Mina Part 27

Winnie retrieved her coat from the chair where she had tossed it. When she opened the door and saw Millicent sitting on a chair outside the door, she turned toward Jonathan and added, "Mina is right. There have been too many secrets in this house, Jonathan Harker."

"I'll see you out," Millicent said coldly.

Winnie walked behind her to the door. Just before she left, Winnie turned to the older woman and squeezed her hand. "Be a comfort to your nephew," she said. "He is so in need of comfort now."

Millicent closed the door, then turned and leaned against it. She could think of nothing to say, nothing at all. It occurred to her that she had raised Jonathan to be so strong because she had never known how to deal with weakness.

"Aunt Millicent," Jonathan called. "Come in here please." When she did, she saw that he had opened his wall safe and was pulling a stack of pages from it. As he held it out to her, it seemed that she had never seen her nephew's expression so determined.

Millicent carried the pages to her room and read the accounts of Jonathan, Mina, Van Helsing and the others for the better part of the day. When she had finished, she took the pages to Jonathan. She found him in his study with Winnie Beason, the both of them typing furiously. Jonathan paused when she entered the room, taking the pages from her, then holding both her hands as he told her why Mina had gone to London and what had happened afterward. "Now you know the story we did not want to share with you or with anyone."

"But it came out anyway, didn't it, Jonathan? Secrets always do." So much had been answered, but one question remained. "Why didn't Mina tell you of her doubts earlier?" Millicent asked.

"She didn't want to burden me with them. You can understand that, can't you?"

Millicent was a strong woman. She understood it all too well.

TWENTY-FIVE

I

April 26, Varna. Gance and I are in the same hotel where I and the others waited months ago for the s.h.i.+p Czarina Catherine. It seems that we must wait here again, for Gance needs a day more to recover.

I noticed his fever the night we pulled out of Lille. When I went to bed, his body seemed warmer. I thought it might be the closeness of the room or the champagne we had had at dinner, so I took a blanket and pillow and slept on the sofa.

In the morning, he lay uncovered, his nights.h.i.+rt stuck to his skin. His face, usually so pale, was ruddy from heat.

Alarmed, I called for the steward, who found a doctor to treat him. While I sat in the dining car, the doctor examined Gance, then opened the wound and cleaned it. After changing the dressing, he sent for me and suggested to both of us that we stop in Munich until Gance is better. "The wound may be abscessing. If the infection begins to spread into the lung when you are in some backward country. . . "

"We go on," Gance said.

"I'm leaving the train in Belgrade," the doctor explained. He looked at Gance, hoping to see some wavering in his resolve. There was none. "I'll look at you again tonight," he said wearily and left us.

"Gance, there's no rush," I said.

"If we stop and I become really ill, we could be trapped somewhere for weeks. Varna is a city. They have physicians there. "

By evening, his fever was so high that I had to bathe him with cold water to keep it down. "We have to stop, Gance."I said. "Other-wise, you'll die before we reach Varna."

He only looked at me stubbornly. "Tell the steward to bring me some cold oranges," he said. "Winnie Beason told me that they feed them to the hospital's children to ward off infection."

"Gance!"

"We go on."

The night after the doctor left the train, I dared not go to sleep. Instead I sat beside Gance's bed with the pan of ice water, changing the compress on his forehead, holding his hand when he became restive. Finally, his own strong const.i.tution came to his rescue. The fever broke and he slept peacefully. I have never seen his expression so innocent. He said in the morning that he'd had magnificent dreams.

He demanded to get dressed. When the steward came, Gance requested that the man change the linens on the bed and ordered me to sleep. We were an hour out of Varna when I woke.

Gance was sitting on the end of the divan, a map of the Carpathians spread beside him. "Mina, come and show me where we're going," he said when he saw me sitting tip in bed.

"We're going to spend a few days in Varna," I replied. "I won't have your death on my conscience, Gance."

"I promise not to die."

"An easy promise to make. You won't even have to feel regret if you break it. "

"Excellent!" he said, commenting on my wit. "But I'm sure to feel regret in the afterlife, particularly since it's common knowledge that /'m going to h.e.l.l. Now come here, show me where we're going ... eventually."

I did as he asked, exaggerating my confusion with the location, the steepness of the climbs, the chill in the air, the remoteness of the area.

