ITALY (PRESENT DAY):
“We’ll stop here for today,” I said. “I remember this spot.”
Enid looked around. “How can you tell? It looks all the same.”
“See the bend of that stream over there?” I pointed to a stretch of water that made a hook-shaped glimmer through the trees. “And there’s the village, just where I saw it last.”
“Village? What village?”
I reminded myself once again that Enid was new to all this, and that she didn’t even have a human experience of being outside her pretty little English town. “There,” I said. “See the ruined buildings? They’re overgrown, of course, but you can still make out the shape. They apparently never rebuilt it after the war.” I got off my bicycle and propped it up on its stand. “Get the sleeping bags. We’ll spend the day here.”
“Which war?” Enid had finally begun to get used to cycling long distances, and hadn’t fallen off in a couple of days. Still, she winced and rubbed her bottom. “When were you here last?”
“The Great War. Nineteen seventeen.” I gestured. “There were a lot fewer trees around then, and the houses were just fresh ruins. Come on, let’s find a spot to rest.”
Enid took a moment to look up to the north, past the branches of the forest, where the jagged peaks of the Alps glittered in the morning sun. I tried to see it through her eyes, to feel the wonder that this beauty must still have for her, who’d not grown far too jaded with the passage of centuries to be able to be affected by mere natural beauty. She’d get that way soon enough; the thought made me hurt inside, as did everything else she was going through and would have to go through to learn to be what she would have to be for the rest of eternity.
“I’m glad we took this trip,” she said. “It’s all so lovely.”
I found a place where the grass was thick and the branches overhead formed a lattice that would block out the worst of the sun. Nearby, the remnants of the old church were covered with vines and part of the bell tower still poked skywards like an accusing finger. The last time I’d seen it the walls were still smouldering and shattered chunks of masonry had been scattered everywhere.
“Are you sore?” I asked Enid. “Do you need a massage?” The wild boar we’d fed from the previous evening had put up a tremendous fight, flinging us both around as he tried to rip us with his tusks. We’d only got a few sips each and finally had to withdraw, calling it honours even. If easier prey had been available I’d never have tried to take on a wild boar. They are not animals to be trifled with.
“No, I’ll be all right with a bit of rest.” She pulled off her boots and socks and crawled into her sleeping bag. “Marcilla?”
“Hmm?” I looked up from undoing my bootlaces.
“Why were you here then, during the war?”
I sighed. “Do you really want to know?”
“Of course. I want to know everything about you.”
I didn’t say anything until I’d got into my sleeping bag. Enid stretched her arm out to me, touching the back of my hand. “Well?”
“You won’t think well of me,” I warned her. “You’ll decide I’m a terrible person.”
“No, I won’t.” She turned her head and looked into my eyes. “I promise.”
“Right…so…”
I took a deep breath and began.
__________________________________________________
ITALY (1917):
I learnt centuries ago that wars are a great potential feast for our kind. The death and destruction left behind by armies provides endless opportunities for feeding without danger of discovery. I’d followed Napoleon into Russia, and tore the throats out of the stragglers of the Grande Armée as they retreated from Moscow through the winter snows. In the 1850s, disguised as a missionary, I glutted myself on peasant soldiers as Hong Xiuquan’s Taiping Rebellion raged across China like a forest fire. Just over a decade later, I was back in Europe, feeding from French and Prussian with equal abandon at the fringes of the battlefield at Sedan. I’d gone to the New World in between, too, but arrived just too late to be able to taste the harvest of the American Civil War.
Back then, conflicts were delicious to me, and I looked upon wars and the prospect of wars with anticipation and glee.
When Europe descended into yet another of its periodic paroxysms of madness, I was in London. By then I’d long since stopped considering myself an Austro-Hungarian or indeed of any nationality; England was no more, or less, my enemy than Austria-Hungary or France or Germany. I’d immediately tried to find a way to reach the fighting. But I’d soon realised that the Western Front, with its trenches, its millions of soldiers living cheek by jowl, its constant bombardments and its fighting that occurred almost exclusively at night, was impossible. A woman could never manage to get to the frontline without being immediately noticed; nor did I have any particular wish to be vaporised by a shell. You’ll recall that then I was as powerless and vulnerable as a human during the day.
But Italy offered better prospects. The war was being fought on precipitous Alpine slopes, but I didn’t need to go up there; the foothills were crowded with troops and civilians, and I was sure a woman like me could move unnoticed among the forests and little villages, taking what I considered to be rightfully mine.
So I took ship from Marseilles, disguised first as a society lady, and then, in Italy as a French prostitute, and afterwards as various other things, I made my way among the woods and valleys, feeding from sentries and peasants and moving on before my work was discovered. I didn’t feed only a little, as I do now; I drained them, leaving only corpses in my wake. And then, one afternoon, I reached this spot.
I still remember it as clearly as it was yesterday, though so many other memories have blurred and merged and shifted in my mind. It was a sunny day, and I had been walking since the previous night. At first I’d walked aimlessly, just to put as much distance between myself and the previous night’s victims as possible, but then I’d noticed smoke rising into the air, and one thing I had learnt was that smoke in wartime was an excellent indicator that I would find sustenance. So I changed direction and clambered over boulders and fallen trees until I reached the place the smoke was coming from.
It was this village. Even then, it was so small that it only had a single street and maybe twenty houses. But when I arrived it was already deserted and still burning. The Austro-Hungarian artillery in the mountains had shelled it to pieces. There were no corpses, not even civilian ones – I looked – so I don’t know why they’d shelled it.
I’d sat down to rest a bit before moving on when I heard the engine noises. They came from aeroplanes, up above. Back then aeroplanes were still so new that even I’d only seen a handful, so I was curious enough to look up at the sky
There were two of them, an Austro-Hungarian and an Italian one. At first they were so high up that I had to squint even to see them. They were circling each other, each trying to get on the other’s tail. And as they circled, they descended, lower and lower, until they were so close overhead that I could clearly see the insignia painted on their lower wings.
Long before the pilots themselves realised it, I knew that they were going to collide. Each of them was trying to turn in smaller circles than the other, until, inevitably, one’s propeller clipped the other’s wing, and then they both tumbled to the ground in a mass of wood, metal, and fabric.
Some of the wreckage must still be there, under the grass and moss and rotting logs, machine gun bullets and engine parts and such. But if you don’t mind, I’m not going to look for any of it.
