The Historian (25 page)

I had meant to utter this ironically, but the unreality of the whole situation dawned on me again as I spoke; here I was, standing on the sidewalk in front of the library as I had hundreds of times before, except that this time I was talking about vampires—as if I believed in them—with a Romanian anthropologist, and we were watching ambulance drivers and police officers swarm across a death scene in which I had been involved, at least indirectly. I tried not to see them at their grisly work. It occurred to me that I ought to leave the quad soon, but without visible haste. I couldn‘t afford to be taken in by the police at this point, not even for a few hours‘ questioning. I had a great deal to do, and it had to be done immediately—I would need a visa to Turkey, which I might be able to obtain in New York, and a plane ticket, and I would need to leave safely at home a copy of all the information I had already. I was not teaching this term, thank goodness, but I‘d have to present some kind of alibi to my department and give my parents some explanation to keep them from worrying.

I turned to Helen. ―Miss Rossi,‖ I said. ―If you will keep this business to yourself, I promise to get in touch with you as soon as I come back. Is there anything else you can tell me? Can you think of a way I could reach your mother before I go?‖

―I cannot reach her myself, except by letter,‖ she said flatly. ―Besides, she speaks no English. When I go home in two years I will ask her about these matters myself.‖

I sighed. Two years was too late, unimaginably so. I was feeling a sort of anxiety already at being separated from this strange companion of a few days—hours, really—the only person besides myself who knew anything about the nature of Rossi‘s disappearance.

After this I would be on my own in a country I had barely ever thought about. It had to be done, however. I extended my hand. ―Miss Rossi, thank you for putting up with a harmless lunatic for a couple of days. If I come back safely I will certainly let you know—I mean, maybe—if I bring your father back safely—‖

She made a vague gesture with her gloved hand, as if her interest could not possibly lie with Rossi‘s safe return, but then she put the hand in mine and we shook on it, cordially. I had the sense that her firm grasp was my last contact with the world I knew. ―Good-bye,‖

she said. ―I wish you the best possible luck with your research.‖ She turned away in the crowd—the ambulance drivers were shutting the doors. I turned away, too, and started down the steps and across the quadrangle. A hundred feet from the library, I stopped and looked back, hoping to glimpse her dark-suited figure among the ambulance watchers. To my surprise, she was hurrying toward me, already almost on my heels. She reached me quickly, and I saw that her face had picked up a ruby flush over the cheekbones. Her expression was urgent. ―I have been thinking,‖ she said, and then stopped. She seemed to take a deep breath. ―This concerns my life more than any other thing.‖ Her gaze was direct, challenging. ―I am not quite sure how to do it, but I think I will come with you.‖

My father had some pleasant excuses for being in the Oxford vampire collection instead of at his meeting. The meeting had been canceled, he said, shaking Stephen Barley‘s hand with his customary warmth. My father said he‘d wandered up here to an old haunt—there he stopped, almost biting his lip, and tried again. He‘d been looking for some peace and quiet (that I could easily believe). His gratitude for Stephen‘s presence, for Stephen‘s tall, blooming good health, his woolly sweatered wholesomeness, was palpable. After all, what could my father have said to me, if I‘d surprised him there by myself? How could he have explained, or even casually closed, the folio under his hand?

He did it now, but too late; I had already seen a chapter title stark on thick ivory paper:

―
Vampires de Provence et des Pyrénées
.‖

I slept poorly that night in the canopied chintz bed at the college master‘s house, waking from strange dreams every few hours. Once I saw light under the door in the bathroom between my room and my father‘s, which reassured me. Sometimes, though, the sense of his not being asleep, of quiet activity in the room next door, dragged me suddenly from my rest. Near dawn, when a slate-colored haze was starting to show through the net curtains, I woke for the last time.

