The Pierced Heart: A Novel Page 23

  Bremmer hesitates, then nods.

  “He means the Baron harm—he’s been planning this for a long time—”

  And then the air is split with an ear-rending scream and Charles breaks from his captors’ grasp and pushes past Bremmer into the hall, throwing open the door of the library with a crash. There are books all over the floor, priceless volumes strewn broken-backed, stands upended, glass cases smashed. But the room is empty. He strides back out and races up the stairs, feeling his old injury ache, as if reawakened by the beast that gave it, to the door beneath the tower he has found unlocked only once before.

  Until now.

  He pushes the door open gently, hearing voices. Not the low hoarse tones of the Baron, but another—younger, stronger, angrier. Charles’s breathing is so loud he can scarcely make out the words, and he begins hesitantly up the steps, unsure whether surprise will be his ally or his downfall. It is dark in the space he emerges into, lit only by a single lamp, and stifling in a way he cannot understand until he reaches out a hand and finds the walls have been lined with some sort of dense cloth. In the centre of the room, there is something hanging from the ceiling, looming in the shadows, and creaking as it turns back and forth in some unseen current. For one heart-faltering moment he thinks it is a body, but then his eyes adjust and he can make out heavy loops of coiled wire. And directly beneath them Abraham Van Helsing, his back to the door, bent over something out of Charles’s line of sight. And as for the Baron Von Reisenberg, he is lying on the floor unmoving, his mouth forced open and gaping with star-like flowers, his eyes rolled back white in the glassiness of death.

  And then Van Helsing moves and Charles realises with horror that what he is standing over is a dissection table—the same one, surely, that the Baron had with him in London, the same one those girls must have lain on, half insensible, as the Baron bled them. But now it is Lucy Causton who is lying there, dressed only in a thin nightgown high at the neck, her wrists tied to the sides of the bed. Van Helsing moves again and Charles watches him attach a leather strap about her left ankle, adjusting the tightness with the precision of a surgeon. And beside him, on the floor, is the leather bag, open now to reveal knives, a hammer, and a thick wooden stake. The girl’s hearing must be extraordinarily acute, for though Charles has made no sound she lifts her head slightly and their eyes meet. She is white with terror, but she makes no movement as he gestures her to silence and he begins to move towards her. But then a board creaks and Van Helsing turns. Turns, and sees, and knows.

  “Ah, Mr Maddox. I wondered if you would be joining us. You are rather earlier than I expected.”

  “Don’t do this, Van Helsing. Stop now before you spill more innocent blood. I know what you think—what you believe—but the Baron was not a vampire. A monster, yes. But it was science that made him so, not necromancy. The girl is blameless—as much his victim as your own sister.”

  Van Helsing laughs. “Your ignorance is matched only by your arrogance. I saw that at once, when we met that day in the Library. That English condescension, that haughty disdain. You think yourself so superior, do you not, so modern and so wise? And yet you are as blind as a child, duller of wits even than the uneducated people hereabouts whom you treat with such scorn. They know better than you of the truth of the stregoica. They know there are such beings as vampires—that there are mysteries which we can only guess at, and which even your so-called science cannot explain. Even had I not the corroboration of my own unhappy experience, the records of the past give proof enough. And you have even less excuse, for have you not seen the evidence with your own eyes? For all your pride in your capacity for observation, have you never asked yourself why Von Reisenberg should shun the light of day? Why no-one has ever seen him eat the food of man? Why his teeth are so elongated and so sharp? Why all mirrors have been removed from his domain?”

