Borne in Blood (39 page)
Authors: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Historical, #Horror, #Occult & Supernatural, #Guardian and Ward, #Vampires, #Nobility, #blood, #Paramours, #Switzerland
Another board fell, and then came the sound of heavy footsteps from below, and men shouting from somewhere nearby.
“No! It’s not time!” Hyacinthie swung off Hero and rushed to the top of the precarious stairs, her face set in a ferocious smile; Hero forced herself to listen intently, to remain as still as she could, until she knew who had come into the mill. “They must go away.”
“Fraulein Hyacinthie! Madame von Scharffensee! Are you here?” The voice was Herr Medoc’s. “Call out if you can hear us.”
Hero heard this and wanted to shout aloud, but she could only make a muffled cry, and wondered if she could be heard at all.
“There are stairs. Be careful going up them,” said a voice Hyacinthie did not recognize. “Some of the treads are loose, or rotten.”
“Thanks,” said Medoc, ascending.
Hyacinthie took a position where Medoc would not see her at first; she crouched low, and as his head appeared in the stairwell opening, she launched herself at him, snarling as she raised her arm to shove her knife down through his shoulder deep into his chest, leaning down hard to drive the point as far into his lung as possible. Blood spread down his jacket and he coughed wetly. Hyacinthie withdrew the knife and was rewarded with a spurting fountain that struck her face and upper body; she plunged the knife in again, this time into the base of his neck. He jerked, blood sprayed from his mouth, and he made a clumsy attempt to dislodge her from his back. She hung on as he staggered, knees collapsing and sending him face forward onto the sagging treads, where he lay, bleeding and spasming as life left him, and Hyacinthie rose, knife still in hand, face and shoulders encaramined, to confront Heller Wegbruden, who had picked up a large plank to serve as a shield against her. The metallic odor of fresh blood intensified, along with the stink of relaxed bowels.
“Hyacinthie!” Otto Gutesohnes shouted from the open doorway below. “Hyacinthie! Don’t!”
“I’ll kill you!” she shouted at the men coming into the mill. She struck out with her foot, hit the plank, and sent Wegbruden back down the stairs, not quite falling, but stumbling enough to impact the pillar at the foot of the stairs.
“Stay where you are!” Gutesohnes told her. “I’ll come get you.”
“No!” She looked around wildly. “Go away! All of you!”
Gutesohnes spoke for all of them. “I can’t do that, Hyacinthie. I have to carry Herr Medoc back to the Schloss.”
She screamed and kicked at Medoc’s corpse, then made her way up the stairs again, only to find Ragoczy, his clothes marred by moss and splinters, in the act of freeing Hero from the gear-housing. “You!” She hesitated, baffled by his presence: none of this was what she had planned. “How did you get here?”
“I climbed the outside of the mill,” he said calmly as he continued to work on Hero’s bonds. It had been a hard climb and his shoulder was sore from the effort.
“How could you? It’s steep.” Hyacinthie regarded him suspiciously.
“It was not an easy task,” he said, and bent to free her ankles, saying to Hero, “Do not try to stand. I’ll hold you.”
“You won’t,” said Hyacinthie, her fury returning. “You can’t.”
“But I can,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “If I do not help her, and soon, she will die from her wounds.”
“Yes! She will!” Hyacinthie said with renewed purpose. “She should die.” She ran at Ragoczy, knocking him away from Hero and stabbed his arm near his half-healed wound. He gasped and she was on him, gouging at his face. “You can die with her!”
Ragoczy fought off the cold ache that was spreading through his arm and shoulder; he seized her wrist in a powerful grip, then pushed her off him and wrapped his arms around her, confining her in an unbreakable grasp. “Gutesohnes!” he shouted. “Come up! Now! Bring the rope.” Blood from her face and clothes added to the ruin of his shirt and coat.
Hyacinthie struggled and twisted in Ragoczy’s effective restraint. She kicked and poked at his leg with her knife, cursing him comprehensively in terms that would have astonished her uncle to hear.
“I will not let go, no matter what you call me or where you cut me,” he said levelly. “You have done damage enough, Fraulein: you will do no more.”
