Slave Of Dracula (28 page)

He would die himself rather than take that comfort, that trust, away.

Yet when he lay down to sleep later that morning, it was of the vampire-Mina, the voluptuous smiling
demon-Mina, that he dreamed.

***

Dr. Seward’s Diary*

27 October

No news yet of the ship we wait for …

***

“Mrs. Marshmire will meet you at Bistritz,” explained Renfield, as in the pre-dawn cold he, the
shipping-agent Ross, and the hired drivers checked the harness and wagon for its journey up to the
Borgo Pass. “She has made her own arrangements to get there, and you will find rooms for you and your
men at the Golden Krone Hotel. She is going home to her family there to rest, and to recover a little of
the tenor of her mind. Please bear with her fancies, and indulge them so far as you’re able. I assure you,
they are only fancies, and nothing of a serious nature. But it will disturb her very much if her will is
crossed.”

The slender, graying Virginian smiled reminiscently. “I did have an aunt that took it in her head that my
daddy’s roses were the re-born souls of the knights and ladies of Camelot,” he re-marked. “When I was
about five, she took me out and intro-duced me to Sir Galahad and Sir Bors and Morgan le Fay, and
told me all kinds of tales about their deeds on Earth before they became rose-bushes. It was kind of
sweet, really.”

Renfield smiled. Such conduct would hardly have raised an eyebrow at Rushbrook. “Exactly,” he said.
“I am glad and grateful that you understand.” He gave the man fifty pounds for expenses, having the head
shipping-agent’s assurance that in more than twenty years Ross’s accounts had never showed so much as
a penny’s discrepancy; he had learned, in nearly twenty years in the India trade, to read men well.

“Please bear in mind,” he added, “that this is a strange coun-try, and Mrs. Marshmire comes from a
very old family that is both eccentric and a little dangerous. In particular watch out for her sisters, should
you encounter them. My wife will do all she can to assure your safety, once you get among the Szgany
gyp-sies that owe them alliegence, but I need hardly tell you to watch your backs and not take any
foolish risks.”

“Won’t be the first time I’ve been up the country in these parts,” replied the Virginian, unperturbed. He
pulled closer about him the sheepskin coat he wore, for once away from the warmth of the Black Sea the
air had grown steadily colder, and the mountains before them were thick with clouds that smelled of
snow. “And I’ll do my possible to make sure it won’t be the last. Thanks for your honesty with me, sir.”

Not precisely honesty, reflected Renfield, watching the lights of the wagon dwindle into the icy iron
twilight of the road out of town. But how many battles would you have ridden into, during your
State’s rebellion against the Federals, had your Gen-eral Lee been completely honest with you
about the politics, bribery, and power-struggles that led up to the war?

He turned his steps, not back into the yard of the modest inn where they’d spent the night, but toward
the railway station, from which the train would leave for Galatz sometime before noon if he were lucky.
He ached all over, from days without rest, pretending to be mortal and human for Ross’s benefit and
living only for the time when he could seep as mist through the holes in his coffin in the baggage-car, and
rest in his native earth.

The thought that he was helpless, through the two days’ rat-tling journey from Varna, had filled him with
dread and had in-creased his hunger five-fold. A dozen times he’d had to leave the compartment lest the
craving for blood overcome him and he at-tack Ross or the two hired drivers. Through the night, lying in
his earth-box, he had whispered to Nomie as she lay awake in hers, reassuring her and being reassured.
It was good beyond measure not to be alone.

A look at the roads in this part of the world, glimpsed through the train windows during those two
endless days playing cards with his hirelings, had demonstrated to Renfield at least why the Count had
chosen to be conveyed back to his Castle by water in-stead of by land. Once past Bucharest and into
the rising hinter-lands, the roads deteriorated sharply, sometimes to little more than muddy tracks, and as
the land rose toward the Carpathi-ans, the trackless forest crowded in many places down to the road’s
edge.

On running water, the Count might be helpless, reflected Ren-field, as he slipped into the open
baggage-shed past the dozing guard, but there were fewer robbers on the water, and the direc tion of
their attack was perforce more controlled. Having jour-neyed now so far from his native earth, he felt a
deep and intense sympathy for the Count’s obsessive precautions. Only the knowl-edge that his
henchmen were skeptics-American and German-had given him the confidence to travel with them.
Slovaks who’d grown up believing in vampires, or Englishmen who’d had their existence unarguably
demonstrated to them, might have spotted him for one at once. And in daylight he was helpless.