Before they’d even struck the earth, I was up and running as fast as I could. I knew that they could explode into a fireball, and I needed to reach the pilots before that happened. Back then, they didn’t wear parachutes, so they would ride their planes right down to the ground.
I did make it to the mangled wreckage before anything exploded, but it was already too late for the Austro-Hungarian pilot. He’d been flung from the cockpit on impact and was dead, his head twisted on his neck at a grotesque angle. I wasted nothing on him but a glance, and rushed to the other plane.
The Italian pilot was still alive, and moving feebly in his harness, trying to free himself. I had a knife with me – I never was without one in the days when one could still carry a personal weapon without arousing suspicion – and used it to cut him free of his straps. Pulling him out of the cockpit, I dragged him sufficiently far away from the wreck that he’d be safe from any explosion, and then ran back to get his first aid kit.
He was looking up at me with an expression of incredulous joy when I got back to him, and began muttering something about seeing an angel. “Don’t try to talk,” I said in Italian, which was one of the languages I’d grown up speaking. “It’ll be all right. You’re safe. I’ll take care of you.” Though he was badly hurt, I was fairly certain I could keep him alive. But he still needed to be out of the elements, so I dragged him into the only nearby house I could see that was still relatively intact and no longer burning.
It was still late afternoon, though the shadows were lengthening. I cut off his flight jacket and the uniform tunic he had on underneath with my knife, carried water up from the river in a tureen I found in the kitchen, washed his wounds, and dressed them with the bandages I found in his first aid kit. By then he’d lost consciousness and I was terrified that he’d die, but eventually he opened his eyes again.
“My angel,” he whispered again. “You’re my angel.”
“Shhhh,” I said. “Try not to talk.”
But he kept talking. “You saved my life, bella. I owe everything to you forever. Not only I, my old mother and my sister owe everything to you.” He raised his head to try and kiss my hands. “As long as I live, I will remember every moment I have from now on is because of you.”
He was really very handsome; dark eyed and olive skinned, with curly black hair that sprang out when I removed his leather flying helmet to mop his brow. A normal girl, something I of course no longer was, might have fallen in love with him on the spot. I closed my eyes tight for a few moments to dispel the thought.
“What’s your name?” I asked. If he was going to insist on talking, at least I might try to make him say things that did not wound me to the heart. “Where are you from?”
“Enrico Cavalcanti,” he whispered. “I’m from Firenze.”
Florence. I’d visited the city many times over the years, watched the sunset from the Ponte Vecchio, made love to the nubile daughters of society ladies and then drained them of their life essence before vanishing into the night. I clenched my fists to banish the memories. “It’s a lovely city,” I replied.
“Will you come back with me?” His dark eyes were full of helpless adoration. “I want to take you home, to meet my family. They deserve to know who saved me.”
“I’ll try,” I said, and I felt the tide of misery rising inside. “I’ll do my best.” In order to avoid looking at him, I got up and went to the door. The sun had already disappeared over the mountains and blue shadows were puddling on the land. “I’ll try and visit your family.”
I waited at the door, not wanting to look at him, until the last vestige of daylight had disappeared from the sky, and I felt my power flood back into my body.
Then I walked back and tore his throat out with my freshly regrown fangs, and drank the sweet liquid that flowed from his veins.
I kept my eyes tightly shut throughout, so I didn’t have to see the shock and betrayal on his face.
__________________________________________________
ITALY (PRESENT DAY):
“I wish I could say that was the last time I followed a war,” I said. The memories were so intense that I felt my heart beating frantically. “I wish I could say that I could never do that again, after that. But it would be a lie. I spent the rest of that war following behind the armies, killing and feeding, but…” I paused, hoping Enid had fallen asleep. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.
She had not fallen asleep. “But?”
“But I didn’t want to think about the mothers and sisters whom I was depriving of their sons and brothers.” I paused for a few long breaths. “I was too cowardly to look at his identity papers to get his address. I didn’t want to visit his mum and sister. I didn’t trust myself to not harm them.”
“Marcilla…”
“Yes,” I said, “I know you hate me now.”
“I don’t hate you. How could I?” Her fingers tightened around mine. “You did what you had to do.”
I laughed, without any humour. “Of course it wasn’t what I had to do, only what I chose to do, because it was easy pickings. Just over a couple of decades later Europe began destroying itself over again in a maelstrom that made the Great War look like a picnic, and I did it all over once more. I followed Hitler’s armies into Poland and France, and then into Russia and back again. And if after that war it had not become nearly impossible for a woman to travel unnoticed to a conflict zone, I might have been doing it still.” I drew a long ragged breath, and realised, belatedly, that I’d been sobbing. “I was a monster, and I can’t forgive myself for that.”
“You aren’t a monster,” Enid said. “You could never be a monster.” Her hand squeezed mine tightly. “I love you.”
“I’ve been a monster a very long time.” I looked up at the sky through the branches, so blue and pure. I wanted to fall up into that sky forever. “I had to become a monster, to survive after I was turned. I had no choice.”
There was the faint sound of Enid unzipping her sleeping bag, and then I felt her warm breath on my cheek as she lay on the grass next to me. She threw her arm across my torso. “Marcilla.”
“Yes? You’d better get back into your bag. The grass is still clammy from the dew.”
“Marcilla. Please. Look at me.”
I turned my head. Her eyes were warm and full of love. “Stop hurting yourself. Whatever you were, you aren’t now, you daftie.”
I gave her a surprised laugh. “Such words of wisdom from one so young! Not like what I was at your age.”
“You were very young, weren’t you? When you turned?” She sat up to look down at me. Her straggling brown hair fell across her face, and I reached up to push it behind her ear. “When are you going to tell me about it?”
“About how I turned? That was so long ago. Why do you want to know?”
“I told you, I want to know everything about you. Besides, you keep telling me that it was very hard for you in the early days, and that you were lucky to live through them until you learnt how to survive. Don’t you think I should know that?”
“Are you sure you’d not rather sleep and hear this some other time?”
“Don’t be a berk. If you don’t tell me now, I’ll have to wait months till I can get a chance to ask you again. And I’m not sleepy anyway, and neither are you.”
“You’ve got me there. Well, if you’re going to sit on the wet grass, I might as well do so too.” I struggled out of the sleeping bag and sat with my back against the nearest tree trunk. Enid surprised me by lying down on the grass and put her head in my lap, looking up at me with a smile. I gave and involuntary grin back in response, and began.
