The Man Who Loved the Vampire Lady

BRIAN STABLEFORD

A man who loves a vampire lady may not die young, but cannot live forever.

(Walachian proverb)

It was the thirteenth of June in the Year of Our Lord 1623. Grand Normandy was in the grip of an early spell of warm weather, and the streets of London bathed in sunlight. There were crowds everywhere, and the port was busy with ships, three having docked that very day. One of the ships, the Freemartin, was from the Moorish enclave and had produce from the heart of Africa, including ivory and the skins of exotic animals. There were rumors, too, of secret and more precious goods: jewels and magical charms; but such rumors always attended the docking of any vessel from remote parts of the world. Beggars and street urchins had flocked to the dockland, responsive as ever to such whisperings, and were plaguing every sailor in the streets, as anxious for gossip as for copper coins. It seemed that the only faces not animated by excitement were those worn by the severed heads that dressed the spikes atop the Southwark Gate. The Tower of London, though, stood quite aloof from the hubbub, its tall and forbidding turrets so remote from the streets that they belonged to a different world.

Edmund Cordery, mechanician to the court of the Archduke Girard, tilted the small concave mirror on the brass device that rested on his workbench, catching the rays of the afternoon sun and deflecting the light through the system of lenses.

He turned away and directed his son, Noell, to take his place. “Tell me if all is well,” he said tiredly. “I can hardly focus my eyes, let alone the instrument.”

Noell closed his left eye and put his other to the microscope. He turned the wheel that adjusted the height of the stage. “It’s perfect,” he said. “What is it?”

“The wing of a moth.” Edmund scanned the polished tabletop, checking that the other slides were in readiness for the demonstration. The prospect of Lady Carmilla’s visit filled him with a complex anxiety that he resented in himself. Even in the old days, she had not come to his laboratory often. But to see her here—on his own territory, as it were—would be bound to awaken memories that were untouched by the glimpses that he caught of her in the public parts of the Tower and on ceremonial occasions.

“The water slide isn’t ready,” Noell pointed out.

Edmund shook his head. “I’ll make a fresh one when the time comes,” he said.

“Living things are fragile, and the world that is in a water drop is all too easily destroyed.”

He looked farther along the bench-top, and moved a crucible, placing it out of sight behind a row of jars. It was impossible—and unnecessary—to make the place tidy, but he felt it important to conserve some sense of order and control. To discourage himself from fidgeting, he went to the window and looked out at the sparkling

Thames and the strange gray sheen on the slate roofs of the houses beyond.

From this high vantage point, the people were tiny; he was higher even than the cross on the steeple of the church beside the Leathermarket. Edmund was not a devout man, but such was the agitation within him, yearning for expression in action, that the sight of the cross on the church made him cross himself, murmuring the ritual devotion. As soon as he had done it, he cursed himself for childishness.

I am forty-four years old, he thought, and a mechanician. I am no longer the boy who was favored with the love of the lady, and there is no need for this stupid trepidation.

He was being deliberately unfair to himself in this private scolding. It was not simply the fact that he had once been Carmilla’s lover that made him anxious. There was the microscope, and the ship from the Moorish country. He hoped that he would be able to judge by the lady’s reaction now much cause there really was for fear.

The door opened then, and the lady entered. She half turned to indicate by a flutter of her hand that her attendant need not come in with her, and he withdrew, closing the door behind him. She was alone, with no friend or favorite in tow. She came across the room carefully, lifting the hem of her skirt a little, though the floor was not dusty. Her gaze flicked from side to side, to take note of the shelves, the beakers, the furnace, and the numerous tools of the mechanician’s craft. To a commoner, it would have seemed a threatening environment, redolent with unholiness, but her attitude was cool and controlled. She arrived to stand before the brass instrument that Edmund had recently completed, but did not look long at it before raising her eyes to look fully into Edmund’s face.

“You look well, Master Cordery,” she said calmly. “But you are pale. You should not shut yourself in your rooms now that summer is come to Normandy.”

Edmund bowed slightly, but met her gaze. She had not changed in the slightest degree, of course, since the days when he had been intimate with her. She was six hundred years old—hardly younger than the archduke—and the years were impotent as far as her appearance was concerned. Her complexion was much darker than his, her eyes a deep liquid brown, and her hair jet black. He had not stood so close to her for several years, and he could not help the tide of memories rising in his mind.

For her, it would be different: his hair was gray now, his skin creased; he must seem an altogether different person. As he met her gaze, though, it seemed to him that she, too, was remembering, and not without fondness.

“My lady,” he said, his voice quite steady, “may I present my son and apprentice, Noell.”

Noell bowed more deeply than his father, blushing with embarrassment.

The Lady Carmilla favored the youth with a smile. “He has the look of you, Master Cordery,” she said—a casual compliment. She returned her attention then to the instrument.

“The designer was correct?” she asked.

