Slave Of Dracula - Renfield Part 5

Narh, said Morehouse, and spit. They's just robbers.

And one of the Punjabis, a man named Akbar Singh, had said, They existed long before the uprising, Renfield Sahib.

In those days they were called Thugs, and they were better organized, but it was much the same. Indeed, it was forbidden among them to rob the Gora-log, the English, proof enough that it was only money that interested them, though they claimed to have their G.o.ddess's blessing. It is a poor country, Sahib, and even if a man has a farm, or part of a farm that he shares with many brothers, he often cannot feed his family. Men of this brotherhood speak of harvesting travelers, as if they were wheat, standing in fields that the G.o.ddess had given them. There are many such.

In his years of living in India after that, Renfield had found that this was so.

Singh's words came back to him, through that endless day, as he felt the yellow fires of the Traveler G.o.d's hunger seep into his dreams: harvesting. Harvesting.

And in his dreams he caught glimpses of her, despite all he could do: running up the stairs with a tray of tea and m.u.f.fins for her mother, who lay yet in bed; having a chat with the housekeeper-"I worry about her, Mrs. Dennis, she says she feels fine but I know she isn't well . . ." Giving her maid a quick, friendly hug before she s.n.a.t.c.hed up her broad-brimmed straw hat, skipped down the stairs to meet her handsome Arthur, waiting smiling in the hall, or sitting beneath the flapping sun-shade of a small steam-launch that Arthur piloted up the river.

The sun moved across the sky, and the Earth's concealing shadow crawled over the curve of the world. Renfield screamed his despair, and in his mind Wotan only laughed.

If you will turn aside from the harvest, will you then turn aside from the living bounty that it yields?

He felt Wotan's waking like the breaking of a strangler's noose. It was dark in the padded room, and silent, for once, in the hall outside. The smelly air was warm and thick as dirty water. Renfield hung for a time, weeping, in the straps, but twisted his head to one side to dry his eyes on his shoulder when he heard Hardy's footsteps in the corridor. He murmured a pleasant, "Good-evening, Hardy-did you manage to beat Simmons at cribbage today?" and the attendant unlocked the straps, released the metal catches on the back of the strait-jacket, pulled the heavy garment from Renfield's arms.

"There, now, y'old villain, you gonna be good this evenin'?"

"My dear Hardy . . ." Renfield widened his eyes at the big man. "Have I not been good as gold for three days now? Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I know not / They requite me evil for good, and my soul is forlorn."

But Hardy, who did not appear to know more of the Bible than a few names and a Commandment or two (if that), only shook his head, and took his leave, to bring, Renfield knew, the usual unpalatable dinner of tepid stew and bread. So he stood in the corner farthest from the room's tiny barred window, head down and hands folded in an att.i.tude of pa.s.sive dejection. When Hardy returned with the plate in his hand, he was ready for an attack, but Renfield only dodged past him, slammed the door on him, and shoved the bolt shut.

The padded cell was on the ground floor: Hardy's whistle shrilled in Renfield's ears as he ran, but he knew the keepers would go first to the outer doors, not upstairs. He plunged up the small service flight, then along the hall, where the door of his own old room still stood open, awaiting the glaziers who would fix the cas.e.m.e.nt he'd torn out. Let them catch him in time, if only he could reach the dark chapel, if only he could plead with Wotan to find someone else. Surely there were robbers and murderers in England, spiritual brothers of the Thugs, upon whom his hunger could feast?

Darkness outside, the wild smells of summer night and freedom. Shrubs lashed his bare legs, damp gra.s.s like a carpet of velvet under his naked feet-it seemed to him almost that he was flying in a dream, flying like the Valkyries, with their wild music in his ears.

It would be moonrise soon, moonrise when Wotan would walk out, would make his way to Hillingham House, where, Renfield knew, he had marked the very window of Lucy's bedchamber.

"Master, no!" He threw himself against the iron-strapped oak of the chapel doors. "Master, listen!"

The next instant Seward and his attendants seized him, dragged him back from the door. Renfield screamed in frustration and rage, turned in their grip, and lunged at Seward. Fool and worse than fool, understanding nothing! You will be the death of that innocent girl, who never did you harm! But the anger that had all of Renfield's life come and gone from his brain overwhelmed him in red blindness, and the sounds that came from his mouth were inchoate howls of fury. His hands closed around the mad-doctor's skinny throat and he squeezed, twisted, knowing nothing beyond the fact that this man would thwart him, thwart him from doing what he knew to be right.

And as the madness of anger swept over him, he heard laughter, far back down some dark corridor of his burning brain: the laughter of contempt.

Then Wotan was gone.

