The Falstaff Vampire Files (13 page)

“Really?” Bram chuckled a little, I could feel his whole body respond to the idea. He looked down at me. “He did that to a woman in a restaurant?”

“Well, she was definitely willing and eager. She made a lot more noise than Vi. And whatever he did to her appeared to involve removing her panties, because he had them in his pocket when we got to the car.”

I glanced over at Sir John, and looked away immediately when I saw how Vi was moving slowly, ecstatically, in his embrace. I turned back, looking up into Bram’s eyes.

“And your panties, were they missing when you got home?”

I laughed a little giddily, then for some reason I remembered Sir John talking about drinking men’s as well as women’s. Lust was here, and I was totally confused. “I’m sorry. All this sensuality, I think it’s a vampire thing. I realize that you’re—one of Larry’s friends.”

“Yes.” Bram reached out a tentative hand and touched my hair, then he froze. “What?” Anger rose up to replace the lust in his eyes—well, not entirely. “Because I stayed at Larry’s house you thought I was gay?”

“Uh—”

He turned aside with a harsh bark of laughter. The tide of passion receded for a moment. “I can’t believe this. In supposedly enlightened San Francisco.”

Now I was blushing from embarrassment. “Bram, I apologize. In my situation, a widowed older fat woman, it’s safest to assume that attractive men in a gay setting are gay, until proven otherwise.”

The “attractive” part brought him back to look at me. “So you want proof, eh?”

“I just got rejected pretty brutally,” I whispered.

“I’m not about to reject you.” He took my hand and led me over to the sofa. We sat down together, trying mightily to ignore the moans and sighs coming from the other end of the room.

Bram pulled me close enough to kiss, but instead he murmured, “This is the worst day of my life. I’ve always wanted to meet a real vampire—not that I thought they existed—well, not since age 12 or so. But I finally meet one and he laughs at my vampire kit.”

For a moment we just sat breathing and looking into each other’s eyes. He reached out and stroked my hair. “Now I meet a woman who arouses me on every level and you say you think I’m gay. Open your eyes and look. You must be able to tell that I really like you. All you had to do is call—at an ungodly hour, I might say—and I came running.”

“I liked you from the moment I saw you.” I put a hand on his arm in apology, somehow couldn’t make myself move it, enjoying the feel of him through his shirt. “Oh. I think it’s a pretty good night.”

“It’s improving by the minute.” He slipped both arms around me and pulled me close in a passionate kiss. No flirting. No circling around to building up anticipation. Even young impetuous Hal and I had teased back and forth for a little while before jumping on each other.

But sensuality hung in the air like incense smoke, and the entire room seemed to be raw and throbbing with lust. Bram and I began caressing and kissing each other as if we had been waiting months for the opportunity. Our kisses grew deeper and more intense until a scream from the other side of the room made both of us break away and look over.

Vi struggled out of Sir John’s embrace, not reluctantly, but dreamily, as he lifted his face away from her neck and cast blank eyes over us. The expression on Vi’s face was dreamy and dazed. Two small puncture wounds glittered on her neck like rubies. I looked away as Sir John leaned down to lick the last drop of blood from the rapidly closing wound.

Sir John kept his arm around Violet and walked her over to the sofa where Bram and I were still entwined. His cheeks were pink and he looked strong, while her skin was noticeably paler and she half staggered. He held her on her feet. She had a big goofy grin on her face.

I broke away from Bram to lean close to her. “Are you okay?” I turned to Sir John. “Did you take much blood?”

“The blood’s a mere condiment. Salt and pepper to the life force that’s my main meal. And a lovely meal she gave me.”

I felt like kicking him, but Vi was blinking as if happily drunk. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Something in this—” he touched a finger to what I now saw was a sharp fang, hidden under his white moustache and beard—”Gives the pleasure that you see.” He nodded at Vi.

I guided Vi to sit at the end of the sofa. Bram moved to the other end, so I could sit in the middle.

Sir John stretched and moved to sit in the wing chair. He hooked a boot around the ottoman, pulled it close, propped up his feet and leaned back to survey us with contentment. “Questions? Ask them.”

I glanced at Vi, who was just surfacing from her trance. Bram didn’t say anything either. So I started. “Who ARE you?”

