From Aberystwyth with Love (15 page)

Sospan was so gripped that he was leaning as far out of his box as he could without actually falling. He bored his gaze into the silent Eeyore. ‘What did he do?’ he spluttered.

Eeyore adopted the attitude of a story-teller who had been waiting for the prompt. ‘Despite what some people will tell you, Vlad the Impaler was a real historical figure. A tyrannical prince who ruled in Walachia in the fifteenth century. Dracula was one of his nicknames, it means devil or dragon. The stuff about vampires is nonsense, of course  . . .’

Sospan looked disappointed.

‘Probably an embroidered folk memory of his bloodthirsty exploits. He used to dip his bread in his victim’s blood which may account for the blood-drinking stories. And there are lots of bats in that region of Walachia and Transylvania, and they carry rabies. It’s not unknown for someone bitten and infected with rabies to run mad and even try to bite someone else, so you can see how easily the idea could have originated.’

‘And sticking stakes in the heart could have come from the impaling,’ added Calamity knowledgeably.

‘I thought you said they stuck them up the “you know what”,’ I said.

Calamity turned expectantly to Eeyore.

‘Oh, they stuck them in all sorts of places,’ he said. ‘Regions of the body that it really wouldn’t do for me to mention. In fact, given the lateness of the hour . . .’ He raised an arm in a theatrical gesture towards the foggy coast in which the setting sun appeared diffused and vague, more as a bloodstain than a disk. ‘I really shouldn’t even be telling it now.’

‘Go on,’ said Sospan, ‘tell us about Brother Hans. I’ll give you a free ice cream.’ I expected Eeyore to dismiss the offer, but surprisingly he didn’t. Sospan prepared a ninety-nine and handed it to Eeyore. It looked a bit smaller than the normal ones. ‘Don’t tell anyone, mind,’ he said.