Renfield stood trembling, shivering, for in the fight his nightshirt had been ripped half off him, and sweat painted his body and soaked his hair. Hardy, Simmons, Hennessey, and Langmore clutched his arms, while Seward leaned against the corner of the chapel wall, gasping and clutching at the collar of his shirt, which had been all but torn away. These things Renfield noted distantly, of less importance than the black wheeling shape of a bat, flittering above their heads in the light of the dropped lanterns and the new-risen crescent moon.

As Renfield looked up, the bat circled overhead, and for one instant Renfield saw the red gleam of its eyes. Then it flew away, not erratically as such creatures fly, but straight, like a homing bird, westward toward London.

Emptiness swept him, and despair.

Langmore had his wrist, clamped under his armpit while he pulled the sleeve of the strait-jacket over Renfield's hand. Renfield looked around him at the men as if waking from a dream. There was so much fear, such deadly grimness in their faces, that it seemed to him almost comical, were it not that he knew what would happen, must happen, tonight.

"It's all right," he said in a normal tone of voice. "You needn't tie me. I shall go quietly."

Lucy Westenra's Diary*

Hillingham 24 August Last night I seemed to be dreaming again just as I was at Whitby. Perhaps it is the change of air, or getting home again. It was dark and horrid to me, for I can remember nothing; but am full of vague fear, and I feel so weak and worn out. When Arthur came to lunch, he looked quite grieved when he saw me, and I hadn't the heart to try to be cheerful ...

CHAPTER TEN.

R.M.R.'s notes 24 August 4 flies

25 August 6 flies. Sugar and treacle.

Won treacle from Hardy at riddles.

A good man proclaimed by G.o.d and man, I sit with my family, two daughters, two wives, two sons.

Each daughter with her only son, Each daughter's son with his two sisters, With his father, his uncle, his nephew.

Five chairs there are round the table And each has a chair, none stands.

Who am I?

26 August 5 flies, 1 spider Spiders harder to catch in padding.

27 August 10 flies. Prune macedoirae.

28 August 9 flies.

His voice is silent. Even when I sleep, as I did in today's deep heat, nothing. He is sated.

Every night I see him, standing on the air outside her window, first a small darkness, like a bat, red eyes burning, burning. She comes to the window, sleep-walking in her night-dress, blonde hair streaming down her back and lifted by the breath of the night.

Dear G.o.d, how thin she looks! Her face is drawn and gaunt, her eyes sunk in shadows. He walks to her across the air and the face she raises to him is like an exhausted child's, uncomprehending. His cloak covers her; he steps down, and into the dark of her room.

Treacle pudding at dinner. Won Langmore's from him at cribbage. Hardy cheats.

29 August 12 flies, 1 spider Was it Dante who said that the true pain of h.e.l.l is exclusion from the beatific vision of G.o.d? All the refinements of torment, the rain of fire and the pits of ice, the buffeting winds of the Circle of the Pa.s.sionate, all are only reflections of that fact: that those souls have forgotten G.o.d, and are forgotten by Him.

Wotan the Traveler has forgotten me.

Oh, Catherine, forgive me my failure! I am utterly on my own.

30 August Will he never make an end to her?

"John." Lucy rose from the wicker chair among the ferns of the Hillingham conservatory, held out her hand. "It's good to see you."

In the act of surrendering his hat to the maid, Seward froze. His heart seemed to stall in his chest. Art had warned him that Lucy looked bad. But nothing could have prepared him for the ghastly whiteness of her face, the way her stylish pink gown hung now from her attenuated shoulders, the transparent look to her hands, and the faint blueness that lay like a ghost on her lips. Dear G.o.d!

He forced himself to say, "And it's always good to see you, Miss Westenra," hoping his voice would not betray his shock. He thanked G.o.d-and his long-dead nanny-from the bottom of his heart for the existence of good manners and small talk, that allowed one to go on as if nothing unthinkable were happening.

"We'll be having lunch out here, if you don't mind." Lucy smiled, gesturing through the conservatory's gla.s.s doors to the white- clothed table, the cheerful blue-and-,yellow china set out among the tubbed feather-palms, the dark-leaved aspidistras. "It's so muggy today." With its long windows open onto the walled garden, even the conservatory was warm, but Lucy kept a shawl draped over her shoulders, as if her own flesh no longer sufficed to protect her bones from chill. From the other white wicker chair, Mrs. Westenra half-rose with a friendly nod-friendly, reflected Seward, now that there was no danger of Lucy giving her hand to one so unworthy as a mad-doctor who had no better social manners than to go off in pursuit of one of his patients between the fish course and the entree.

"And how are you, Madame?" he asked, holding out his hand to her. Lucy's appearance shocked him, but her mother's sallow skin and puffy hands only filled him with deepest pity. Even had Arthur not warned him about that, too, he would have seen the death-warrant written in her face.

