Vigil (19 page)

Chapter Forty-Four

Salem Abbey

There was a brother there who had become suspicious of me, I think. Had I had the normal run of emotions, I would have been hurt, I think. As it was I understood it all too well when Brother Jonas returned from his travels one day. I saw the way he looked at me. He had changed over the years. His head was burnt a dark shade from constant exposure to the sun and the elements. There were deep weather lines at the corners of his mouth and his eyes. His eyes, too, were darker and he had taken to squinting. I think his eyesight was failing, but that didn’t mean he was no longer capable of observation.

             
I should have recognised the way that he looked at me. I should have seen it in his eyes. Now, I recognise the look of suspicion all too well. Sometimes they come by the understanding over the course of many years, sometimes in an instant.

             
I think it was too obvious. As I have said, it did not occur to me. I was too wrapped up in books and study to even think of it. Brother Jonas only read one book. He spent the rest of the time observing people. Doing good work. I suppose he thought he was doing God’s work when he pointed the finger at me. I only wish he had come to me first. Then I could have killed him quietly and saved the library. But it was not to be.

             
I often wonder how mankind would have evolved had many of the great libraries of the world survived the ages. But books are fragile. Knowledge is fleeting.

             
The other brothers, of course, whispered behind their hands about me. But it was not malicious. They had seen me, day in, day out, for twenty years or more. The evidence was too close to them. Brother Jonas, on the other hand…he only saw me sporadically.

             
It was bad timing. His awakening came at the same time as the visit from the Inquisition.

             
They arrived early in the morning. I had my hood up but I could smell them. They smelled differently, the suddenness of their odour in my nose jarring and startling. I smelled the horses, of course, but I had smelled horse before. But the people smelled strange because they were from far away and were fed on different foodstuffs to the brothers I was surrounded by.

             
I turned, shading my eyes, standing in the shade of the courtyard, when they rode into the square. They dismounted by the well, and I smelled something else on their skin. Trouble.

             
My senses had been dulled, however, by nearly twenty years of fasting. My strength had waned. It had been so long since I had been in any danger that I had, in my way, grown soft as the brothers who shared my home. I was still stronger than they, but like a warrior grown old my reflexes and instincts were dulled. I was too slow to react.

I knew straight away what they represented. Three Dominican Monks in black robes, six soldiers in polished breastplates. A small delegation, but unmistakeable as they rode under the papal banner.

             
The inquisition was here, under my roof. For what, I did not know. Perhaps, I thought stupidly, they had heard of the forbidden grimoires that the Abbot kept under lock and key. Secrets had a way of getting out.

             
I thought little more of it, until Brother Jonas returned from his travels some hours later. I greeted him as I had always done. We broke bread together. I didn’t recognise the look in his eyes as he ate with me.

             
Before I could finish my meal the room fell silent. We were not held by vows of silence. In fact, discussion of religious matters was encouraged outside of our duties. Meal times were a chance for many to relax.

             
My God. How slow I was that day. The sudden silence did not even make an impression on me.

             
The soldiers, flanking the monks, walked through the dinning hall toward me.

             
‘Forgive me,’ said Brother Jonas.

             
‘For what?’ I asked.

             
Brother Jonas shook his head and I felt two strong hands take my arms, a third snaked round my neck and I struggled but it was no use. I was weakened by my fast.

             
I realised then what a fool I had been. Understanding flooded through me as the soldiers took my arms and legs and carried me from the dinning hall. The only sound was my cries. I pleaded like a child. I fought as hard as I could, but my strength was only moderately greater than a mortal at that point.

             
Oh, what a fool I had been! Had I really thought I could live among humans undetected for decades? Eat their foul food, dig the earth like some lowly farmer?

             
In my own way I had been in the throes of my own fervour. I was devoured by knowledge, and learning. My new love of books turned out to be my own undoing. While I had been learning, the brothers had been watching, and whispering. But as a man is ignorant to the whispers of a wife’s infidelity, should he love her, I had been ignorant of those whispers, ignorant of their secrets, passed in their secret sign language that they had used for centuries. Too slow, you fool…fool…the word echoed within my head as they dragged me through the hall and out into the courtyard. The light burned my eyes but I could not shield them.