  Charles shakes his head. “I know that would seem to prove what you say, but there are medical conditions that we still do not understand—illnesses that render the sufferers sensitive to light, and cause their gums to bleach and recede—”

  Van Helsing laughs hollowly. “A ludicrous hypothesis, and yet because you deem it ‘scientific’ you are prepared to give it credence. Oh I admit that at the first I, too, was a sceptic—my education had taught me to scoff at such things, just as you scoff. But you have not lost a sister—you have not loved her since she was a little child, and seen her prey to sleepwalking and the terrors of the night, and heard the doctors say there was no hope. You have not taken her under your protection, and travelled with her half a thousand miles in the hope that a change of air might effect a cure. You have not seen her sicken thereafter day by day, growing pale and paler still, until her breathing was painful to see. You have not found her lifeless body, and seen the marks of teeth about her throat. I saw them, I tell you, and there was no mistaking what they were—those little round holes edged with white that do not heal—”

  “No,” interrupts Charles, starting forwards, “you are wrong—those marks—they were made by a scarificator—a medical instrument. He used it to bleed them, for the sake of his experiments. He had some great theory about the energy of the universe—”

  Van Helsing is laughing now. “And you dare consider me deranged!”

  “I know it sounds insane, but he genuinely believed he had made a momentous advance—that the sufferings of young women like your sister were due to their special sensitivity to moonlight, a sensitivity stemming from a dilution of the blood. That’s why those girls in London looked so pale—that’s why they had those wounds—”

  Van Helsing shakes his head. “It is not I who err, Maddox, but you. This instrument you claim he used, where did he obtain it?”

  Charles opens his mouth to speak, but then falters. Van Helsing smiles thinly. “It was in London, was it not, when he visited your so-called Great Exhibition?”

  Charles swallows, then nods.

  Van Helsing’s contempt is glacial. “You set such store by your capacity for logic, and yet your reasoning will not withstand even the most basic examination. For if he purchased that instrument in London, how do you account for the marks I saw on the neck of my own Mina more than three months before? How do you account for what I saw on the throat of that young woman in Whitby?”

  Charles sees the girl start. “I knew I had seen you before,” Lucy says, looking up at Van Helsing in the pitiful eagerness of doomed hope. “You were at the abbey that day—you raised your hat to me—I thought you so gentle, so gallant—”

  Van Helsing smiles down at her, a smile to turn the heart to ice. “And indeed I am,” he says softly, putting a finger to her cheek, “for I will do you the greatest service any man may perform. I will rescue you from an eternity of working wickedness by night and growing ever more debased by it by day. I will save you from murdering innocent babes in their cradles, and feasting upon the flesh of those you most love—”

  “It was you,” she whispers, the tears running down her face. “It was you I saw that night, in the cemetery, with my Dora. I thought it was him—I blamed him—but it was you, all along—”

  “She had crossed to the Undead long before that night—the marks on her neck left no room for doubt.”

  “I was with her every day, and I saw nothing.”

  Van Helsing’s eyes narrow. “She hid them—in the cunning manner of her kind. However fervent you are to excuse her, Miss Causton, you cannot deny the truth. Your friend had taken to wearing a black band about her throat, had she not?”

  “That was for the brooch—so she could wear the brooch—the one I gave her—”

  Van Helsing shakes his head. “How naïve you are, how very trusting. And she would have preyed upon that—upon you—had I not acted when I did. That black band was most efficacious, by way of concealment. But it could not deceive me. They were still there, those marks, when I broke open the grave and tore that band away. Her body was as perfect and intact as my sister’s had been, when I found her
corpse lips black with the blood of a little child—a child that had been found with its throat torn open, as if by some wild and rabid beast.”

  “What do you mean?” cries the girl, before Charles can prevent her. Because he knows what was done to Dora Holman’s body, and he wants to save this girl the pain of it—the impossibility of forgetting it. “Why would anyone do so terrible a thing as disturb the peace of the dead?”

  “It was I who gave her that peace,” replies Van Helsing, stroking her face. “When I lifted the lid of the coffin I saw her lying there radiant with the bloom of the Undead, her lips full and red and moist, and then she opened her eyes and looked at me—”

  “No, no!” cries the girl, struggling against her constraints, and Charles can see now, that there is a knife in Van Helsing’s hand, a knife with a long hooked blade, and dark stains along the edge. Old blood, long dried. The blood of those girls in London, murdered and mutilated, and of young Rose Danby, who died in the dirt, in terror and exhaustion, begging for her life.

