Anno Dracula (42 page)

‘He still won’t talk,’ Godalming told the
nosferatu
. ‘Stubborn fellow. He’ll rot here, I suppose.’

Orlok’s rat-shark-rabbit teeth scraped his lower lip, the nearest he could manage to a smile. Godalming did not envy any prisoner entrusted to the care of this creature.

The Yeoman Warder escorted him up to the main gate. The skies above the Tower were lightening. Godalming still trembled with the sustenance he had taken from Helena. He had the urge to run home, or to dive under Traitor’s Gate and swim.

‘Where are the ravens?’ he asked.

The Yeoman Warder shrugged. ‘Gone, sir. So they say.’

H
is house was interesting, his books and pictures confirming her intuitions. In his library, she found a reading desk piled with volumes, many with places marked. His interests were eclectic; currently, he was absorbed by
A Modern Apostle, and Other Poems
by Constance Naden,
After London
by Richard Jefferies,
The True History of the World
by Lucian de Terre,
Essays on the Endowment of Education
by Mark Pattison,
Science of Ethics
by Leslie Stephen and
The Unseen Universe
by Peter Guthrie Tait. Among his books, Geneviève found framed photographs of Pamela, a strong-faced woman with a pre-Raphaelite cloud of hair. In pictures, Charles’s wife was always frozen in sunlight, at ease in her stillness while others in her group posed stiffly.

She found pen and ink on a stand and considered leaving a note. With the pen in her hand, she could not think of anything she needed to say. Charles would wake up and find her gone but she had no excuses to make. He knew about being bound by duty. Finally she just wrote that she would be at the Hall this evening. She assumed he’d return to Whitechapel and that he would look in on her. Then they might have to talk. After a moment, she signed the note, ‘love,
Geneviève’, the accent a tiny flick above her flowing signature. Love was all very well; it was the talking about it that enervated her.

On the third attempt, Geneviève found a cabman willing to take an unescorted vampire girl from Chelsea to Whitechapel. Her destination might not be outside the Four-Mile Radius, that arbitrary circle beyond which hansom cabs were not obliged to venture, but cabbies often had to be overpaid to discharge duties which lay in that Easterly direction.

En route
, lulled by the gentle trundle of the wheels and her sense of satisfied repletion, she tried not to think about Charles and the future. By now she had suffered enough involvements to guess accurately what they could expect of life together. Charles was in his middle thirties. She would stay sixteen, unchanged. In five or ten years, she would seem his daughter. In thirty or forty, he would be dead; especially if she continued to feed off him. Like many vampires, she had, with the insistent complicity of her victims, destroyed those about whom she cared deeply. An alternative would be to turn him; as his mother-in-darkness, she would nurture him into a new life, finally losing him to the wider world as all parents must lose their children.

They crossed the river. And the city became noisier, more cramped, more populated.

There were vampire couples, even vampire families, but she thought them unhealthy. After centuries together, they tended to meld into one creature with two or more bodies, leeching off each other so much that they lost their original individualities. If anything, their reputation for extreme cruelty and ruthlessness was worse than that of the worst of the un-dead outlaws.

It was a cold, drab morning. They were well into November, past
Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes’ Night, neither much celebrated this year. The fog was so thick that the sun did not penetrate down to the streets. The cab made slow progress.

This time, the world was truly different. Vampires were no longer secret things. She and Charles would not be unique, hardly even out of the ordinary. Their little love must be playing out in a thousand variations up and down the country. Vlad Tepes had not bothered to think through the implications of his rise to power. Alexander-like, he cut the knot; loose ends fell where they might, without any guidance or judgement.

Last night, with Charles, it had been more than feeding. Despite her worries, she remained elated by his blood. She could still taste him, still feel him inside.

The cabby opened his trap and told her they were in Commercial Street.

H
e did not intend to roll up in a hansom and saunter about the vilest hole in London as if taking a constitutional in Piccadilly. Not that any driver would dare venture into the Old Jago, for fear his brass would be tarnished, his fare stolen and his horse exsanguinated. The last time Godalming had been in Whitechapel, dogging Sir Charles’s heels, he had gathered how teeming the quarter was. It might take weeks of patient work to find his Sergeant but find the man he would. With Mackenzie dead and Kostaki imprisoned, he had no rivals on this track. Only he knew the face of the quarry.

As he strolled up Commercial Street, Godalming whistled ‘The Ghost’s High Noon’, from
Ruddigore.
Not politically a sound tune for an intimate of Lord Ruthven, it was hard to work out of the head. Besides, when he had unshakable evidence that the Diogenes Club conspired against the Prince Consort, he would be forgiven anything. His long-ago warm association with Van Helsing would be wiped from the record. He could name his own position. Arthur Holmwood was on his way up.

His nocturnal vision had improved markedly. The entire quality of his perceptions shifted with each night. The fog that shrouded the
people on the street was to him merely a faint fuzziness. He could distinguish an infinite variety of tiny sounds, scents and tastes.

Even if Ruthven lived forever, it was unlikely he could keep eternally on the right side of the Prince Consort. He was too temperamental for his position. Eventually, he would fall from grace. When that happened, Godalming would be in a position to dissociate himself from his patron. Perhaps even to replace him.

