Diaries of the Family Dracul - The Covenant with the Vampire Part 5

Here I frowned, curious, at him, for I had heard a similar word, Dracul, before-on the servants' lips, and those of the old coachman in Bistritz. Mister Jeffries broke off and instantly corrected himself with an apologetic glance at my husband. "Forgive me, I meant to say, Vlad Tsepesh... Does the name Tsepesh have any meaning?"

Arkady stood gazing steadily at the crypts with his back to us, and I could tell from his distant tone that he was brooding over whatever has been troubling him the past few days-something I suspect is connected with the castle and his father's death. "Impaler," he said quietly, and I knew at once that he had quite forgotten my presence; in many ways he is like his sister, given to abrupt, intense daydreams which completely remove him from the present. "Hardly more n.o.ble in meaning than the name Dracul, but at least the peasants do not utter it with the same loathing, and it carries no hint of the supernatural. Impalement was a common form of execution at the time."

Mister Jeffries arched a pale, disbelieving brow as he stepped beside Arkady and followed his gaze to a gold marker on which was engraved the legend VLAD TEPES. "Indeed?

History indicates it was common only among the Turks. The peasants say Vlad borrowed their methods and turned this"-and he swept his arm to indicate the entire countryside- "into a veritable forest of the impaled. The smell, they say-" And here Mister Jeffries broke off in horror at his own words and turned to me. "Oh, my dear Mrs. Tsepesh, forgive me! How insensitive of me to alarm you, mentioning such terrible things..."

I laughed gaily, though in fact I had never heard these things before and was fascinated in a horrified way. At the sound, Arkady withdrew from his reverie and faced us, also distressed that such things were being discussed in my presence. "I am no delicate maiden given to swooning, sir," I said.

Arkady flushed and moved beside me to take my hand. "It's true," he said, gazing at me with affectionate concern but addressing Jeffries. "Mary is the most levelheaded person I have ever known." He glanced at Jeffries with an awkward smile. "I am constantly grateful for her trait. It is quite an invaluable att.i.tude here, where one is surrounded by superst.i.tion and dark legends."

"My dear," I told him softly, "you mustn't try to shield me from these things. How will I be able to refute the servants' strange beliefs if I know nothing of them?" To Jeffries, I said in a firm cheerful voice, "Of whom were you speaking?"

"Of Vlad Dracul- Forgive me, madam. Vlad Tsepesh, whom the peasants call Dracula."

"The prince?" I asked.

Jeffries tilted his long face in a gesture which seemed to both confirm and deny. "His namesake." He flipped a page on his notepad and scanned it for a fact, then looked up. "Born 1431, supposedly died 1476, though the peasants would disagree."

Arkady gestured at the plaque at the foot of a crypt. "You see his marker here before you."

"But he died in that region to the south known as Wallachia, did he not? Where he reigned?"

"True," said my husband. "But the family moved northward to Transylvania soon after his death, and brought his remains with them. It was not an uncommon practice."

Mister Jeffries' tone grew skeptical. "Surely you know he is not buried here. It is a blind, so that those who would try to desecrate the body will not find it."

My husband turned towards his visitor with narrowed eyes and a faint, ironic smile on his lips. "Sir, you clearly know more about the subject than you have disclosed." He paused and gazed back at the marker. "It is true. He is buried at the monastery at Snagov, in his native Wallachia."

"The peasants would disagree with you once again, sir. They say no body lies at Snagov, either. Perhaps that is why the peasants say he is strigoi, and accuse your great-uncle-"

"Strigoi," I repeated, unable to contain myself, as I recognised it as the word Dunya had used earlier. "Please; what is the meaning of that word?"

Arkady glanced at me sharply, clearly distressed to learn that I had been exposed to the term, but Jeffries looked me in the eye and said, "A vampire, madam. They say your kind and gracious great-uncle is in fact Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula, born 1431; that he has made a pact with the Devil to obtain immortality, and that the souls of innocents are the price." And he laughed as if the notion were incredibly amusing. Arkady and I did not join in.

Jeffries realised the discomfort his words had provoked, and immediately switched the conversation to a lighter topic. We departed the chapel soon after, and when I left my husband and his guest in the dining-room they were engaged in a friendly argument about America's newest literary sensation, Mister Edgar Allan Poe, and whether his poem "The Raven" was as great a work of genius as purported.

And so I retired to the bedroom, thinking that, by the time I finished this entry, Arkady would return, and I would confess everything to him; but it is almost eleven now, and still he has not come. I am tired and yearn for sleep, but I cannot keep my gaze from the heavy curtains drawn across the window; I cannot keep from worrying about what lies on the other side.