__________________________________________________
STYRIA (1698):
I told you that I don’t remember my parents, and that is true enough, in that I don’t recall their faces or the sound of their voices. I do remember, however, their plans and expectations of me.
When I was born, the von Karnsteins were already an ancient family, and already one that had seen much better days. Once the family lands had stretched through much of Styria, but by 1679 only the old Schloss Karnstein and the village in its shadow still remained. And while I was still a very young girl, my parents determined that my destiny would be to marry into a rich and powerful family to restore the Karnstein fortunes.
So, as I grew, I was moulded and trained for one thing, and one thing only: to be an attractive wife for someone with money and connections at the court in Vienna. I was taught to sing, which I hated, and to play the clavichord, which I found so impossible that even my parents finally abandoned their efforts to teach it to me.
And of course I was taught to dance. Dance was very important in social life then; social life revolved around dances. I didn’t really enjoy dancing, but I got very good at the minuet, mostly to escape the displeasure of my mother.
Oh, and I was taught languages and court etiquette, and allowed to read enough books that I might be able to conduct a captivating conversation. But I was never taught, or encouraged, or even allowed, to think for myself, and of course I was never exposed to life outside the Schloss. Except for our yearly sojourns in Vienna, I doubt that I saw the world outside its walls more than a score of times in the first eighteen years of my life.
Then I turned eighteen, and my parents decided that I should begin attending balls in the grand residences of the aristocracy, both to meet prospective suitors and to prepare for me to be presented at the Imperial Court in the next year.
I still recall the first ball I attended, chaperoned by my governess, a stuffy French spinster of impeccable manners and no detectable imagination or intelligence, easily shocked and as easily duped. But though I could have slipped away from her easily enough, what could I do if I did, wander the halls by myself? So I allowed myself to be subject to interminable conversations with grand ladies whom I had met once or twice at Vienna and whose names I struggled to remember, and danced with their awkward sons, sweating in my formal attire, waiting until the ball could be over and I could go home again.
It was when I got away long enough to take a few sips of wine when I saw her. She was standing across the ballroom, to one side of the door, alone. She was in a gown of dazzling white, over which her blonde hair floated and shimmered like a waterfall. She was easily the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
And she was looking right at me.
I had, of course, no knowledge of sex; the very idea of telling me about the birds and the bees would have shocked my poor Mademoiselle de F____________ (I just realised that I don’t remember her full name) insensible. So even less did I have any idea that one could be attracted to someone of one’s own gender. And, following from that, I could and did have no understanding of why the blood rushed to my cheeks and my heart began to beat so quickly.
I don’t know what might have happened then if Mademoiselle de F_________ hadn’t come bustling up. “Grӓfin,” she said reproachfully. She always referred to me by my title, though she’d known me since I was a toddler. “I have been looking for you all over. You must come back, the next dance is about to start.”
“I’m coming,” I said, putting down my little goblet of wine. “I was just about to speak to the lady over there.”
“Which lady?” Mademoiselle de F____________ looked confused. “Whom are you talking about, Grӓfin?”
“Whom?” I asked. “Why, that lady over th…” I turned towards the door.
But there was nobody there. She was gone.
Later that night, after the carriage had taken me back to Schloss Karnstein and I had finally retired to my bed, I could not fall asleep for hours, because I kept thinking about that mysterious woman. And the more I thought of her the more I felt sensations in my body I didn’t know how to interpret, a mysterious tingling in my breasts and between my thighs. I became more and more confused about all of it.
Eventually the wine I’d drunk and my own exhaustion got the better of me, and I fell into bed, expecting to be asleep in moments.
Maybe I did; I still don’t know if what happened next was only a dream. My bedroom was on the first floor, with tall windows whose curtains I’d failed to draw, letting in moonlight that splashed across the foot of my bed and the floor. And riding down the moonlight into my room, right through the closed windowpanes, she came; the woman I’d glimpsed in the ball. She was dressed as I’d seen her, in simple white, her golden hair streaming over her shoulders, her face serene and beautiful. I couldn’t look away or even blink as her feet touched the floor under the windows and she stepped silently to stand by my bedside.
Then she held out her hand to take mine, and I gave it to her and got out of bed. Her grip was tight on my hand, and she drew me effortlessly to the window again.
Then she went up through the closed window along the moonbeams, up into the night air outside.
My hand struck the windowpane, and she tugged at it, looking at me over her shoulder, but I couldn’t go through the glass. Nor did it occur to me to open the window. She gave a final tug, looked at me with an unreadable expression on her face, and was gone.
If I had been asleep, I woke then. I was standing at the windows. The floor was cold under my bare feet and my right wrist was hurting. When I looked at it I saw red blotches, as though fingers had gripped it hard, but within moments they’d faded so that I couldn’t even be sure that they’d ever been there.
Of course I didn’t tell anyone about this, just as I didn’t even acknowledge to myself how my heart had hammered and my mouth had gone dry when I’d seen her floating down into my bedroom, so pale and lovely. But I found myself looking forward eagerly to the next ball, hoping that I would see her again.
She wasn’t there, although I spent so much of my time looking for her that Mademoiselle de F__________ had to reprimand me sharply for neglecting my social duties. Nor was she there at the next ball, and I couldn’t even ask anyone about her because I didn’t know her name.
The fourth ball I went to was so far away from Schloss Karnstein that it was arranged that I should spend the night and return the next morning. It was held at a chateau – really a castle – so large that it made my parent’s schloss look insignificant. It would be one of the main balls of the year before the Vienna season, so my parents insisted I go, even though I had no desire to.
The ballroom was crowded and so hot and stuffy that I, in the elaborate gown that I had been forced to wear, began after a few dances to feel as though I could not breathe. Looking around, I saw Mademoiselle de F__________ in deep conversation with another French lady, undoubtedly the governess and chaperone of some other poor girl. Since she had temporarily forgotten me, I took the opportunity to slip out of the ballroom and stand on the balcony, cooling myself in the night air.
“Good evening, Fräulein.” Even without turning around I knew who it would be. Somehow, even though I’d never heard her speak before, her voice was exactly as I’d imagined it would be; soft but with a husky undertone that sent a thrill from my ears to my heart. Her accent was pure Viennese aristocracy. “It’s so nice to see you again.”
