A Sharpness on the Neck

Chapter Ten

After my futile attempt in August of 1792 to come to grips with my brother at the palace of the Tuileries, I departed from Paris, called away by matters which have little to do with the subjects of this chronicle. Suffice to say that for a year or more I was traveling, mostly out of France. Of course during this period my closest blood relative was never far from my thoughts, and now and then news reached me, indirectly, of some of his activities. Apparently he had chosen to remain in France, drawn like a moth to the Revolutionary flame. There was a report that Radu had taken to frequenting lunatic asylums, recruiting disciples among some of the inmates.

Not that the folk outside those walls seemed a great deal saner. Six months after the Tuileries, in February of '93, all of Europe learned that Louis Capet, formerly king of France, had been guillotined like a common criminal.

In July of that year, the Revolutionary propagandist Marat was assassinated, made a martyr in the eyes of his fellow enthusiasts; he was stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday, whose pretty head was separated from her body by Sanson a few days later. On 16 October, Marie Antoinette followed her once-royal husband to the scaffold.

By the time of my return to Paris in the spring of 1794, when I was once more free to concentrate upon my problems with Radu, the French Revolution was entering its most acute phase. The infection known as the Terror was building to its most feverish height, before it reached its sudden climax in the Revolutionary month of Thermidor.

One of the events which drew me back to France at just that time was the news which had reached me concerning a gathering of vampires, which was soon to be held there.

Simultaneously with word of this gathering there came to my ears an indirect communication from Radu. His emissary proposed, in his name, that we two brothers should take advantage of the conclave to discuss a truce.

Treachery on Radu's part was of course the first idea that sprang to mind when I received this news. Yet at the same time—perhaps I was tired—I allowed myself to toy with the idea that it might after all be possible to come to some agreement with Radu, to reach an armistice if not conclude a peace. Foolishly I allowed myself to be tempted by the notion that my brother and I might be able to coexist, however uneasily, in the world.

Constantia too had evidently been invited to the gathering, or at least had learned about it, and for old time's sake she found a way to let me know.

A hundred years earlier, the protracted feud between the brothers Dracula had been the subject of much gossip in the small community of European nosferatu; now the subject was waxing popular once again. In general our colleagues found it vastly entertaining, if now and then a little worrisome.

One or two of the newer members of the club, though they had recently met Radu, had never heard of me at all. Or they had heard vague tales of Prince Dracula (the peak of whose international fame, literary and otherwise, still lay far in the future) but took it for granted that Radu was the only member of the family to bear that title, the only Dracula still alive (or "undead," if you prefer), and had always been the only one of any importance.

Radu had been giving intense consideration to the problem of recruiting people, preferably people of proven capabilities, to help him defeat his brother. In the end, as far as I could piece the facts together, he thought it best to try to intrigue them with the idea of a kind of hunt. He seems to have described the upcoming effort as a kind of sporting event—it would be fun, and not very dangerous, to track down the cowardly Vlad (whose, reputation, he assured them, was based on falsehood!) and torment him or kill him. How well Radu succeeded in this effort we shall see.

I may digress for a moment to remark that now at the time of writing, as the twentieth century jitters unpredictably toward its close, the study of vampire populations still offers a fertile field of investigation, though (I admit we ourselves are partly to blame) facts are often hard to come by. An investigator of a scientific turn of mind might endeavor to calculate our probable longevity in terms of half-lives; in using that word I am not speaking of some supposed twilight existence of the undead, but adopting a scientific concept which is most commonly applied to the heavy nuclei of radioactive atoms. A population of such atoms is said to have a half-life of one thousand years, if its numbers are diminished by fifty percent after the passage of that measure of time. And in the Europe of two centuries ago, I now compute that the half-life of the nosferatu as a group was more than two centuries.

Certainly the scholarly movement, which came to be known as the Enlightenment, sweeping across Europe in the last half of the eighteenth century, had brought some decline of belief in our existence, at least among the self-considered intellectual elite—though not nearly as great a falling-off in supernatural terror as was produced a century later by the widespread adoption of the electric light.

* * *

While still perhaps two hundred yards away from the small group which was already gathered for the meeting, I could recognize the voice of Radu. No mistaking it, though he was speaking quietly and his mellow tones had not graced my ears for many decades. My flesh crept—no, I am not a total stranger to that sensation—with a premonition of evil. I listened, paying close attention, as I drew nearer. My brother was engaged in telling a small assembly of our colleagues his version of our family history—a lively chronicle in very truth, though perhaps not as extravagant as his tales would have made it—in an effort to enlist their support against his brother.

The answers given by the group were skeptical and not particularly enthusiastic. Only one of the other voices was that of a vampire I had met before.

