Blood 20 Read online

  The Jew had set his candle in a little niche in the wall, where once maybe a sacred image had been placed, now vanished. As the young man flirted with the corpse, bending close, his long hair mingling with hers and of the self-same shade as hers, di Giudea stood in silence, his tall straight figure partly shrouded in the dark, his arms folded. There was about him a curious air of pat­ience, that and some inexorable and powerful quality having no name. The tomb, with its pledge of death, the miracle that lay there, if miracle it was and not some alchemical trick, each seemed to have left him undisturbed. The younger man sparkled on the dark like a jewel; the Judean was, in some extraordinary way, an emissary and partner of that dark. So that, looking up once more, Valore very nearly started, and might be forgiven for it, as if he had glimpsed the figure of Death himself.

  But, ‘Well,’ said Valore then, regaining himself in a moment, ‘what shall we do? Shall we withdraw? I for one am loath to desert her. How long she has endured alone here, unvisited save by beetles, unwooed save by worms. If I could wake her, as you postulate, with a loving kiss – shall I try it, noble pagan? Will you act my brother at this wedding, stay and kiss her, too …

  Olivia di Giudea did not respond, standing on, the shadows like black wings against his back. And Valore offered him again that glorious smile, and put down his beautiful face toward the beautiful face of the dead. The lips met, one pair eager with heat, one passive and cool. Valore della Scorpioni hissed his kindred with great insistence, his mouth fastened on hers as if never to be lifted, his fingers straying, clasping, the smooth flesh of her throat, the loose knot of her fingers on her breast.

  The Jew watched him.

  Valore raised his head, staring now only at the woman. ‘Divine Madonna,’ he exclaimed, ‘beloved, can I not warm you? I must court you further, then –’ And now he half lay against the body, taking it in his arms, his eyes blazing like gold coins –

  And for the third occasion of that darkness, the Jew laughed.

  Valore acknowledged this only by the merest sound, his lips active, his hands at work, his pulses louder in his ears than any laughter.

  But in another instant, de Giudea left his post by the wall, breaking the shadows in pieces and striding to the slab. Here he set a grip like iron on the young man’s shoulder and prised him from his employment. With a slitted gaze, now, breathing as if in a race, Valore looked at him perforce, and found him laughing still, mainly the two eyes glittering like black stones with laughter.

  ‘Your kisses after all, I fear, leave her but too cold,’ said the Judean.

  ‘Oh, you will do better? Do it. I shall observe you closely and take instruction.’

  ‘First,’ said di Giudea, holding him yet in that awesome iron grip, ‘I will tell you this much. You rightly suppose she is not dead. She only sleeps. Should she rouse, will you run away?’

  ‘I? I have seen many things done, and stayed to see others. Things even you may never have looked on.’

  ‘That I doubt. I am older than you, and much-travelled.’

  Valore attempted to dislodge the iron vice, and failed. He relaxed, trembling with excitement, anger, a whole host of emotions that charged him with some delicious sense of imminence. Even the punishing hand that held him was, in that moment, not displeasing.

  ‘Do as you wish, and all you wish,’ said Valore hoarsely. ‘And you will find me here, obedient.’

  The Jew showed his white teeth and with a casual violence quite unlooked-for, flung the young man from him and simultaneously from the couch. Valore rolled on the floor and came to rest against the worn stones of one wall. Dazed, he lay there, and from that vantage saw the tall figure of the Judean stoop as he himself had done toward the slab. ‘You will learn now,’ the voice said above him, ‘which kiss it is that wakens.’ But there was no meeting of the lips. Instead the dark head bent, black hair fell upon white skin, yellow silk. It was the throat di Giudea kissed, and that only for a space of seconds. Then the dark head was lifted, strong and slowly as some preying beast’s from a kill, and there, a mark, a blush left behind on the skin, the silk.

  Valore ordered himself. He came to his feet and stole back across the tomb, and so beheld, with an elated astonishment, how his shadowy companion milked the broken vessel of the throat with his fingers, smearing them, then pressed these fingers to the lips of the dead. Which quietly, and apparently of their own accord, parted to receive them.