Chapter 37

Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

August 5th continued

He laughed.
“You think I am not Sir John Falstaff?”

Vi roused herself enough to say, “You can’t be Falstaff, he’s a fictional character.” She sighed, half wistfully and half contentedly.

“But Falstaff was modeled on Sir John Oldcastle, who was a real historical figure,” I said, primed by a day of research on the net. “But his descendents made a big fuss, so Shakespeare changed the name and put in a line to say it wasn’t Oldcastle.”

“Oldcastle died a martyr.” Sir John tapped his chest. “This is not the man.” But his bright blue eyes had lost a bit of sparkle on hearing the surname.

“A direct quote from the end of
Henry the Fourth, Part Two,
” Violet beamed. She seemed to be coming round again. “Lawyers give writers the same advice about avoiding slander to this very day. Like—‘The characters in this book don’t resemble anyone, and least of all my rat of an ex-husband. Not in the slightest. Nuh-uh. Nope.’”

“Okay,” I continued, “There were witnesses to Sir John Oldcastle’s death. He was burned in front of a crowd in St. Giles Field in 1417. I found a picture of it on the net.”

“A picture?” Bram’s voice was skeptical.

“Well, a reproduction of a woodcut. Want to see?”

“Yes,” Vi and Bram both said.

Sir John’s face, which had grown ruddy with Vi’s blood, paled visibly. “Do not bid me remember my end.”

“Does the picture bother you?”

“Do as you wish.” But he turned his face away as I went to get my folder. I brought it back to the sofa and sat down between Vi and Bram. Sir John stared at the empty fireplace as I opened the folder.

We all looked at the woodcut. “It’s not a likeness to you,” Bram said to Sir John, who refused to look.

“It’s also not very gory,” Vi said, “compared to modern day pictures.”

“Like a line drawing,” I agreed. “Or a really grisly coloring book with no crayons.”

The woodcut depicted simple, grim figures. Men in hats, puff-sleeved antique jackets, and knee breeches surrounded a man a lot thinner than Sir John, bound hand and feet, who dangled suspended from a chain, fixed to a cross-beam so low that his feet and legs nearly touched the wood of the fire. A few men stood watching in the background. A hat and jacket, perhaps the dying man’s clothing, occupied the foreground.

“Why burning?” Bram touched the outlines of flames in the picture. “Isn’t that the typical punishment for a witch?”

“Maybe that was about the heresy,” I said. “Oldcastle was a follower of John Wycliffe, who was an early Protestant. See the text under the graphic?”

Bram read it. “It says Wycliffe—and his followers like Oldcastle—were considered heretics because they read the Bible in English.”

“They also had some radical ideas about the Catholic Church not owning property and women being allowed to preach. Come to think of it, those ideas are still considered radical in some circles.” I said.

“Cool!” Vi said.

There was a faint sound from Sir John. He had his face turned to the fireplace, so I couldn’t tell—but my guess was that it was a snort of derision.

“Oldcastle was the first layperson to be martyred in England,” I concluded.

“Roasted alive.” Sir John’s voice was hollow and he still averted his eyes.

I read the paragraph that accompanied it. “It says here—hanged by a chain by the middle, he was consumed by fire, the gallows and all. The gallows must be that wooden thing he’s hanging from like a crossbeam. It says while he was burning alive, he prayed for his persecutors and prophesied that he would rise on the third day.”

“Like a vampire,” Vi exclaimed.

Sir John snorted again. “There’s Another that rose on the third day that was no vampire.” He was looking at us, but still avoiding the woodcut.

We all looked at each other blankly.

“You call yourselves Christians!” Sir John snorted.

“Well,” I said. “I don’t belong to any organized religion.” I looked at Bram and Vi.

“Me neither—I’ve always thought of myself as a kind of New Age Druid,” said Vi.

“Agnostic,” said Bram. “I keep an open mind.”

“An open mind can invite much.” Sir John’s voice rumbled. He shook his head and chuckled grimly, “Agnostic vampire fighter. Most irresolute.”

“I’m not really a vampire fighter, Sir John. Until today, I’d have said vampires didn’t exist. I’m just fascinated by the idea.”

“’Tis in your blood, lad. No shame there.” The old man’s voice rumbled deep. “But you need to find some faith to arm you, whatever that may be.”

