ma.s.sive German-English dictionary in the upstairs library, and sitting in an armchair two centuries my senior, with the great book spread upon my lap, found the words: Schwur, Bund.

Covenant.

What unholy alliance is this?

The Diary of Arkady Tsepesh 11 April.

A day has pa.s.sed, and there is still no sign of Jeffries.

I do not sleep much. When I do, I return in my dreams to that moment of breathless panic in the forest and find myself trapped in its all-consuming blackness, doomed to experience forever the sting of pine boughs whipping against my face, the heat of wolves' breath, the snap of hungry jaws amid the screams of horses. I pull at the reins with all my strength-to no avail. The caleche wheels about in an unending circle; the branches continue to slap me; the horses never cease their shrieking, nor the wolves their snarling attack. I know I will never find my way out of the infinite forest.

Never.In my dreams I see Jeffries, too, caught at the moment he peered out the castle's south window from a dizzying height at the great expanse of forest below. I see the flush of fear on his face, on his pink scalp where the milky-blond hair parts, on his brow as he lightly blots beads of sweat with his monogrammed handkerchief. I see the dread in his eyes... and then I see him fall.

Fall through the open, waiting window. I follow through that window, watching safe as a bird aloft while he hurtles downwards, arms and legs flailing, cutting through the cold mountain air with the same sharp whistle as wolves' teeth. He struggles so frantically that in mid-fall, he rolls face upward, and I can see the terror in his wide pale eyes, his contorted features, his mouth, a gaping rictus frozen in a soundless scream.

Down, down, down... All the while silent, save for the whistling sound of his struggling limbs, and a faint, distant snarl that comes from somewhere outside the dream.

Such a long way down.

At last he reaches the trees; and here is the joke. His fall is not broken by them, nor interrupted with bruising force and the crash of bough and brush until needle-strewn ground finds him. No; as he reaches the very tips of the tallest trees, their thin pointed branches pierce like sharpened stakes through torso, neck and arms, calves and thigh.

He lies impaled, torn, swaying with the wind that ripples through the treetops, b.l.o.o.d.y pine branches protruding from his body like the shafts of primitive arrows, a modern Saint Sebastian.

And then he smiles, the muscles in his neck straining around the branch that pierces them, rippling beneath blood, and he gazes up at me with the very same delightedly curious expression he wore when he had looked at my ancestor's portrait, and says: "Vlad the Impaler. Vlad the Tsepesh. Born December 1431. You're an Impaler, aren't you?

One of the wolf-men? Are you quite sure you prefer that to Dracul...?""

I wake, heart pounding to the point of nausea, remembering the bright fear in his eyes as he peered out the south-wing window, and I think: He was frightened not of heights, but of his fate. He saw it awaiting him there.

The longer I a.n.a.lyse it, the more I realise I cannot go to the authorities in Bistritz without more evidence. Non habemus corpus; we do not have a body, ergo there is no crime. V. will refuse to suspect Laszlo out of blind loyalty, will continue to insist that Jeffries simply chose to disappear, unless there is proof.

And so this morning I cleaned Father's pistol-a s.h.i.+ning steel Colt revolver, the most recent innovation in firearms and my final gift to him, sent from England- and put it in the caleche along with a lantern.

I then left for the village. I drove the horses slowly alongside the wood, purposely taking a small detour back towards the castle and returning to the spot where Stefan had last appeared, but his ghost did not reappear.

It was mid-day when I made my way to the village churchyard, where Masika's son was being buried. I tethered the horses to a post outside the church and from a distance watched the simple peasant ceremony. There was a sad beauty to its spartanness. Six muscular rumini bore the pine casket on their shoulders and set it down beside the fresh- dug grave while all the women sang Bocete in high, wavering voices. There were no hired mourners, no elegant marble tomb crowded with ancestral shades, no plaques of gold; just villagers and family, a deep hole in the black earth, a marker made of stone which the elements would render illegible within a generation's time. Nor was there any sense of family history; Masika Ivanovna, clad in black from crown to toe, was the young man's sole relative in attendance, the only one to throw herself upon the closed coffin and wail.

After the s.p.a.ce of some moments, the small group of women attending her gently pulled her away, so that the burial service might begin. The priest stood behind the small stone marker and recited the Fiftieth Psalm, then the liturgy in a soothing, musical tone; from time to time, the mourners chanted a response. Soon the coffin was lowered into the waiting trench and strewn with handfuls of earth and single wild roses. I thought of the beautiful spray of scarlet roses, exuding sweet perfume from their wounds, as they lay crushed upon the marble floor of Father's tomb.

