The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) (31 page)

I analyzed every word he said. Would he teach me to
temper my passion? Did he know I held him above everything else, my unwanted
child, my humanity, blood? His cold eyes punished me when he spoke. They only
showed their beauty when he smiled, and he hadn’t smiled at me since I was
human. (His grin at my drink didn’t count since his anticipation for the girl
had prompted it).

When we reached the Empress’s cabin, we entered
without knocking. A slender vampire opened the door in anticipation of our
arrival. Vincent returned her stare, and then ordered me to sit on the throne
across from the daybed. I thought the vampire was my maker until I actually met
the Empress.

I suppose I should digress briefly and record how I
came to be the Empress’s progeny. Desperate to die when I thought Vincent had
abandoned me, I stole a pointed claw from the Empress. I have no remorse for my
attempted suicide: death was mine if Vincent was not. As the hours passed, as I
sat locked in a small compartment away from my baby and the world as I knew it,
I prayed, though my faith in his coming faded with every passing sound outside
my prison. I sat by the entrance, eventually falling asleep there. I cried
unless I slept—in fact, the bruising from those wounds remain. I only
hushed myself when I heard footsteps along the passageway. I waited, I hoped, I
begged and bargained, but he didn’t come. He’d deserted me, thinking I was
dead, and so I wanted to be.

When I was finally met with some kind of relief, it
was in the form of this strange girl who treated me like a doll. She didn’t
speak to me, but rushed into my cabin and tore at my robe. I’d been in the
soiled wrap for too long, but this girl undressed me and washed me with soapy
water she’d carried in with her. I didn’t resist. She could’ve killed me, I
wouldn’t have cared, but she was gentle, as she worked to clean me up. When
she’d washed under my arms and my face and my hair, she dried me off and ran a
brush through my knots. I cried all the while, but she didn’t comfort me. She
covered me with a blanket when she was done, picked up the basin and brush, and
slipped out of the compartment again. I stood alone in the wrap for a few
seconds before I collapsed on the deck.

Unconscious for a time, when I woke, the girl was
with me again. She’d dressed me in a strange outfit and pulled me up as soon as
I opened my eyes. She led me to a single chair in the middle of the cabin,
facing the dark bulkhead. She placed something on my head, but I was too
starved to care. I hadn’t eaten in so long, I was a phantom. I’d forgotten
Alessandra, Helgado, Lucia—and death was mine. I sat on that chair for
ages, stifling my sobs, as single tears ran down my cheeks, drying up before
dropping from my chin. I think I slept on that chair since I don’t remember
moving from it again. When the Empress came into my compartment, I’d no idea
who she was. She floated around me like a wisp, a slender cigarette dangling
from her red lips.

“You are lovely,” she’d said. “I see why now.”

She bent down to examine me and when she caressed my
cheek I felt the tip of her ornamental claw. The idea came to me in one single
bound, as though no time elapsed between my thinking about it and doing it. I
dug her metal point into my neck before I realized it as my escape. I don’t
know if I succumbed to death and she revived me, or if I simply lost blood and
consciousness, but when I woke, I was in Vincent’s arms and all was right with
my world again.

Vincent greeted the Empress with a slight bow when
she came in to meet me as her progeny. She’d removed her decorative claws but I
recognized my fatal instrument on the canvas of the large portrait on the
bulkhead behind her. I smiled inwardly when I saw it. She stared at him for a
moment and then glanced over at me.

“Way shama tat zu ze?” Her words were meaningless
sounds since I didn’t understand what she said until Vincent told me to stand
up and greet my maker. The Empress addressed me in Mandarin, Vincent said,
because she expected me to learn it. I assured him it was impossible, but he
insisted I would. Despite the difficulty of studying Chinese, I was hung up on
the thought of adopting her language, and essentially her lineage.

“It is a pleasure to—”

“Tingzhi,” she said.
Stop!
It’s a word I came to learn right away since she used it
freely in our first visit. “Her face is like a pumpkin,” she said, this time in
perfect Italian so I could hear the insult. She pulled on her cigarette with
her blood red lips and inhaled half of it. “Ninung punung jurgei wokan.”