             
The brothers followed me out into the light. I noticed then, how the brothers I had been living with had aged. Their skin had sagged and they grew wrinkles from being in the sun tending their gardens. Their eyebrows turned grey. Their teeth yellowed and fell out. Their limbs became weaker. They suffered illness and injury.

             
I was not one of them. I never could be.

             
There was a stake in the ground, and a pyre built around it.

             
I was to have no trial. I had been condemned without mercy. I was to burn.

             
I can’t say I blamed them. I deserved to burn, for my towering stupidity, if nothing else.

*

Chapter
Forty-Five

Salem Abbey

My hands were tied behind me around the post with a leather thong. Don’t get me wrong. Today I am not as foolish as I was then. I know ways to retain my strength. Back then I was too weak to fight. The leather was thick and the knots were tight. I could not bend my arms to break the bond. Perhaps, even then, had my hands been bound in front of me I could have broken free. But I was so weak.

             
The courtyard was thronged with people. All the monks were there that I had lived with, shared my thoughts with, for the last twenty years. Some bowed their heads but most stared at me with undisguised hatred. That I could have fooled them for so long must have hurt more than the fact that I was a vampire.

             
I don’t think even the Inquisitors knew exactly what I was. They just assumed that I had made a pact with the Devil. Anything they did not understand must, of course, be outside of God’s good graces. If God created everything, how could that be true?

             
What good would discourse do when I was faced with burning?

             
One of the Dominican Brothers stepped forward and began to list my crimes in a high pitched voice that hurt my ears. He spoke loudly although the White Brothers made no sound.

             
The Abbot was there to see my demise, as was Brother Jonas. I sought him out. I was prepared to stare into his eyes as I burned to my death. If he could sign my death warrant then the least he could do was watch a man burn to death.

             
I did not think, then, when it was early enough to save myself. There were ways I could have broken free, but like I said, I had been dulled with soft living and an endless torrent of words, streaming over the page and over my years. I was not thinking. I was terrified. I did not hear the black Brother’s words. I pleaded, I begged.

             
He did not hear me. He made no reply to my pleas. I am not sure he even heard the words that tumbled from my mouth. He had made his mind up without trial. What words would come from the Devil’s mouth but those which beguile and fuddle the mind? He had been dealing with evil for many years. I do not doubt that others had the seed of evil within them, and perhaps he even caught a few witches in his time, but I think that most were innocent of wrongdoing and merely knew more than the Inquisition. More witches were burned by the Protestant nations as the years went by, but the Catholics did it better. There was more ceremony.

             
He prattled on and eventually I gained control of myself. I would not die here, not today.

             
I waited. I bided my time. I watched his eyes and concentrated. I thought faster than I ever had, faster, at least than I had while in the Abbey. Words on a page do not rush by. Reading them slows the mind, makes your thoughts parade by at a leisurely pace. Something has been lost since words could be confined to the page.

             
Speed of thought, perhaps. Maybe even more than that is the will that made men rise up and tame the world. Through words have they tamed the atom, true, but it is through speed and might that they contain other men.

             
I smelled the torch. One of the soldiers was bringing a burning brand forward. I had to wait until the last minute. It would be a close run thing. Too close, unfortunately for me.

             
He did not get close enough until the brand had touched those dry logs that surrounded me. As the flames licked the logs I hawked and spat in the guards face. He wiped his face clean and I wasn’t sure if it would work. If not I would die here.

             
He smiled and turned away. What could spit do to him? Uncaring and unfeeling he turned his back to me as the heat began to rise. I could feel the flames spread. I cried out in terror then. I could feel the flames touching my legs.

             
I had failed. I was going to die a burning death, nothing left of me but ash and bone.

             
Then the soldier screamed and fell to his knees. I had a moment of hope then but it was short lived. I had been stupid yet again. He was turning, but too late to save me. At least, I thought in the last moments, before the pain became too great for coherent thought, I will take these bastards with me. Let them taste my pain.

             
I gave them the hunger. My last will and testament. I unleashed the beast within me.

             
The soldier was raging with the infection from my saliva. A monk came forward and began chanting over the writhing soldier. Words of benediction, perhaps. An exorcism? Maybe he thought I had put the Devil in him.

