Lord of the Vampires (17 page)

Yet when alone in my presence, he sometimes permits me glimpses of an immensely brilliant and knowledgeable occultist beneath the fools mask. He has never labelled it as occultism, of course; this is what I have gleaned. But now I remember a long-ago holiday in Amsterdam, when I inadvertently wandered into his private library and discovered inside a closed cabinet a treasure-trove of treatises on magic
The Greater Key of Solomon, The Goetia
, the
Sepher Yetzirah
, and
A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Doctor Dee and Some Spirits
.

This is the man I met again today, though he had successfully adopted the guise of a not-so-educated country priest. But I saw beneath the simple guilelessness that veiled the wide blue eyes, beneath the cheerful expression. He looks older than when I last saw him; more of the red-gold hairs have faded to white, and he, like me, has lost weight and looks drawn about the cheeks and jaw. Despite it all, he radiates even more of that impressive internal strength, that deep sense of wisdom and calm even the fiercest tempest cannot shakeparadoxically making him the
real
, interior man beneath the costume of flesh seem far
younger
than when we last met.

But here, I continued, gesturing towards the entry. We both headed for the open door, I reaching as if to take the motionless woman in his arms. As expected, he refused any aid. Lets go inside at once and relieve you of your burden. I will call the attendant to carry her

No! The sharpness of his reply made me jerk my head to stare at him at once. More mildly, he added, No attendants yet. The time may come when she requires one, but today, let us maintain as much privacy as we can.

I agreed, and told him I would wait to ring Thomas to fetch the bags until both he and his patient were settled into their rooms, then have the bags left outside the cell doors to guarantee their anonymity. Once we had stepped over the threshold, I convinced him to let go of his jealously guarded prize and deposit her in a high-backed wheelchair. It is the newest model, specially equipped with restraints for the more violent patients. As he tucked her with tender solicitousness into the chair and paused to regard the straps, I commented softly, I doubt she will need those.

Not at the moment. The jovial mask slipped again for an instant, no more. This time I saw a darkly troubled man, one who bore the weight of all the world upon his soul. But the time may come soon. We must remain alert.

He insisted upon pushing the chair himself. I led him directly to the lift (a necessity here; dragging a violent patient upstairs or down is dangerous work). In the absolute privacy of the lift, I awaited an explanation of his secret mission, but none came. So I made small talk and inquired after his mother, a true English gentlewoman whom I have met and come to fondly admire.

She is dying, he said, in his blunt, matter-of-fact Dutch manner. Ulcerated tumour of the right breast. She has had it more than a year, but her time is short now; it affects her brain. My concern is that she might die while I am away.

I put a hand upon his shoulder. I have rarely touched him other than to shake his hand in greeting or parting, and he acknowledged the gesture with a grateful glance. (Does anyone like to shake hands more than his countrymen?) I am sorrier than words can say. She was so very kind to me when you both came to visit; I came to think of her as my own grandmother, since I never knew either of mine.

At that last comment, he let out a soft gasp as if struck in the stomach, and looked away; I think emotion had finally overwhelmed him. After a moment of silence, he said, I do not mean to burden you, friend John, with my own difficulties. You have borne more than your share in your brief life. You are too young to have experienced so much loss; too young. At my age, it is to be expected.

He referred, of course, to the death of my father some sixteen years ago, and my mother three years ago this fall. The family estate is too vast and lonely for a single heir to occupy, so now 1 share it with my patients.

At last we arrived at the two cells closest to my own bedchamber, which I prefer to keep unoccupied unless the asylum is filled to capacity. As we have only three resident patients at present, one of whom I expect to release shortly, the closest inmate was a good half-dozen cells away. Van Helsing will have his privacy.

Here we are, I said, unlocking and then flinging open the doors to each room so that the professor could peer in. One cell was windowless and contained the standard furnishings: bed, night-stand, and a gas lamp mounted so high upon the wall that it could be turned on or off only by an attendant with a special contrivance attached to a long broom handle. The other I had personally prepared for the professor. The barred window looked directly down into the flower garden (which is particularly bright and lush this summer), and I had covered the bed with a quilt sewn by Mother. I had added, too, a writing-table and comfortable chair which faced the window, and beside the unreachable gas lamp had left a long pole so that the professor could control the light as he wished.