As it was, he found it difficult to melt into mists, to flow into the earth-box labeled, R.M.
R E N F I E L D - H A P G O O D ‘ S - V A R N A . Ex-haustion seemed to have turned his Un-Dead flesh to
lead. He cast a longing eye at the snoring guard, but knew it was too dan-gerous. Veresti was a small
enough town that those who found an exsanguinated corpse would have no doubt in which direc-tion to
look for the killer. A box full of earth with small holes in its lid would be the first they’d open.

Nomie, thought Renfield, as he seeped finally through into the comforting darkness, Nomie be safe!

For a moment their minds touched, like hands questing for comfort in darkness. He saw her before
him, in dreaming as she had looked in life, a sweet slender golden child in the flowing gauzes and striped
satin jacket of that most graceful of eras in which she’d lived.

And in the distance, as if through her eyes, he saw the Cas-tle Dracula, brooding half-ruined on the
shoulder of cliff above the Borgo Pass. But it was shelter and safety to her, no matter what memories it
held or what future; and there she could rest. In his mind he sang to her Wotan’s song from Das
Rheingold, the most beautiful piece of music Wagner ever wrote. The most beautiful, in its soul-deep
soaring peace, of all the music of the earth:

“The evening beams

O f the sun’s eye sumptuously gild

Those walls! …

Near is night;

From envy and grudge

It shelters us now.

I greet this place!

Secure against horror and fear.

Come with me, Lady:

In Valhalla dwell with me. “

Be safe, my child, my friend, he thought. I have done for you what I can.

***

R.M.R.’s notes

Train, Veresti to Galatz

28 October

4 chickens

What a thing it is to travel on a country train! There remain only two things left for me to do.

With luck, Van Helsing and his companions will still be in Galatz when I arrive, depending on how well

the Count has cov-ered his tracks. Money can buy silence, if one knows where to shop. But I suspect
that Dracula does not.

The Count is a boyar, a nobleman, like the great princes of India whom for twenty years I watched
quite ordinary British middlemen bilk daily. His approach is, like theirs, a simple one: sword in one hand,
a large pile of gold in the other. And no idea about how to finesse a believable story or which strings of
influ-ence to pull.

Godalming is rich. Quincey Morris is rich. Any silence the Count can buy, they can undoubtedly
purchase retail at a very small mark-up. Van Helsing speaks enough Russian and Ro manian that they can
probably hire whatever vehicles they need for pursuit. If they guess, or are informed, this will probably be
a vessel of some kind to pursue up-river with possibly outriders following along the shore. At a guess,
they shall leave one of their number in Galatz with Mrs. Harker, and that one probably Seward, who is
less accustomed to rough-and-tumble work than Morris. Harker has at least been to Castle Dracula, and
his ex-perience might be of value if they get that close to the Borgo Pass; besides, I cannot see him letting
himself be done out of the kill.

A pity, for I like Seward and trust him. Nevertheless, Go-dalming, Morris, and Van Helsing all met me
at the asylum–what a long time ago that seems! ‘They will recognize me, and Van Helsing will certainly
understand my request.

But I smile at my own foolishness even as I write these words. With Godalming and Harker of the
party, I won’t even be put to the momentary embarassment of explaining myself. They will slaughter me at
sight.

What a deep sense of happiness that anticipation brings me, as I settle for sleep, a stranger in a strange
land, in the comfort of my native earth!

Jonathan Harker’s Journal*

30 October-night

I am writing this in the light from the furnace door of the steam-launch: Lord Godalming is firing up. His
is an experienced hand at the work, as he has had for years a launch of his own on the Thames …
Regarding our plans, we finally decided that Mina’s guess was correct, and that if any waterway was
chosen for the Count’s escape back to his castle, the Sereth, and then the Bistrizia at its junction, would
be the one …

Lord Godalming tells me to sleep for n while, as it is enough for the present for one to be on watch. But
I cannot sleep-how can I with the terrible danger hanging over my darling … My only comfort is that we
are in the hands of God …

We seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways; into a whole world of dark and
dreadful things. Godalm-ing is shutting the furnace door.