“Yes, indeed,” he replied. “The device is most ingenious. I would dearly like to meet the man who thought of it. A fine discovery—though it taxed the talents of my lens grinder severely. I think we might make a better one, with much care and skill; this is but a poor example, as one must expect from a first attempt.”

The Lady Carmilla seated herself at the bench, and Edmund showed her how to apply her eye to the instrument, and how to adjust the focusing wheel and the mirror.

She expressed surprise at the appearance of the magnified moth’s wing, and Edmund took her through the series of prepared slides, which included other parts of insects’

bodies, and sections through the stems and seeds of plants.

“I need a sharper knife and a steadier hand, my lady,” he told her. “The device exposes the clumsiness of my cutting.”

“Oh no, Master Cordery,” she assured him politely.

“These are quite pretty enough. But we were told that more interesting things might be seen. Living things too small for ordinary sight.”

Edmund bowed in apology and explained about the preparation of water slides.

He made a new one, using a pipette to take a drop from a jar full of dirty river water.

Patiently, he helped the lady search the slide for the tiny creatures that human eyes were not equipped to perceive. He showed her one that flowed as if it were semiliquid itself, and tinier ones that moved by means of cilia. She was quite captivated, and watched for some time, moving the slide very gently with her painted fingernails.

Eventually she asked: “Have you looked at other fluids?”

“What kind of fluids?” he asked, though the question was quite clear to him and disturbed him.

She was not prepared to mince words with him. “Blood, Master Cordery,” she said very softly. Her past acquaintance with him had taught her respect for his intelligence, and he half regretted it.

“Blood clots very quickly,” he told her. “I could not produce a satisfactory slide.

It would take unusual skill.”

“I’m sure that it would,” she replied.

“Noell has made drawings of many of the things we have looked at,” said Edmund. “Would you like to see them?”

She accepted the change of subject, and indicated that she would. She moved to Noell’s station and began sorting through the drawings, occasionally looking up at the boy to compliment him on his work. Edmund stood by, remembering how sensitive he once had been to her moods and desires, trying hard to work out now exactly what she was thinking. Something in one of her contemplative glances at Noell sent an icy pang of dread into Edmund’s gut, and he found his more important fears momentarily displaced by what might have been anxiety for his son, or simply jealousy. He cursed himself again for his weakness.

“May I take these to show the archduke?” asked the Lady Carmilla, addressing the question to Noell rather than to his father. The boy nodded, still too embarrassed to construct a proper reply. She took a selection of the drawings and rolled them into a scroll. She stood and faced Edmund again.

“We are most interested in this apparatus,” she informed him. “We must consider carefully whether to provide you with new assistants, to encourage development of the appropriate skills. In the meantime, you may return to your ordinary work. I will send someone for the instrument, so that the archduke can inspect it at his leisure.

Your son draws very well, and must be encouraged. You and he may visit me in my chambers on Monday next; we will dine at seven o’clock, and you may tell me about all your recent work.”

Edmund bowed to signal his acquiescence—it was, of course, a command rather than an invitation. He moved before her to the door in order to hold it open for her.

The two exchanged another brief glance as she went past him.

When she had gone, it was as though something taut unwound inside him, leaving him relaxed and emptied. He felt strangely cool and distant as he considered the possibility—stronger now—that his life was in peril.

When the twilight had faded, Edmund lit a single candle on the bench and sat staring into the flame while he drank dark wine from a flask. He did not look up when Noell came into the room, but when the boy brought another stool close to his and sat down upon it, he offered the flask. Noell took it, but sipped rather gingerly.

“I’m old enough to drink now?” he commented dryly.

“You’re old enough,” Edmund assured him. “But beware of excess, and never drink alone. Conventional fatherly advice, I believe.”

Noell reached across the bench so that he could stroke the barrel of the microscope with slender fingers.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked.

Edmund sighed. “You’re old enough for that, too, I suppose?”

“I think you ought to tell me.”

Edmund looked at the brass instrument and said: “It were better to keep things like this dark secret. Some human mechanician, I daresay, eager to please the vampire lords and ladies, showed off his cleverness as proud as a peacock.

Thoughtless. Inevitable, though, now that all this play with lenses has become fashionable.”

“You’ll be glad of eyeglasses when your sight begins to fail,” Noell told him. “In any case, I can’t see the danger in this new toy.”

Edmund smiled. “New toys,” he mused. “Clocks to tell the time, mills to grind the corn, lenses to aid human sight. Produced by human craftsmen for the delight of their masters. I think we’ve finally succeeded in proving to the vampires just how very clever we are—and how much more there is to know than we know already.”

“You think the vampires are beginning to fear us?”

Edmund gulped wine from the flask and passed it again to his son. “Their rule is founded in fear and superstition,” he said quietly. “They’re long-lived, suffer only mild attacks of diseases that are fatal to us, and have marvelous powers of regeneration. But they’re not immortal, and they’re vastly outnumbered by humans.