I removed two keys from the jailers ring on my belt and handed them to him. This is yours and this is the key to the ladys chamber.

Ah, he said, gazing down at them and then back up at the rooms. Thisand he gestured at the sunnier, more cheerful room I had fixed for himI will let her have. The other is suitable for me. And before I could protest, he wheeled her past me into the cell, lifted her from the wheel-chair, and deposited her in the more comfortable seat looking out onto the garden. It was rather frustrating, for if the lady was indeed catatonic, the view would be quite wasted, and I was not at all happy leaving Mothers heirloom quilt in the safekeeping of a madwoman.

I followed them inside, wondering whether it would be too rude to speak up, when the professor reached down and removed his patients hat and veil.

I drew in a breath. The woman was absolute skin and bones, but at the same time young and unnaturally pretty, with huge dark eyes and full dark hair coiled at the nape of her neck. And yet

I blinked, and for a heartbeat found myself looking at a woman Van Helsings age, one with streaks of grey in her hair and crows-feet framing her eyes.

Another blink, and the lady was again young and beautiful, her hair a rich brown-black without a trace of silver. It was as if her youth was a veil which had lifted for an instant, then quickly lowered, masking the real woman beneath. The dreadful soulless vacancy in those half-closed, downcast eyes could not be hidden; yet beneath it I sensed a fathomless grief.

I looked up at last to find the professor studying me, his gold-and-silver brows furrowed intently. When our gazes methis knowing, mine questioninghe said, You are a sensitive, John. You see beneath the facade, yes?

I was too taken aback to do anything but gesture my assent. Did I understand him aright? Was this a metaphysical case he had brought me, this strange, sad woman with the aged yet ageless face? The notion in itself was compelling enough. Still, there was more that drew me to her, some odd sense of kinshipa feeling that perhaps we two shared some secret sorrow.

To my disappointment, he revealed no more, but said, And now we leave her to rest. I shall require some time alone with her at sunset. At once he bent down onto one knee at her feet, like a gentleman proposing to a lady (the painful memory of Lucy again!). Gently, he lifted her limp gloved hand from her lap; this he pressed to his lips with such pure, loving devotion that I was honestly shocked. Their relationship was clearly more than doctor and patient.

So piqued was my curiosity that when we exited and the professor shut and locked the thick door behind us, I demanded outright: Who is she?

He looked ahead into the distance and sighed. Gerda Van Helsing. My wife.

I could not have been more astonished. I had known the professor for more than seven years, since I first arrived at university at the tender age of fifteen. A difficult situation: my first time away from home, and I so much younger than the other lads that I was constantly the butt of jokes and taunting. (Nor did it help that I looked far younger than my actual age.) Only the professor looked beyond my immaturity, at my talents, and took me under his paternal and professional wing.

We were very close, perhaps because I had lost Papa early on, and I was grateful to find a father-substitute; of course, there was also the fact that we shared a passion for medicine, and that he saw much of himself in me. He, too, was a boy genius who had taken his medical degree at a very early age; thus he encouraged me greatly to pursue my medical studies, though I was surrounded by men almost ten years my senior. (The professor is also licensed to practice law in Holland, but he ruefully admits that was a mistake.)

Yet during our years of associationand during my brief one-day visit to his homeI have never heard him (or his mother, for that matter) speak of family or wife. In fact, I had always assumed he was a bachelor. I had never asked for a tour of his bedchamber.

Professor, I said, in a low voice, although we were quite alone and beyond anyones earshot, what is going on? I get the perception that your wifes malady is more than mere catatonia. Something else is involved; am I wrong to think it is metaphysical? Mrs. Van Helsing seems so young yet I believe that she is not, that it is all illusion.

