The Vampyre (28 page)

‘“Of course,” said Lady Melbourne, unsurprised.

‘I frowned. “What do you mean?”

‘“She shares your blood. You are drawn to each other. Your love can't destroy her.” She paused. “But your thirst, Byron - your thirst will.”

‘I stared at her. “My love can't destroy her?” I repeated slowly.

‘Lady Melbourne sighed, and reached out to stroke my hand. “Please,” she whispered. “Do not allow yourself to fall in love with your sister.”

‘“Why not?”

‘“I would have thought that was evident.”

‘“Because it's incest?”

‘Lady Melbourne laughed bitterly. “We are hardly fitted, either of us, to take a stand on morality.” She shook her head. “No, Byron - not because it is incest - but because she shares your blood, and you are drawn to it. Because her blood is irresistible to you.” She took my hand, and squeezed it tightly. “You will have to kill her eventually. You know that. Not now, maybe - but later, as the years pass - you know you will.”

‘I frowned. “No. I don't know that at all.”

‘Lady Melbourne shook her head. “You do. I'm sorry - but you do. You have no other relative.” She blinked. Were there tears in her eyes? - or was it just the glint of a vampire's stare? “The more you love her,” she whispered, “the harder it will be.” She kissed me gently, on the side of my cheek - then, noiselessly, she left the room. I did not try to follow her. Instead, I sat in silence. All that night, I pondered her words.

‘Like a splinter of ice, they seemed embedded in my heart. I admired Lady Melbourne - she was the shrewdest, wisest woman I knew - and her certainty had been frightening. From then on, I was in agonies. I would part from Augusta, but at once existence would seem dull and grey, and I would hurry back to her, to her companionship, and the perfume of her blood. How perfect she was for me - how kind and good-hearted - with no real thought but to give me happiness - how could I even think of killing her? And yet I did, of course, all the time - and more and more, I saw how right Lady Melbourne had been. I loved - and I thirsted - and there seemed no escape. “I have tried, and hardly, too, to vanquish my demon,” I wrote to Lady Melbourne, “but to very little purpose.”

‘Yet oddly, such torment did serve to stir me. After all - better agony than dullness; better an ocean storm than a placid pond. My mind, scorched by contradictory desires, sought to lose itself again in fierce excess; I re-entered Society, wildly and fervently, and found myself drunk on dissipations to which before I had grown immune. Yet my gaiety was like a fever; in Italy, it is said, in times of plague, orgies were held in the charnel houses, and my own pleasures too, even at their height, were dark with the shadow of my fantasies of death. The image of Augusta fading in my arms, drained a lovely white, haunted me; and the conjunctions of life and death, of joy and despair, of love and thirst, began to disturb me again, as they had not done since my revellings with Lovelace in the East. For a long while now, I had seen my victims as little more than walking sacks of blood; but now, for all that my thirst was as desperate as before, I mourned again for those I had to kill. “That will comfort them,” Lady Melbourne sneered mockingly; and I knew that she was right, that pity, in a vampire, was just another word for cant. Yet still - my self-disgust returned. I began to kill with less savagery - to be conscious of the life that I was draining with the blood, to feel its uniqueness, even as the spark was snuffed out. Sometimes, I would fantasise that my victim was Augusta; my guilt would be heightened - so too would my pleasure. My revulsion and delight began to seem intertwined.

‘It was therefore with a certain tortured hope that I began to correspond with Annabella again. In the crisis that tortured me that long, cruel year, her moral strength - yes, her moral
beauty
- seemed more and more to offer a hope of redemption - and I was desperate enough to grasp at it. Ever since my first glimpse of her, that evening in Lady Melbourne's salon, Annabella had held a fascination for me; “I know you for what you are,” she had whispered - and indeed, in a strange way, it seemed that she did. For she had sensed the pain in my soul - the longing for a sense of absolution - the blighted love of higher things, and better days. As she wrote to me, appealing not to the creature I was, but to the man I might have become, I found she was renewing feelings in me I had thought were lost - feelings that a vampire should never entertain - feelings entwined within that single word,
conscience
. It was an unsettling power, then, that she had - and there was awe in the homage she drew from me. Like a spirit herself, she seemed - but of light - seated on a throne apart from the surrounding world, strong in her strength - all most strange in one so young.