Eeyore took a lick and resumed his tale. ‘This Vlad the Impaler, you see, was an astonishingly bloodthirsty prince. He was crazy about impaling. He did it by the thousands. One time he impaled twenty thousand peasants and soldiers and sat down among the forest of pales to eat his dinner. On another occasion an invading Turkish sultan marched his army into a narrow gorge filled with thousands of rotting corpses impaled there. They had been there for months and blackbirds were nesting in the ribcages. The sultan was so appalled and dismayed that he took his army straight back to Constantinople. Vlad was truly wicked. He impaled everybody: mothers nursing infants, old men and children, he even impaled sucklings on to their mothers’ breasts. Others he boiled alive, or skinned alive, or disembowelled. If he needed to send a dispatch detailing the progress of a war he would send off bags filled with ears and noses. He even nailed one man’s hat to his head. All these tales were recorded in the monasteries, you see, and this is where Brother Hans, who has since become the Patron Saint of Seaside Donkeys, comes into the story. It so happened that there were three monks of the Benedictine order: Brother Michael, Brother Jacob and Brother Hans – who was their porter. For some reason or other they were forced into exile and crossed the Danube into Walachia. They found asylum in a Franciscan monastery at Tîrgoviste, which happened to be just down the road from Vlad the Impaler’s palace. One day, purely by chance, they ran into Vlad and he invited them back to the palace. The funny thing was, although he was infamous throughout the land for performing these unspeakable cruelties, he was also at heart a religious man and was deeply concerned about the prospects for his eternal soul. So he questioned the monks. First he asked Brother Michael whether it would be possible for him, in spite of everything that he had done, to attain salvation. Brother Michael was only too keenly aware of the fate that automatically befell anyone who upset the prince. Who would tell the truth to such a monster? So Brother Michael said, “But of course you can attain salvation. The Lord is infinitely merciful and I can see no reason why you should not be forgiven.” That was all right, as far as it went, but Vlad was no fool, he knew well it would take a brave or foolhardy man to insult him. So he put the same question to Brother Jacob and got a similar reply. Finally he asked Brother Hans what he thought. This man was made of sterner stuff than his two companions and he told him straight. “Are you nuts?” he said. “You haven’t got a hope of salvation, you are the most evil, cruel, bloodthirsty tyrant who ever lived; you are so terrible that probably even the Devil won’t want you, so much innocent blood have you shed.” And he stopped and added, “I know you will stick me on one of your pales for this, but if that is to be my fate I ask that you do me the honour of letting me finish my tale before you kill me.” And Vlad the Impaler said, “Say your piece to the end, I won’t cut off a syllable and will lay no hand of violence to your person until you have done.” Whereupon Brother Hans gave old Vlad the Impaler an ear-bashing the like of which it is utterly certain no one else in all his life had the temerity to address to him. “You,” he said, “are the most unspeakable, cruel, barbarous, bloodthirsty, inhuman, tyrannical monster who ever defiled the sweet face of the earth. You bathe in the blood of innocents, of children and their mothers, of old and young, none of whom ever did you harm. Heaven stops its nose at your works. What right do you take to impale mothers heavy with children in their bellies, and to stick your wicked spikes through them? Answer me, I demand it of you!” And Vlad the Impaler was so astonished to hear these words, curses such as no man had ever dared utter in his presence, that he answered him. He told him, “It is not mere wanton delight in the pain and suffering that causes me to do these things, although I do admit that there are few things I enjoy more in life than to sit down and dine in a field filled with the impaled bodies of my enemies and to watch my friends the blackbirds eat their dinner at the same time, pecking the weeping eyes from the sockets. It is not mere lust and joy for its own sake but a matter of practical politics. Just as the farmer who clears weeds from his land must also take great care to pull up the roots or assuredly the weeds will return, so I, the Prince, must kill the children of my enemies or they will surely return one day to avenge themselves upon the cruel tyrant who delivered their mothers and fathers to such a wretched death.” On hearing this, Brother Hans cried out, “You fool! You madman! How can you even imagine for a second that the Lord will forgive you? He will condemn you without mercy to a life of everlasting torment, a thousand times crueller than the torments you have inflicted on your victims in this life.” At that point, Vlad could take it no more. He lunged out and grabbed the monk and threw him to the floor. In a bloodthirsty rage more terrible than any of the courtiers had ever seen before, he jumped on to the monk and stabbed him to death with a series of frenzied knife blows to the head. Before long the floor was slippery with the monk’s spilled blood, and Vlad the Impaler lay exhausted in a heap upon the now-dead body of Brother Hans. Vlad dragged himself up to his feet, paused to reflect, and repented his quick anger. Because in so doing he had cheated himself of his one great pleasure in life: the opportunity to impale an enemy. And it was at this point, as he stood there panting above the corpse of noble Brother Hans, that he committed the crime for which he will never be forgiven, the one that will stain the clay until Judgment Day long after the blood of all the other impaled victims has been washed away by the tears and rain. He looked around wildly, mad for something to impale. And that was when his eyes lighted on Brother Hans’s only possession. His donkey.’

He stopped, and we all gasped. ‘It’s a true story,’ he said. ‘Set down in the Benedictine monastery at St Gall in Switzerland.’

By the time he had finished his tale the sun had slipped below the horizon and rendered the sky of the west the colour of plum. Although the heat had not lost its edge, a strange chill passed through us, causing us to shiver; we remained for a while in silence, each privately contemplating the terrible death agonies of that poor donkey from long ago.

Chapter 11

Doktor Gustav P. Essequibo and his lovely daughter Lucrezia stood patiently at the bus stop outside Aberystwyth station. It was a hot summer day and the doktor carried his tan-coloured macintosh neatly folded over his arm; he wore a light-blue Egyptian cotton shirt, open at the neck, and beige slacks. At his feet a small cardboard suitcase bore stickers of the North Surinam Passenger, Freight and Mail Steam Packet Company as well as those belonging to the British Overseas Airways Corporation. His daughter was about sixteen or seventeen with blonde hair braided into pigtails like a member of the Cherokee tribe. She wore beige jodhpurs tucked into black leather riding boots, a crisply starched white blouse and observed the bustle of the station through a monocle. At her feet was a small box that might have been called a steamer trunk had it been substantially bigger. The doktor examined his watch with the quiet patience of a man whose life has been spent on the periphery of the world in countries where all timetables are approximations and no great significance is attached to delays of less than half a day  . . .