  Van Helsing’s voice is softer now, almost tender, as he caresses Lucy’s golden hair. “Believe me, it pains me to tell you this, but it is the full and terrible truth. Your friend’s eyes that once had been so gentle were then as hard as stone, the pupils so dilated they seemed as black as fathomless wells. And then her bosom began to heave and she smoothed her hands voluptuously over her own breasts until the nipples were hard and she whispered to me like a street whore, ‘I have been waiting for you—kiss me—make love to me!’ And I saw that there was blood on those swollen lips, and I knew what I must do. I took the stake in my hands and plunged it, without mercy, into her heart. She writhed, and twisted, and her beautiful face was curdled into a vile thing of fury and of vice, and as I drove the stake deeper and deeper still, she screamed like a demoness and the blood spilled over her lips and ran over her white death-robe but I never faltered, never shrank from the gruesome necessity until she lay finally still and my high task was done. And then I took this knife and cut off her head in one sweep, and filled her sagging mouth with garlic flowers. And as the scent rose all about me I saw that she was changed, and the face that had been so foul was sweet and pure once more. She was at peace. Just as you will be at peace—”

  The knife is at the girl’s throat, and Charles’s gun is to his hand, but the angle is all wrong, he cannot do it—cannot risk a shot that might kill the girl.

  “I believe you,” he says, starting forwards. “I believe you.”

  Van Helsing stops and stares at him.

  “I had a beloved sister, too,” stumbles Charles. “A sister who was lost through my own fault—my own carelessness. I know how unbearable such a loss can be.”

  Van Helsing frowns, but his grip on the knife is looser.

  “I will help you,” insists Charles, hoping that the despair—the lie—is not as flagrant as it sounds in his own ears. He sees the girl’s mouth open, but he cannot afford to look at her. “I will help you put an end to the menace of Von Reisenberg forever, and rid the earth of his hideous kind.” He strides now to the bag and lifts the stake from it. “Tell me what I must do.”

  Van Helsing’s eyes narrow. “Why should I trust you? How do I know you are sincere?”

  “Because I will help you with the girl.”

  Charles’s heart is beating hard now, and his legs shaking, but he walks as composedly as he can to the head of the table. The girl’s fear is palpable; he can smell it on her.

  “No,” she whispers. “Please.”

  He hesitates; what he’s about to do is a tremendous risk, but there is nothing else, no other way. In her weakened condition, after what happened in the Albany, surely Von Reisenberg would not have used the scarificator on her—surely he would not have endangered his most precious possession, or harmed the one person who could vindicate a lifetime’s ambition.

  “Should we not,” he says, his throat tight, “ascertain first, and conclusively, that the girl has indeed fallen victim to his foul predations?”

  Van Helsing is sardonic. “She has been alone with him for the better part of two months. And you have only to look at her—her breathlessness, her pallor—”

  Charles shakes his head. “That might derive from another cause. I saw evidence, in London, that Miss Causton has recently miscarried a child—miscarried badly. She lost a great deal of blood—”

  He had wondered if she knew; if a girl so innocent would have even known she was pregnant, and he sees from her face now that he was right. Her eyes widen and her lips part, but no words come as she shakes her head slowly from side to side.

  “Very well,” says Van Helsing, reaching a hand to the collar of the nightgown. “There is one piece of evidence she cannot dissemble.”

  But as he pulls the silk aside there is a rending crash and one of the windows shatters open in a rain of glass and splinters and the lamp gutters and goes out. The moon must be clouded for the room is utterly black, and filled with the sound of wings beating. The huge leathery wings of an enormous bat, shrieking and clattering against the walls, swooping over Charles’s head and into his face. He beats the thing away but there are fingers now at his throat, gripping him from behind, wrenching his head back and down and there is something cold and thin at his throat and the breath is squeezing from his lungs and he can hear his own voice crying out as the world explodes in a crescendo of light.