Terror keeps them safe, but terror is based in ignorance, and behind their haughtiness and arrogance, there’s a gnawing fear of what might happen if humans ever lost their supernatural reverence for vampirekind. It’s very difficult for them to die, but they don’t fear death any the less for that.”

“There’ve been rebellions against vampire rule. They’ve always failed.”

Edmund nodded to concede the point. “There are three million people in Grand Normandy,” he said, “and less than five thousand vampires. There are only forty thousand vampires in the entire imperium of Gaul, and about the same number in the imperium of Byzantium—no telling how many there may be in the khanate of Walachia and Cathay, but not so very many more. In Africa the vampires must be outnumbered three or four thousand to one. If people no longer saw them as demons and demi-gods, as unconquerable forces of evil, their empire would be fragile. The centuries through which they live give them wisdom, but longevity seems to be inimical to creative thought—they learn, but they don’t invent. Humans remain the true masters of art and science, which are forces of change. They’ve tried to control that—to turn it to their advantage—but it remains a thorn in their side.”

“But they do have power,” insisted Noell. “They are vampires.”

Edmund shrugged. “Their longevity is real—their powers of regeneration, too.

But is it really their magic that makes them so? I don’t know for sure what merit there is in their incantations and rituals, and I don’t think even they know—they cling to their rites because they dare not abandon them, but where the power that makes humans into vampires really comes from, no one knows. From the devil? I think not.

I don’t believe in the devil—I think it’s something in the blood. I think vampirism may be a kind of disease—but a disease that makes men stronger instead of weaker, insulates them against death instead of killing them. If that is the case—do you see now why the Lady Carmilla asked whether I had looked at blood beneath the microscope?”

Noell stared at the instrument for twenty seconds or so, mulling over the idea.

Then he laughed.

“If we could all become vampires,” he said lightly, “we’d have to suck one another’s blood.”

Edmund couldn’t bring himself to look for such ironies. For him, the possibilities inherent in discovering the secrets of vampire nature were much more immediate, and utterly bleak.

“It’s not true that they need to suck the blood of humans,” he told the boy. “It’s not nourishment. It gives them… a kind of pleasure that we can’t understand.

And it’s part of the mystique that makes them so terrible… and hence so powerful.” He stopped, feeling embarrassed. He did not know how much Noell knew about his sources of information. He and his wife never talked about the days of his affair with the Lady Carmilla, but there was no way to keep gossip and rumor from reaching the boy’s ears.

Noell took the flask again, and this time took a deeper draft from it. “I’ve heard,”

he said distantly, “that humans find pleasure, too… in their blood being drunk.”

“No,” replied Edmund calmly. “That’s untrue. Unless one counts the small pleasure of sacrifice. The pleasure that a human man takes from a vampire lady is the same pleasure that he takes from a human lover. It might be different for the girls who entertain vampire men, but I suspect it’s just the excitement of hoping that they may become vampires themselves.”

Noell hesitated, and would probably have dropped the subject, but Edmund realized suddenly that he did not want the subject dropped. The boy had a right to know, and perhaps might one day need to know.

“That’s not entirely true,” Edmund corrected himself. “When the Lady Carmilla used to taste my blood, it did give me pleasure, in a way. It pleased me because it pleased her. There is an excitement in loving a vampire lady, which makes it different from loving an ordinary woman… even though the chance that a vampire lady’s lover may himself become a vampire is so remote as to be inconsiderable.”

Noell blushed, not knowing how to react to this acceptance into his father’s confidence. Finally he decided that it was best to pretend a purely academic interest.

“Why are there so many more vampire women than men?” he asked.

“No one knows for sure,” Edmund said. “No humans, at any rate. I can tell you what I believe, from hearsay and from reasoning, but you must understand that it is a dangerous thing to think about, let alone to speak about.”

Noell nodded.

“The vampires keep their history secret,” said Edmund, “and they try to control the writing of human history, but the following facts are probably true. Vampirism came to western Europe in the fifth century, with the vampire-led horde of Attila.

Attila must have known well enough how to make more vampires—he converted both Aëtius, who became ruler of the imperium of Gaul, and Theodosius II, the emperor of the east who was later murdered. Of all the vampires that now exist, the vast majority must be converts. I have heard reports of vampire children born to vampire ladies, but it must be an extremely rare occurrence. Vampire men seem to be much less virile than human men—it is said that they couple very rarely.

Nevertheless, they frequently take human consorts, and these consorts often become vampires. Vampires usually claim that this is a gift, bestowed deliberately by magic, but I am not so sure they can control the process. I think the semen of vampire men carries some kind of seed that communicates vampirism much as the semen of humans makes women pregnant—and just as haphazardly. That’s why the male lovers of vampire ladies don’t become vampires.”

Noell considered this, and then asked: “Then where do vampire lords come from?”

“They’re converted by other male vampires,” Edmund said. “Just as Attila converted Aëtius and Theodosius.” He did not elaborate, but waited to see whether Noell understood the implication. An expression of disgust crossed the boy’s face and Edmund did not know whether to be glad or sorry that his son could follow the argument through.