Some time tonight, he must feed. His appetites grew with the increase of his sensitivities. What was once a fumbling business – wrestling some tart before ripping into her with swollen, painful teeth – became easier as he found himself more able to impose his will upon the warm. He merely had to issue mental orders to his chosen conquest and she would come to him, baring her neck for his satisfaction. It was smooth and peculiarly delightful. His approach became delicate and he was able more to relish the pleasures of feeding.

It was time he made more vampires, like Penelope Churchward. He would need concubines, catspaws, maidservants. Each powerful elder had his retinue, adoring get who served their master’s interests. For the first time, he wondered what had happened to the new-born Penny. She had stolen a suit of his clothes. He must seek her out and bend her to his purpose.

‘Art?’ came an educated girl’s voice. ‘I say, it’s Lord Godalming, isn’t it?’

He looked at the girl and his thoughts crawled down. It was like being dragged from a mountain peak into a muddy trough; forced to consider petty pursuits after having had the prospect of things colossal.

‘Miss Reed,’ he purred, ‘how pleasant to find you.’

Kate Reed looked at him strangely, almost shocked. He considered
feeding off her, but was not ready. Vampire blood was heady. Only true elders could survive a diet of the stuff, exhorting tribute from their vassals. He was not yet strong enough, but Kate might make a suitable vassal in the new century. Doubtless weak, she could be easily shaped into a pliable devotee.

The girl looked taken aback; disgust leaked out of her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I see I was mistaken.’

Since turning, she had changed. Godalming had badly underestimated Kate Reed. She had found him entirely transparent. His thoughts had been written on his face, or so boldly in his head that even a poor new-born could distinguish them. He would have to be more careful. The girl retreated swiftly, almost running. She would not welcome his attentions in the near future. Still, he had time. Eventually, he would claim her. He would make a project of it.

He resumed his whistling, but the tune was shrill and erratic to his own ears. With considerable irritation, he realised Kate Reed had rattled him. He was so taken with his new abilities and perceptions that he had neglected the mask that had been a part of him long before he left his warm days behind. He had let another see him as he truly was, which was unforgivable. His father, his human father, would have thrashed him soundly for showing his hand in such a blatant fashion.

He wanted to be among people, hidden in a crowd. There was a public house, the Ten Bells, on the other side of the road. He might find a woman there. He crossed the street, dodging out of the path of a cart, and pushed into the pub...

... there were a few warm folks scattered in the crowd, but mostly the Ten Bells was a vampire pub. Godalming resisted the meagre
temptations of a pint of pig’s blood, but found company with a pair of new-born whores. To everyone but his quarry, he would seem a slumming murgatroyd from the West End. He wore his frilliest shirt and his tightest jacket, and looked the part of a bloodthirsty, empty-headed poseur.

The whores were called Nell and Marie Jeanette; they were lightly sozzled on gin and pig’s blood. Nell was remarkably hirsute with a striking faceload of stiff red bristles. Marie Jeanette was Irish with absurd pretensions and new clothes. Marie Jeanette, who was almost pretty, had an appointment later, presumably with a deep-pocketed admirer. She was just passing the time but Nell was seriously on the prowl and took elaborate care to seem intrigued, often commenting on his general good appearance and obvious sharpness. He did his best to seem a drunken, affected idiot.

Nell was outlining a supposedly tempting scheme, involving a warm third party. She was proposing that they get together in her nearby room, and he could have his pleasure of the two of them, satisfying all his interests in one bed. She kept rubbing her whiskered cheek against him, letting him sniff her animal musk.

‘Yer has to rub me the right way, Artie,’ she said, smoothing the fur on her arm, then ruffling it up. ‘Depending on what yer likes.’

He looked across the pub and saw a man at the bar, back to the room. Godalming, with a rush of excitement,
knew
. He pressed close to Nell’s neck, making sure his face was in shadow. A pint of pig in his hand, the man turned, one heel up on the bar-rail, and looked about him. It was the Sergeant. He took a deep draught of his drink, then wiped the gory residue out of his moustache with the back of his hand. He was in a check suit not a constable’s uniform, but there was no mistaking him.

‘That man at the bar,’ he said, ‘with the extravagant moustache. Do you know him? Don’t be obvious about looking.’

If Nell noticed he was suddenly twice as intelligent and half as interested in her, she accepted the change without complaint. She was used to the requirements of her gentleman friends. Like a good little spy, she took a neatly surreptitious look and whispered to him, ‘He’s a regular. Danny Dravot.’

The name meant nothing but hearing it gave him a ticklish thrill in his stomach. His quarry had a face and a name. Dravot was almost in Godalming’s power.

‘I thought I might have known him in the army,’ he said.

‘He was in India, I hears. Or maybe Afghanistan.’

‘A sergeant, I’ll wager.’

‘Some does call him that.’

Marie Jeanette was listening to them. She must be feeling left out, awaiting her tardy suitor.

‘Does yer want me to invite him over,’ Nell asked.

Godalming looked at Dravot’s glittering red eyes. Though sharp and clever, they did not seem to notice him.

‘No,’ he told the whore. ‘He’s not the fellow I thought he was.’

Dravot finished his pint and left the Ten Bells. Godalming let him get entirely out and stood up, leaving the two whores cold. They would be puzzled but go on to the next customer. Whores were no threat.