‘I’ve always wanted to be called Lucrezia,’ said Calamity.

‘I still think the monocle is over the top,’ I said. ‘In fact, I think everything is over the top.’

Calamity sighed. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry about the disguises, they were all Mooncalf had left. He said there was a fancy dress party on at the Football Club.’

I looked at my watch. ‘The buses were far more regular in Guyana.’

‘That’s out of character,’ said Calamity. ‘According to the instructions Doktor Gustav P. Essequibo is a patient man whose life . . .’ She took a small instruction booklet out of her jodhpur pocket and read: ‘. . . whose life has been spent on the periphery of the world in countries where all timetables are approximations.’

‘Not as approximate as in Cardigan.’

‘You’re doing research into the curative and restorative properties of ectoplasm. Remember there are only two known methods of harvesting ectoplasm. It can be found . . .’ She consulted the booklet again: ‘. . . in the outer corpus of the genus of sea creature vulgarly known as jellyfish. And at séances.’ She looked up from the book. ‘Keeping jellyfish in captivity is difficult because they have no swim bladders. In the ocean they drift with the current, but when kept in tanks they tend to end up in the corner where they cannibalise each other. Can you remember all that?’

‘Don’t you ever get the feeling Mooncalf is laughing at us?’

‘Yes, sometimes.’

A bus pulled up and the doors opened with a sigh of compressed air escaping. A wave of stuffy air, perfumed with hot plastic and the faint scent of diesel, puffed out. We climbed aboard and sat down.

‘How did you get on with the letter?’ asked Calamity.

I took out an airmail letter from the pocket of my macintosh. ‘It’s from your wretched brother, Wild Bill, who, as you know, is currently suffering the living hell of a life sentence in the cockroach-infested Demerara Institute of Penal Correction. Note the cuts in the paper, the result of a vicious knife fight which took place on the way to the posting box. Note also the letter smells of tequila, and hopelessness.’

‘Wow,’ said Calamity. ‘Wild Bill sure got himself in a pickle this time.’

‘We mustn’t give up hope. For the sake of your brave mother and the agonies she suffered during her struggle with the ravages of jungle foot.’

The bus passed through the tree-enshrouded gloom of Southgate and out into the bright sunlight. To our right glimpses of pure blue translucence, the ocean, flickered through the trees, sending a secret heliograph message, sweeter than the call of sirens, about the ecstasy that awaited the traveller who forsakes the bus and dives into the cold green brine. Messages that made the heart cry.

Calamity grabbed her index finger with the fingers of the other hand. ‘Item one: is there a connection between the disappearance of Gethsemane and the mystery fate of Gomer Barnaby? Item two: was it really Goldilocks who buried the shoe? Or someone trying to frame him? Item three: what did Gomer see? Was it a troll?’

‘I don’t think that matters so much,’ I said.

Calamity continued. ‘Item four: what is the meaning of the curious levitated dog?’

‘What levitated dog?’

‘The one in the photo Vanya gave us.’

‘I forgot about that.’

‘Item five: who sent the séance tape? Item six: is the hasty wedding of the Witchfinder and Mrs Mochdre significant?’

‘Item seven,’ I said, ‘was the girl down by the lake really Gethsemane Walters, and if it wasn’t, who on earth was she?’

‘That’s a lot of items,’ said Calamity.

There were four other members of ‘the sitting’. There was a man in his seventies with a bald head and big ears; he had a warm and simple smile and seemed nervous. There were two spinsters, sisters, and a woman who claimed to be a collector of antique china figurines; she engaged everyone in conversation, displaying such a degree of inquisitiveness that it was clear she had to be a plant. The man and the spinsters told her about their lost loved ones whom they were coming in search of and the maid pretended to dust the sash windows and was clearly listening intently as well. Five minutes later they were called into the other room, ‘The Parlour’, where a dining table was set with a green baize cloth and more tea was served.