I turned round slowly to see her leaning on the parapet, her head turned towards me. As before, she was clad in simple white, with her golden hair loose. This was at a time when women wore elaborate gowns with large lace collars, complete with jackets, and with their hair done up and concealed beneath caps. Being so simply clad was almost scandalous. I could not look away.
“It’s warm inside, isn’t it?” she asked, and pretended to fan herself with a hand. “I don’t blame you for coming out here. The night is so beautiful. Look at the stars!”
I’d been staring at her without being able to utter a word, but at her instruction I automatically turned to look up. I felt rather than heard her come up behind me, and her breath stirred the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Ah, Fräulein,” she murmured. Her hand, pale and lovely, reached past my torso to run a fingertip down my left forearm. Even through my clothes her touch sent a shiver through me. “When I saw you the other time, I thought you were so beautiful. I wanted so much to see you again.”
My mouth was dry. I ran my tongue along my lips in a futile attempt to moisten them. “I…” I began.
“You….?” Her lips were brushing my ear. “You…what?”
“I thought you were beautiful, too,” I managed to whisper. “I wanted to see you again at other balls but I couldn’t find you.”
She gave a little laugh. “So many social events, so little time, Fräulein. But you’ll see me again. I promise.”
And then suddenly she was gone. I didn’t hear or feel her step back. She just wasn’t there any longer.
I might have run to the other side of the balcony to look for her, but then Mademoiselle de F_________ came bustling out. “There you are, Grӓfin. Come on in, our hostess is asking to meet you.”
After an interminable evening, during which I chafed internally every moment because I wanted to look for her – surely she had to be somewhere in this throng! – I was shown into the chamber where I was to sleep. It had a great four poster bed of richly carved oak, with pale rose coloured curtains on rails. As usual, Mademoiselle de F_________ insisted on helping me disrobe and get into my sleeping attire, a loose but formidable gown that descended to my toes. Then, setting a tallow candle on the bedside table and enjoining me to go to sleep, she left the room.
I had no sleep, however. All the emotions of the meeting I’d had with my mysterious golden haired lady came flooding back the moment I’d blown out the candle, climbed into bed, and pulled the curtains closed. I pulled up my left sleeve and ran my fingertip down my forearm, just as she’d done, over and over, and each time my breath caught in my throat.
Mysterious other things were stirring in me, too, feelings I’d never experienced before, and which I’d no way to understand. My breaths quickened, I felt a tingle in my breasts, and my nipples hardened and rubbed against the cloth of my night gown as my chest rose and fell. I felt a mysterious pressure and warmth between my legs, too, and when I pressed my thighs together I felt moisture seeping out of me. Not understanding what I was doing, I kept stroking my arm and squeezing my legs rhythmically together, at first slowly and then faster and faster as a need within me grew, until a sudden incredible jolt of pleasure streaked out from between my thighs to every part of my body. I threw my head back and squeezed my eyes shut, shuddering in ecstasy. I may have cried out, but nobody came.
The spasms of pleasure subsided at last, and I say there, almost sobbing as I drew in deep breaths of air. My heart was still pounding, my nipples so sensitive that the touch of my night gown on them seemed almost agonising. And the throbbing between my legs, in my cleft, and what lay inside it, of which I didn’t then even know the name, was warm and wet and unsettling.
I knew right then that I had discovered a thing that I was not supposed to feel, because otherwise I should have been told about it, and that I needed to keep it to myself. Cautiously I got out of bed and went to the window, hoping to see her again, somewhere. But the night outside was dark and still, and though I stood there for at least half an hour, I saw nothing and nobody.
At last I returned to the bed, but it was still a long time before I could fall asleep.
A few days later, my mother let me know that she had received a letter from a Grӓfin von Schwerin und Hardenberg asking that I visit her for a few days. My mother was, of course, extremely status conscious and would have ignored any invitation from, say, a mere Baroness. But even I had heard of the wealth and status of the Grӓfin von Schwerin und Hardenberg, so there was no question of my not going.
Of course I did not want to go. I wanted to visit balls and look for my golden haired lady. I wanted to feel her magic touch, not through clothes, but on my bare skin. Just the thought of how it might feel sent shivers to my breasts and the spot between my legs began to thrill and moisten.
But my parents’ word was law, so one foggy morning I was put in a carriage along with Mademoiselle de F_______, who couldn’t stop talking about the great honour an invitation from Grӓfin von Schwerin und Hardenberg was, and how fortunate I must consider myself.
“Above all, Grӓfin,” she told me, over and over during the days the journey took, until I got sick of hearing her voice, “you must be on your best behaviour. Do remember everything I’ve taught you.”
Finally, on the third day of our journey, we arrived at the castle of Schwerin. It was late afternoon and the setting sun lit up the mountains before us with a golden glow. High on a rocky crag the castle perched, like a great stone bird about to take flight, its walls and turrets the colour of dark rich honey.
“It’s beautiful,” Mademoiselle de F_________ exclaimed, sticking her head out through the window. “Isn’t it beautiful? Look how beautiful it is!”
I had no mood to appreciate the beauty. I disliked being away from my home, and even more, I disliked being away from any opportunity to seek my golden haired beauty in the balls that would be held while I was gone. After all, she had said that she would be meeting me again, so surely she would be at those balls, but I would not.
I was morosely thinking this over for the hundredth time when the carriage drove through the castle gates, and a footman ran out to open the door and give me a hand – which I did not need – to step down. Mademoiselle de F___________ began to supervise, quite unnecessarily, the unloading of our luggage, while the footman conducted me up a flight of steps so broad that they seemed as big as a carriage path and into the castle.
I was ushered into a small but opulently furnished chamber, its walls hung with rich velvet drapes in dark red, with carved furniture in gilded paint. The footman directed me to a table on which stood a bowl of fruit and a tall flask of wine, poured me a goblet, and left the room after making certain I was comfortably seated, saying that the Grӓfin von Schwerin und Hardenberg would be with me soon.
The sky seen through the little window was already darkening when the last voice I’d expected to hear sounded from behind me.
“How very kind of you to accept my invitation, Fräulein.”
I jumped up from the chair and turned so quickly that if I’d been holding a full goblet I would have assuredly spilt it all over myself. She was standing there, smiling. Today her dress was dark blue, not white, and held around her waist with a thin ribbon, as gold as her hair. Her lips were very red and curled in an amused smile.
“You look surprised, Fräulein. Or did you forget that I promised that we’d meet again?”