“Because it doesn’t always happen,” Edmund went on, “it’s easy for the vampires to pretend that they have some special magic. But some women never become pregnant, though they lie with their husbands for years. It is said, though, that a human may also become a vampire by drinking vampire’s blood—if he knows the appropriate magic spell. That’s a rumor the vampires don’t like, and they exact terrible penalties if anyone is caught trying the experiment. The ladies of our own court, of course, are for the most part onetime lovers of the archduke or his cousins.

It would be indelicate to speculate about the conversion of the archduke, though he is certainly acquainted with Aëtius.”

Noell reached out a hand, palm downward, and made a few passes above the candle flame, making it flicker from side to side. He stared at the microscope.

” Have you looked at blood?” he asked.

“I have,” replied Edmund. “And semen. Human blood, of course—and human semen.”

“And?”

Edmund shook his head. “They’re certainly not homogeneous fluids,” he said,

“but the instrument isn’t good enough for really detailed inspection. There are small corpuscles—the ones in semen nave long, writhing tails—but there’s more… much more… to be seen, if I had the chance. By tomorrow this instrument will be gone—I don’t think I’ll be given the chance to build another.”

“You’re surely not in danger! You’re an important man—and your loyalty has never been in question. People think of you as being almost a vampire yourself. A black magician. The kitchen girls are afraid of me because I’m your son—they cross themselves when they see me.”

Edmund laughed, a little bitterly. “I’ve no doubt they suspect me of intercourse with demons, and avoid my gaze for fear of the spell of the evil eye. But none of that matters to the vampires. To them, I’m only a human, and for all that they value my skills, they’d kill me without a thought if they suspected that I might have dangerous knowledge.”

Noell was clearly alarmed by this. “Wouldn’t…” He stopped, but saw Edmund waiting for him to ask, and carried on after only a brief pause. “The Lady Carmilla…

wouldn’t she… ?”

“Protect me?” Edmund shook his head. “Not even if I were her favorite still.

Vampire loyalty is to vampires.”

“She was human once.”

“It counts for nothing. She’s been a vampire for nearly six hundred years, but it wouldn’t be any different if she were no older than I.”

“But… she did love you?”

“In her way,” said Edmund sadly. “In her way.” He stood up then, no longer feeling the urgent desire to help his son to understand. There were things the boy could find out only for himself and might never have to. He took up the candle tray and shielded the flame with his hand as he walked to the door. Noell followed him, leaving the empty flask behind.

Edmund left the citadel by the so-called Traitor’s Gate, and crossed the Thames by the Tower Bridge. The houses on the bridge were in darkness now, but there was still a trickle of traffic; even at two in the morning, the business of the great city did not come to a standstill. The night had clouded over, and a light drizzle had begun to fall. Some of the oil lamps that were supposed to keep the thoroughfare lit at all times had gone out, and there was not a lamplighter in sight. Edmund did not mind the shadows, though.

He was aware before he reached the south bank that two men were dogging his footsteps, and he dawdled in order to give them the impression that he would be easy to track. Once he entered the network of streets surrounding the Leathermarket, though, he gave them the slip. He knew the maze of filthy streets well enough—he had lived here as a child. It was while he was apprenticed to a local clockmaker that he had learned the cleverness with tools that had eventually brought him to the notice of his predecessor, and had sent him on the road to fortune and celebrity. He had a brother and a sister still living and working in the district, though he saw them very rarely. Neither one of them was proud to have a reputed magician for a brother, and they had not forgiven him his association with the Lady Carmilla.

He picked his way carefully through the garbage in the dark alleys, unperturbed by the sound of scavenging rats. He kept his hands on the pommel of the dagger that was clasped to his belt, but he had no need to draw it. Because the stars were hidden, the night was pitch-dark, and few of the windows were lit from within by candlelight, but he was able to keep track of his progress by reaching out to touch familiar walls every now and again.

He came eventually to a tiny door set three steps down from a side street, and rapped upon it quickly, three times and then twice. There was along pause before he felt the door yield beneath his fingers, and he stepped inside hurriedly. Until he relaxed when the door clicked shut again, he did not realize how tense he had been.

He waited for a candle to be lit.

The light, when it came, illuminated a thin face, crabbed and wrinkled, the eyes very pale and the wispy white hair gathered imperfectly behind a linen bonnet.

“The lord be with you,” he whispered.

“And with you, Edmund Cordery,” she croaked.

He frowned at the use of his name—it was a deliberate breach of etiquette, a feeble and meaningless gesture of independence. She did not like him, though he had never been less than kind to her. She did not fear him as so many others did, but she considered him tainted. They had been bound together in the business of the Fraternity for nearly twenty years, but she would never completely trust him.

She lead him into an inner room, and left him there to take care of his business.

A stranger stepped from the shadows. He was short, stout, and bald, perhaps sixty years old. He made the special sign of the cross, and Edmund responded.

