Slave Of Dracula (5 page)

In his dream those eyes returned to him, drawing him to them through darkness. But he saw now that
they were a man’s eyes. Cold gripped him, the damp cold to which even eighteen years back in his native
country had not accustomed him. Cold, and the smell of the ocean. In his dream he was standing, and
underfoot the rough boards of a ship’s hold rocked. He heard the slosh of waves against the hull, smelled
the familiar stinks of a cargo-hold, rats and bilge-water and dirty leather and rope, and above all else the
thick, mouldy smell of earth. The ship was transporting boxes of dirt-Renfield mentally calculated the cost
per pound of shipping, and concluded that someone must be both rich and mad. In Rome he had visited
a monastery whose chapels had been floored with earth brought from Jerusalem, that the monks who
died might be buried in the holiest ground in Christendom without the inconvenience of making an actual
pilgrimage. Was there, he wondered sardonically, some equally pious coward still at large in England?

How did he know the ship was bound for England?

Then he saw the eyes. Not gold now, but red, gleaming from a dark shape which rose up from among
the earth-boxes. A cloaked form, hiding power in the folds of its garments, like the Pilgrim God in
Wagner’s Siegfried: the Wanderer stepping from the shadows, concealing yet unable to conceal all of
what he is.

Renfield sank to his knees. “Who are you?” he whispered, and to his lips came the words in German of
Mime the Dwarf from that opera. “’Who has tracked me to this retreat?’”

A voice which seemed to emanate less from the column of darkness before him, as from the dark at the
back of his mind, whispered, echoing the words of Wagner, “’Wanderer’ the world calls me:
wide are my wanderings; I roam at my will all the earth around.’”

A vast shudder shook Renfield’s bones. He managed to breathe the name, “Wotan . . .” but could
make no other sound. The dark shape continued: “’I’ve mastered much and trea-sured much;
I’ve told wondrous tales to men. Men have believed Their wisdom great, but it is not
brains that they should treasure. ‘”

“`I have wit enough,”‘ Renfield gasped-Mime gasped. “’I want no more …’” Yet in his mind,
in his heart, he saw the dozens of glass tumblers begged singly from Langmore and I tardy, with his
painstakingly collected flies buzzing beneath them. Saw the crumpled sorry boxes of spiders, the
hard-won fragments of his great work kicked aside by fools and Fate, as in the opera the sword
Nothung had been shattered, beyond his poor power to re-forge.

“’What was good, straightway I gave them,’” murmured that deep, harsh voice from out of
the shadows. “’Spoke, and strengthened their minds.’”

Renfield whimpered, “Lord . . .”

His head bowed into his hands, he only heard the sough of the great cloak as that column of darkness
stepped forward-as Wotan the Wanderer, lord of the gods, stepped forward-and smelled the rank,
intoxicating stench of graveyard earth and de-caying blood. The hand that rested on his head was heavy,
cold as the hand of a corpse.

“’Behold, the bridegroom cometh,’” said Wotan’s voice, in the dark at the back of Renfield’s
mind. All around them the waters surged against the boat’s wooden hold, but though the lightless space
stank of rats, not a single whisper of their skitter-ing did Renfield hear. “’And ye know not the day
or the hour.’ But I come. Then those who are known to me shall have their reward.”

It seemed to Renfield then that he was back in his bed in Rushbrook House, back in his opiated sleep.
But his mind was awake and aware, aware of everything: of the voices of Lang-more and Simmons as
they played their endless, stupid games of cribbage at the little deal table at the far end of the hall; of the
kitchen-cat hunting in the long grass and poor old Lord Alyn in the next room crying and mumbling over
and over to himself how he did not deserve to live, how great his sins were and how powerless he was to
stop himself … Of the soft deadly clinking in the study directly below him, as Dr. Seward made up for
him-self his now-nightly injection of chloral hydrate, so that he could enjoy the sleep he so blithely handed
out to his patients. He was aware of the fog that lay on the marshes, of the boats moving down the broad
estuary to the sea.

He was aware of the sea. Of a small ship with tattered sails, driven on by storm-winds that moaned in
its rigging, of the pounding of waves on distant rocks. It seemed to him that he could rise from his bed

and fly on the wings of that storm-on the crest of that darkness.

