Slave Of Dracula - Renfield Part 4

Lantern-light flashed in the darkness. Langmore, Simmons, and Hardy threw themselves out of the shrubbery, catching Renfield as he tried to bolt. Seward, who'd sprung forward and seized Renfield's arm, was thrown back against the chapel wall as if he had no weight at all. For a moment it seemed to him, watching the struggling men, that the madman would hurl them all aside and disappear into the night. Renfield bellowed and cursed, then screamed like an animal as Langmore twisted his arm, but Seward thought the madman would have gone on struggling, letting the attendant break his bones, had not Hardy struck Renfield a stunning blow on the head. The big man sank to his knees; Langmore whipped forward the arm he held, and Simmons jammed it, and the other, into the sleeves of the straitjacket they'd brought.

Whatever momentary fears Seward felt about that blow dissolved on the way back to Rushbrook House. Renfield kicked, thrashed, howled like an animal until he was gagged; twisted like a man in the throes of convulsions. At one point Seward feared that the lunatic would manage to tear himself free of the straitjacket, and when they got him into the house-with all the other patients setting up a cacophony in sympathy like the howling of the d.a.m.ned in h.e.l.l-ordered extra bindings strapped around him before he was chained to the wall of the padded room.

When Seward returned to his own bedroom, he was shaken to the bones: Dear G.o.d, and I once harbored the delusion that I could bring Lucy to live with me in this place?

He sank down onto the bed, trembling. The transformation of a man whom he'd thought of as basically harmless, to other human beings if not to himself or to any fly or bird that came within his reach, brought home to him what his old teacher Van Helsing had said to him once: "We are the guardians of the frontier of darkness, my friend. And that means that for the most part, we must stand our watches alone."

Ah, Lucy, he thought despairingly, you deserve better than this-better than the danger you would be in, living here with me, no matter what I could do to protect you. I underestimated the dangers of that dark frontier: I will not do so again.

In the east-facing windows of his room, past the irregular darkness of Carfax's broken roof-line, the summer sky was already staining with first light. Through the walls of his room Seward could hear his patients howling. And above their cries, a powerful voice bellowed like that of a t.i.tan in chains: "I shall be patient, Master! It is coming-coming-coming!"

Seward injected himself with chloral hydrate and pa.s.sed out without even removing his clothes.

Letter, R. M. Renfield to his wife Undated (late August?) My beloved, I beg your forgiveness for not having written. I was unavoidably prevented, by the stupidity and, I fear, downright malice of the men with whom I am forced to work in this place. Nothing but the most urgent consideration would have kept my pen from paper, would have silenced the words of love that every day dwell in my heart.

Tell our Vixie that her papa loves her, and will be with her again by-and-by.

Your own, R.M.R.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Hanging in chains on the wall of the padded cell, Renfield dreamed.

For three days he hung there, raving and sobbing at what he saw, at what he knew was happening, would happen. They gave him laudanum to quiet him, forcing it down his throat when he twisted his head aside in a vain effort to refuse further dreams.

Don't send me back there! he wanted to scream at them. He is hunting her, stalking her as a hunter stalks a doe! Waiting for her to come.

But these words he dared not say aloud, for Catherine's sake, for Vixie's and his own.

Wotan was near. Wotan was present, was there, not just in England but less than half a mile distant, lying open-eyed in his coffin in the crumbling chapel of Carfax, blood-stained hands folded on his breast.

Waiting.

Peace came with nightfall and moonrise, for in those hours Wotan's mind was elsewhere, occupied with the business that men occupied themselves with during the day. The sense of release, of relief, was nearly unbearable. Renfield would lie on the floor of the padded cell each night when at Seward's orders he was released from his bonds, listening only to the dim howling of the other patients, to the murmur of Langmore and Simmons as they played their unceasing games of cribbage in the hall, to the steady soft ticking of the hallway clock. Yet he was at all times aware of the Traveler, aware of his nearness. Aware of his power.

Wotan was there, Wotan who held the gift of life in his hand. Wotan whose anger infected his brain and drove him to screaming rages in the daytime, so that he was chained again on the wall.

Watch yourself, traitor, if you betray me now, Wotan had said to Loki, in the shivering music of Das Rheingold. I, of all the G.o.ds your only friend ...

Wotan, too, dreamed. In his dreams the Traveler G.o.d could hear and see, through those others whom his mind had touched. His thoughts spread like poisoned mist through the air, making nothing of distance. Wotan would know what Renfield said, if he shrieked to the guards what he knew, what he saw during his daytime visions. Wotan would hear, and would not forgive.

I do not want to see the kill!

That first day in the straps he saw the girls in the train-station. Pretty Lucy looked much better, with a trace of rosiness returning to her delicate cheeks, and she hugged her dark-haired friend like a sister. "You have your tickets?"