In the awful days following that disastrous dinner, Seward had frequently wished Mrs. Westenra ill. Though he had no su- perst.i.tious belief that mere sour wishes could bring ill to pa.s.s, the recollection of them twisted within him, not out of guilt, but sorrow at how hastily a disappointed lover could hope for fate's vengeance, little realizing that far worse was already in store. "I'm quite well, thank you, Dr. Seward." Her own nanny's strictly taught good manners allowed her to smile as she lied. "I'm sorry Mr. Holmwood will not be able to join us."

"His father was taken ill, at their ancestral home in Ring." The telegram had reached him that morning, as he'd been writing up instructions for Hennessey to look after various of the more difficult patients. "Have you been there? It's in the Lake District, probably one of the most beautiful old houses I've ever seen." He helped Mrs. Westenra to the little table, just as if she hadn't made sniffy remarks about his quarters in Rushbrook House; held her chair for her and handed her her napkin before seating Lucy, then himself. "I had occasion to spend a few weeks there, when I was first hired to escort Uncle Harry Holmwood round the world and make sure he didn't kill himself or anyone else in the process."

Tales of Uncle Harry kept both women entertained through luncheon-traveling with Uncle Harry had given Seward a stock of stories that would have lasted him through two months in quarantine, and that was only the repeatable ones. His ill-will against Violet Westenra dissolved as though it had never been, petty in the face of mortality's shadow, and he exerted himself to entertain her. For her part, she met his efforts with smiling cheer. Sometimes Seward, glancing at Lucy's face, saw dread and confusion in her eyes as she looked at her mother, but Mrs. Westenra seemed already to be withdrawing from the world of the living. If asked, she would probably agree that Lucy was too thin and did not look well. But she did not seem to see the skull that stared at Seward from beneath Lucy's fragile skin.

"If you young people will excuse me, it's become my custom to lie down for a little after luncheon . . ."

And they were alone.

The last time they had been so was back in May, when Lucy had confessed to him, weeping, that she loved another: that her heart was not free.

He wondered if his would ever be.

The memory of the scene was in her eyes as she looked at him, and Seward said, as if speaking to a new patient, "So tell me what's troubling you ... Miss Westenra. Or may I yet call you Lucy, as if you were my sister?"

Her fleeting smile showed gums nearly white, and sunken back horribly from her teeth. "I should like to have a brother like you, Doctor ... Jack. One day . . ."

The maid came in to clear up. Lucy glanced sidelong at her, and said, "Would you much mind coming to my boudoir, if you're going to look in my eyes and at my tongue and all that?" She smiled brightly, but in her eyes Seward saw the same worry that had been there when she'd watched her mother at lunch.

Wondering how much her mother guessed; how much her mother saw.

"Of course." He followed her through the well-remembered front hall, with its Queen Anne chest and the big Chinese porcelain bowl that held visitors' cards, and up to her room, over looking the back garden on a little balcony and painted white and violet.

The moment the door was closed, she sank onto a chair, her hands pressed to her brow to cover her eyes, as if all her strength had deserted her and she had barely made it to refuge. For a moment she said nothing, but Seward could see the tears flowing from beneath her trembling fingers.

"I can't tell you how I loathe talking about myself." Her voice was barely a whisper.

"I understand," replied Seward softly. "But even were I personally blackguard enough to speak of what another tells me, a doctor's confidence is sacred. Arthur is my friend, and grievously anxious about you, but your trouble is no more his business than the sufferings of any of my patients would be."

"It isn't that." Lucy raised her head then, shook back the tendrils of her hair that had come unpinned around her face. "Tell Arthur everything you choose. It is his business, and no more than I would tell him myself, were he here.

"As for what's wrong ... I don't know what's wrong with me! That's what frightens me so. I feel so weak, and I have trouble breathing, especially in the morning, as if there isn't enough air in the world to fill my lungs. And I have dreams, terrible dreams . . ."

"About what?" Seward asked, though the matter was clearly physical and not in the province of mental fancies. Lucy ducked her head aside, the faintest flare of pink staining the ghastly white of her cheekbones.

"I-I don't recall." Her breath quickened to a sudden, ragged gasp. She got hastily to her feet and went to the window, the pink cashmere shawl sliding from her shoulders in her confusion. Her hands fumbled with the window-catch and the next moment she gave a little cry as the cas.e.m.e.nt jerked up hard. She pulled her hand back, where a corner of the pane cracked at the impact.

Seward sprang to his feet and went to her. She was crying in earnest now, clutching her cut finger, from weakness, he guessed, rather than genuine pain. Or shame perhaps, he thought, as he took her hand and made sure that the cut was indeed superficial. He found it curious, how frequently young ladies were overcome with shame they could not name, when they were exhausted, or hurt.