When it was over, those present gave me wide berth, crossing themselves and performing the peculiar gesture to avert the evil eye-first and middle fingers forming a V and thrust towards me. One of the women who had attended Masika Ivanovna hissed at me as she pa.s.sed. I was dismayed and confused by this reaction, but relieved when Masika Ivanovna, her round cheeks flushed and glistening with tears, approached and warmly clasped my hands.

We embraced like long-lost relatives. In retrospect it seems odd and inappropriate, but at the time I felt towards her a very strong and tender emotional tie, as strong a one as I might feel towards Uncle or Zsuzsanna.

Still holding my hands in hers, she drew back and gazed with fond wistfulness on my face, as a mother might. "Arkady Petrovich! How good it is of you to come! How grateful I am to set eyes on you one more time!"

She uttered the last sentence with such finality that I replied, "And you shall have many opportunities to set eyes on me again, at the castle."

Her lips pressed together tightly; she shook her head, and in her eyes shone the same grim regret and fear I had seen just before Laszlo's presence interrupted her in Father's office.

"No," she said in a low voice. "I will never go back there."

"You are overcome with grief, Masika Ivanovna. In a week, perhaps two, you will feel strong enough to work again. Besides, you are my only true friend there." I released her hands and withdrew from my pocket the large gold crucifix and chain I had recovered the night before from the guest chambers. I pressed it into her palm; she looked down at it with dismay.

"Jeffries would not wear it," I explained, and after a beat added, in a low voice: "He has disappeared."

"Oh, Arkady!" she cried, so caught up in anguish that she addressed me as a familiar. "You still do not understand, do you?" At once she glanced furtively over her shoulder at the women waiting for her a short distance away. Leaning close to me, as though frightened someone might overhear, she whispered, "My own fate no longer matters to me. I have lost the two men I loved most in all the world, and I care not whether I live or die. Yet I fear so for you and your wife and child..."

My heart began to beat more swiftly at the thought that anyone might believe Mary in danger. "What is it you fear, Masika? That someone will harm us?" Laszlo, I told myself; she knows he is a murderer. Yet her next words served only to perplex me.

"Not physically. But there are worse sorts of injury -those inflicted on the soul." She raised her hands to her face and emitted a soft, bitter sob. "Mine has endured enough. I want only to die."

"Masika, you must not say such things-" She continued as though I had never spoken, reaching forth to touch my cheek and gaze upon me with that gentle maternal fondness. "You are as your father was when he was young, full of goodness and kindness. But it may be too late for you already; too late."

"I do not understand," I answered, but she interrupted in a whisper hoa.r.s.e and swift, as though afraid I might try to stop her: "The covenant, Arkady Petrovich; the covenant!

Come to me in the day when he sleeps. It is not safe for us to converse here in the open; there are too many ears, too many spies. Today we cannot speak; my house will be full. But come to me quickly-in a day, two days. We must talk, and..." Here her voice dropped so low I could scarcely hear. "... there is a letter from my son you must read. He knew his time was near, and so he wrote to you. But for your sake and mine, speak of this to no one. You must swear to keep this secret. Only come-!"

Her urgency was compelling, but I could make no sense of her words. "But why, Masika?"

"Because..." she began, then hesitated for the s.p.a.ce of some seconds, looking up intently at my face with grief-filled, anxious eyes, as though fearing condemnation. "Because I loved your father. Because it is your brother we bury today."

I recoiled, overcome with shock, unable to reply as she strode away quickly to join the group of waiting women, whose dark forms disappeared swift as low-flying blackbirds over the spring-wakened gra.s.s.

I waited for the last of the mourners to disappear, then I stepped forward to the burial-plot, where the gravediggers were beginning to cover the entrenched coffin with shovelfuls of dirt. The unadorned stone marker read: RADU PETROVICH BULGAKOV 1823-1845.

Bulgakov was Masika's surname, but it gave my heart no comfort to see on the marker the Russian patronymic: Petrovich, son of Petru.

I cannot describe how I feel now, or felt then. Stricken. Wounded. Betrayed. Bitterly angry, at Masika, at Father. At this young man, for dying before I met him.

When I came to myself, I asked the older gravedigger: "What did he die of?"

The man stopped shoveling to regard me with polite hostility as he lifted his rumpled cap and wiped his grimy brow with an even dirtier forearm.