"Exactly where they were when you asked five minutes ago." Mina patted her handbag, and Lucy laughed. "You're in danger of forgetting that I'm the schoolmistress, you're the giddy young who goes to parties and is going to be the daughter-in-law of Lord G.o.dalming by the time I get back."

"Darling!" Lucy giggled, her rosiness deepening, and the older woman who accompanied the girls-she had Lucy's blue eyes, Renfield thought, and Lucy's flawless complexion-folded her gloved hands and smiled.

But her smile was wan. There was a haunted shadow in the back of those blue eyes, transforming what had been the cold face of a lady of Society-a lady who reminded Renfield alarmingly of his sister-in-law Georgina, Lady Clayburne-into a mask of exhaustion and deepest tragedy. She watched the girls w if it were she, not the dark-haired Mina, who was about to depart, with a hungry longing and a terrible regret. Her face was both puffy and sunken, with a waxy cast to it that Renfield knew well from long acquaintance with his countrymen in India's unhealthy clime.

She has had her death-warrant, he thought, his heart aching suddenly for her as he never thought it could have, not for that species of woman. She knows it, and her daughter does not.

"And this Sister Agatha didn't say what had happened to Jonathan?" Lucy was asking. "Other than that he had brainfever?"

"It was all she said." Mina reached into the pocket of her jacket-sensible brown linen and, like all her other clothing, a little worn, a few years out of fashion-and drew out a much-folded square of yellow paper. "Only that he rushed into the train-station at Klausenberg shouting for a ticket for home. Klausenberg seems to be the central market-town of the Carpathian plateau, if the atlas is correct and if Klausenberg is the same as Cluj. There seems to be only one train per day there from Vienna, at nine-fifteen in the morning. Since the night-train from Munich arrives at just before seven, that should give me plenty of time-"

"You and your railway timetables!" laughed Lucy's mother, her weariness dissolving into genuine pleasure at the dark girl's company, and Lucy hugged her friend again impulsively.

"Oh, darling, you're so brave! Going out like this to the ends of the world! Not even knowing the language!"

He is watching her, thought Renfield, aware of Wotan's mind, Wotan's shadow-aware of those red eyes gleaming, like a rat's eyes, in the shadows of that cheerful provincial train-station. Watching her and waiting for her ... and smiling. Smiling like a d.a.m.ned leering devil in the dark of his coffin.

NO!!!.

Renfield tried to twist his mind away as he became aware of that grinning, ironic, ancient thought watching him, too. Enjoying his pity for the sad-faced mother in her stylish walking-dress, deriving wicked amus.e.m.e.nt from his fears for that too-fragile, too-pale fair-haired girl. Renfield tried to dream something else, tried to think of something else: great pools and smears of treacle, spread aII over the floor of his cell, and huge black horseflies roaring through the window to become mired in them, waiting smilingly for his hand.

Not the spa.r.s.e and aenemic insects of England at all, but the meaty gargantuan fauna of India. White ants swarming forth from wood like trails of animate milk, rice-beetles that would blunder and blunder at the same wall without the wits to go around. Those were insects indeed!

He tried to force himself to see them, to force himself to see the yellow buildings of Calcutta, the market-places aswarm with brown half-naked farmers, with Brahmins in their golden robes und shy-eyed farm-girls and great white cows making their way through the dung and the dirt and the crowds. Tried to will himself back to that place, where life dripped with the scents of clarified b.u.t.ter and spices and the painted idols stared out from every street-corner and door.

But it was as if he moved his eyes and the vision dissolved And he was back in that cool neat train-platform in England, with the smell of the green fields in his nostrils and the taste of the salt sea near-by, and Mina clasping the older woman's hands saying, "There's no way I can ever repay your kindness in buying me my tickets, Mrs. Westenra, and giving me money for the journey. But believe me, I shall pay you back."

A smile twitched the wrinkled gray lips and Mrs. Westenra laid a loving hand on Mina's cheek. "My dear child, do you imagine it's money out of my pocket? By the time you come back, Lucy will be the daughter-in-law of Lord G.o.dalming, and I shall have gotten the money out of her lord."

They all laughed merrily at that, as the conductor began to drone his call for travelers to board; in the shadows at the back of the platform, Renfield could see the cloaked shadow of the Traveler, red eyes glinting, white teeth glinting as he smiled.

No!

"We'll take your trunk down to London the day after tomorrow. You must bring Jonathan to Hillingham the very moment he's well enough to travel. Darling . . ."

"Darling!"

The girls embraced on the steps of the train, the bright silks and laces of the one like the most fragile of flowers against the earthy brown linen of the other. Somewhere in his mind Renfield felt the gloating greed, the amused pleasure, of the watching Traveler and he began to thrash in his dreaming, to scream, Let her alone! Let her alone, you devil!