***

“Not what you’d call a promising lot.” Seward surveyed the six horses assembled in the livery stable
yard. The best the town has to offer, the stableman had assured Quincey, and if that were indeed the
case, Seward reflected, his heart bled for anyone in Varna who wanted to get anywhere in a hurry or in
any kind of style.

“You by any chance referrin’ to them banditos we just en-listed?” Quincey gestured with an
eyebrow-he was the only man Seward had ever seen who could do such a thing-to the two Romanian
grooms the Vice Consul’s chief clerk had recom-mended to Godalming on the strength of the fact that
one of them, Chernak, allegedly spoke English and the other, Nagy, allegedly spoke what was alleged to
be French, though you couldn’t prove it by Seward.

And Seward had to admit that the scrubby, shaggy, under-sized horses did have a slightly more
wholesome aspect than the men.

The thought of trusting his life to either group made him queasy.

Still, he went over to the two grooms and explained-with the stableman’s questionable help—what he
wanted of them: ride fast, rest seldom, change saddles when necessary to the remounts who’d carry the
provisions. The expressions on their faces were hugely reminiscent of that worn by Mary the parlor-maid
at Rush-brook House when she was in the process of hopelessly mis-understanding his instructions about
rotating household linens or setting the table when Sir Ambrose Poole came for Sunday tea. The
recollection filled Seward with a curious sense of deep isolation, as if the Superintendant of Rushbrook
House, who’d conscientiously recorded entries concerning every patient in his daily phonographic log and
who’d dealt patiently with the Hen-nesseys and Lady Broughs and Ambrose Pooles of the world, were

someone else entirely from the man who stood here now in the stable yard of a Black Sea town, trying to
hire servitors in grammar-school French for–

For what?

For the pursuit of a monstrosity that the Superintendant of Rushbrook House, back in August, would
never have be-lieved in.

For the vengeance he would wreak, on the thing that had first dishonored poor beautiful Lucy, and then
had taken her life. And after that vengeance, what?

“Voars cornprenez?” he asked, and Chernak and Nagy re-garded him with blank and total
incomprehension before they both nodded vigorously.

I’ve come four and a half months and over a thousand miles and I feel like I’m back where I was
explaining about getting supper on the table on time.

Which it wasn’t, of course.

Renfield, he thought, as the two grooms turned away and went to gather their own bedrolls from the
corner of the courtyard. Supper didn’t get on the table because Renfield es-caped.

As if the name were a trigger to some obscure irritation of his nerves, for an instant a sense of horrified
enlightenment flooded into his heart-Dear God, Renfield!-and then blurred away al-most immediately
into the cloudy sensation of a dream.

I dreamed about Renfield, he thought, his mind groping at what felt like an almost palpable barrier of
oblivion. Dreamed about him on the train. Well-dressed, well-groomed, soft-spoken, sane.

He said … He said …

“They understand?” Quincey loomed up out of dark and torchlight beside him. The light of the wasting
moon wickered through the breaking clouds, and though it was only a little af-ter suppertime, it felt later.

Seward sighed. “Not a solitary thing.”

The Texan spit a stream of tobacco-juice into the moist muck of gravel and hay underfoot. “Can’t be
worse than the Hakkas we hired in Singapore, and that worked out all right.”

Looking up into his tall friend’s face, Seward felt again that great sense of distance, not from Quincey
himself-that friend with whom he’d traveled three-quarters of the way around the world-but from
Quincey’s thoughts and heart. It occurred to him that since the horrible afternoon in Hampstead
Ceme-tery, when they’d driven a stake through Lucy’s heart, when they’d cut off her head and stuffed her
mouth with garlic as if they were superstitious savages and she some ritual beast, neither he, nor Art, nor
Quincey had spoken one word to one another of what they’d done, or what they’d felt. All the way
across the Channel and across the continent of Europe, Art had lapsed again and again into terrible
silences, staring out the windows of trains or hotels struggling against tears, hand over his mouth and the
muscles standing out on his temples with the tension of his jaws. At such times Seward, or Quincey,
would sometimes drop a hand to his shoulder, or grip his arm in passing.