‘And yet I mustn't exaggerate. Morality was all very well - when I was feeling sorry for myself - but it couldn't hold a candle to the taste of living blood. Nor, of course, could my admiration for Annabella compare to my infatuation with my sister, a longing that now began to grow more cruel. For Augusta was pregnant, and I feared - I hoped - that the child might be mine. For weeks after its birth, I delayed in London; when I set out at last for Augusta's home in the country, it was with the horrified certainty that it was to kill my own child. I arrived; I embraced Augusta; she led me to where my daughter lay. I bent low over the bed. The child smiled up at me. I breathed in deep. The blood was sweet - but it was not golden. The baby began to mewl. I turned round to Augusta, a cold smile writhing on my lips. “You must give my congratulations to your husband,” I said. “He has given you a beautiful child.” Then I walked out, in a fury of disappointment and relief, and galloped across the countryside, until the moon rose pale and calmed my rage.

‘Once my frustration had died, I was left with my relief. Augusta stayed with me for three weeks in a house by the sea, and in her company I felt almost happy. I swam, and ate fish, and downed neat brandies - I didn't kill for the three weeks I was there. At last, of course, the craving grew too great - I returned to London - but the memory of those weeks was to stay with me. I began to imagine that my worst fears might be wrong, that I could live with Augusta, and conquer my thirst. I began to imagine that my very nature might be denied.

‘But Lady Melbourne, of course, merely laughed at this idea. “It is a great shame,” she said, one fateful night, “that Augusta's child was
not
your own.”

‘I looked at her, puzzled. She saw my frown. “I mean,” she said, “it is a shame that Augusta continues to be your only relative.”

‘“Yes, so you keep saying,” I replied, frowning again, “but I don't understand why. I have told you - I believe in the power of my will. I believe that my love is greater than my thirst.”

‘Lady Melbourne shook her head sadly. She reached out to stroke my hair, and her smile, as she ran her fingers through my curls, was desolating. “There is grey here,” she said. “You are getting old.”

‘I stared up at her. I smiled faintly. “You are joking, of course.”

‘Lady Melbourne widened her eyes. “Why?” she asked.

‘“I am a vampire. I will never grow old.”

‘At once, a look of terrible shock crossed Lady Melbourne's face. She rose to her feet and almost staggered to the window. Her face in the moonlight, when she turned back to me, was as bleak as winter. “He never told you,” she said.

‘“ Who?”

‘“Lovelace.”

‘“You knew him?”

‘“Yes, of course.” She shook her head. “I thought you had guessed.”

‘“Guessed?” I asked slowly.

‘“You - with Caroline - I thought you understood. Why I begged you to have pity on her.” Lady Melbourne laughed, a terrible sound of pain and regret. “I saw myself in her. And Lovelace in you. That, I suppose, is why I love you so much. Because I still love . . . I still love - him - you see.” Tears, noiselessly, began to slip down her face. Like drops of silver on marble they gleamed. “I will love him for ever - for ever and ever. You were kind, Byron, not to give Caroline the kiss of death. Her misery will come to an end.” She bowed her head. “Mine never will.”

‘I stayed frozen where I sat. “You,” I said at last, “you were the girl he wrote to.”

‘Lady Melbourne nodded. “Of course,” she said.

‘“But - your age - you have grown old . . .”

‘My voice trailed away. I had never before seen a look so terrible as Lady Melbourne's then. She crossed to me, and held me in her arms. Her touch was icy, her breasts cold, her kiss on my forehead like that of death. “Tell me,” I said. I stared out at the moon. Its brilliance, suddenly, seemed unforgiving and cruel. “Tell me ever ything.”

‘“Dear Byron . . .” Lady Melbourne stroked her breasts, feeling the lines that furrowed them. “You will grow old,” she said. “You will age faster than a mortal. Your beauty will wither and die. Unless . . .”

‘Still I gazed out at the blaze of the moon. “Unless?” I asked calmly.

‘“Surely you know?”

‘“Tell me. Unless.”

‘“Unless . . .” Lady Melbourne stroked my hair.

“Unless you drink the golden blood. Unless you feed on your sister. Then, your form will be preserved, and you will never age. But it must be the blood of a relative.” She bent low, so that her cheek was resting on my head. She cradled me. For a long while, I said nothing at all.