He knew the girls would never meet again.

The roaring of flies filled his mind, the taste of them in his mouth. A thousand flies, a million, all mired in those sweet pools of treacle and all smiling up at him with Lucy Westenra's face.

He is hunting her. He is waiting for her to come.

In those cool hours of release while the moon flooded Rushbrook's lawns with wan silver, Renfield tried to tell himself that he knew nothing of the girl Lucy. She might be stuck-up and cruel, as calculating as her mother. She was, after all, about to marry a lord, and that sort of thing surely didn't happen by accident. But this he could not believe. During the course of his second day of laudanum-induced visions, of the gloating, grinning presence of the Traveler in his mind, he glimpsed Lucy and her mother in the rock-walled garden of what seemed to be a small summer cottage, having tea with a golden young Apollo in Bond Street tailoring.

Saw with what exquisite care and tact the girl dealt with her mother, fetching and carrying for her and laughingly denying that she did so out of worry.

"Nonsense, darling. Arthur told me he liked helpful women and I'm trying very hard to impress him!" When she pa.s.sed his chair, young Arthur's gray-gloved hand sought hers. The look that pa.s.sed between his blue eyes and hers tore Renfield's heart.

Such prey is the source of his strength, he thought, lying the next night on the thick canvas flooring of his cell, the reek of ancient filth and decades of carbolic rising dimly through it from the matted coir beneath. Without her death, there would be no life in his hands, to give out to those who serve him.

Renfield pressed his face to the padded floor and wept. He wanted Catherine desperately, wanted only to see her smile again, to hear her voice. Where Life flows, Loki had sung-Wagner's music had sung-in Water, Earth, and Air ... What could a man find, mightier than the wonder o f a woman's worth? ... In Water, Earth, and Air; the only Will is for love.

How long had it been since her laughter had bubbled in his cars, sweet as spring rainfall? He could not even recall. Now it was only with terror that he thought of her at all, fearing that even in these dark hours, while Wotan's mind was elsewhere, Wotan would somehow learn of her, somehow know where she and Vixie were hidden.

Fearing that he would find them, as he would find Lucy no matter where she went.

Renfield hugged himself, as if he could crush his bulky sixteen-stone-plus into a ball the size of an apple, the size of an apple- seed ... too small to be found by those all-seeing crimson eyes. Hurting for comfort, he called to mind-just once, like a quick glance at a photograph hastily stowed in hiding again, Catherine's face as last he had seen it, asleep and so peaceful, with her long dark lashes veiling those pansy-blue eyes and her wd hair unraveled over the pillow.

Beautiful Catherine. Beautiful Vixie, as delicate as Lucy but ~,vith Miss Mina's exquisite darkness, laughing over some pa.s.sage in her Latin lesson or holding out her finger in breathless wonder as a yellow b.u.t.terfly floated in from the garden, landed on it with tiny p.r.i.c.king feet.

Just let me be with them again, Renfield whispered to the G.o.d whom he knew Wotan would never allow him to pet.i.tion. I know my sins are many, , my offenses rank in your sight, but please, please, let me finish my task here, and return to their side.

Day was coming. They would strap him up again, pour laudanum down his throat. He felt the Traveler's mind, as the thing he knew as Wotan drew near to his lair in the rotting chapel at Carfax again, seeking the bed of earth upon which he must sleep. Why earth? he wondered. Why that particular earth, which he'd brought in such quant.i.ty upon the haunted ship? He wanted to ask, but dared not. He was there only to serve, only to do the bidding of the Master who, for all his terror, was his best and only hope.

Seward had left the door of the padded room unlocked through most of the night-Renfield heard them whisper about it in the corridor. But beyond a flicker of contempt for such an obvious attempt at trapping him, he felt no interest in the matter. The Traveler was abroad in the night; of what use was it to knock upon the door of his empty house? And Renfield was weary, weary unto death, and hungry with a hunger that he knew could never be filled. No fly, no spider, not the smallest ant crept into the dreary canvas confines of the padded cell. Only, if he listened, deep beneath the matting he could hear the rustle of tiny creeping beetles, of crawling fleas.

And they did him no good at all.

Catherine, my darling, he thought as he felt the Traveler's mind begin sinking into its day-sleep, begin to burn like creeping fire at the edges of his own, dream of me now, between your sleep and your waking. Remember that I love you.

He heard the key turn in the lock.

Not many minutes after that he began to scream.

Letter, Dr. Patrick Hennessey, M.D., M.R.C.S., L.K.Q.C., P.I., etc., Rushbrook House, to Georgina, Lady Clayburne 22 August Received your check. Many thanks.

I searched through Seward's correspondence again this week and found no attempt on the part of Catherine Renfield to get in much with either her husband or Seward. Nor was there any letter in a hand that matched the sample you sent to me. I will continue to observe.