  ‘Take,’ said di Giudea, the one word a sound like smoke. And the parted lips widened and there came a savage glint of teeth. So Valore had seen a dog maul the hand of its master! Yet the Judean was impassive as this terrible thing occurred, still as the night, until he spoke again, a second word: ‘Enough.’ And the mouth slack­ened, and he drew his fingers away, bloody and appalling, seeming bitten through. The sight of all this sent Valore reeling. He fell against the couch again, full finally of a sensation that prompted him to hilarity or screaming, he was not sure which.

  ‘What now?’ he cried. ‘What now?’ Swaying over her, his Aurena, supported by one hand against the slab, the other fixed on the Jew’s wrist. But the question required no answer. Fed by that elixir of blood the Jew had given her, her own and his, the being that lay before them both began, unconscionably, to awaken. The signs off it were swift, and lacking all complexity. The parted lips drew a breath, the eyelids tensed, and unfurled. Two eyes looked out into the world, upon the vault, upon the form of Valore. She had seemed in all else very like him, but those eyes of hers were not his eyes. They were like burnished jets; the eyes, in fact, of Olivia di Giudea.

  ‘She is more beautiful than truth,’ Valore remarked, staring down at her. ‘Is it a part of your spell, O Magio, to set your own demoniac optics in her head?’ But then he began to murmur to her, caressing her face, smiling on her, and she, as if lessoned in such gestures by him, smiled in return.

  It was a joy to Valore, a joy founded upon exquisite fear, to feel her hands steal to his waist and seek to pull him to her. His hold on the other man he relinquished, and taking hold instead once more of her, he sank down.

  The Jew spoke quietly at his back.

  ‘It would seem, locked in her father’s house against the coming of the plague, she could not find escape, nor would she prey on her kindred. But she has been hungry a great while and forgotten all such nepotism.’

  His face buried in Aurena’s breast, Valore muttered. It was a name, the name of one who, a legend and a sorcerer, cursed by the Christ to an eternal wandering until Doomsday, when and if it should ever come, was also a Jew; and this persona he awarded Olivio di Giudea now. ‘Ahasuere.’

  Di Giudea stood at the door of the tomb, looking upon black­ness and a faint threat of greyness in the east, where all the stars went out, and from which all the plagues of the world had come – sickness, sorcery and religion.

  ‘Ahasuerus? But if I am he, and immortal,’ the Judean replied, ‘there must be some reason for it, and some means. Say then, perhaps, my presence at your side tonight also had some reason and some means. You will come to understand, there are other kindred than those of the flesh. And only one race that may safely spurn all the rest.’

  Valore did not hear this. There was a roaring like a river in his ears, a burning that ran from his neck into his heart. As he lay in her arms, Valore knew it was his blood now she drank. And first it was an intolerable ecstasy, so he clung to her, but soon it passed into a wonderful and spiritual state wherein he floated, free of all heaviness. But at length this too was changed, and he was invaded by a dreadful languor and an iciness and a raging thirst and a searing agony of the limbs and nerves, so that he would have pulled himself away from her. However, by then it was too late, and helplessly he sprawled upon her till she had drained him.

  An emptied wine-skin he lay then, void and dry. The doorway was long-empty also of any other companion, and the door rightly shut against the impending dawn.

  Aurena della Scorpioni reclined beneath the coverlet of her victim,
her head flung back, her eyes enlarged, her lips curved, smil­ing still.

  Beyond the tomb, the garden and the wall, the city was wakening also, throwing off its stygian sleep.

  By noon, some would have asked aloud for Valore, the Scorpion’s child, and found him not. It was the same with the clever Judean; he and all his arts and skills and sciences vanished with and in like manner to the darkness. From those who had supped at Andrea’s table and remained, uneasy fancies sprang. As days went by thereafter without clue, there began to be a certain hideous curiosity concerning corpses dredged from the yellow river. But twenty days later the veiled person of plague entered the Interiore, and thence the forums, and the markets, and the churches, and the proliferation of the dead ended such speculation.

  It was not until the winter came to cleanse the ancient thoroughfares with blades that Andrea Trarra, going one evening into his garden to inspect the frost-crippled vines, was shocked to find a figure there before him.

  After a moment, recovering somewhat, Andrea stepped briskly forward.

  ‘Valore – where in God’s name –?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Valore, his face deadly white in the dusk, but beautiful and charming as ever, ‘I have countless secrets. Do you, for example, remember when we diced for this?’ And held up before the other a great key of iron, now no blacker than the centres of his eyes.

