Part 3 (2/2)
”No!” I cried. ”Uncle, please-”
But I knew when Vlad turned his imperious, distrustful gaze on me that my words were in vain; the time had come for my punishment. Jean would suffer now because I had dared disobey. His voice was stern, unyielding, but not without an undercurrent of tenderness.
”You have failed me, Zsuzsanna; you, whom I have most loved. Have I ever failed you?
Ever denied you anything?”
He straightened regally, and his visage and voice took on a richness, a glamour, a leonine magnificence that had surely been seen four centuries before by those who had attended his court. He became indeed the voievod, the warrior-prince who had saved his people from death at Turkish hands: Vlad, he who was called by some Tsepesh, the Impaler; by others Dracula, son of the dragon. The words beneath him, Justus etpius, just and faithful, no longer seemed parody; no, he shone, radiant from within, like a beatified saint. An angel- fallen, but no less glorious to behold. For a swift instant -the flicker of a candle, no more- even I, trained by him in the art of mesmerisation, was swayed by his beauty, his greatness, and forgot my pity for my intended, Monsieur Jean Belmonde.
”I am harsh but just, am I not?” he asked me softly as Vanya slid the stake higher, higher, until the point came to rest just at the opening of the chained man's bowels.Jean's cries grew even more hysterical.
Vlad rose, his movements lordly, as elegant as any work of art I ever saw in Vienna, and took one step, two, towards the bound man. ”A madman, am I, monsieur? Do you realise who it is you insult?”
Belmonde began to weep openly, tears streaming down his face, his bloodied chest heaving from paroxysmal sobs. ”No. No. I beg pardon, monsieur; tell me what it is you wish, and I will see it done. Anything. Anything! Only do not harm me-”
”I am prince of these lands,” Vlad said, his face gleaming from such bright inner fire that he seemed an apparition sent from G.o.d rather than the Devil. At the sight, I remembered how it was that I became smitten with love for him. ”I bought them with my flesh, my blood, my tears. Did you hear what I told Zsuzsanna?”
Carefully, deliberately, red eyes wide and intent on his victim, Vanya moved the stake higher: a half-inch, no more. Belmonde jerked and cried out, then began to babble tearfully.
”Forgive me, Prince, forgive me . . . I am a foolish man, I did not know. . . .”
”I said: Did you hear what I told her?”
Jean fumbled, wild-eyed, for the words. ”I am not sure. . . . I- You are-you are-harsh but just?”
Vlad smiled. ”Very good, Monsieur Belmonde. And what I have said is true. I ask you now: Is it just to punish an insult?”
The trapped man's lips trembled as he struggled to formulate a reply that might save him.
A bead of sweat trickled its way down from his damp golden curls; from a distance I savoured its pungent aroma as my fondness and compa.s.sion warred with my growing hunger. ”It ... it is more Christian, perhaps, to forgive it-” His voice broke. ”For love of G.o.d, I beg you, monsieur, to forgive-”
I might have asked again for mercy to our unfortunate guest, but Vlad despises weakness; my pleas would have served only to provoke more suffering for Jean. So I held my tongue as Dunya, awakened now from her trance, stumbled down to my side and sank, weakened, to her knees. As she clasped my waist and hid her face in my skirt, I put my arms around her and stroked her hair in a useless gesture of comfort. Meanwhile, Vlad interrupted his prisoner.
”So now I am un-Christian,” he thundered, ”an infidel, like the Turks I defeated so many centuries ago? Two insults! I advise you, sir: Beg for mercy. Beg for your very life!”
Poor Belmonde begged, in an incoherent rush of sobbed syllables. I have quite a facility for French; Jean and I used it almost exclusively to communicate. But this time I understood not a word; not until Vlad at last climbed the scaffolding beside my trembling naked lover and bent low beside him.
Of a sudden, his expression softened, and in a low, gentle voice he whispered to Jean, ”Enough. Enough. You shall be released from your chains.”
The young man let go a deep, shuddering sigh, then wept softly as he whispered, ”G.o.d bless you, monsieur; may G.o.d eternally bless you.”
Vlad stroked Belmonde's glistening forehead, smoothing back the golden curls with paternal tenderness. And then he turned his face just enough to glance down at the foot of the rack, where Vanya stood ready, one shoulder against the base of the s.h.i.+ning oiled stake.The Impaler signalled with a nod.