Vincent decoded her command for me, and I was struck
by his ability to speak Mandarin. “Your maker would like you to show her your
fangs,” he said.

And that’s how it began. Like a child parading her
talents for her governess, I was forced to show the Empress my fangs, my nails,
my skin, my waistline, my elbows, my hair, my feet and my stomach, which was
the most embarrassing. I stood in front of her where she sat on the daybed,
smoking an endless link of cigarettes, and lifted my cheongsam all the way up
past my waist to bare my newly emptied belly. I was grateful the mute girl had
given me underwear, even if it meant she’d seen more than I’d cared to show. My
stretch marks and flabby skin were gone, and I admired my perfect stomach with
wonder.

“Humph,” the Empress said. She pointed at my belly
and reached out to touch it. “Grotesque,” she said in my native tongue. “She
will begin her training with Zhi.”

“I am happy to choose for her,” Vincent said. “She
is still mine, Cixi.”

I was overjoyed when he said the words, though I
knew he didn’t mean them in the way I’d have liked him to when he spoke about a
fair exchange. “You have the museum,” he said. “And the head. I have yet to
receive my payment in full.”

The Empress tapped her tongue on the roof of her
mouth. It was the first time I’d seen her teeth and I recalled how her fangs
hadn’t dropped when she visited me in the compartment. She hadn’t intended to
feed on me. She simply wanted to inspect Vincent’s girl.

“We’ll talk of this another time,” she said. “For
now you should give the novice to Zhi. He’ll be in charge of her apprenticeship
and find her the proper trainer. By the shape of her hands, she’ll make a good
fighter when her claws come in.”

I looked at Vincent, hoping he’d protest. I couldn’t
bear the thought of being with another, but he abandoned me once again and simply
bowed to her command. “As you wish, Empress,” he said.

Inwardly I seethed at the thought of being passed
off, wanting him to teach me, to show me how to be his vampire. I almost
expressed my disapproval until he touched my arm and led me out of the cabin. I
didn’t say goodbye to my maker, for she turned away from the both of us, as we
exited.

After I met the Empress and Vincent left me to see
to “other matters,” as he put it, I meditated, awaiting his return. I sat on
the berth with my legs crossed and eyes closed. I placed my hands facing upward
on my knees and pictured him. He didn’t always look handsome, especially when
he scowled, but I imagined him smiling and drew soft lines on his face. He
looked at me with the eyes I adored and we locked ourselves in that imagined
stare until the sound of a bird’s warble broke my concentration. I opened my
eyes and looked around the compartment but it was empty. I hadn’t dreamed it,
for even with eyes open, I heard it. The sound grew louder before I noticed Vincent’s
step in the passageway, and when he entered the cabin, the warble peaked and
then settled to a soft lull. He read my expression, knowing what I’d
experienced, and the slightest smile rose on his lips, as though he wanted to
greet me with a larger one but still retain a stern aspect.

I’d first learned about the vampire’s signal when we
stayed in the villa on the outskirts of Portero. Those days seem long ago, but
I haven’t forgotten them yet. “It is most similar to the high-pitched chant of
a sparrow,” Vincent had said. Patient with my curiosity, he was willing to
divulge a few of his secrets in exchange for my blood, though he could’ve had
it for free.

A vampire’s frequency is like his
fingerprint—no two are the same. Vincent’s vibrates with a tempo that
loops, like the mellow call of a bird. It’s no wonder others are drawn to it.
When I heard it for the first time, I couldn’t imagine my life without it, and
it pained me to think I’d been deaf to it when we spent all that time together.
It still penetrates me now like nothing else—deep, deep down to my very
core—and I listen for it continually.

“Not every vampire can distinguish between
frequencies,” he said. “Though most will pick up on them. I am glad you are
able to discern mine from the others.”

“I haven’t heard others,” I said.

“You will.”

He’d returned to me softer, more attentive and
willing to speak with me. I wanted to ask what had changed but was afraid to
ruin the favorable mood he’d fallen into. “Why can’t you train me?” I asked
instead.

“It is beneath me,” he said.