At last I remembered my manners and dropped a belated curtsey. She shook her head. “No need of that. We’re equals, are we not, Fräulein? Or would you prefer that I address you as Grӓfin? You are, after all, a Countess too.”
This was the first time I’d seen her face to face and in good lighting. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, and was slightly taller than me, with an oval face and eyes that were of a remarkable colour. I couldn’t decide whether they were blue or violet or something in between, or whether the colour changed from moment to moment. But looking into her eyes was like looking into the sky. You felt that you were staring into infinity.
My mouth finally worked, forming words. “Please excuse my ignorance of your identity when we met earlier, Grӓfin. I acted with unpardonable rudeness.”
“Oh, la!” she waved a hand airily. My heart thrilled at the slight of her slender fingers. “You did nothing wrong, and I enjoyed not being addressed by my title. So, how would you like me to call you?”
“I don’t want to be addressed as a Countess, Grӓfin. You can call me Fräulein or by my name, whichever you prefer.”
She tilted her head as though considering the question. “Oh, I think I’ll call you Fräulein. Everyone else can call you by your name, but you’ll always be my Fräulein.”
“Thank you, Grӓfin. I –”
“No.” She raised an admonitory finger. “You will address me by my name. Brunhilda.”
I swallowed. My mind was so full of emotions that I was finding it different to think, let alone speak. Just an hour ago I’d been cursing my fate, resigned to being locked away for weeks with some no doubt elderly and overbearing grande dame, while my golden haired lady looked for me in ballrooms filled with pretty girls, girls prettier and cleverer than I, one of whom might catch her eye instead. Now I was with her, and she was no longer anonymous. She had a name.
“Say it, Fräulein,” she said. “Say my name.”
“Brunhilda.” It felt strange on my tongue. I said it again, tasting the word, and it came easier. “Brunhilda.”
“There,” she laughed again, the same little laugh as on the balcony, and I am certain that my nipples hardened enough to raise the fabric of my dress into little points. “It gets easier, doesn’t it?” She extended a hand to me and her fingers curled round mine. “Come with me. I’ll show you around the castle.”
Though we spent a long time walking around as she described this and that, from the history of a particular room or tower to the subject of one or other of the great paintings that adorned the walls, I hardly remember a thing. I was too busy looking at her, drinking in the sound of her voice, and feeling her hand on mine, for she never relinquished her grasp on my fingers. Eventually, we emerged on a high balcony, overlooking the valley below the mountain and the road by which we’d ascended.
“Remember how we watched the stars?” she murmured. “The stars are even clearer from here, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t even think of the stars. My mind was consumed with how close she was, her voice in my ear, her hand on mine. She dropped my wrist, slipped behind me, and wrapped her arms around my torso.
“It’s a bit chilly, don’t you think?” she murmured, and then I felt her soft lips on the skin behind my left ear.
To understand my reaction, you must remember that I had literally never been kissed before, in any way, unless it was when I was a baby too young to remember anything. It was the first time I’d ever felt the touch of another person’s lips, still less on a place that is a personal erogenous zone (yes, Enid, I can see you filing that bit of information away, and if you imagine I’ll let you take advantage of it without retribution, you’ve got another think coming). I literally convulsed, falling forward into her arms.
“Steady, Fräulein.” She held me and kissed me again, and I felt the tip of her tongue travel down the back of my neck, until my lace collar impeded its further progress. “Ooh, you taste so sweet.”
“Grӓ…” I managed to gasp. “Brunhilda, I…”
“You, what?” She kissed me again on my neck. “What do you feel, Fräulein?”
“I don’t know.” My knees were so weak that if it weren’t for her arms around me I would’ve folded to the floor. “I don’t know what I’m feeling.”
She laughed again, and her tongue traced my ear. “We should explore that question together, shouldn’t we?” A faint bell sounded, as though from an infinite distance, and she stepped a little back from me. “Ah. Will you have dinner with me?”
That first dinner with her set the tone for all those that came afterwards. We were alone in a little chamber. Not even Mademoiselle de F_________ was present. We sat opposite each other at a tiny table, and while I ate and drank, she, Brunhilda, sat opposite, watching me. Once or twice she lifted a goblet of wine or a piece of meat to her lips, but if she actually ate or drank anything, I did not notice it. I didn’t at that time think it odd; I was so overwhelmed with everything happening to me that I wouldn’t have thought it odd if she’d suddenly sprouted wings.
“Come,” she said when I’d finished, and picked up one of the candles on the table. “I’ll show you to your room.”
The room she took me to was, quite positively, the most opulent bedchamber I’d ever been in in my life until that point. The walls were covered in velvet drapes, the immense windows looking out on the sky over the valley were furnished with gauzy curtains so thin that they were almost transparent, and the bed was deep and curtained and inviting.
“I’ll leave you this candle,” she said, putting it on a little bedside table. “Would you like me to summon a maid to help you undress…or,” she added with a wicked grin, “would you prefer I do it for you?”
The very thought of her undressing me made my head spin. I was positive that I would collapse were she to see me naked. “I’ll, I’ll do it myself, thank you,” I managed.
“Until tomorrow, then,” she said, smiling, dropped me a mock curtsey, and left the room, closing the door behind her. I stood there a few minutes, my head still dizzy with feelings, and then I slowly undressed myself. For a moment I was tempted to slip into bed in the nude, but then habit reasserted itself and I pulled on the nightgown.
It was only after I’d blown out the candle and got into bed that I thought to wonder how, since she’d left me the candle, Brunhilda would find her way in the dark.
Not that I held this thought long; it was swiftly replaced by the memory of Brunhilda’s tongue tracing its way down the back on my neck, and again, as it had done after our meeting on the terrace when we’d first spoken, my body began to respond, and in a little while exploded in a spasm which brought my back arching off the mattress.
Then I must have fallen asleep, and I do not remember any of my dreams.
The next morning a maid brought me breakfast in bed, an unexpected luxury I had never experienced before, and I thought it was fortunate that I’d resisted temptation and pulled on the nightgown. After breakfast that same maid – a buxom girl with hair so blonde that it was almost white, and eyes so blue they were like the sky on mountain ice, who said her name was Gerta – insisted on helping me bathe and dress. I’m sure I blushed bright red during the process. I was used to Mademoiselle de F_________ seeing me naked, since she’d done so since I was a very young child, but nobody else.