             
And I had. The flames began charring my clothes and the pain grew as the soldier took the monk’s arm in his teeth and tore a chunk of flesh loose to chew on. The hunger was immediate. The soldier became berserk. I knew how he was feeling. The hunger would be rushing, gnawing and tearing at his insides. All thought would be burnt away, replaced by the simple need to feed. He ran forward and tore the throat from another soldier. That soldier fell, spurting his life blood out onto the ground. The other soldiers were too slow to react. The white monks were crying out in horror and terror. Their eyes were wide with fear and I relished their fear as the flames ignited my robes, burning my skin and turning me black. I lapped up the smell of their fear, as powerful as the smell of my charring flesh. The logs around the base of the pole caught and the heat became immense. My flesh caught fire and my legs burned, my flesh melting and my fat dripping into the flames. I could hear myself sizzle. My vision was blurred from the pain and the smoke.

             
Over it all I could hear the screaming, theirs and mine. Screaming more terrible than any man can imagine unless he has suffered loss and pain, but the screams of a vampire are more terrible than any mortal screaming, for our loss is all the greater for our long lives.

             
My flesh and robes were an inferno. My eyes were losing focus. I suppose then that I was dying.

             
But is it not true that God loves all of his creatures, even though sometimes his love is horrifying to behold?

             
The flames weakened the leather bonds that held me to the pyre. My arms were free but for a moment the pain was so great that I stood in the centre of the inferno and screamed and screamed in my agony.

             
But the hunger ruled me once again. When I am injured the hunger burns more brightly than hatred or love or agony. I leapt from the pyre, a burning effigy, and ran toward the screaming crowd. I plunged into the mass, my eyes blind but my hunger seeing for me. I took the first man I came to and plunged my teeth deep into his throbbing neck, my melted fingers holding his head in a tight embrace.

             
I drank for the first time in twenty years. If you have ever been an alcoholic, in the throes of such hunger, imagine the rush at that first drink, when that terrible thirst is quenched at last. I was filled with new energy. My body began to fight the awful wounds that it had sustained. I ran among the monks, tearing arms from shoulders and drowning myself in fresh flowing blood. Their blood, even though warm, cooled the agony from my burnt flesh. I was becoming whole again.

             
Why had I denied myself for so long? This was what I was. I was a creature born to bathe in blood.

             
I drank and all around me chaos reigned.

             
When my sight returned I took in the sight and cherished it. I cherish it even now. The hunger had driven some insane. Those who were uninjured ran to and fro in panic and terror. I was a king among vampires. My new brethren, my new brotherhood, fed in idiot bliss around me.

             
But even in my pain I knew I could not leave them like this. The infection would spread. Even in the haze of agony from my charred limbs I remembered Radu’s lessons well. What would be left of the world if everyone was like me? I knew I could not leave my revenge incomplete.

             
I took burning branches and logs from the fire and methodically threw them onto the roof of the abbey. I threw them through the windows of the library. I was soon rewarded by the sight of flames dancing through the windows. I was surrounded by fire and death.

             
This was where I belonged. In the centre of the maelstrom. I stood on feet that were slowly mending from the fire and did not think how close to my death I had come. Instead I revelled in the deaths of those around me. My children fed. I felt pride, but I knew they had to be put down. In their hunger and the joy of their birth they ran amok, feeding and killing.

             
I put the sight away in my heart in its secret places, the place that I have kept untouched for years, even through all the terrors I have endured. Then I leaped the burning building, landing on my burnt feet with a scream. They were still more bone than flesh and the agony was blinding, but only for a moment. I barred the door from the outside and made my way to the stables.

             
If I felt sad at the death of my children I do not remember it. I remember the feeling of joy at my reawakening, though, and I remember the pain.

             
The pain always returns. It has been the one thing constant in my life. It is like an old friend, one that causes only grief. But it is still a friend, and in a life without end we cherish those companions that can stay the course.

             
I took a horse from the stables. It whinied and bucked underneath me, perhaps frightened of the smell of my flesh. I heeled the horse on, turned toward the north and rode as hard as the pain would allow.

             
Then, as now, I never looked back. The future draws me onward. What else is there to living? The past only holds us back.

*