I don’t know what reaction my face showed but it
caught him by surprise, for he suddenly looked sorry for saying it. “It is not
an insult, Evelina. You are the newest vampire, and I am ancient. The disparity
between our ages is too great. I cannot stoop to the dregs of training a
novice.”

“Even if I’m yours?”

“You are not mine,” he said.

The words stung, though sorrow didn’t bite at me,
only rage. I seethed again, as I contemplated the fate of being another’s
progeny. “Why did the Empress change me?” I asked.

“For greed,” he said. “We made a deal and she could
only acquire her part of the bargain if you were alive when I returned.”

“Aren’t I supposed to be human, though?”

He looked away, as if he needed to harness his own
anger, that which begged to be freed. He was disappointed in me. I could read
it plainly on his face. A permanent scowl marked him. I’d stolen the one thing
he’d worked so hard to keep—Evelina Caro, the girl that Byron had asked
him to save for humanity and his kind. “I will always find you,” he had said to
me once, but I hadn’t trusted him and my betrayal pains him.

“Please forgive me,” I said. “I couldn’t
know—I was frightened and I didn’t know you’d—please don’t abandon
me again.”

He looked at me, confused. “Evelina, of what do you
speak?”

I wanted to cry some real tears, as the corners of
my eyes tightened again. Hardened now, I could do nothing to release the
emotion still trapped inside me. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m just—it’s
nothing.”

“You will need to feed again soon,” he said. “But I
will take you to Peter first.”

I felt like a child forced to go to a sleepover. The
thought of being separated from him overwhelmed me, as did my anger. “No,” I
said.

“Excuse me?” He looked at me with disdain, and I
almost feared him.

“I just mean, I don’t want to meet others,” I said.
“I want to stay with you.”

“You have things to learn and this is the best place
for you to do so.”

I obeyed my master, fearing the moment he’d be torn
from me and I’d lose the one thing that gave me any sense of myself. My
feelings for the human child had taken flight and I’d no desire to see her.

“Are you going to leave me?” I could barely ask,
fearful as I was of his answer.

“Not just yet,” he said. “Come.”

I followed him out of my cage and into the jungle,
where he led me through the ship, giving me a tour of a place that had held a
certain mystery until then.

“We are headed for the soldiers’ quarters at the
stern of the ship,” he said.

We traveled through the same passageways we had on
the way to the Empress’s cabin, the elegant ones I’d ignored before. The steel
paneled bulkheads were adorned with silk fabrics and artifacts of immeasurable
value. Vincent pointed out some of the more choice pieces, as we passed them. I
know nothing of art, but I’m not ignorant of beauty. When I saw the painting of
the girl in the water, I had to stop. She lay in a shallow stream, facing up,
wearing an expression of horror that made me gasp. A corpse for certain, she
was drowned with a posy of colorful flowers that circled her floating body. The
shrubbery around her was green as any green could be, and though the lights
below deck were dim, I saw the colors perfectly. Peacefulness marked her woe,
and I wondered if she knew she was dead.

“It is Ophelia,” Vincent said. “Millais’s
Ophelia
.”

“I thought Ophelia was from Shakespeare?”

“She is a character in
Hamlet
,” he said. “But the painter is John Everett Millais.” I
couldn’t think of a thing to say in response, the image filling me with sorrow
and ire. “Come, Evelina.” Vincent touched my arm and softened my wrath.

When I think of the image now, I know it was an
augury. She showed me what I’d soon be, and when I recall my plunge into the
depths of the sea, the estrangement my drowning has caused, I know Ophelia’s
hopeless abandonment is mine too.

We eventually went below, down to the bowels of the
ship where the drab and rusted bulkheads of the servants’ quarters gave me a
sense of relief. A distinct separation of rank marked Empress Cixi’s vessel, as
she and her entourage inhabited the first-class quarters at the ship’s stern
while those under her command lived among the steerage compartments. I couldn’t
say where she kept the human cargo then, for I wasn’t so lucky, though I’d
guessed it was somewhere near the front section of the ship since the
strawberry blond appeared well fed, clean and generally happy. I assumed the
Empress preserved her chattel’s dignity, keeping them safe and satisfied,
though they didn’t roam the ship freely.