Afterwards I made my way downstairs, and found my governess there, talking to a tall angular woman who turned out to be the housekeeper in chief. I don’t remember what she was called. They greeted me and were about to return to their conversation, but I managed to slip in a question.
“Where is Brun…I mean, the Grӓfin?”
The housekeeper looked a bit surprised. “Asleep, probably. The Grӓfin keeps odd hours, but she’ll be up in the afternoon. In the meantime, she instructed me to inform you that you are welcome to explore the castle and the grounds.”
At a loss for anything to do, I decided to take up the offer. After a bit of wandering, I found myself in a little enclosed garden. On one side there was a circular walled structure, which I realised was a retaining wall around a well. I leant my elbows on the top of the wall to see if I could make out the water below, when an arm suddenly snaked around my chest and drew me back.
“Careful,” Brunhilda said in my ear. “That wall’s old and could crumble easily.”
I turned to look at her. “I thought you were sleeping!”
“I couldn’t sleep with you up and about, could I?” She gave that little wicked grin again. “How could I neglect my guest and make her feel lonely? Come with me, and I’ll show you round the grounds and the stables.”
The stables were large, at which I was not surprised, and the horses were magnificent. “Would you like to go out for a ride?” Brunhilda asked.
Now of course we had a stable at Schloss Karnstein, and I’d been taught to ride, but it was only on an old and docile mare, walking or at best trotting slowly round the stable yard, with a groom always at hand. Brunhilda laughed as I told her this. “Come on, then,” she said. “I’ll teach you to ride – properly.”
That was the first time I felt that I was really on a horse. It was a giant black stallion, on whose back Brunhilda effortlessly hoisted me, and then sprang up herself. And it wasn’t just a sedate trot round the yard; when we finally stopped, after a gallop through meadows that I’d barely had a chance to notice as we galloped through them, I was gasping for breath more than the horse was.
“You’ll soon get used to it,” Brunhilda said. “By the time you go back you’ll be an expert.”
Go back? The words struck a pang in my heart. Just yesterday at this hour I’d been wishing desperately that I could turn around and go home. Now the last thing I needed was even a reminder that I was only here for a couple of weeks. I didn’t want to go back.
I didn’t say anything, but Brunhilda must have guessed what was on my mind, because she tilted my face up with a forefinger under my chin and looked into my eyes. “There’s still a long time to go,” she said.
That night, Brunhilda again conducted me to my bedchamber with a candle. This time I remembered to ask how she’d find her way back in the dark. “I know this castle better than I do the back of my hand, of course,” she said. “Sleep well, Fräulein. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I was aching in unaccustomed places from the horse riding. Also, I kept remembering her breasts pressed in the saddle to my back, her arms reaching round me to hold the reins, and her breath on the back of my neck. It was a long time before I found a comfortable position and fell into a half doze.
It was one of those half sleep conditions where one is aware that one’s on the verge of sleeping, is in fact mostly asleep, but could wake up if one chose to. I drifted like that for a while and then, though my eyes seemed still closed, I saw Brunhilda come into the room. How she came in I didn’t know, since she didn’t open the door, but she was there, standing beside the bed and looking down at me with a strange expression on her face I couldn’t interpret. Then she slipped noiselessly into the bed beside me, threw her arm around my waist, and laid her head on my breast.
At any point I think I could have let her know I was aware that she was there, and asked what she was doing, but I felt a great lethargy steal over me. Little by little, I drifted into a vast darkness and felt the tides of sleep bear me away.
When Gerta woke me in the morning there was no sign that Brunhilda had ever been there, and I decided it had all been a dream. I was still feeling sleepy and tired, but after breakfast and a bath I felt myself returning slowly to normal.
“The Grӓfin requests that you join her at the stables,” the housekeeper told me when I went downstairs. And Brunhilda again put me on a horse, and if she’d really been in my bed the previous evening, she didn’t mention it.
That night I resolved to stay awake for as long as I could, so if Brunhilda came to the room I could welcome her into the bed properly and hug her back, put my head on her breast – the very thought made me thrill – but though I somehow stayed up till almost midnight, nothing happened until then. Of course I was tired again in the morning, but I just put it down to lack of sleep.
The days passed like that. I barely saw Mademoiselle de F_________ except at lunchtime, which she and I took together. Brunhilda was never present at these lunches. One day, a little over a week into my visit, Mademoiselle de F_________ cocked her head at me.
“You’re looking a bit tired, Grӓfin. You’re pale and there are dark circles under your eyes. Aren’t you sleeping enough?”
“Like the dead, Mademoiselle. After being out in the saddle all day I sleep like the dead.” I was getting steadily better, so that for the last two days Brunhilda hadn’t even put in an appearance, trusting me to go out and return on my own.
“Maybe then you should eat more? I’d hate for your parents to think I’m not taking proper care of you.”
I laughed aloud at that. “Look at this!” I pointed at my plate. “I’m eating twice as much as I do at home.” All the riding seemed to have stimulated my appetite, or something had, anyway. “At this rate I’ll feel I’m always starving when we go back and I have to eat the food at home.”
That night after dinner, when Brunhilda and I were standing on the high terrace and letting the cool breeze blow over us, she slipped her arm around mine and took my hand in hers. “I was thinking,” she said, “that perhaps you’re feeling lonely? Should I arrange a ball for you, Fräulein?”
A ball? No, I absolutely did not want a ball. “I’m not lonely,” I said. “I’m fine when you’re with me.”
I don’t know what I expected her reaction to be, but it wasn’t what happened next. She swung me around with effortless strength to face her, her other arm went around my shoulder and back, and, bending me backwards, she pressed her lips to mine.
How long that kiss lasted I don’t know. I’d opened my mouth in an involuntary gasp when she’d bent me over backwards, and as her lips slid over mine, her tongue pressed between my teeth and into my mouth. I trembled with the force of the sensations flooding me, and gripped her upper arms as hard as I could.
When she released me I was breathless. “Oh,” was all I could whisper. “Oh.”
Brunhilda smiled at me. “Dear Fräulein,” she said. “I’ve been aching to do that since the first time I ever laid eyes on you.” Her eyes dropped from my face to my heaving bosom. “I see you like it, too.”