“I’m Cordery,” he said.

“Were you followed?” The older man’s tone was deferential and fearful.

“Not here. They followed me from the Tower, but it was easy to shake them loose.”

“That’s bad.”

“Perhaps—but it has to do with another matter, not with our business. There’s no danger to you. Do you have what I asked for?”

The stout man nodded uncertainly. “My masters are unhappy,” he said. “I have been asked to tell you that they do not want you to take risks. You are too valuable to place yourself in peril.”

“I am in peril already. Events are overtaking us. In any case, it is neither your concern nor that of your… masters. It is for me to decide.”

The stout man shook his head, but it was a gesture of resignation rather than a denial. He pulled something from beneath the chair where he had waited in the shadows. It was a large box, clad in leather. A row of small holes was set in the longer side, and there was a sound of scratching from within that testified to the presence of living creatures.

“You did exactly as I instructed?” asked Edmund.

The small man nodded, then put his hand on the mechanician’s arm, fearfully.

“Don’t open it, sir, I beg you. Not here.”

“There’s nothing to fear,” Edmund assured him.

“You haven’t been in Africa, sir, as I have. Believe me, everyone is afraid—and not merely humans. They say that vampires are dying, too.”

“Yes, I know,” said Edmund distractedly. He shook off the older man’s restraining hand and undid the straps that sealed the box. He lifted the lid, but not far—just enough to let the light in, and to let him see what was inside.

The box contained two big gray rats. They cowered from the light.

Edmund shut the lid again and fastened the straps.

“It’s not my place, sir,” said the little man hesitantly, “but I’m not sure that you really understand what you have there. I’ve seen the cities of West Africa—I’ve been in Corunna, too, and Marseilles. They remember other plagues in those cities, and all the horror stories are emerging again to haunt them. Sir, if any such thing ever came to London…”

Edmund tested the weight of the box to see whether he could carry it comfortably. “It’s not your concern,” he said. “Forget everything that has happened.

I will communicate with your masters. It is in my hands now.”

“Forgive me,” said the other, “but I must say this: there is naught to be gained from destroying vampires, if we destroy ourselves, too. It would be a pity to wipe out half of Europe in the cause of attacking our oppressors.”

Edmund stared at the stout man coldly. “You talk too much,” he said. “Indeed, you talk a deal too much.”

“I beg your pardon, sire.”

Edmund hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to reassure the messenger that his anxiety was understandable, but he had learned long ago that where the business of the Fraternity was concerned, it was best to say as little as possible.

There was no way of knowing when this man would speak again of this affair, or to whom, or with what consequence.

The mechanician took up the box, making sure that he could carry it comfortably.

The rats stirred inside, scrabbling with their small clawed feet. With his free hand, Edmund made the sign of the cross again.

“God go with you,” said the messenger, with urgent sincerity.

“And with thy spirit,” replied Edmund colorlessly.

Then he left, without pausing to exchange a ritual farewell with the crone. He had no difficulty in smuggling his burden back into the Tower, by means of a gate where the guard was long practiced in the art of turning a blind eye.

When Monday came, Edmund and Noell made their way to the Lady Carmilla’s chambers. Noell had never been in such an apartment before, and it was a source of wonder to him. Edmund watched the boy’s reactions to the carpets, the wall hangings, the mirrors and ornaments, and could not help but recall the first time he had entered these chambers. Nothing had changed here, and the rooms were full of provocations to stir and sharpen his faded memories.

Younger vampires tended to change their surroundings often, addicted to novelty, as if they feared the prospect of being changeless themselves. The Lady Carmilla had long since passed beyond this phase of her career. She had grown used to changelessness, had transcended the kind of attitude to the world that permitted boredom and ennui. She had adapted herself to a new aesthetic of existence, whereby Her personal space became an extension of her own eternal sameness, and innovation was confined to tightly controlled areas of her life—including the irregular shifting of her erotic affections from one lover to another.

The sumptuousness of the lady’s table was a further source of astonishment to Noell. Silver plates and forks he had imagined, and crystal goblets, and carved decanters of wine. But the lavishness of provision for just three diners—the casual waste—was something that obviously set him aback. He had always known that he was himself a member of a privileged elite, and that by the standards of the greater world, Master Cordery and his family ate well; the revelation that there was a further order of magnitude to distinguish the private world of the real aristocracy clearly made its impact upon him.

Edmund had been very careful in preparing his dress, fetching from his closet finery that he had not put on for many years. On official occasions he was always concerned to play the part of mechanician, and dressed in order to sustain that appearance. He never appeared as a courtier, always as a functionary. Now, though, he was reverting to a kind of performance that Noell had never seen him play, and though the boy had no idea of the subtleties of his father’s performance, he clearly understood something of what was going on; he had complained acidly about the dull and plain way in which his father had made him dress.