Nodding to myself, I paused before joining the small assembly, to take thought, weighing the several possible ways in which its members might react to my presence, which to some of them would be totally unexpected. Much would depend on how much progress Radu had already made in winning them to his cause. And then, having made some preliminary decisions, I moved forward again.

Certain students of our miniature society have wondered why I appeared at this secret gathering of vampires in the traditional clothing of a French priest—wearing a black soutane, which is a cassock, along with the traditional buckled shoes and a black broad-brimmed hat. My reasons for this choice of dress were personal; I did not explain them to anyone at the time, nor do I consider it my duty to account for them now. It was not the first time I had worn such an outfit, and several explanations have been suggested, among which the reader may take her/his choice. The simplest may be that a clerical identity made certain things easier when one moved in society—or at least that was how things had worked in France before the Terror got under way in earnest.

Others have speculated that Vlad Dracula was wearing a cassock and a black priest's hat on that night as a gesture of defiance, simply because the Revolutionary government had forbidden such apparel, at the same time as it required all priests to take an oath of loyalty to the new government.

There is even one quite romantic, chivalric interpretation, to the effect that I had disguised myself as a priest in the hope of giving a certain real priest, whom I knew to be a worthy man, a better chance of getting away from his sans-culotte pursuers, who were determined to deprive him of either his sworn loyalty to God, or of his life. I can imagine those unfortunate fellows discovering, too late to help them, that they were chasing down Vlad Dracula instead; and like a varied assortment of rascals before and since, they were not to profit by the exercise… but the reader may take his choice.

I did not really expect to be challenged when I arrived at the meeting, but I was.

Even as I neared the door, I was formally commanded to present some ancient password to a young vampire-sentry.

"Who told you of our gathering?"

The question was asked in tones of a childish suspicion, and from one of my age and accomplishments it deserved no answer. I tilted back my head and raised two open hands toward the sky, like one calling upon the heavens to witness some phenomenon beyond mere human comprehension.

Though my vampirism ought to have been obvious enough to any of my colleagues, I did not necessarily consider myself slighted by the fact of being challenged—it was part of an old and honored ritual. I had an ample supply of passwords, in many languages.

For several minutes I had already been aware of my brother's presence in the small group ahead. From where I now stood, I could hear six beating hearts but only one set of breathing lungs.

Shortly before I entered the room—a chapel long-profaned, though only recently abandoned by its breathing owners, located a level or two above the ground floor of the ruined castle—with all my senses tuned to full alertness, I became aware that the breathing lungs were small organs working shallowly and rapidly. Their owner was at the far end of the chamber, behind some angle of stonework and as yet invisible to me.

I gave the password almost absentmindedly, without making an issue of the challenge. My attention and my thoughts were now focused almost exclusively on my brother.

Each of us solemnly assured the other that he was looking well.

As I made my entrance, the group of five or six vampires, men and women, young and old, was deep in discussion; this came to an abrupt halt, and I suspected its subject would be likely to affect me directly. I did not need to hear much to know that Radu was actively attempting to enlist their aid in his war against his brother.

A silence fell.

Quietly I entered the darkened room, and Constantia, rather proudly as I thought, introduced me to the small handful of those who had known me only as a name. I was glad to see my old companion—in her breathing days my lover—present at this gathering, though I knew better than to depend on her for any support in a crisis. The former gypsy girl was in fact one of the senior members of this group, though she looked as young and beautiful as ever.

Constantia had come to the meeting dressed up in a long gown of rich fabric that had certainly never belonged to peasant girl or sans-culotte. She wore it with a natural grace.

She alone among those present, besides Radu, could testify absolutely to my true identity. She had in fact been present at my first emergence from my first grave—another story I have told elsewhere.

"Vlad Dracula, Prince of Wallachia."

All the group save Radu and Constantia were strangers to me. I had the feeling of one who had neglected his social obligations and fallen out of touch. Constantia introduced the others, one by one, and I bowed slightly at each name. They were of a wide range of ages, and some bore names I recognized. It was not exactly the sort of gathering I had been hoping for; there were none I would have chosen for my associates.

To Radu I remarked: "You appear to have rested well since our last meeting. Did you enjoy a satisfying sleep?"

"I feel quite refreshed, thank you," Radu responded. "Quite energetic."

"Would it be impolite of me to inquire how all this energy is going to be employed?"

The stone-arched room before me was high and narrow, not big enough to accommodate many more than the lord of the manor and his immediate family at their devotions. Though partially roofless, on that night it was by breathers' standards very dark, which mattered little, because none of those on hand for the meeting needed much light to see. In that old room, redolent of remembered prayers, the very walls still reeking faintly of old incense, the eyes of a breathing human would have picked out only ghosts of illumination entering by the tall windows, where only fragments of stained glass still remained, making an irregular rim and corners.