Vanya gave a mighty thrust. I am immortal, yes; and even if my life extends through all eternity, I pray never again to hear such a sound. (The horror is, I have heard it before- and certainly shall again.) Jean screamed-a scream to pierce the very gates of Heaven. I caught but a glimpse of his body arched in spasm as the stake ascended, piercing his bowels; more than that I could not bear to witness but instead closed my eyes and covered with my palms the ears of poor Dunya, who added her own cry of anguish to his. We clung to each other in our misery.
At last silence fell. I looked up to find that the young man had, in his agony, fainted; now Vanya, atremble with excitement, struggled feverishly to raise the stake.
So he did, with some a.s.sistance from Vlad, and erected it in the midst of the theatre of death, upon the scaffolding constructed expressly for the purpose. And Vlad, his own eyes ablaze like the sun, stepped back to admire his grisly handiwork: Belmonde impaled, his head hung to one side, his arms swinging limp as a marionette's, the weight of his own body drawing him downwards so that the stake travelled slowly, inexorably up through his vitals.
By dawn, if Vanya had performed his task precisely, the blunted tip would peek through the corpse's gaping lips.
”Wake him!” Vlad ordered, and Vanya scurried to procure a pole from which hung suspended a rag. This he doused liberally with slivovitz, then raised it to Jean's lips, a cruel parody of the centurion offering Christ bitter gall.
The dying man groaned as he returned to consciousness-beyond speech now, beyond all but pain. I knew what would follow now and dreaded it, yet my own hunger had grown painfully and demanded appeas.e.m.e.nt. I had grown accustomed, in Vienna, to dining nightly, and the spectre of famine made me desperate to feed while I could. Dunya was too weak, too pale to offer sustenance; I dared not even sip lightly, much less drink to my satisfaction. Jean was entirely lost. From him, I could drink my fill. . . .
I watched, disgusted at my own desire as Vlad took the suffering man's chin in his hand, turning Jean's face towards his.
”Yes, wake,” he hissed. ”Wake and know who it is that torments you.”
And with a savagery that, to my shame, delighted and aroused me, he thrust his teeth into Belmonde's neck. The man cried out again-a weak whisper, now. Shock and pain had sapped him; there would not be much time to drink before death, when the blood began to cool.
I forgot my humanity. I pushed Dunya aside and hurried to the scaffolding, ascending it in a smooth, easy leap invisible to mortal eyes.
I stood beside Vlad, waiting anxiously as he fed, forgetting my distaste for blood tainted by terror, fearing only that there should not be enough for us both. And as Vlad drank, Belmonde's piteous moans ceased. After a time, he fainted once more, and even Vanya's persistent ministrations could not rouse him.
At that, Vlad moved aside, his eyes brilliant, green, triumphant as he watched me press my lips to the b.l.o.o.d.y wound he had opened.
I drank, angered at my own helplessness to refuse, at my own weakness. Yes, I drank, but it was bitter, bitter, bitter blood . . .AMSTERDAM NOVEMBER 1871.
Twenty-six Years Later
Chapter 3.
Telegramme from Guy de la Mer, Amsterdam, to V. Dracula, do Golden Krone Hotel, Bistritz, 12 November 1871 Subject located at last. Itinerary and arrival time to follow.
The Journal of Mary Tsepesh Van Helsing 19 NOVEMBER 1871.
My husband is dead.
My husband is dead.
Twice I have written these words; twice it has happened. To-day we buried Jan, who more than two decades ago rescued my child from unspeakable danger.
Did I love him? Yes. But ours was a cool love, more a friends.h.i.+p born of grat.i.tude and respect, not pa.s.sion -at least, not mine. Even so, my heart aches at the loss, and writing this, I weep stinging tears. I have lost my truest friend; or so, before to-night, I had believed.
But only one man has ever truly had my heart: my beloved Arkady-dead some twenty-six years. This I know as a fact, for it was I who served as his executioner, I who aimed the bullet that tore through his heart.
Would that it had been mine; the pain would have been less. I have treasured the gun all this time; not a night has gone by that I did not caress it in secret, did not press its cold steel to my lips and whisper lovingly to the ghost of him who still haunts me.
But a ghost he is no more. No; far, far worse than that . . .
He came to me to-night. Not as a phantom of imagination or ill-formed spectre from a dream but in the flesh-the cold, cold flesh.
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