  BLOOD CHESS

  Winter and the Sorian Approach

  A crumbling stone staircase leads down the mountain-hill from the castle. About a mile above the valley, there is a walled terrace, and here the gigantic chessboard is laid out. It is old and faded, the black squares grey, the blood-red squares a lifeless pink. As she crosses the chessboard, each square taking a full three steps, Ismira glances down at it, at the cracks in its paving where wild flowers push up in spring, and where, now winter is approaching, they die.

  She is not a vampire, but the people in the valley are afraid of her, thinking she must be. Her brother is the vamp­ire. In the valley they call him the Sorian. He comes from the land of Soriath, over the mountains, so the name is not inappropriate – but really they are trying to distance him in the only way they can. They are aware of his true name, which is Yane, and never use it.

  Ismira knows her brother will return during the night. By going down to the village, she is also warning them.

  There is an afternoon frost. When she reaches the village street, the tall trees by the well are clouded with cold. Icicles thin as needles spike the roofs. Already the ball of the sun is rolling off the sky. Before, she would often come here in full daylight, striving to convince them she was only herself, had no fear of sunlight, and did not require blood. But when she saw this did no good, she did not do it anymore.

  All the doors are shut and the street and alleys empty. Somewhere a dog howls and is struck – she hears the blow – to silence it.

  Ismira stops in the centre of the street, by the well. In her long black garments, her long black hair curling down like a fleece to her shoulder-blades, she is only what they must expect.

  As she stands waiting, the sun too runs away, afraid she will see its redness and desire its blood.

  Yane, the Sorian, once said to her, in one of his intermittent fevers: ‘The sun – give me the sun to drink – it’s full as a wineskin –’

  After a time of merely standing there, Ismira sees a door is being eased open in the side of the big house, the one with the carvings that pretend to the decoration of the castle on the mountain-hill. Something is thrust out. It drops and lies motionless on the street.

  Ismira goes over to this object, which turns out to be a young woman of about 16, clothed in white, and with her fair hair washed and braided. She is not unconscious, as some­times they are. She stares up at Ismira from the dirt.

  ‘Don’t make me, lady – Let me go –’

  ‘I can’t. Get up and come with me.’

  Shaking and temporally past tears, the girl does so. She will probably walk meekly behind Ismira all the way back up the mountain. Now and then, one of them will dash off, and never be seen by Ismira again. She suspects the village pursues and murders them.

  Ismira herself has done what she must. She has proc­ured the sacrifice for her brother’s needs, and also warned the village by her presence, that he is imminent.

  The sky burns crimson.

  Ismira and the sacrifice plod doggedly up the terrible, ruinous stair.

  ‘Look,’ says Ismira, encouragingly, as the epic bulk of the castle looms over them, touched with ruby by the falling sun they have, through climbing, managed to keep sight of. Now the girl starts to cry.

  Ismira hardens her heart, at which act she has, over the 15 years since her tenth birthday, become adept.

  Why attempt reassurance? These ones the village selects by unlucky lot. Each of them knows what will happen.

  They pass the chessboard. The weeping girl takes no notice of it. All the flowers have been abruptly frost-bitten to death, and above, in the castle garden, scarcely any leaves remain on the tangled trees, and those that do are like silver daggers.

  The Return of Yane

  The girl’s name is Thental. She sits crying on and on.

  Once it begins to be very dark, Ismira walks about the castle, the rooms, passages and annexes, lighting a few lamps and enormous candles. She wonders if the girl would be more comfortable in the great hall. But the kitchen, with its huge fire, will be much warmer.

  Coming back into the kitchen, there is Thental, still crying.

  Ismira has given her white bread and an apple, and wine for courage, none of which has Thental tried.

  How dismal it all is, Ismira thinks, lighting another candle on the branch above the hearth. She hopes Yane will soon arrive.

  As if reading her mind, Thental checks her sobs.

  ‘Does he fly here, on his bat wings?’ she asks.

  Ismira senses an unpleasant pettiness in the question. Thental knows she is being given to a monster, the monster must therefore live up to his legends.

  ‘No, in fact he’ll ride across the pass.’

  ‘Some demon will have told you he’s near.’