  The moments that follow etch his retina like photographic stills. Van Helsing, blinded, raising his hands to his face and falling backwards. The girl standing in a blaze of white flame, her hands raised high above her head like an angel in ecstasy. And then the light going out and the dark closing back and the two men are on the floor, rolling over and over, kicking and clawing, and there’s the sound of furniture toppling, and specimens are falling about them and rolling on the polished floor and the knife is spinning away, and he is thrusting Van Helsing back and down and closing his hands about his neck, closing his hands about the neck of a man he knows to be a murderer—

  “Don’t you understand,” gasps Van Helsing. “He has taken her—he has taken her—”

  Van Helsing starts to cough and retch and Charles can hear suddenly the sound of wheels. He leaps to the open window and out onto the parapet. Far below, in the courtyard, a carriage has come to a halt by the door and a man is lifting Lucy Causton into it. A man who stops, for one tiny moment, and looks up to where Charles is standing, before stepping quickly inside and shouting to the coachman to make all speed.

  The Baron Von Reisenberg.

  It’s too late to follow them—too late to prevent them—and Charles can do nothing but watch as the carriage gathers speed at the gate and begins down towards the causeway.

  “Shoot,” croaks Van Helsing behind him. “You have a gun. Use it. Use it to stop him!”

  It’s too far away and the gun only a pistol and there is no hope of the bullet finding its mark, but like a man in thrall Charles raises his aim and fires. And then time slows to a heartbeat and he can hear his own pulse thundering in his ears as the horses rear at the noise, and their hooves slither on the wet stones, and the coachman cries out, and the carriage lurches from side to side, gathering pace and careering faster and faster until it plunges headlong over the side of the causeway and rolls, splintering, in an agony of screaming horses and breaking wood, to a shudder, and a stop.

  By the time Charles gets to the gate the servants are already crowded about the coachman where he was thrown clear but not safe, his body broken. Far below, the carriage lies shattered, half submerged in the river, one door hanging open and the wheels spinning. Charles barks at Bremmer to send for the doctor, then races down the causeway and onto the shingle, slipping and stumbling, out of breath, half out of his mind, up to his knees in water, until he reaches the overturned coach where the Baron Von Reisenberg is lying, his face turned up to the moon, his mouth running with blood, and the metal spike of the carriage axle pierced through his heart.

  “Lucy!” cries Ch
arles in panic, wading round to the opposite side. “Lucy!”

  The carriage is slowly sinking now, the sand sucking at its weight, and he wrenches desperately at the door. He can see her inside, but she is not moving, not answering. The carriage lurches, dips sickeningly, but all at once he has the handle open and she is in his arms and he is carrying her out and up the slope, and laying her gently on the ground. There is a graze on her cheek, and a deep cut on her neck, but she is breathing, she is alive. And as he cradles her head and takes her hand in his own it is as if some energy passes between them, and she opens her eyes and looks at him. Looks at him in pain and bewilderment, and a distant anguished recognition.

  “Don’t leave me,” she whispers, at last. “Don’t leave me, Charles.”

  EPILOGUE

  BUCKINGHAM-STREET, 18 JUNE

  My dear Charles,

  I send this letter to the poste restante in Vienna, in the desperate hope that it may reach you in time. I parted, earlier, with Alexander Causton. He brought here a picture he wished me to send to you, that you might know his daughter if you are able to find her. I say “his daughter,” and I know he called her so, to you, but I must tell you now that the girl you seek is neither his daughter, nor as old in years as Causton has always believed. I have enclosed the picture that he so wishes you to have, but I have also enclosed another—an image of this girl when she was very young, and seated on her mother’s knee.

  It is an image that has stopped my very heart, for I have seen this woman’s face before, though only once, and many years ago. She was part of the travelling fair that was visiting Windsor in July of the year ’35. A fair I know you will remember, for you talked afterwards of the lights, and the crowds, and the music of the barrel-organ. This woman was among many whom I interviewed in those first few frantic days, when I was so desperate for any clue, any trace. I remember her solemn features, her wary replies, her insistence that she had seen nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing. But I do not remember a daughter. For whatever she may have said to Causton, whatever lies she later told to hide her crime, the child she claimed was not her own.