“You still haven’t answered the question, Sir John.” I wasn’t going to let him elude it. “Are you saying you are this Oldcastle who was martyred for his faith? Or if not, who are you?”

Chapter 38

Sir John Falstaff’s words

on black digital recorder, undated

Like a litter of helpless pups,
but growing teeth to gnaw at me.

So I told them—as much as anyone could tell such mewling babes.

“You come from a gentler age.” I told them. “For all your time’s destruction.”

If you want to imagine the scene, this Oldcastle, I’ll tell you. I know him well as I know myself—no saint, but a soldier, earned his knighthood on the field of battle in his youth. In age, a man of good wit, literate, a gentleman. Yet he read the Bible in English. An act of heresy in that Church-ruled age.

This Oldcastle came to believe that matters of conscience were between man and his Maker without a priest to intervene, that the Church should not own property—are you surprised that they might burn a man at the stake for such views?

They spun rumors of an imaginary plot to kidnap the king, captured Oldcastle and bound him over to be burned at the stake. His king, the noble Henry the Fifth, turned his back on his old friend.

Imagine this Oldcastle, imprisoned in the Tower. In comes a lovely lady, slipping past the guards like a perfumed breeze. Her hair as dark as night and eyes as deep as oceans. Offers him a chance to live rather than die for his faith. Tells him he could live to see the future where his offspring would pay for what they planned to do to him tomorrow. Who would not choose life?

You protest that many saw the man burned alive.

But imagine a creature who could counterfeit young womanhood and slip past guards unnoticed, a creature who could win a man of reason, a man of faith, but also a man of appetites. Could not such a creature cloud the minds of a crowd come out to stand in a field to see a man burned alive? The master-mistress of this dark art could do that and more.

But doubt it not, the man who followed her into undeath did burn, and was reborn before he reached the state of ashes. The first and bitterest of step on the path of undeath was to learn that his new mistress spiced her amusements with the suffering of others. But she kept her promise and he did not die.

The creature he was bound to looked young and beauteous. Yet inside she was old and starved for wit, with no laughter to call her own. She had picked out the man for his sublime wit. The creature watched, and laughed, and it could not bear to let laughter die.

Let’s say that man lived, but at a price.

You ask if that price was his soul. Now that soul you speak of, like that elusive thing that they call honor, is invisible. Most difficult to measure.

The man might have wondered afterward if he had made a bargain with the Devil. A fair question. But one with no present answer. I could no more see my soul before my death than I can see it now. ‘Tis true I do owe God a death. But until that debt is paid in full, a vampire, like a mortal man, can only wait and wonder.

Chapter 39

Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

August 7th continued

“However I came here,
I faced death and chose life—even half life. So here I stand and deal with what is in front of me.” Sir John bowed as if applause had been offered.

“So you were kept alive to entertain?” I asked.

“Not a pretty fate. But a good wit will make use of anything. If I could turn diseases to commodity, then I could conjure up a smile from a grinning skull and live a season as court jester to an undying ruler. Yet escape fell in my way and I took it. Returned to London, near two centuries after leaving, and found much changed. The Protestants in power, the Catholics hunted, and the Bible read in English. Even so, the name of Sir John Oldcastle was vilified for gluttony and debauching youth. Another immortality stemmed from a chance meeting in a tavern. Tales spun for a balding man with a honey tongue and ink-stained fingers, a poet and player. You know the man.”

“Shakespeare,” Vi and I both said reverently.

Chapter 40

Hal Roy’s spoken notes

silver flash drive/voice recorder

August 8th

Jack came over on an ocean liner
in 1939, stowed in the hold, shipped as a load of diplomat’s personal property to avoid customs.

Grandfather, who was with the State Department, wanted Reba out of Europe before World War II broke out. She told me she won Jack in a poker game from a countess, but I always wondered if the Englishwoman who gave him up simply couldn’t cope with World War II and Jack at the same time.

The price Reba demanded for going peaceably back to San Francisco was shipment of some crates of household furnishings. Her father asked no questions—if Reba was smuggling, he didn’t want to know. The crate around Jack’s coffin had a special latch so he could emerge at night to feed, and lock himself in during the days to sleep safely.