My eloquence won. When we reached Varna, I recommended that we come here to this hotel, and here we have stayed for the last three days. We keep to ourselves, Gance because he is recuperating, me because so many on the staff recall my visit here with my husband just months ago. Though Gance and I have separate rooms, they still look at me oddly, wondering, I suppose, where my husband has gone. I shouldn't care but I do. / feel as if some of the essence of our little band remains alive in these rooms. The feeling is impossible to shake, as is my belief that one day a s.h.i.+p or a train will bring Jonathan here looking for me.

Gance was much better this afternoon. A local physician (not at all the sort of quack the doctor on the train had said we would find!) examined Gance and told him that the infection had subsided. He gave Gance permission to bathe and instructed him to leave the wound uncovered afterward so the scar could dry.

"We ought to talk to someone who knows the area around the Borgo Pa.s.s," Gance said after the doctor had gone and we were together once more. "The physician had a suggestion an where to begin. Go and dress for dinner. We're dining out."

The hotel had the western flavor of all port establishments. But as we walked up the hill away from the harbor, it seemed that we had stepped into another land, one of many races. The women all seemed to share an affinity for white cotton skirts but covered them in wildly embroidered ap.r.o.ns tied in both front and back. These seemed to serve both as protection for the skirts and to give some warmth. Their chests were covered with woolen shawls, their heads with detached hoods that Gance told me were believed to date back to Roman times.

I had sufficient opportunity to observe a great deal because we walked very slowly and stopped often. Gance may be better, but his wound still pains him if he breathes too deeply. Once we were on level ground, however, we went on at a good pace. It is heartening to see him healing so quickly.

The instructions the doctor had written helped us find a small restaurant, no larger than a common English pub. A hostess wearing a magnificently embroidered velvet jacket that any London socialite might envy, showed us to a table covered with a blue crocheted cloth. The napkins were trimmed in similar blue lace. The hostess knew enough Hungarian to bring us the wine Gance wanted, but it took far longer for Gance to explain to her that we also needed to talk to someone who knew the area between Bukovina and Bacau.

She beamed with pleasure at finally understanding, nodded and said a word Gance told me meant "later."

In the meantime, we dined on the most magnificent goose, baked with apples and cinnamon, an odd pickled squash and u dessert of paper-thin layers of dough that dripped honey down my fingers.Each time the woman returned with bread, more coffee or dessert, Gance would ask about the guide. Each time she would repeat the same word.

When I thought the seam on my skirt would split from my gluttony, the man who had been tending bar in the front came and joined us.

There was danger in consulting a guide. We knew that, but we had no choice. Fortunately, the man was well versed in the roads around the Borgo Pa.s.s, but if the tales of the area meant anything to him, he gave no indication.

"Good land," he said of Bukovina, not once but often, then suggested we take the coach that traveled there every few days.

"Ask him if we can purchase horses at a coach stop," I suggested.

"If there are horses, I can purchase them," Gance replied in a quick whisper. He asked the man to come to the hotel in the morning, and paid the bill, including a handsome tip for the advice.

It was almost dark when we left the restaurant. As we stood on the hill overlooking the port, the entire ocean seemed to have turned to gla.s.s, reflecting the clouds and the many shades of the evening sky. The scene was so moving that I stopped and tried to etch it in my mind, as if its beauty could erase the horror of the past.

Someday when all of this is behind me, I hope that Jonathan will come here. I want him to look at this place with an artist's eyes and see it true beauty. And though I know that it is most likely impossible, I want to be here with him, to sit beside him as he draws.

I see this all in my mind so perfectly. Even as I stand here, my arm linked to another man's, I feel so close to Jonathan.

April 27. Gance saw me to my room and followed me inside. Since he was so much better, I expected him to spend the night. When he turned to leave, I stopped him, kissing him with all the pa.s.sion he had taught me to show.

He shook his head slowly, sadly. "Gance, I'm sorry," I said. "I thought you would welcome it. I should have known that it's too soon. "

His hand brushed the side of my face. He kissed my cheek sweetly, with all the affection of a brother to his sister.

"What's happened?" I asked. "What has changed?"

He seemed to be weighing an answer, or looking for something deeper than just a witty remark. "l care for you, enough that I never want you to feel any regret."

"Me, or yourself, Gance?"

"I'm not a coward, if that's what you mean."

"It takes great trust to love. You have to reveal so much of yourself." I touched his hair, soft and white like a small, fair child's. "You are no coward, Gance, but you are afraid of something. What is it?"