“Goat-fucking scum,” she yowled, trying again to break his hold, to no avail. “I wounded you, you toad-turd!”
“Yes. You did wound me,” he said with almost no emotion; she continued to squirm, and he said, “You will not get away, you know.”
Gutesohnes swore as he did his best not to step on Medoc’s body. “There’s a lot of blood,” he warned as he emerged in the upper room; he was pale and distressed by what he saw. “Mein Gott,” he exclaimed as he caught sight of Ragoczy and Hyacinthie, and Hero, sagging against the gear-housing.
“Fraulein Hyacinthie needs to be subdued before—”
“You shall not
touch
me, you son of a syphilitic Turk,” she spat at Gutesohnes.
touch
me, you son of a syphilitic Turk,” she spat at Gutesohnes.
“—we can carry her back to the Schloss.” He increased the tightness of his clench as she poked her knife into his hip.
“Don’t!
Do not! DO NOT!
” She flung her head back and wailed in fury.
Do not! DO NOT!
” She flung her head back and wailed in fury.
“I am afraid I must, Fraulein,” said Gutesohnes, appalled.
“I will
kill
you!” Hyacinthie crowed.
kill
you!” Hyacinthie crowed.
“You had best get the knife from her,” Ragoczy recommended. “She will use it if she can.”
As if to prove this, Hyacinthie thrust her knife into his thigh. “Bleed! Why don’t you bleed?”
Gutesohnes approached hesitantly; he did not know how to confine Hyacinthie without offending her sensibilities, and although he knew it was a foolish reluctance, he found it difficult to overcome a life-time of habit. In the hope of calming her, he spoke to her as he would a startled horse, on one note, unhurrriedly. “I am going to take your knife, Fraulein Hyacinthie. Don’t do anything reckless, will you.”
For an answer she screamed and tried to lunge at him; Ragoczy held her fast.
“Comte, I don’t know what—”
“Start with the knife, and then get your rope around her feet and work your way up,” Ragoczy said.
“All right,” Gutesohnes said in a tone that was far from convinced this would work. He took a step closer and saw the knife-blade flicker as she tried to keep him at bay.
“Carefully,” Ragoczy warned him. “She will not hesitate to hurt you.”
Hyacinthie growled something nasty and stabbed Ragoczy again.
Hero, who had been observing all this as if from a distance, now gathered up as much determination as she could, and in spite of the muzziness obscuring her thoughts, she fell forward, grabbing for the knife. She felt a cut open in the web between her thumb and finger, but she held on grimly and finally jerked the knife out of Hyacinthie’s hand before crumpling onto the floor.
Gutesohnes moved in quickly and worked rapidly to tie Hyacinthie securely, in spite of her taunts and spitting. Panting with his last effort, he regarded her, aghast. “What has happened to her?”
Ragoczy shook his head. “I do not know. But whatever it is, it is deep and long-coming.” He thought back to others he had known whose sudden lapses into madness had terrified and bewildered all who saw them.
“Can anything be done?” Gutesohnes asked while Ragoczy knelt beside Hero. “For Fraulein Hyacinthie?”
“For now, we can return her to the Schloss.” He touched Hero’s neck gently, reassuring himself that her pulse still beat there. “Will you bring up the sack of medicaments from below? I must clean and bind these wounds before I can move Madame.” He did not add that her blood loss had already put her in danger.
“What of Fraulein Hyacinthie?” Gutesohnes asked, eyeing her wrestling with her bonds.
“I rely upon you and Wegbruden to carry her. I doubt she will walk on her own accord.” Ragoczy motioned to Gutesohnes to move quickly.
Hyacinthie yelled obscenities.
“I’ll be back in a minute or two. Then we’ll get Medoc off the—” With that, he picked his way down the stairs, again taking care not to touch the body, and to step around the treads made sick and sticky with blood.