He released a sigh of infinite weariness, and all his cheeriness fled for good. We are both men of science, John, trained to rely on our eyes and our logic to explain how the world operates. But there are instances where modern science fails utterly. We must adapt and, like Democritus when he postulated the atom, must accept that there is more to this universe than eye can see or brain can fathom. He paused, and seemed to consider whether or not to tell me everything all at once. To my disappointment, he apparently opted for the latter. In time, I will explain more. But sunset will come in less than two hours; before that time, I must tend to Gerda.

First, I said, you must have a proper tea. And so I led him off and we ate together. He seemed deeply preoccupied, and spoke no more of his wife or mother, so I did not press. Afterwards, he disappeared into the garden cell and did not emerge until supper. Again, he was uncharacteristically tight-lipped about his purpose in being here.

Cannot sleep tonight, and so I have risen to record this: My mind keeps returning to the image of Mrs. Van Helsings face. Why does it haunt me so?

* * *

The Diary of Abraham Van Helsing

2 JULY.

An uneventful journey, and both Gerda and I passed a quiet night. Unfortunately, I missed my opportunity yesterday for a successful hypnotic session with her we were both travelling at the time she was most receptive, and when I returned to her later in the afternoon, she would not speak.

How strange to indulge in the luxury of sleeping at night! First, I carefully secured each cellput a crucifix over each door, and one over Gerdas window, in addition to a small medallion of Saint George. And of course, there is the cross around her neckon a thick chain like mine, that neither she nor an attacker can easily break.

For the first time in many nights, I slept soundly. The realisation that the worst had already happenedthat Vlad and Zsuzsanna had grown suddenly stronger and escaped the castlewas oddly calming. I had nothing more to worry about.

Except for John; he has always been like his mother, a sensitive psychic. When he stared at her face-to-face for the first time yesterday, I feared that he had indeed surmised the truthand that I had made a fatal mistake in bringing Gerda here.

For I have worked all my life to spare the boy pain, to protect him from the Impalers attentions. I wanted him to have a normal life, the life I and all my ancestors could not have, the life our sweet little Jan was so cruelly denied.

(And how horrified and moved I was to hear that his adoptive parents bestowed on him the English version of his dead brothers name: John.)

No one knows but meand Mama, who took the infant with her to London and gave it to the best and kindest people she knew, who had long been denied children. They were never told the truth of the childs origin. Even poor Gerda does not know of his existence, for during her pregnancy and delivery she was quite unaware of her bodys condition, and I worked hard to keep this knowledge from Zsuzsanna and Vlad.

Have I succeeded? I do not know; the question will be answered soon. I agonised long over whether to come here and expose him to dangerbut
not
to come and watch over him might be even more perilous. He is too close to London now that Vlad is headed here. My only link to the vampires is through my poor wife, who tells me little; how else can I be sure that John is safe, and that Vlad and Zsuzsanna have not learned somehow of his existence?

But yesterday, when I saw him peer profile-to-profile into his mothers face, I was horrified: How stupid I have been to think that John, psychically sensitive, would not know he was staring directly into a genetic mirror? The resemblance between them is that marked: same nose, same eyes and chin, same colouring. Yet in my desperate haste I had failed to consider this problem.

Any harm that comes to him is entirely my fault. I am contemplating departurefor his sake.

At dawn this morning, an ominous sign from Gerda. Under hypnosis, her mood was gay and chatty. To the question Where are you now? she replied, Moving.

This confused me; the day before, she had radiated passionate fury and had sworn, He has left! The bastard has left! Of this she would say no more, except to describe the sight of large, sturdy wagons outside the castle. I took this to mean that Vlad had abandoned Zsuzsanna.

But today, the news is changed. Moving, Gerda says. I hear rattling and the snorts of horses. Zsuzsanna was riding in her coffin in one of the large wagons, I assumed. Yet, to my surprise, there followed: A bright, sunny morning; I had forgotten how beautiful the countryside is in summer. I am sad to leave my home forever, but at the same time, I am overjoyed!