Edmund ate and drank sparingly, and was pleased to note that Noell did likewise, obeying his father’s instructions despite the obvious temptations of the lavish provision. For a while the lady was content to exchange routine courtesies, but she came quickly enough—by her standards—to the real business of the evening.

“My cousin Girard,” she told Edmund, “is quite enraptured by your clever device.

He finds it most interesting.”

“Then I am pleased to make him a gift of it,” Edmund replied. “And I would be pleased to make another, as a gin of Your Ladyship.”

“That is not our desire,” she said coolly. “In fact, we have other matters in mind.

The archduke and his seneschal have discussed certain tasks that you might profitably carry out. Instructions will be communicated to you in due time, I have no doubt.”

“Thank you, my lady,” said Edmund.

“The ladies of the court were pleased with the drawings that I showed to them,”

said the Lady Carmilla, turning to look at Noell. “They marveled at the thought that a cupful of Thames water might contain thousands of tiny living creatures. Do you think that our bodies, too, might be the habitation of countless invisible insects?”

Noell opened his mouth to reply, because the question was addressed to him, but Edmund interrupted smoothly.

“There are creatures that may live upon our bodies,” he said, “and worms that may live within. We are told that the macrocosm reproduces in essence the microcosm of human beings; perhaps there is a small microcosm within us, where our natures are reproduced again, incalculably small. I have read…”

“I have read, Master Cordery,” she cut in, “that the illnesses that afflict humankind might be carried from person to person by means of these tiny creatures.”

“The idea that diseases were communicated from one person to another by tiny seeds was produced in antiquity,” Edmund replied, “but I do not know how such seeds might be recognized, and I think it very unlikely that the creatures we have seen in river water could possibly be of that character.”

“It is a disquieting thought,” she insisted, “that our bodies might be inhabited by creatures of which we can know nothing, and that every breath we take might be carrying into us seeds of all kinds of change, too small to be seen or tasted. It makes me feel uneasy.”

“But there is no need,” Edmund protested. “Seeds of corruptibility take root in human flesh, but yours is inviolate.”

“You know that is not so, Master Cordery,” she said levelly. “You have seen me ill yourself.”

“That was a pox that killed many humans, my lady—yet it gave to you no more than a mild fever.”

“We have reports from the imperium of Byzantium, and from the Moorish enclave, too, that there is plague in Africa, and that it has now reached the southern regions of the imperium of Caul. It is said that this plague makes little distinction between human and vampire.”

“Rumors, my lady,” said Edmund soothingly. “You know how news becomes blacker as it travels.”

The Lady Carmilla turned again to Noell, and this time addressed him by name so that there could be no opportunity for Edmund to usurp the privilege of answering her. “Are you afraid of me, Noell?” she asked.

The boy was startled, and stumbled slightly over his reply, which was in the negative.

“You must not lie to me,” she told him. “You are afraid of me, because I am a vampire. Master Cordery is a skeptic, and must have told you that vampires have less magic than is commonly credited to us, but he must also have told you that I can do you harm if I will. Would you like to be a vampire yourself, Noell?”

Noell was still confused by the correction, and hesitated over his reply, but he eventually said: “Yes, I would.”

“Of course you would,” she purred. “All humans would be vampires if they could, no matter how they might pretend when they bend the knee in church. And men can become vampires; immortality is within our gift. Because of this, we have always enjoyed the loyalty and devotion of the greater number of our human subjects. We have always rewarded that devotion in some measure. Few have joined our ranks, but the many have enjoyed centuries of order and stability. The vampires rescued Europe from a Dark Age, and as long as vampires rule, barbarism will always be held in check. Our rule has not always been kind, because we cannot tolerate defiance, but the alternative would have been far worse. Even so, there are men who would destroy us—did you know that?”

Noell did not know how to reply to this, so he simply stared, waiting for her to continue. She seemed a little impatient with his gracelessness, and Edmund deliberately let the awkward pause go on. He saw a certain advantage in allowing Noell to make a poor impression.

“There is an organization of rebels,” the Lady Carmilla went on. “A secret society, ambitious to discover the secret way by which vampires are made. They put about the idea that they would make all men immortal, but this is a lie, and foolish.

The members of this brotherhood seek power for themselves.”

The vampire lady paused to direct the clearing of one set of dishes and the bringing of another. She asked for a new wine, too. Her gaze wandered back and forth between the gauche youth and his self-assured father.

“The loyalty of your family is, of course, beyond question,” she eventually continued. “No one understands the workings of society like a mechanician, who knows well enough how forces must be balanced and how the different parts of a machine must interlock and support one another. Master Cordery knows well how the cleverness of rulers resembles the cleverness of dockmasters, do you not?”

“Indeed, I do, my lady,” replied Edmund.

There might be a way,” she said, in a strangely distant tone, “that a good mechanician might earn a conversion to vampirism.”

Edmund was wise enough not to interpret this as an offer or a promise. He accepted a measure of the new wine and said: “My lady, there are matters that it would be as well for us to discuss in private. May I send my son to his room?”