Down in the empty cellars and across the occasionally moonlit floors of the old house, rats and mice went scurrying here and there, going about their murine business, accepting vampires as one more fact of life, no more and no less incomprehensible to mice than so many breathing farmers, or tax-collectors, would have been. And spiders, progressing in their eight-fold strides so swift and light that even I needed to strain my ears to pick them up.

And there, standing in the midst of the little gathering, was my beautiful, beautiful brother, beautifully dressed for the meeting in silks and furs, in the style of a century long gone. As our eyes met at last, Radu stood silent for a moment, trying to be aristocratically impassive, and almost succeeding—but I could see that he was afraid.

Was he on that evening a little taller than I, or a little shorter? I find it difficult to remember. In the course of his adult life, Radu has been both. As usual, more slender. Quite young in appearance, as always. Almost always. I sometimes think that Radu would rather die than let himself be seen in public with an aged face, gray hair, or wrinkled, sagging skin at his throat and on the backs of his hands. In vampires these phenomena tend to come and go, largely dependent on the vagaries of diet, and to me they are generally matters of indifference.

In this company of our peers—if that is the right word for them—neither of us felt quite secure enough to move decisively against the other.

Radu faced me solemnly. "Vlad, we have been enemies long enough."

I took time to gather my thoughts before replying. "What do you propose?"

"We are brothers, after all. I have sworn an oath to give you no more cause to hate me."

"You? Have sworn?"

"Upon our father's grave," he proclaimed in a clear, convincing voice, meanwhile raising his right hand. "There is nothing that I hold more sacred."

"Bah! I doubt that you even know where it is."

He looked nobly sad. Chagrined at this rebuff, but still determined to make himself my friend. "I suppose it's only to be expected that you would not believe me. Nevertheless, I have sworn."

My brother's face was no longer disfigured by the mustache I had glimpsed at the Tuileries on the tenth of August. He would not choose to wear that appearance in this company, nor did I choose to mention our near-meeting then. Nor, of course, was he wearing now either the red cap or the carmagnole.

It so happened that I was now the one in disguise. On seeing me, one of Radu's friends made some harsh jest about the soutane, asking when I had taken holy orders, and a little later inquired whether I intended to say mass.

I gazed at him steadily. "I dislike jesting about sacred matters."

The vampire who had spoken fell silent, blinking, not knowing what to make of that dead-serious reply.

"Vlad has had just cause to be upset with me." Radu was musing aloud. His demeanor was that of one inclined to be forgiving. "In fact I sometimes fear that he might even nerve himself one day to make a serious attempt upon my life." Radu turned to our peers and colleagues, wistfully inviting their understanding.

"Do not tempt me," I growled softly.

Throughout the course of this dialogue, our peers and colleagues were looking at me thoughtfully, and I could see that most of them were not quite able to reconcile the figure I presented with the one they had been forming in their minds, based on Radu's description.

"So, this is the famous Prince of Wallachia?" one demanded suddenly.

Having answered that question with regard to myself, if I thought it deserved a straight answer, I now repeated it, turning it on Radu.

"Thou knowest who is famous and who is not."

My brother, it gradually became clear to me as I listened, had been telling these potential recruits to his cause that he was the one who had nailed the turbans of the sultan's envoys to their heads. (Remind me to tell you about that, another time). He, the prince who had so thoroughly terrorized the potential criminal elements that a merchant's bag of gold could lie untouched in the streets all night—but that story I have told elsewhere.

At least Radu had been making those outrageous claims before I arrived. Constantia, who had been listening to them, knew better, and Radu of course realized this; but he also knew that she was not going to contradict him.

The subject which had been under discussion before my arrival was soon taken up again: the recent shocking events of the Revolution, and how the profound changes taking place in the breathers' society were going to affect their lives. Opinions were divided on the probable effect of these attacks upon the Church. The consensus was that almost any change was likely to be for the worse—a truer, more spiritually active church would not be a good thing for the villains in the group.

One of them wondered, with a languid laugh, whether under the new regime aristocrats among the nosferatu might be called to account for drinking the blood of the unwilling. I had gathered from the speaker's previous remarks that he was planning a dreadful vengeance on his peasants, who in their ignorance were congratulating themselves on having, as they thought, burned the lord of the manor alive.

Eyes of divers colors, set in a variety of pallid faces, turned in my direction. Some, no doubt, were not impressed with what they saw. Well, it was not my purpose to appear impressive.

One asked: "And what does our most recent arrival have to say upon the. subject?"

I was reluctant to comment on the Revolution, except to say that the lower classes were not without rights—as long as they chose to exercise them.

"How do the Americans put it now—we are all 'endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights'? In this the peasants of France are remarkably like everyone else. Including us."

My words were met with a largely uncomprehending silence.