The peasants are right; Vlad is a monster. They simply do not realise what sort.

Chapter 4.

Zsuzsanna Tsepesh's Diary 10 April.

I am dying of love.

Another night of dreams; this morning I am so weak, I can scarcely pick up the pen. After a sentence or two, I must set it down to rest. My back aches terribly, from the top of my spine all the way to the bottom. And so strangely: sometimes it feels as if the muscles and bones are moving, stirring beneath my skin.

He came again. He came, and this time I was waiting for him at the open window. This time I unfastened the ribbon myself, though I let him gently pull the thin fabric down across my skin. I shivered at its softness; and then I shivered at the coolness of the night air against my exposed flesh, followed by the chill of his hands, and the heat of his breath.

He was just as gentle this time, and twice as bold. He pulled the nightgown until it fell about my ankles, all the while keeping his lips pressed to my skin, drawing them slowly down with the fabric over the curve of my shoulder, my breast, my ribs; parting them to taste my flesh with his tongue. I blush to write that he did not stop there, but knelt down and continued the kiss downward over the soft slope of my abdomen, my belly, and below...

I felt a rush of warmth and a tingling that began at the base of my spine and ascended through the top of my head, and beyond. I felt as though I had been dead all my years on earth, and for the first time, a kiss had wakened me to life. I looked down at my kneeling saviour and buried my fingers in his thick mane of silvery-white hair.

And then he drew his lips over the thigh of my withered leg. At first I flushed in embarra.s.sment; in my adult life, I have never permitted anyone to touch, even to see my crippled limb. I began to pull away, but he drew me back, and stroked and kissed it gently, lovingly- No. Far more than that; he kissed it with pure reverent adoration, and in that moment I loved him as a G.o.d.

The kiss continued to the very tip of my poor, twisted foot; and then he rose, and took me in his arms, and said: "Zsuzsanna. I am bound by the covenant I made with your father to take care of you while you lived. I am bound by it as well not to come to you in this way. But you are too sickly to make the journey to England-where I am determined to go. This is the only way you can accompany me. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I whispered, though in truth I knew nothing, understood nothing except that I wished to remain in his embrace always.

He smiled faintly, and said, "Of all the family in all the many years of my time on this earth, you alone have freely loved me-"

"No," I whispered. "I worship you. When I was sick, you saved my life; and no man has ever treated me so kindly, has ever given me notice, as you have. To other men, I am invisible; but you alone see me."

A look of utterly regal satisfaction crept over his face; I knew my words had pleased him.

"Because of that devotion," he said, "I have broken the covenant with the family, and must pay the price; and now I make a new one in its place. I will never leave you, but will make you mine, and bind us both together forever." And when I begged for him to do so at once, he shook his head sadly. "I had hoped to tonight, but it is not to be; I am still too hungry.

Soon it will be possible... Very soon."

And with a move swift as a serpent, he fastened his lips upon my neck.

It was as if the suddenness of the motion woke me from a trance. I felt the sharp pain of his teeth piercing my flesh and cried out, struggling in his steel embrace, full of a wild unreasoning fear. I recoiled and struck my fists against his broad, unyielding chest, tried to push him away, but with a single hand spread against my back he crushed my body against his. His grip tightened until I could not breathe. I felt pressure against my neck, and his tongue and lips working hungrily against my skin with the same soft sucking sound of a babe at its mother's breast.

I gave up fighting and fell into a swoon. At that instant, the sweet pleasure of the previous night overtook me again; and the more I surrendered, the more intense that pleasure became, until I could not repress my moans. I became aware of nothing but velvety darkness, the feel of his tongue and lips, of my blood flowing out towards him to the slow, synchronous beating of our hearts.

The ecstasy mounted until I could bear it no more and cried out. At that moment, he withdrew and let me fall back, barely conscious, into his arms. I was too weak to stand, to speak, even to see, but I heard his deep voice clearly as he said: "Enough. Perhaps too much... !"

He carried me over to the bed and gently covered me with the blankets. I sensed him leave, though I could not move, could not even open my eyes to watch him go. For a time I lay, feeling with each breath that I would not have strength to draw another, feeling a faint ripple of pleasure with each throb of my heart, and thinking it would be its last.

Most of all, I felt amazement that death could be such an exquisitely sensual experience.

But I did not die. I slept, and in the late morning when I woke, once again there lay the nightgown on the floor by the window. I was too weak even to retrieve it; Dunya found it this morning when she brought breakfast and handed it back to me with a scandalised expression -whilst I guiltily tried to hide my nakedness under the sheets.