R.M.R. has been under heavy restraint for two days, after an escape attempt on the 19th, and violent much of that time. So far as any of the attendants has heard, he has not uttered your sister's name, nor given any clue as to her whereabouts or those of your niece.

I will require another 10 s. per week, if I am to continue to collect information from the attendants.

I remain, dear Madame, Your humble etc.

CHAPTER NINE.

Letter, the Honorable Arthur Holmwood to Lord G.o.dalming 22 August Dearest Father, Please forgive my delay in coming up to Ring. I promised to escort Miss Westenra and her mother down to London, and if you could see the uncertain state of Mrs. Westenra's health, I am sure you would agree with my course-nay, command me to it. I hope your own health is improved?

I cannot wait for you to make Miss Westenra's acquaintance. You will p.r.o.nounce her-in Uncle Harry's words-"sound as a roast." (One inevitably wonders what sort of roast he has in mind?) The two days I have spent in Whitby with her, walking up to the Abbey on its overhanging cliffs, or rowing on the Esk, have been among the happiest of my life, for she seems to carry sunlight about with her. Her mother is a bit of a Tartar-I kept expecting her to tell me, a la Aunt Maude, that gentlemen do not wear double-breasted waistcoats-but good-hearted underneath. f think she fears to let Lucy go, for with her own failing health ,he has come to rely on her in a thousand ways.

By the by, the Westenras are not, as Aunt Maude would have at, "n.o.bodies." Sir Clive Westenra left Lucy 1100 a year upon her marriage, a quite respectable sum-to anyone but Aunt Maude! Their villa-Hillingham-lies near Primrose Hill, a very quiet, countrified place, surrounded by the sort of old-fashioned garden that makes one think one is deep in the country indeed. I installed the two ladies there this afternoon, and spent a peaceful hour listening to Lucy play the piano. I kept thinking how her fingers would sound on the keys of your harpsicord at Ring, and hoping some day soon to hear the two of you talk about Music together. (Her favorite is Brahms.) Tomorrow I have promised to take both ladies out on the Thames in the Guenivere, for it's been far too long since I've had a tiller in my hands. I only wish you could be along as well, to wave at the little sailing-craft as we steam grandly past!

Unless you need me, sir, I shall remain in London until the wedding, which as you know has been moved up to the 28th September. The change of date has made for a great deal of business, and though Lucy handles it all as adeptly as a matron of thirty, still if I can be of service to her and her mother here, I should like to put myself at their disposal.

I look forward very much to seeing you here on the 20th, if that is still your plan.

Until then, Your loving son, Arthur

He knows where she is!

Through the heat of the endless summer afternoon Renfield twisted in his chains, emerging again and again from the cloudy delerium of laudanum to the horror of waking knowledge.

He is only waiting for the night, to take her!

He could not say it, could not speak. Wotan in his coffin would hear him, know his betrayal. But he could not keep silent, and like an animal, trapped in rage and in pain, he screamed, and kicked at that filthy gnome Langmore, the whiskey-smelling Hennessey, when they came into the padded room, to dump more laudanum down his throat.

Don't send me back there! If she is to die tonight I don't want to see it!

As if he lay naked, chained like Prometheus to the vulture-haunted rocks, Renfield could feel the pa.s.sage of the sun across the sky, the inevitable approach of the night.

Someone save her! Someone warn her!

What I do not have yet, Wotan whispered, grinning with his sharp white teeth, shall I make you a present of shameful one? How many flies will you have to devour, my little Mime, to gain all that one single drink of living blood will bestow?

The blood is the life. You know this.

In India, Renfield remembered, there were sects-whole villages in places-devoted to Kali, the many-handed black-skinned G.o.ddess who danced on the corpse of a dead demon, a necklace of human heads about her throat. They said she was the wife of Shiva, Lord of Change, but there was something in her that Renfield sensed was older, deeper, primal as the rotting flesh from which next year's corn sprouted. He'd ridden out one night with a sergeant named Morehouse and a couple of Punjabi policemen to raid the camp of a robber-band along the Grand Trunk: they'd taken two men prisoners, and killed two others in the fighting. I lie rest had fled. In the camp they'd found the clothes and money of at least twenty-five travelers, some of whose bodies they'd located in ditches near the road the next day.

Are they leftovers from the Mutiny? Renfield had asked, when the screaming, spitting robbers had been bound, gagged, loaded into one of their own bullock-carts for transport back to Calcutta and trial. Even then-thirty years ago almost-the great uprising against the British rulers had been over for a decade, but Renfield remembered it still: the grilling sun beating down On the empty parade-ground at Meerut, the horror of blood and hacked-up bodies he'd seen, when with the relieving troops he'd looked down the Well at Cawnpore.