"I wasn't speaking of love. Everyone I ever loved has died, and none of them pleasantly." He sat on the edge of my bed.

"I suppose I simply feel afraid for you, especially now."

"If the vampires are still alive, and / believe that some of them are, they won't kill me. Perhaps they want another prisoner to amuse them. "

"Or your help in escaping those ancient walls."

I had never thought of that. Some of my shock must have shown in my expression, because he held out his arms, and when I sat next to him, he said, "Look at London, filled with thieves and murderers, men who would cut your throat for that brooch you are wearing. There would be no shortage of food for creatures such as them. Actually, London would be all the better for their presence. "

"Dracula did not dine on thieves, Gance. He chose Lucy Westerna instead. "

"Perhaps, in his own way, he loved her."

Why was I so shocked at his words when I already knew they were right? Why was I so saddened by them? I still do not know, but I cried, sobbing for her and for me and for the marriage that never had a chance to grow. Gance took my hands, and I looked up and saw that there were also tears in his eyes. Suddenly I understood why he backed away from me, for all the affection for him that I had held back surfaced, threatening my control the way the dreams had my sanity.

"How did those you cared for die?" I asked him.

He went to his room for a bottle of brandy. I had only meant to have a little, but as I listened to his sad tale of his mother's suicide and his father's slow degeneration into l.u.s.t and insanity, we shared the bottle.

We drank a great deal and fell asleep, fully clothed, in one another's arms.

When I woke in the morning, Gance had gone.

I went back to sleep for another hour then went and knocked on his door. He didn't reply. Thinking him ill once more, I went in and found his bed still made up. Though there were clothes on the chair, the room seemed emptier. I went to the closet and found that his bag and heavier coat were missing.

The hotel staff sympathized with what they thought was nay plight. The owner took special pains to a.s.sure me that the bill had been settled and an account left to see me through another dozen days or so. I could stay on or go as I wished.

He also gave me an envelope Gance had left for me.

I opened it in the privacy of my room. Inside was a draft for two hundred pounds and a note that simply said, Perhaps I do love you. Else why would I be foolish enough to go to his abode without your knowledge and protection. I took my own precautions, and now I am gone. A fitting adventure for one who shares Lord Byron's blood, don't you think?

Gance.

His own precautions? Something of last night came back to me, and my fingers brushed over a tender spot on my chest.

I felt the cut. He had tasted my blood, and through it Dracula's, once more.

The fool! The terrible fool! I considered everything that had happened on my last journey here. An idea came to me, one I was amazed I had not thought of before. I changed into my simplest traveling clothes then went downstairs and asked the staff to give me directions to the nearest church. "Catholic or Lutheran?"

"Neither." Dracula's religion, I thought. The one he had practiced all his life. The one he believed in. "Orthodox," I said.

II

Brother Michael Kozma, prior of St. Peter and Paul Monastery in Varna, seemed to be accustomed to the presence of unbelievers. He had a keen curiosity about the world, asking me many questions as he explained the history of the retreat.

I was astonished at how well he spoke English and commented on it. He replied in German, then French, then, in English once more, he said I should be more amazed at his pride.

Astonis.h.i.+ng. I came here looking for a holy man and found another Gance instead.

He told me that women were not allowed in many sections of the monastery, then took me into the church and showed me the sacred icons. After I had finished admiring them, he asked for a donation for their preservation.

This pragmatist was not the sort of holy man I had come to see. "When people come to discuss matters of the soul, do they also speak to you?" I asked.

"Me? No, madam. Those I hand over to the abbot, Brother Sandor, who has all the virtue that I do not possess."

"May I speak with him?"

"He does not give audiences to women."

I suppose I should have known. "May I ask for an exception?"

He looked surprised. Had no one ever asked this before? "For what reason?" he questioned, his voice now gentle, prodding a reply.

"One I prefer to discuss with him," I replied.

"Unless you speak Rumanian or Russian, you will be discussing it with me as well. And if you wish an audience with Brother Sandor, you need a reason and that must go through me." From anyone else, the words might have sounded harsh, but Brother Michael's candor made them seem no more than truth.

I considered how to begirt, then said, "A year ago, my husband, a solicitor from London, came to this country at the request of one Count Dracula, whose castle is in the Borgo Pa.s.s. While he was there, he was attacked by strange creatures who live in that castle. It is of those creatures, called nosferatu in your language, that / wish to speak. "

"Those creatures are legends. Whatever your husband saw was a dream."