“Then I rose, and crossed to the window, and stood in the silver wash of the moon. “Well, then,” I said calmly, “I must get a child.”

‘Lady Melbourne stared at me. She smiled faintly. “It is a possibility,” she said at last.

‘“It is what you did, I presume.”

‘Lady Melbourne bowed her head.

‘“When?” I asked.

‘“Ten years ago,” she said eventually. “My eldest son.”

‘“Good,” I said coldly. I stared back out at the moon. I felt its light refresh my cruelty. “If you have done it - I can do it. And then I shall live with my sister again. But until then - to save her from the aspersions of the world - I shall marry.”

‘Lady Melbourne looked at me, shocked. “Marry?”

‘“Yes, of course. How else am I to get a child? You wouldn't have me fathering a bastard, I trust?” I laughed mirthlessly - then I felt despair rise up with the cruelty in my heart, and I brushed Lady Melbourne's embrace aside. “Where are you going?” she shouted after me. I didn't reply. I swept from my rooms, out into the street. The horror screamed in my blood like wind against wire. That night, I killed often, and with the savagery of madness. I ripped throats open with my naked teeth, I drained blood until there was nothing of my victims but bundles of bone and white skin, I grew drunk on death. By the time the sun rose in the eastern sky, I was rosy with blood, and fat like a leech. My frenzy began to die. As the sun rose higher, I crept back to the welcoming darkness of my rooms. There, like a shadow of the night, I cowered.

‘That afternoon, I wrote to Annabella. Our correspondence, I knew, had softened her heart. She had refused me before, but not this second time. She accepted my offer of marriage at once.'

The principal insane ideas are - that he
must
be wicked - is foredoomed to evil - and compelled by some irresistible power to follow this destiny doing violence all the time to his feelings. Under the influence of this imagined fatalism he will be most unkind to those he loves best, suffering agonies at the same time for the pain he gives them. He then believes the world to be governed by a Malignant Spirit, & at one time conceived himself to be a fallen angel, though he was half-ashamed of the idea, & grew cunning & mysterious about it after I seemed to detect it . . . Undoubtedly I am more than any one the subject of his irritation, because he deems himself (as he has said) a villain for marrying me on account of former circumstances - adding that the more I love him, & the better I am, the more accursed he is.

LADY BYRON, STATEMENT TO A DOCTOR ON THE
SUPPOSED INSANITY OF HER HUSBAND

W
hy did I marry her?' Lord Byron paused. ‘Yes - to father a child - but why her? - why Annabella? She was to prove nearly fatal to me. Lady Melbourne, when I told her who my bride was to be, had prophesied as much. She understood me, better, perhaps, than I did myself. For she saw the poison of anguish in my soul; saw how violently it blazed, deep below the ice of my outward form; saw how this was dangerous. “You are wounded,” she told me, “and so you are turning to Annabella in the hope she will offer you a cure.” I laughed at this scornfully, but Lady Melbourne shook her head. “I have warned you before, Byron. Beware of my niece. She has quite the worst kind of moral virtue - strong and passionate.”

‘“Good,” I answered. “That will increase the pleasure of destroying it.”

‘But I was lying to myself - and Lady Melbourne had been shrewder by far than I cared to admit. The turmoil of my feelings for Augusta, my self-disgust, my dread at what the future would hold - all made me desperate for a sense of peace. I knew of no one else but Annabella who might offer me this - and though it seemed a vain hope, I had no choice, eventually, but to acknowledge it. I had travelled north to her parents' home. I waited for her by the fire in the drawing-room. I had been left alone. Annabella came to me and stood, for a moment, frozen in the doorway. She stared into my eyes. A shadow passed across her face, and I saw how she recognised the death-chill in me - how sullied I had become, how coarsened, since our last meeting. I did not look away from her gaze, but it was so clear and beautiful that inwardly I shrunk, as evil spirits, it is said, must always do in the presence of good. And then she crossed the room; she held my hands; and I felt her compassion for me, rising and intermingling with her love. I bent my head and kissed her, softly. As I did so, the hopes I was placing in her welled up into thought, and I could no longer stave off recognising them. I knew then I would do it - I would marry her.