My head was spinning, and I had no way to resist when she took me by the hand and led me to my bedchamber, closing the door behind us. It was a moonlit night – the moon was not far short of full – and it shone through the nearly transparent curtains, so we didn’t need the candle. Brunhilda blew it out and turned me around in a circle, kissing my mouth, cheek, ear, the back of my neck, then my ear, cheek, and mouth again.
“Tonight I’m going to help you undress, Fräulein,” she said. “Or, rather, I’m going to undress you.”
Even if I’d had any desire to refuse, I had no capacity to. I hadn’t the faintest idea why she wanted to undress me, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be the same as Mademoiselle de F______ or the maid Gerta’s seeing my unclothed body. And I was right.
As in a trance, I stood still as a statue as her hands flicked over me, stripping me one garment at a time, until I had nothing on but my little boots and socks. Pushing me gently down on the bed, she knelt before me and pulled them off, then pushed my thighs apart.
“Oh, Fräulein,” she said, “your little mouse is excited, isn’t it?”
I didn’t have to be told that; I was so aroused that my fluids were trickling down towards my bottom. I didn’t know what she was intending to do, so when her head pressed between my thighs and her tongue reached out and licked my cleft, my body shuddered as much with surprise as with pleasure. Involuntarily, I tightened my thighs around her head, but she didn’t seem to even notice. Her tongue flicked rapidly up and down my cleft, and the darts of unbearable pleasure that shot out were so intense that I threw myself on my back on the bed, my hands clutching the fabric of the sheets.
Her tongue seemed to be everywhere in my spot, around my cleft, dipping into my cleft, and then, over and over, making tiny circles at the top, where I was so intensely sensitive that I could not even begin to bear it. I began to buck involuntarily, thrusting myself against her mouth, until the ecstasy that exploded between my thighs was so intense that it filled me all through, from my scalp to the soles of my feet. It happened again, and again, until the spasms of unendurable pleasure merged into one, and I must have fainted dead away.
When I could think and feel again, I was in the bed, tucked in, still naked. The moonlight on the floor was at a slanted angle from before, so time had passed. There was no sign of Brunhilda. I felt immensely weary, yet fulfilled, and I could not bring myself to get out of bed and drag on that nightgown. At last, I fell asleep, and if Gerta was surprised at finding me in the nude when she brought me breakfast in the morning, she successfully concealed it.
Every night of the remainder of my visit, Brunhilda was with me when I went to bed, and after getting me naked, her mouth and fingers played on, over, and, after the second night, inside me. I spent those days yearning desperately for the night to come, so that I could feel her kisses and her touch on and in me, so that I could buck helplessly in the torment of the ecstasy she brought me. Even when I was astride the horse she’d decided would be mine for the duration of my visit, a black stallion named Friedrich, galloping across the meadows, I could only think of her and wait until we could be together again.
Mademoiselle de F________ for some reason grew steadily more concerned. “I’m so glad we are going home tomorrow, Grӓfin,” she told me over lunch one day. “Every day you seem to be more pale and tired, and your eyes are positively sinking into your head.”
Tomorrow? My heart seemed to fall into a hole in the pit of my stomach and keep falling. Was it really so soon that I would have to go back? I could barely eat a bite after that. And in the evening, when I met Brunhilda, I poured out my heart to her. By the end, I was sobbing helplessly.
“Fräulein,” she said, “my dear Fräulein, don’t worry. You’ll see me again, most certainly. Don’t even think about that for a moment.”
That night she gave me pleasure so intense that it exceeded everything that had gone before, but I still couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I’d be leaving in a few hours. I wanted to stay in Schwerin forever. Even after she left, I lay awake in bed, my fingers caressing my breasts and between my thighs, where her kisses and hands had roamed, but I couldn’t rouse any more sensation. My mind was full of a brown misery when I thought of her and going away again.
The next morning, Gerta hesitated after I’d had my bath and she’d helped me dress. “Grӓfin?”
“Yes?” I was surprised. She rarely spoke to me.
“You’re leaving today, aren’t you?” Her ice-blue eyes looked into mine. “Please don’t come back.”
“What?” I was so surprised I could think of nothing else to say.
She looked hurriedly over her shoulder at the door. “Please don’t think me impertinent, but this place isn’t good for you. She isn’t good for you. Be just glad you can still leave. I only wish you well.” Without a further word, she exited, leaving me open mouthed with astonishment.
Mademoiselle de F_______ was already supervising the loading of the carriage when I came downstairs. “Grӓfin,” she said, “we’re just about to leave.”
“But…” I asked helplessly, “what about Brunhilda? Can’t I say goodbye?”
Mademoiselle de F________ looked disapproving at my use of the first name. “If you mean the Grӓfin von Schwerin und Hardenberg, she is away, and asked me to pass on her greetings to you and wish you a happy journey home.” And so I had to be content with that as the carriage clattered away from Schwerin Castle back towards Schloss Karnstein.
Of course I thought of the maid’s parting words, but I soon decided that they were born of jealousy. Of course she had realised, from seeing me naked in bed every morning, and knowing Brunhilda’s closeness to me, that we were together at night. No doubt she had wanted to be in my place, receiving Brunhilda’s caresses – who wouldn’t, from a woman so kind, charming, and beautiful? – and had decided to warn me off. But, I thought, I could make my own decisions too, and would return as soon as I could.
Schloss Karnstein seemed tiny and restricted when I returned, almost a prison. My parents were as distant as ever, and though I was permitted to take horses out for a ride, the experience had none of the heart-pounding excitement of being on Friedrich at Schwerin, feeling his muscles expand and contract under me while I eagerly awaited Brunhilda’s visit at night. And though each night, after Mademoiselle de F________ had helped me change (she insisted, though I said it wasn’t necessary) I stripped off the nightgown and climbed into bed naked, and then touched myself, I could only summon up a shadow of the thrills Brunhilda had aroused in me. Each night I missed her more and more.
The Vienna season was approaching, and we would soon leave for the Imperial capital, where I would be presented at court, and no doubt be expected to find a suitably rich and powerful husband, if not this year then undoubtedly the next. Before, I’d been quietly resigned to my fate, but now the very thought turned my stomach. In the meantime I still had to attend balls, where I spent all my time distractedly looking for one golden haired lady. And she was never around.
My heart was breaking, slowly but surely, being ground down to dust.
