Page 19 (1/2)

NINETEEN

Lydia spent the followingup a report of what she had seen at St Job’s Shea dissection – of the layout of the– the boy – she had encountered in the crypt To these she appended an account of thebetween the unfortunate youth and ‘Petronilla’ in the sun-drenched hall of the clinic

Obviously, Horace Blaydon wasn’t the onlyartificial vampires And, by the look of it, Benedict Theiss had had the advantage – which Blaydon had not had – of finding a true va to ith hi with hi them by artificial means? Especially when the result – or one of the results – was so disastrous?

She sat turning her teacup for a tiht-filled woods beyond the veranda

To prevent Mada over thes?

But, in that case, ould La Ehrenberg go along with it? In Lydia’s experience, no vampire – not even Ysidro, in so many ways atypical, (no, he isn’t! she told herself) – yielded a finger-breadth more control than he or she had to

Or was there so made? Like the late Master of Constantinople, who had been incapable of getting fledglings? Were they all turning out as monsters? Had she come to Theiss to be cured? Lydia’s mind toyed with the idea even as she rejected it No matter how badly Benedict Theiss needed entle, kindly s

What, then?

At one in the afternoon, the Baroness Sashenka put in an appearance, dressed to the nines in lavender Poiret that irlish, and carried her off for luncheon at the ultra-stylish restaurant Donon with assorted , you can’t abandonon about the instinctive wisdom of the Russian peasant, and I need to have someone there whose husband has actually spoken to peasants’)

While being waited on by the ubiquitous staff of Tatars (Sashenka was quite right about Madame Muremsky’s conversation), Lydia inquired about theinforhts and noises, secret rituals of the Illuhteenth-century scandals, and the plain financial ement that had eventually closed the place down It was very difficult to sort out useful facts which could apply to vaossip – or even to ascertain which pieces of gossip ht have a basis in truth

‘There were supposed to be just eways, between it and its little priories--’

‘When the heretical sect was cleared out of there in the time of the Empress Elizabeth, I’round cells--’

‘They can’t have been terribly far underground, can they?’ Lydia looked up worriedly from her mushrooms and toast points ‘I mean, it’s rather close to the river’

‘That’s just it, darling’ Madaazed into her eyes ‘They were bricked up alive, and when the tide ca them--’

‘Honestly, dearest, the same could be said of eneral laugh

‘Scoff if you will, darling’ Madame sampled a dab of Donon’s extremely tasty kasha ‘But the Common People, in their wisdom, avoid the place’

‘The Co the police a truly startling sum every quarter to keep people away from it,’ returned a Commissioner’s pretty wife

Not much more success attended Lydia’s efforts to pick up infor, aside froenerally disliked (‘She’s so intent, you know, dearest – and the way she runs poor Dr Theiss’s life for him is positively obsessive! One used to see hi – and now that she’s taken to supporting him he’s always either at the clinic or his laboratory’)

So, obviously, reflected Lydia, the wo horse had co with herwhichabout her true identity byenquiries here

‘Are they lovers?’ The question would have been unthinkable in Oxford or even London, but was co tea-tables

‘Oh, I should think so,’ replied Corave;ers ‘At least, when I encountered her at the Kustov’s, where that handso souage for his poetry, to free the heart froht have i, Iit was a waste of tis for Love, she said, when the old one works quite well, even in this day and ageQuite ht she spoke like a woman as in love,’ said Sashenka

‘Or ere taught to believe was love,’ threw in a very advanced young Countess, ‘by priests and parents and men’

‘What does a German know of love?’ Madame Muremsky waved a scornful and heavily jeweled hand ‘What can one expect, of such a people? They have no understanding of the Russian Soul’ And she clasped her hands upon her heart, as if her Russian Soul were about to leap frolory, to the assembled ladies

Two hours’ discussion of the Russian Soul ensued, and Lydia hesitated to bring the conversation back to Petronilla Ehrenberg, lest word reach her that Lydia Asher had been asking about her

Ja a note in her memorandum book: labyrinth, crypt, police protection

Jamie needs to know about all this

There was no note from Jamie when she returned to the izba for dinner Nor had there been one yesterday, nor the day before She tried to tell herself that this was only soiven the renowned efficiency of the Reich, she are that this little self-deception histling in the dark Not that any of the notes he’d sent her, daily, froue and all those German cities had contained a word of information: he’d written in the name of a fictitious Aunt Caroline and had clearly striven to coinable about the weather, the accommodations, and the obstinate refusal of Polish and Gerue

The e was that he was alive and in good enough spirits to invent Aunt Caroline’s petty diatribes in that rounded, schoolgirlish writing, studded with underlinings and ellipses so unlike his own dark, jagged hand, knowing that it wouldwith a vampire, in quest of other vampires: creatures ould kill to preserve the secrecy in which they lived Creatures who existed on death

She sat ht of the woods beyond the

He was traveling with Ysidro

She thrust the ghost-white, elegant ie of the vampire from her mind

Any vampire They are creatures who kill those who serve therow bored

And though Ysidro had befriended and protected the of the vahtly-colored stamps enlivened the one-way correspondenceexcept that they were vampires Dear God, don’t let hie of thirteen, Lydia had had a physician’s clinical and rather mechanistic view of God – awe at His works, but too deep an awareness of the physical limitations of flesh and fate to hold much belief in the efficacy of individual prayer Lately – after Constantinople, and a deeper acquaintance with va her confused about who she was praying to or why

Her prayer was a child’s prayer:

Don’t let hiht

The prayer people prayed all over the world

There was no ranted her desperate plea of sixwould stop, and her baby would live

The blackness beyond that door in her mind orse than the crypts of St Job’s, and as she had yesterday, she ht of that lost child, mentally closed the door Stay out of there