He said nothing, only took a clean handkerchief from his jacket pocket to tie up the cut. He didn't even think Lucy noticed that he also extracted from the same pocket a small gla.s.s pipette, and took in it a few drops of her blood.

"I wish Mina were with me," Lucy whispered, as Seward guided her back to her chair. "Mina Murray, who was in the Fourth Form at Mrs. Druggett's School when I was in the First. Of Course I can speak to ... to Arthur about anything, but ... but sometimes a girl needs another girl to speak to."

"Of course," said Seward. And in a gently rallying tone, added, "That's a well-known medical fact," and was rewarded by Lucy's hesitant smile. "And I'm sorry," he went on more soberly, "that Arthur could not be here to comfort you. Even were you not affianced, I could name no man better suited to the task."

And she sighed and relaxed, relieved that Arthur's name was not forbidden between them. She turned a little away from him, groping in her pocket for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

"Can your Miss Murray not be sent for?" Seward asked. "She was the friend who went to Whitby with you, was she not?"

"She was, but she was called away suddenly, just before Mother and I came home. Her fiance was taken ill with brainfever somewhere in Europe, and she had to go to him."

Speaking of her friend's concerns seemed to steady her, and she held out her hand, and opened her mouth, for his examination of nails and gums, with the air of an obedient child. The mucous membranes were nearly white, as he had observed before. Chlorosis?

he wondered, baffled. It was a form of anaemia that struck girls of her age, but he'd never known it to come on so swiftly. In May she'd been delicate-she was always p.r.o.ne to bronchial complaints-but she'd been pink as a rose and lively as a kitten.

"When did this start?" he asked, expecting her to say-as so many did-that she didn't really know, that it had come on her gradually.

Instead she replied at once, "In Whitby. I used to sleep-walk when I was at school, I think I told you-poor Mina was forever chasing me down the hallways in the middle of the night! In Whitby I started doing so again. One night I went right out of the house where we were staying, and walked clear up to the churchyard that overlooks the town. Mina found me lying on one of the tombstones, like the heroine of a play. We didn't tell Mama."

Again the hesitation, the shadow of fear crossing her eyes-fear of what she half-guessed, fear that she would not even speak of to Seward, and he a doctor. Fear that her fear for her mother was true.

She went on, "I felt ill right after that. I thought I'd just taken a chill, and that it would pa.s.s off, and it did, for a day or two. Then it came back, for three, perhaps four days. I felt better for a day or two just before Mina left for Buda-Pesth, and when Arthur was in Whitby, we rode and walked and went boating, and I thought all was well. But now . . ."

She lowered her head to her hands again, and began to cry afresh. "A week ago it began again, the dreams, and the sleep- walking, and this horrible feeling of being in some terrible danger that I cannot see. Last night I woke up lying on the floor between my bed and the window, gasping as if I were drowning and cold ... so cold! I've tried asking Mother if I may sleep with her and she doesn't want me to. She says she sleeps so lightly she's afraid she will disturb me, or I her. I look at myself in the mirror and I look like Death. I see myself in Arthur's eyes..."

She broke off, her hands pressed to her mouth, her thin body trembling as if with bitter chill. "What's wrong with me, jack?" Her voice thinned to barely a breath. "I know this isn't right. What's happening to me?"

"What's happening is that you're ill." Seward would have given his right arm to cup her thin cheek with his hand; he took her hand instead. Long practice had given him the ability to put into his voice a calm steadiness that he was far from feeling. "All pathologies have an explanation: we simply haven't found the right one here yet. You show some symptoms of anaemia but the onset is all wrong. Are you able to eat?"

She shook her head. It was true she'd only toyed with her lunch.

"The sleep-walking and the dreams may very well have something to do with it, and with your very natural concern over your mother's health. In my work with the human mind, I've observed many cases of some mental stress or upset working its way out in physical symptoms. There's a great deal of new work being done on this subject and it's apparently not at all uncommon. Would it be all right if I came back for lunch the day after tomorrow, and brought a friend with me? He's the doctor I studied with at the University of Leyden, an expert in rare diseases. He may be able to take one look at you and say, 'Ach, it is pollydiddle-itis! She has only to bathe in goat's milk and she vill be vell again!"'

Lucy burst into laughter, her whole emaciated face lightening, and she clasped Seward's hand in both of hers. "Bring whom you will, dear Jack," she said. "Mother will be lunching out; we can be alone. And thank you," she added, as she descended the stairs with him, and walked him to the door. "Thank you more than I can say."

Lucy's laughter, and the brightness that had replaced the frightened lethargy in her eyes, remained with Seward through the long rattling journey back to Purfleet in the two-horse fly he kept-at rather more expense than he liked-for such occasions. Simmons was driving, and came close to tangling axles with half a dozen cabs, drays, and carts on the road.