Fly to the ship, where Wotan waited … where the Wanderer God sat in darkness, with all his power
and wisdom gathered into his strong hands, to help those who did as he willed.

Fly to Catherine …

He saw her, auburn hair half-untangled from its nightly braid, face peaceful in sleep. Like the Prince in a
fairy-tale, he thought he stood over her, her beauty breaking his heart as it always did, always had, since
first she’d stood up at that theosophical lecture and questioned the lecturer about the astral plane. So
many nights when she would turn over and sleep, after their final good-night kiss, he had simply sat
awake, looking at her slum-bering face by the glow of his little reading-lamp, relaxed and so young with
all its small daily worries sponged away. Joy be-yond joy.

I will save her, he thought. Wotan will help me. I will make him help me.

The thought of that terrible ally filled Renfield with dread, for he knew to the marrow of his bones that
the thing in the hold of the ship was not to be trusted. I will make him help me, but I cannot, must not,
ever, ever let him know where Catherine and Vixie are hidden.

He didn’t know quite why this was so, or what the nature of the danger was. But the column of shadow
within shadow, dark-ness within dark, had glowed with a nimbus of peril.

I will be clever, he vowed. Clever and strong. I can get his help without his knowing. I can keep
that secret, buried in my heart. Then no one will put my Catherine or our beautiful Vixie in
dan-ger, ever again.

Mrs. Violet Westenra Requests the honour of your presence

At the marriage of her daughter

Lucy Marie

To

The Honorable Arthur Holmwood

Saturday, the 8th of October

At twelve o’clock noon

St. George’s Church, Hanover Square

Breakfast and reception immediately follow

At

Godalming House

Grosvenor Square

Dr. Seward turned the invitation over in his fingers. Even the paper was rich as creamy velvet in the
patch of strong August sun-light that lay upon his desk.

It interested him that he felt no pain. Only a kind of dull ,,hock, as if he had taken a mortal hurt but
wasn’t yet aware that u would kill him.

A ridiculous conceit, he thought numbly. Of course I’m not going to die of love. I shall recover
from this, as I recovered from a rattlesnake bite on the Texas plains and from nearly hav-ing my
head cut off on the Marquesa Islands.

Oh, Lucy. Was this your idea, or Art’s? Two people he loved equally-of course they’d both want him
to be there, when they Leave themselves over wholly into one another’s keeping. He recalled how Lucy
had wept when he’d asked for her hand, how she’d blushed when he’d asked, Is there someone else?
Of course there was. He’d seen how Art watched the fair-haired girl at that Ball at Godalming House,
how his young friend had maneuvered always to be close at hand when she wanted a cup of punch or a
sliver of cake. He’d seen, too, the melting approval in Mrs. Westenra’s chilly eyes, that had turned to
daggers whenever Seward had claimed Lucy’s attention.

Get away from my daughter, you … you mad-doctor. Can’t you see she’s fascinating the heir to

a Viscount who has twenty thousand a year?

Not for one instant did Seward doubt that young Arthur Holmwood loved Lucy Westenra to
distraction. He would make her a fine husband, and knowing the man as he did, Seward would take oath
that-pavement-nymphs in Tampico notwithstanding–his friend would never give her the slightest cause
for suspicion or tears.

And at nineteen, Lucy was old enough to know her own mind, Seward recognized.

And yet what returned to his thoughts again and again was Mrs. Westenra’s satisfied voice as the
carriage pulled away into the rain: I told you how it would be, Lucy.

And the deprecating contempt in her tone as she looked around the tiny drawing-room: What a clever
use o f space. What else had she said to her daughter, to steer her thoughts away from a man who had
no fortune, to one who had a great one? All for Lucy’s own good, as that harridan Lady Clayburne had
spoken of taking Vivienne Renfield from her mother and sending her to a finishing-school in Switzerland,
so that she could later make “an eligible parti.”

Growing up as he had, with the standards and position of an old family to maintain though the money to
do so was long since gone, Seward had had a front-row seat on how the ladies of So-ciety could damn
with faint praise, could manipulate the hearts and thoughts of their daughters with that agonizing amalgam
of duty, love, and guilt.