This time it was the silence that awakened me. Everything was too still: the faint outlines of trees in the courtyard (I peered around the edge of the curtains), the huge armoire next to my bed, and above all my father‘s room next door. It was not that I expected him to be up at this hour; if anything, he would still be sleeping—maybe snoring a little if he was lying on his back—trying to erase the cares of the day before, postponing the grueling schedule of lectures and seminars and debate that lay ahead of him. During our trips, he usually gave my door a genial tap after I‘d already gotten up myself, an invitation to hurry out to meet him for a walk before breakfast.

This morning the silence oppressed me for no good reason, and I climbed down from my big bed and dressed and slung a towel over my shoulder. I would wash in the bathroom basin and listen a bit for my father‘s nocturnal breathing while I was at it. I knocked gently at the bathroom door to be sure he wasn‘t inside. The silence was even deeper once I was there in front of the mirror, drying my face. I put an ear to his door. He was certainly sleeping soundly. I knew it would be heartless to interrupt his hard-won rest, but panic had begun to creep up my legs and arms. I tapped lightly. There was no stir inside.

We had for years left each other‘s privacy intact, but now, in that gray morning light from the bathroom window, I turned the door handle.

Inside my father‘s bedroom the heavy drapes were still drawn, so that it took me a few seconds to register the dim outline of furniture and pictures. The quiet made the skin quiver along the back of my neck. I took a step toward the bed, spoke to him. But up close the bed lay smooth and neat, dark in the dark room. The room was empty. I let out my indrawn breath. He had gone outside, gone walking alone, probably, needing solitude and time for reflection. But something made me switch on the light by the bed, to look around more carefully. In the circle of brightness lay a note addressed to me, and on the note rested two objects that took me by surprise: a small silver crucifix on a sturdy chain and a head of fresh garlic. The stark reality of these items made my stomach turn over even before I read my father‘s words.

My dear daughter:

I am terribly sorry to surprise you like this, but I‘ve been called away on some new business and didn‘t want to disturb you during the night. I‘ll be gone just a few days, I hope. I‘ve arranged with Master James to get you safely home in the company of our young friend Stephen Barley. He has been excused from classes for two days and will see you to Amsterdam this evening. I wanted Mrs. Clay to come for you, but her sister is ailing and she has gone to Liverpool again. She‘ll try to join you at home tonight. In any case, you will be well cared for and I trust you will look after yourself sensibly. Don‘t worry about my absence. It‘s a confidential matter, but I‘ll be home as quickly as possible and will explain then. In the meantime, I ask you from the bottom of my heart to wear the crucifix at all times, and to carry some of the garlic in each of your pockets. You know I have never been one to press either religion or superstition on you, and I remain a firm unbeliever in either. But we must deal with evil on its own terms, as far as possible, and you already know the domain of those terms. I beg you from a father‘s heart not to disregard my wishes on this point.

It was signed with affectionate warmth, but I could see that he had written it hastily. My heart was pounding. I quickly fastened the chain around my neck and divided the garlic to put in the pockets of my dress. It was like my father, I thought, looking around the empty room, to make the bed so neatly in the middle of a silent hurry to leave the college.

But why this haste? Whatever his errand was, it could not be a simple diplomatic mission, or he would have told me as much. He‘d often had to respond to professional emergencies; I had known him to leave with little warning to attend a crisis on the other side of Europe, but he always told me where he was going. This time, my racing heart told me, he hadn‘t departed on business. Besides, he was supposed to be here in Oxford this week, giving lectures and attending meetings. He was not one to break an obligation lightly.

No. His disappearance must have some connection with the strain he‘d been showing lately—I realized now that I‘d feared something like this all along. Then there was that scene yesterday in the Radcliffe Camera, my father deep in—what had he been reading, exactly? And where, oh where, had he gone? Where, without me? For the first time in all the years I remembered, all the years in which my father had sheltered me from the loneliness of life with no mother, no siblings, no home country, all the years of his being both father and mother—for the first time, I felt like an orphan.