“Vile! You’re all
vile
!” Hyacinthie’s wriggling over-balanced her and she fell to the floor, cursing more emphatically. “You have shit in your veins, or you would bleed,” she said, glaring at Ragoczy. “You are unnatural.”
vile
!” Hyacinthie’s wriggling over-balanced her and she fell to the floor, cursing more emphatically. “You have shit in your veins, or you would bleed,” she said, glaring at Ragoczy. “You are unnatural.”
“Some would say so.” Ragoczy glanced toward her to be sure her bonds were firm, then spoke to Hero. “As soon as Gutesohnes returns, I am going to bandage your arm and your face. We must staunch your bleeding first, so I’ll put rolled lint to help stopper the wound, and I’ll give you some of the sovereign remedy I have so that you will not have to endure the fever of infection for very long. I’ll use a salve to treat your wounds, one that will lessen the hurt and encourage proper healing.”
Hyacinthie laughed furiously. “He’ll do all that for you, and more, but you will still be scarred.” Her laughter rose, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
Hero opened her eye and focused on his face. “Will I?” she asked. “Be scarred?”
Much as he wanted to tell her something else, Ragoczy could not lie, although he softened the blow as much as he could. “Very likely.”
“Oh.” It was the answer she dreaded, and she turned her face aside so she would not have to endure the compassion she saw in his unwavering gaze.
Text of a letter from Oskar Cavelle of Halle, to the Egmond Talbot Lindenblatt, Magistrate, Yvoire, Swiss France; carried by private messenger on foot and delivered two days after it was written.
The greetings of Oskar Cavelle of Halle to the Magistrate Lindenblatt of Yvoire, on this, the 6
th
day of April, 1818.
th
day of April, 1818.
On my oath and as God may see the truth of what I say, pledged before the priest of Saint-Piere-le-Moine, who is also serving as scribe, that these are the things I have witnessed:
Eight days since I ventured up to the shepherds’ station above Boege, in order to prepare and stock it for the summer when the shepherds remain out with their flocks; as the head of the wool-workers in Halle, it is my duty to attend to the shepherds’ stations throughout our area, and to resupply these stations as such is required. The station of which I speak now is among the largest of the five we have: there is a spring there, so water is plentiful, and the shepherds’ station has been maintained there for many, many generations. When I reached the station, I saw at once that it had been occupied most of the winter. There were no foodstuffs left in the station-hut, the pens had horse-dung in them, and the bedding had been removed from the sleeping-racks inside the station-hut. I also discovered a leather bag of gun-powder, which I am sending with this account to make my account more credible.
In examining the rest of the shepherds’ station, I came upon parings from horses’ hooves in the largest pen. I would have thought the wolves would have eaten them all, as they do, but there were some that were untouched, and three horse-shoe nails as well. There were signs of horses’ chewing on the wooden fence enclosing the pen. There was also a small amount of rotted hay in the manger that clearly had not been there all winter. These various factors have led me to believe that there were outlaws in the station through part of the winter, which worries me, for they may return here again, this time not only to take supplies, but to steal sheep, or to hold the shepherds for ransom. It also means that they are likely still in the area and may be planning to strike out at our farmholds and markets as the summer comes on. That is the most disturbing possibility of all, for then everyone in the region will suffer, not just the shepherds and those of us who work with wool.
Among the items I have found around the shepherds’ station, and they were few, was a beer-stein bearing the mark of the tavern in Sacre-Sang, which I am convinced indicates that these men are likely the men who stole from their stores. It may be coincidence, or it may have been left there by one of the shepherds, not the outlaws, but it could be a significant discovery, and so I bring it to your attention.
Perhaps if the Magistrates’ Guards could be sent to scour the high valleys the criminals might be discovered and detained before they can work any more mischief, or perhaps the men of the region may be granted the right to detain any suspicious men to bring to the attention of the Magistrates’ Court. Whatever you decide, I am prepared to do my part in bringing an end to the robbers’ reign of lawlessness.
If you wish to learn more from me, send me word and allow me four days to reach Yvoire; I cannot leave my work without arranging for someone to serve in my place while I am gone. With that single reservation, I am
Yours to command
Oskar Cavelle
(his mark)
woolworker of Halle
Swiss France
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