Was that why, after he’d received the small legacy which had raised him from Out of the Question to
modest eligibility, he had never trusted those hopeful lures tossed out by the daugh-ters of the lesser
social ranks?

Seward sighed, and raised his head, to gaze out the window of his study into the green of the walled
park. Through the trees he could see the black roof-slates of Carfax Hall. Last week the FOR SALE
sign had been taken down from its rusted gates, and hired men had gone in yesterday to scythe clear the
drive. So the place had found a buyer. Wealthy, one hoped, for it would cost a fortune to put that
dilapidated pile back into anything resem-bling livable condition.

Through the endless months of June and July, while he had buried himself in work to forget the ache of
hopes raised only to be dashed, he had written to Lucy in Whitby, where she was staying for the summer
with her mother. She had written back once or twice, polite notes about country walks with her
school-friend Mina, or descriptions of the old churchyard on the East Cliff, where the headstones would
occasionally tumble down to the sea beneath: copybook exercises in friendly correspondence that could
have been addressed to anyone.

Yet what did he expect? Declarations of love? He didn’t know whether these cordial letters were
worse, or better, than nothing at all.

He turned the invitation over again in his fingers. Octo-ber eighth. Sixty days away. Time enough to
determine whether he could not endure to be there, or could not endure to stay away.

With a sigh he leaned across to the cabinet and wound up his phonograph, set the needle on the wax
cylinder, and picked up the small mouthpiece. If nothing else, there was still work. Though everything
seemed to taste of ashes these days, at least he could do some good for someone, no matter what he
was feeling inside.

“August seventh. With the prohibition against sparrows in effect, Renfield’s mania for flies and

spiders has returned full– force, and his room is now filled again with his boxes and jars. In
addition to feeding the flies to the spiders, both Langmore and Hardy have seen Renfield eating
both species, confirming my hypothesis of a new type of mania, zoophagy. For two weeks it has
seemed to me that the man has grown more secretive, and I have come upon him repeatedly with
his face pressed to the window bars, in an attitude of listening. . . “

***

Letter, R M. Renfield to his wife

9 August

My dearest one, in haste–

If I have hitherto hoped that you would somehow find a way to visit me here, now I must-and you
must-put that thought from our minds.

Well did the ancients depict their gods bearing saving fire in one hand, and in the other the bow of
death! Salvation walks side by side with destruction, and wise indeed is the man who can steer the
course between them.

HE IS HERE. His feet tread English soil, and nightly he whis-pers in my dreams. I saw as in a vision
the ship that bears his sleeping body driven ashore by the storm-winds that are in his keeping. Where he
made landfall, I do not know. Amid rain and fog I was aware of picturesque small houses, of cliffs
looming over the harbor, crowned with a tiny church and its tombstones. But through the very ground
beneath this house it seemed to me that I felt the press of his foot, somewhere in this island realm.

And he is coming here! I know this as I know my name. And I fear for my very soul.

Guard yourself, my beloved! Compared to him, such crea-tures as your mother and Wormidge are
nothing! Take every precaution against discovery. Only the knowledge that you are safe-that Vixie is
safe-gives me the strength to carry on.

I am taking what steps I can, to strengthen my soul against his power, that I may not be utterly
swallowed up.

The light of his majesty floods my mind, yet I tremble. As I tremble, your name is on my lips. It is all,
all, for you.

Forever your beloved husband,

R.M.R.

***

R.M.R.’s notes
9 August

15 flies, 4 spiders

10 August

12 flies, 2 spiders

Attempt to obtain a sparrow interfered with by attendant-fool! I must be more careful. So much
depends upon my strength.

***

Dreams of moonlight, and of the long stair that led from the lit-tle coastal town up to the churchyard on
the cliffs above. Renfield felt himself again aware of every living thing in that town, sleeping now, sleeping
deep: each child dreaming of pony-rides or magic palaces, each man of stammering unprepared through
classroom-lessons unlearned. He saw the dark houses with their windows shuttered, the pretty gardens
robed in darkness. Saw the white slip of movement, as a blond girl in a nightdress strolled unconcerned
through the town with a sleep-walker’s un-seeing stare.