  ‘Also no. Common sense, and memory. Snow will soon fall and close all the passes. It’s always on this night Yane comes back. Have none of you realised?’

  The girl shudders. Her head darts up and her shining hair, loosened by now, flutters candlelit round her head like a bridal veil.

  ‘Is that a clatter of wings?’

  Ismira says nothing. She can hear it too, and quite obviously the noise is that of hoofs clattering into the yard outside.

  Yane will stable his horse in the stall Ismira has prepared, before he enters the kitchen; they have no servants, of course. But the girl springs up and falls now on her knees, tightly shutting her eyes, and praying.

  Ismira feels sorry for her, but also it is all so tire­some, this. ‘Shush!’ she exclaims sharply, and Thental becomes quiet as the grave.

  It will be useless to try to reason with her. Ismira, long since, additionally gave that up with the sacrifices who accompany her to the castle, their names written helpfully on little scraps of book paper and wrapped round their wrists.

  They pose there then, in stasis, Ismira seated on the wooden chair, Thental kneeling abject on the stone-flagged floor.

  Outside now a sound of boots, then the door is pushed wide. Yane strides in out of the night, bringing the night in with him, cold and mysterious, across cloak and hair.

  Ismira sees, as so often, Thental stare, then avert her gaze.

  Yane is very handsome. His blue-black hair falls to his waist, he is tall and straight, his body hard and fined from constant journeys, his large dark eyes full of a luminous introspection fatal to most women.

  Ismira gets up. She takes him a cup of wine.

  Yane thanks her. He drinks the wine. Then he glances at the girl kneeling on the floor, staring at him between fing­ers she has clamped over her eyes.

 
‘Is she for me?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Dear God,’ says Yane. He sighs, perhaps an affectat­ion. He walks across and sits in the wooden chair, and looks at Thental. Thental does not look back, but nor does she cry any more. ‘Well,’ says Yane, ‘good evening. Isn’t the floor rather hard on your knees?’

  Thental blinks. She puts down her hands.

  ‘Don’t kill me,’ she says quietly. ‘Don’t damn my soul.’

  ‘I’m not interested in your soul. Keep it.’

  Thental grunts. She lowers her head, desolate now.

  Yane stands up, frowning with irritation and tiredness.

  Ismira has drawn a bath for him, across the passage, with extra water heating on the fire there. He goes out to this, and Ismira moves around the kitchen, seeing to the supp­er, constantly detouring past Thental kneeling on the floor.

  An Evening at Home

  When Yane enters again he is more relaxed, wrapped in a dress­ing-robe of scarlet, black and gold. He goes to Thental at once and lifts her off the floor, and sits her at the table in a chair adjacent to his own.

  She is evidently exhausted by her fright, far worse than Yane from his travels. He takes advantage of that, feed­ing her scraps of meat and cheese, and making her sip the wine. Her head droops onto his shoulder. He kisses her hair absently.

  Ismira watches all this from the other end of the table. It has ceased to offend, puzzle or upset her.

  She thinks back to the day the horsemen came to her father’s house in another country, not this one, and not Soriath either. That was the day of her tenth birthday. While her proud father sat in talk with the riders, Ismira’s chilly mother took her aside. ‘Listen to me, Ismira. Today you’re to go away to another place. We’ve never treated you as we do our other children, and this is because, you must now under­stand, you’re no child of ours at all. You are the cuckoo’s egg left to hatch in this house. We bore it because we must, and we’ve done you no harm. You’ve been raised nobly, as our true children have, although without our love. Under the circ­umstances, you’ll agree, you could hardly expect any.’ Astoun­ded, shocked beyond reason, Ismira stood listening. Her mother – who was not – told her she was the child of an ancient and corrupt family who exerted much power in this region and else­where. The Scaratha, they were called. Due to their way of living, which was that of vampires, blood-drinkers and creat­ures of darkness and horror, they kept no children of their own in their domiciles before the age of ten. At that age they would send for and claim them, whether the vampire strain was prevalent or not. ‘You have been closely observed, more for our sakes than yours,’ said Ismira’s unmother, with great distaste. ‘You show no symptoms of any of that. Even so, you are a fiend, the child of fiends. It’s made me sick to have you in this house. I have seldom touched you and won’t now. Get out and go to your own, you foul abomination.’