The Lady Carmilla’s eyes narrowed Just a little, but there was hardly any expression in her finely etched features. Edmund held his breath, knowing that he had forced a decision upon her that she had not intended to make so soon.

“The poor boy has not quite finished his meal,” she said.

“I think he has had enough, my lady,” Edmund countered. Noell did not disagree, and, after a brief hesitation, the lady bowed to signal her permission. Edmund asked Noell to leave, and, when he was gone, the Lady Carmilla rose from her seat and went from the dining room into an inner chamber. Edmund followed her.

“You were presumptuous, Master Cordery,” she told him.

“I was carried away, my lady. There are too many memories here.”

“The boy is mine,” she said, “if I so choose. You do know that, do you not?”

Edmund bowed.

“I did not ask you here tonight to make you witness the seduction of your son.

Nor do you think that I did. This matter that you would discuss with me—does it concern science or treason?”

“Science, my lady. As you have said yourself, my loyalty is not in question.”

Carmilla laid herself upon a sofa and indicated that Edmund should take a chair nearby. This was the antechamber to her bedroom, and the air was sweet with the odor of cosmetics.

“Speak,” she bade him.

“I believe that the archduke is afraid of what my little device might reveal,” he said. “He fears that it will expose to the eye such seeds as carry vampirism from one person to another, just as it might expose the seeds that carry disease. I think that the man who devised the instrument may have been put to death already, but I think you know well enough that a discovery once made is likely to be made again and again.

You are uncertain as to what course of action would best serve your ends, because you cannot tell whence the greater threat to your rule might come. There is the Fraternity, which is dedicated to your destruction; there is plague in Africa, from which even vampires may die, and there is the new sight, which renders visible what previously lurked unseen. Do you want my advice, Lady Carmilla?”

“Do you have any advice, Edmund?”

“Yes. Do not try to control by terror and persecution the things that are happening. Let your rule be unkind now, as it has been before, and it will open the way to destruction. Should you concede power gently, you might live for centuries yet, but if you strike out… your enemies will strike back.”

The vampire lady leaned back her head, looking at the ceiling. She contrived a small laugh.

“I cannot take advice such as that to the archduke,” she told him flatly.

“I thought not, my lady,” Edmund replied very calmly.

“You humans have your own immortality,” she complained. “Your faith promises it, and you all affirm it. Your faith tells you that you must not covet the immortality that is ours, and we do no more than agree with you when we guard it so jealously.

You should look to your Christ for fortune, not to us. I think you know well enough that we could not convert the world if we wanted to. Our magic is such that it can be used only sparingly. Are you distressed because it has never been offered to you?

Are you bitter? Are you becoming our enemy because you cannot become our kin?”

“You have nothing to fear from me, my lady,” he lied.

Then he added, not quite sure whether it was a lie or not: “I loved you faithfully. I still do.”

She sat up straight then, and reached out a hand as though to stroke his cheek, though he was too far away for her to reach.

“That is what I told the archduke,” she said, “when he suggested to me that you might be a traitor. I promised him that I could test your loyalty more keenly in my chambers than his officers in theirs. I do not think you could delude me, Edmund.

Do you?”

“No, my lady,” he replied.

“By morning,” she told him gently, “I will know whether or not you are a traitor.”

“That you will,” he assured her. “That you will, my lady.”

He woke before her, his mouth dry and his forehead burning. He was not sweating—indeed, he was possessed by a feeling of desiccation, as though the moisture were being squeezed out of his organs. His head was aching, and the light of the morning sun that streamed through the unshuttered window hurt his eyes.

He pulled himself up to a half-sitting position, pushing the coverlet back from his bare chest.

So soon! he thought. He had not expected to be consumed so quickly, but he was surprised to find that his reaction was one of relief rather than fear or regret. He had difficulty collecting his thoughts, and was perversely glad to accept that he did not need to.

He looked down at the cuts that she had made on his breast with her little silver knife; they were raw and red, and made a strange contrast with the faded scars whose crisscross pattern still engraved the story of unforgotten passions. He touched the new wounds gently with his fingers, and winced at the fiery pain.

She woke up then, and saw him inspecting the marks.

“Have you missed the knife?” she asked sleepily. “Were you hungry for its touch?”

There was no need to lie now, and there was a delicious sense of freedom in that knowledge. There was a joy in being able to face her, at last, quite naked in his thoughts as well as his flesh.

“Yes, my lady,” he said with a slight croak in his voice. “I had missed the knife.

Its touch… rekindled flames in my soul.”

She had closed her eyes again, to allow herself to wake slowly. She laughed. “It is pleasant, sometimes, to return to forsaken pastures. You can have no notion how a particular taste may stir memories. I am glad to have seen you again, in this way. I had grown quite used to you as the gray mechanician. But now…”

He laughed, as lightly as she, but the laugh turned to a cough, and something in the sound alerted her to the fact that all was not as it should be. She opened her eyes and raised his head, turning toward him.