The master was very kind when I appeared with my suitcase packed and my raincoat over my arm. I explained to him that I was fully ready to travel by myself. I assured him I was grateful for his offer of a student to see me home—across the whole Channel—and that I would never forget his kindness. I felt a twinge at that, a small but distinct twang of disappointment—how pleasant it could have been to travel for a day with Stephen Barley smiling at me from the opposite train seat! But it had to be said. I would be safely home within hours, I repeated, pressing down my sudden mental picture of a red marble basin filled with melodic water, afraid this kindly smiling man might divine it in me, might see it on my face, even. I would be safely home soon and could call him if he needed extra reassurance. And then, of course, I added with still greater duplicity, my father would be home in a few days himself.

Master James was certain I was capable of traveling alone; I looked like an independent lass, to be sure. It was just that he couldn‘t—he turned an even gentler smile on me—he simply couldn‘t go back on his word to my father, an old friend. I was my father‘s most priceless treasure, and he couldn‘t ship me off without proper protection. It wouldn‘t be for my sake, exactly, I must realize that, but for my father‘s—we had to indulge him a bit. Stephen Barley materialized before I could argue more, or even fully register the idea that the master was my father‘s old friend when I‘d believed they‘d met just two days ago. But I had no time for this irregularity; Stephen was standing there looking like my old friend, in his turn, his own jacket and bag in hand, and I couldn‘t be completely sorry to see him. I regretted the detour it would cost me, but not as thoroughly as I should have.

It was impossible for me not to welcome his practical grin, or his ―Got me out of a little work, you did!‖

Master James was more sober. ―You‘re on the job yet, my lad,‖ he told him. ―I want a call from Amsterdam as soon as you‘re there, and I want to talk with the housekeeper.

Here‘s money for your tickets and some meals, and you‘ll bring me back your receipts.‖

His hazel eyes twinkled then. ―That‘s not to say you can‘t get a little Dutch chocolate for yourself at the station. Fetch me a bar, too. It‘s not as good as Belgian, but it‘ll do. Off with you now, and use your head.‖ Next he gave me a grave handshake and his card.

―Good-bye, my dear. Come again and see us when you‘re thinking of university for yourself.‖

Outside the office, Stephen grabbed my bag for me. ―Let‘s go, then. We‘ve tickets for the ten-thirty, but we might as well get a head start.‖

The master and my father had taken care of every detail, I noted, and I wondered what extra chains I‘d have to slip at home. I had other business for now, however. ―Stephen?‖ I began.

―Oh, call me Barley.‖ He laughed. ―Everyone else calls me that, and I‘m so used to it now that it gives me the creeps to hear my real name.‖

―All right.‖ His smile was just as contagious today—easily as contagious. ―Barley, I—

could I ask you a favor before we leave?‖ He nodded. ―I‘d just like to go into the Camera one more time. It was so beautiful, I—and I‘d like to see the vampire collection. I didn‘t really get to look at it.‖

He groaned. ―I could tell you like grisly stuff. Seems to run in your family.‖

―I know.‖ I felt myself flushing.

―All right. Let‘s take a quick look again, but then we‘ve got to run. Master James will put a stake through
my
heart if we miss the train.‖

The Camera was quiet this morning, nearly empty, and we hurried up a polished staircase to the macabre niche where we‘d surprised my father the day before. I swallowed a threat of tears as we entered the tiny room; hours ago, my father had been sitting here, that strangely distant look veiling his eyes, and now I didn‘t even know where he was.

I remembered where he‘d shelved the book, though, replaced it so casually as we talked.

It would be below the case with the skull, to the left. I ran a finger along the edge of the shelf. Barley stood near me (it was impossible for us not to stand close together in that tiny space, and I wished he would wander out to the balcony instead), watching with frank curiosity. Where the book should have been was a gap like a missing tooth. I froze: surely my father would never, ever steal a book, so who could have taken it? But a second later I recognized the volume a hand‘s length away. Someone had certainly moved it since I‘d been there last. Had my father returned for a second look? Or had someone else taken it off the shelf? I glanced suspiciously at the skull in the glass case, but it gave back a bland, anatomical gaze. Then I lifted the book down, very carefully—