Dunya suspects; and Mary, I think, knows, though it is impossible for one person to know another's dreams. I tried to convey this in my thoughts to Vlad, to warn him that others knew and might try to interfere. No doubt they must be horrified, shocked.

I do not care.

I do not understand what is happening to me; I am no longer sure what is real. I am so weak and confused; I think I am ill and dying. And I repeat: I do not care. If this be death, then death is sheer joy! For the first time in my stunted, miserable life, I am happy. I do not want G.o.d. I do not want forgiveness.

I want only for him to come again.

The Journal of Mary Windham Tsepesh 10 April.

Dear G.o.d, please let me be mad. Please let me be an hysterical pregnant woman who is seeing things because her head has been filled with frightening stories...

The horror of it is, I know I am not. I know what I have seen-and yet it is impossible!

It is now half-past one in the morning. I heard Arkady leave with Mister Jeffries in the caleche a few moments ago; he will not be returning for at least twenty minutes, longer if he stays a bit to converse with his guest, whose company he seems to have so enjoyed this past night. I must write this down-I must do some thing -or lose my wits altogether. My hand is shaking so badly, I can hardly read what I have already recorded.

I could not sleep, of course, after I finished the last entry in my journal, although it was after midnight. I struggled, restless, with the sheets. Part of my discomfort was due to indigestion and the inability to find a suitable sleeping position due to my heavy belly, but most of it was mental: I was worried about whether to tell Arkady about Vlad and Zsuzsanna tonight, after Mister Jeffries had gone, or whether to wait until morning; and I was worried, too, about what precisely I should say.

Nor could I master my curiosity about what might be happening on the other side of that curtain. Surely, I decided, Zsuzsanna had taken note of my dark hint about a wolf at her window, and would at the very least warn Vlad that her bedroom was no longer a safe place to meet; I even dared hope that my oblique words had been enough to convince her to break off the secret relationship altogether.

Still, I forced my eyelids shut. Perhaps I dozed-? though memory swears I remained quite conscious. Yet I fell into a strange waking dream, almost trancelike, and found myself staring into a pair of large, heavy-lidded eyes, suspended against the soft darkness.

They were set in snow-pale skin, and quite strikingly beautiful, like deep green emeralds; the pupils were large, shining, black. I recognised them at once, for they were Vlad"s eyes, and they seemed to cast the same hypnotic spell I had experienced at the pomana-except that this time, being drowsy, I yielded to them for a moment. Doing so made my discomfort vanish and induced a very enjoyable languor which I was reluctant to disturb.

I lingered there but a moment; and then my natural stubbornness awoke and I opened my eyes and gave my head a shake to clear it.

Yet I knew I had not been asleep. This alarming realisation-and perhaps the unease provoked by the stories Mister Jeffries had told in the chapel-caused my heart to begin beating faster. With a sense of inexplicable dread, I went over to the window-seat in the alcove and timidly drew aside the curtain, just enough so that I could see Zsuzsanna's window but could not myself be seen.

The full moon shone in a cloudless sky tonight, lighting up the countryside like day. I could quite clearly see each blade of gra.s.s, each wildflower on the stretch of earth between our window and Zsuzsanna's, though the colours had all been dimmed to subtly varying values of grey.I knew Vlad was there-knew it, though even now I cannot say how this knowledge came to me. Knew it, even before I saw that the shutters had once again been flung wide, and the window opened. The lamp in her room was unlit, so that I could not see clearly inside; but a few feet beyond the open shutters, I saw shadows wrestling in the dimness, a flash of white against black, and knew with the same impossible certainty that these were Zsuzsanna's pale skin against Vlad's cloak.

How long I remained at the window I cannot exactly say; my perception indicates hours, the clock indicates minutes. But I stood frozen, watching until the shadows retreated from my sight further into the dark room- towards the bed.

And then the darker shadow, after a time, reappeared, and climbed swiftly over the windowsill, dropping several feet down onto the gra.s.s with the easy agility of a youth.

It was Vlad. I saw him clearly, unmistakably, his white hair and skin gleaming in the bright moonlight. He looked over his shoulder, furtive as a thief making his escape, then began to run.

He pa.s.sed very near my window, and I drew back, not daring to breathe, pulling the curtains together so that only a tiny crack remained, to which I pressed one eye. As I watched, he crouched forward, and began to lope on all fours, like an animal, his dark cloak furling.

And beneath my very gaze- It is impossible. Impossible. It is madness, yet I know I am quite sane.