“Why, Edmund,” she said, “you’re as pale as death!”

She reached out to touch his cheek, and snatched her hand away again as she found it unexpectedly hot and dry. A blush of confusion spread across her own features. He took her hand and held it, looking steadily into her eyes.

“Edmund,” she said softly. “What have you done?”

“I can’t be sure,” he said, “and I will not live to find out, but I have tried to kill you, my lady.”

He was pleased by the way her mouth gaped in astonishment. He watched disbelief and anxiety mingle in her expression, as though fighting for control. She did not call out for help.

“This is nonsense,” she whispered.

“Perhaps,” he admitted. “Perhaps it was also nonsense that we talked last evening.

Nonsense about treason. Why did you ask me to make the microscope, my lady, when you knew that making me a party to such a secret was as good as signing my death warrant?”

“Oh Edmund,” she said with a sigh. “You could not think that it was my own idea? I tried to protect you, Edmund, from Girard’s fears and suspicions. It was because I was your protector that I was made to bear the message. What have you done, Edmund?”

He began to reply, but the words turned into a fit of coughing.

She sat upright, wrenching her hand away from his enfeebled grip, and looked down at him as he sank back upon the pillow.

“For the love of God!” she exclaimed, as fearfully as any true believer. “It is the plague—the plague out of Africa!”

He tried to confirm her suspicion, but could do so only with a nod of his head as he fought for breath.

“But they held the Freemartin by the Essex coast for a full fortnight’s quarantine,” she protested. “There was no trace of plague aboard.”

“The disease kills men,” said Edmund in a shallow whisper. “But animals can carry it, in their blood, without dying.”

“You cannot know this!”

Edmund managed a small laugh. “My lady,” he said, “I am a member of that Fraternity that interests itself in everything that might kill a vampire. The information came to me in good time for me to arrange delivery of the rats—though when I asked for them, I had not in mind the means of using them that I eventually employed. More recent events…” Again he was forced to stop, unable to draw sufficient breath even to sustain the thin whisper.

The Lady Carmilla put her hand to her throat, swallowing as if she expected to feel evidence already of her infection.

“You would destroy me, Edmund?” she asked, as though she genuinely found it difficult to believe.

“I would destroy you all,” he told her. “I would bring disaster, turn the world upside down, to end your rule… We cannot allow you to stamp out learning itself to preserve your empire forever. Order must be fought with chaos, and chaos is come, my lady.”

When she tried to rise from the bed, he reached out to restrain her, and though there was no power left in him, she allowed herself to be checked. The coverlet fell away from her, to expose her breasts as she sat upright.

“The boy will die for this, Master Cordery,” she said. “His mother, too.”

“They’re gone,” he told her. “Noell went from your table to the custody of the society that I serve. By now they’re beyond your reach. The archduke will never catch them.”

She stared at him, and now he could see the beginnings of hate and fear in her stare.

“You came here last night to bring me poisoned blood,” she said. “In the hope that this new disease might kill even me, you condemned yourself to death. What did you do, Edmund?”

He reached out again to touch her arm, and was pleased to see her flinch and draw away: that he had become dreadful.

“Only vampires live forever,” he told her hoarsely. “But anyone may drink blood, if they have the stomach for it. I took full measure from my two sick rats… and I pray to God that the seed of this fever is raging in my blood… and in my semen, too. You, too, have received full measure, my lady… and you are in God’s hands now like any common mortal. I cannot know for sure whether you will catch the plague, or whether it will kill you, but I—an unbeliever—am not ashamed to pray.

Perhaps you could pray, too, my lady, so that we may know now the Lord favors one unbeliever over another.”

She looked down at him, her face gradually losing the expressions that had tugged at her features, becoming masklike in its steadiness.

“You could have taken our side, Edmund. I trusted you, and I could have made the archduke trust you, too. You could have become a vampire. We could have shared the centuries, you and I.”

This was dissimulation, and they both knew it. He had been her lover, and had ceased to be, and had grown older for so many years that now she remembered him as much in his son as in himself. The promises were all too obviously hollow now, and she realized that she could not even taunt him with them.

From beside the bed she took up the small silver knife that she had used to let his blood. She held it now as if it were a dagger, not a delicate instrument to be used with care and love.

“I thought you still loved me,” she told him. “I really did.”

That, at least, he thought, might be true.

He actually put his head farther back, to expose his throat to the expected thrust.

He wanted her to strike him—angrily, brutally, passionately. He had nothing more to say, and would not confirm or deny that he did still love her.

He admitted to himself now that his motives had been mixed, and that he really did not know whether it was loyalty to the Fraternity that had made him submit to this extraordinary experiment. It did not matter.

She cut his throat, and he watched her for a few long seconds while she stared at the blood gouting from the wound. When he saw her put stained fingers to her lips, knowing what she knew, he realized that after her own fashion, she still loved him.

Table of Contents

Start