It was like observing a child's growth, grossly accelerated so that the transformation of years took place in seconds. Beneath my very gaze, his legs shortened, his arms lengthened, his nose and jaw thrust forward, stretching until they formed a long, lean muzzle full of sharp canine teeth. The fabric of his cloak and trousers seemed to sink into his skin and change in colour and texture until it was no longer black silk, but silvery grey fur.

Before my eyes, he changed into a large grey wolf.

I cried out in shock. I do not think the sound I made was loud; nevertheless, Vlad-the wolf-paused and turned in the direction of my window, gazing up at it with large, pale eyes.

And-perhaps this part is imagination-I watched those canine lips pull back over pointed teeth, curving slightly in the same predatory grin that he had directed at me when he lingered in Zsuzsanna"s embrace at the pomana.

I had never been closer to fainting in my life. I let go the curtain and reeled, staggering to the wall, and pressed against it, afraid if I let go I would not be able to stand.

When at last I gathered myself, I hurried over to the desk to write it all down, lest I convince myself by morning that it was nothing more than a nightmare.

I can hear in the distance the approach of Arkady in the caleche. I had been so worried all evening about what to tell him about Zsuzsanna and Vlad.

What shall I say to him now?

What shall I say?

The Diary of Arkady Tsepesh10 April. LATE EVENING.

Jeffries has vanished. I think they have killed him.

I returned with him to the castle quite late-about one or two in the morning. I did not disturb Uncle, even though I suspected he would still be awake at such a late hour, and Jeffries said that he would be sure to convey my apologies for returning him so much later than my note to Uncle had indicated. I did not feel I had the right to take Mister Jeffries'

company away from Uncle again for dinner the next day, but I did invite him for afternoon tea.

This afternoon, I left early for the castle to fetch Jeffries for tea. As I drove the caleche into the courtyard, Laszlo was just leaving in the coach with a large bundle on the seat beside him. The sight of me seemed to alarm him; he at once whipped the horses and hurried away.

I took his haste and his reluctance to speak to me as a sign of his dislike, and thought little of it, or of the bundle beside him-until afterwards, when I looked for Jeffries in the guest room. He had gone: his luggage and notepad lay undisturbed in his chambers, as did the carefully folded note from Uncle, but a search of the castle proved fruitless. He was not to be found anywhere, and none of the servants admitted to seeing him. In desperation, I called them one by one to my office and questioned them. None of them seemed to know anything about the visitor's mysterious disappearance. (Sadly, Masika Ivanovna did not report to the castle today, as her son has died. I shall learn more of this, for I plan to attend the funeral.) I spoke to Laszlo last, some hours later, when he had finally returned to the castle. As I did, I noted that he had a gold watch fob and chain on his vest which I had never seen before; with an inspiration born of horror, I demanded he withdraw the watch and present it to me.

He did so, and I gasped as my eyes detected the large silver "J" on the watch's engraved golden surface. Such brazenness! He even held it out for my inspection with the same hand that now wore Jeffries' gold ring!

I completely lost hold of my temper and shouted at him: "How dare you steal from a guest of this house! You are dismissed at once! See to it that you never set foot on this property again!"

He lifted his jowly chin, defiant, unrepentant. "Oh, I shan't be leaving, sir. The voievodvrill.

see to that. Besides, you have no authority to dismiss me."

His arrogance enraged me; warmth flooded my face as I cried, "I doubt that! We shall see what Vlad has to say when I tell him you are a thief!"

"I am no thief," said he. "Dead men own no property."

A horrid coldness seized my heart. I thought of the terror in Masika's eyes when she realised Laszlo had overheard; and now her son had died. "What are you saying, Laszlo?

That Mister Jeffries is dead?"

"I say nothing."

"I shall speak to Uncle at once about this," I threatened-to which he simply chuckled, turned his back to me without so much as asking my leave, and walked towards the door.

And as he did- As he did, I saw upon the back of his white sleeve a large red stain the size of an apple. A horrible chill descended over me; I know not how to explain it, but at that moment, I knew in my heart Jeffries was dead, and that I gazed upon his murderer.

"Laszlo," I said.

He paused, and swiveled his head over his shoulder to cast at me his insolent stare.

"What is this? Have you hurt yourself?" I strode over to him and between thumb and forefinger caught a bit of unstained sleeve between my fingers and held it so that I might better study the stain.

It was blood, no doubt of it-beginning to darken, but still bright enough to suggest that it had been shed only hours before. Laszlo glanced down at it and pulled his arm away at once, but his insolence faded a bit. "Not at all. I killed a hen this morning for the cook."

And he hurried out of the room.

It seemed a reasonable explanation; yet I could not shake the sense of dread that overtook me. It was then I remembered the bundle I had seen on the seat beside him in the carriage.