There was one last ball before the general exodus to Vienna, held at the chateau of one Maximilian, Freiherr von Karman; for some reason I still recall his name after all this time, though I doubt I ever even met him in person. I only went to it because my mother – my father was too busy organising our move to Vienna – insisted. Mademoiselle de F________ happened to be indisposed; she was a martyr to what she claimed to be witchcraft-induced pains, but which I still believe were due to simple rheumatism; so, to my own astonishment, I was permitted to go unchaperoned.
The ball was in every way as insipid as I’d expected, and my only wish was to see if Brunhilda would be present. But as I looked around for her, I was accosted by a young man I’d met before at some balls and danced with a time or two. His name, if I recall correctly, was Adelbert von something or other und Krain, and before my trip to Schwerin I’d thought him fairly good looking, likeable, and personable. Now my only emotion at his conversation, even as he was complimenting me, was impatience.
Fortunately, before I had to resort to actual rudeness to get rid of him, one of the older ladies present drew him away for a moment to talk to him about something or other. I took the opportunity to slip out through the nearest door, and found myself in the garden.
The von Karman gardens were huge and marked with lines of trees and hedges; the ground under them must have been thick with shadow even during the day, and so of course were pitch black at night. I crept behind a tree and watched as Adelbert appeared at the door, looked around, and then, instead of going back inside, stood there, as though to enjoy the night air. I couldn’t go back in without his seeing me, and if he took even a few steps into the garden, he couldn’t fail to see me hiding behind the tree. And, in the darkness and in the unfamiliar garden, I couldn’t withdraw any further without risking bumping into something or tripping and twisting an ankle – or worse.
It was quite the conundrum, and I stood frozen in place, holding my breath, when I suddenly felt a grip on my wrist, and a most familiar voice murmured in my ear. “Come.”
She led me unerringly through the darkness through lines of trees, past a little ornamental fountain, and on until the dark outline of a small summer house rose against the sky. We were far enough from the chateau that the music from the dance was only a faint murmur, almost inaudible. She led me inside before turning around and kissing me long, hard and deep. The darkness was almost total, but I still had the familiar scent of her, the feeling of her golden hair spilling over my breast as she leaned in for the kiss.
“Brunhilda,” I gasped, finally. “I’ve missed you so much.”
I felt her lips curve in a smile against mine as she leaned in again. “I couldn’t go without meeting you, Fräulein. Remember I promised that we’d meet again.”
“Go?” I didn’t understand. “Where are you going?”
“Away, for a while. It could be a long time.” Her arms went around me and drew me to her with irresistible strength. “But I knew I had to see you. We have unfinished business, don’t we?”
“But…” My mouth was dry. “If you’re going away, take me with you!”
“I can’t do that, Fräulein. But I can give you a final something to remember me by.” Her mouth dropped to my throat and licked that trail down it that never failed to make me go weak in the knees. I gasped, my body reacting automatically even as my mind whirled. Why was she going away? Why couldn’t she take me along? What unfinished business did we have? I might have managed to ask these questions if I’d been able to control the arousal every touch of hers sent through my body. But she knew just what she was doing. Pushing me down on a bench, with my back to one of the supporting pillars, she knelt between my legs, flipped up my gown and then the skirt underneath, and spread my thighs with her hands. These were the days before knickers had become common wear, and so from my waist to the tops of my short boots I was now naked to her fingers and mouth.
Her fingers were already running up and down my cleft as her tongue traced patterns along my inner thighs. When she slipped a finger inside me the shaft of pure sensation made me cry out aloud, but she didn’t seem to care. Her tongue began making circles on and around the tiny nub of excruciating sensitivity at the top of my cleft as her fingers, first one and then another, stroked in and out of me, the two sensations joining together in a feeling that consumed my entire lower belly. I felt as though something was rushing from all inside me, from my clenched shut eyes to my fingers that were buried in her hair, to the tips of my toes curling in my boots, everything rushing from all over to the point between my thighs where her fingers and her mouth met on and inside me. It built, and built, and then exploded, and as it began I found myself arching, grinding myself frantically against her face.
I hadn’t even finished that first spasm when the second struck, and then a third, so strong that I almost lost consciousness. As the fourth began, I was dimly aware that her mouth had moved from my spot to my inner thigh, and suddenly I felt pain there, like two needles driving into my flesh. But the waves of pleasure were still crashing over and in me, too strong for me to resist, and the liquid fire pouring from my thigh into my body merged with it into a sensation that made me feel as though I was melting inside. I felt as though I had become very light, so light that I was floating up into the air, and carried away into the night sky, where the stars were waiting to welcome me.
When I next opened my eyes I was in complete darkness, lying on my back. I thought at first that I was on the summer house floor. “Brunhilda?” I called. There was no reply.
I tried to push myself up with my arms, and my forehead came into contact with a hard, heavy, cold surface. I reached up to feel with my hands, and felt a stone slab. Then, at last, I realised the truth.
I’d been buried. I was in a tomb.
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ITALY (PRESENT DAY):
Enid’s eyes were shocked as she looked up at me. “She left you? Abandoned you?”
“Turned me and dropped me like a used paper towel.” The bitterness and anger blazed up in me again, as it did every time I thought of her. “That girl Gerta was right. She was never any good for me.”
“Did you ever find out where she went?”
“No. I later realised a few things, once I’d begun to understand my own powers, and therefore the powers of our kind. She’d never been invited to any of those balls, that’s why I never saw her when I was looking for her, only when she wanted to be seen. And that’s why nobody else saw her either. She must have been looking for easy prey, saw me that first time, and picked me.” I bit my lip almost hard enough to draw blood. “And I fell for it like a stupid young fool.”
“Maybe she’s dead now.” Enid reached up to touch my face. “Maybe someone destroyed her.”
I snorted. “Not a chance. Brunhilda was old then already, centuries old, older than I am now, and more powerful than I am now.” I waved a hand. “Somewhere out there that hell-bitch is still alive, still taking her pleasure with innocent young girls, I’ll bet. Of course she’s calling herself something else now, and she must have changed her appearance over and over again.”
“What would you do if you could find her?”
I blinked. “What could I do? I just told you that she was already old and powerful then. She must be far more powerful now. There’s nothing I could do to harm her.”
“Alone, maybe not. But there are two of us now.” Enid touched my face again. “She can’t have expected that. Together we could bring her down.”
I smiled slightly. “Maybe when you’re a few years older. Or a few centuries older. We might be strong enough.”
Enid reached up to wipe the corner of my eye with her finger. I hadn’t realised that I’d begun weeping tears of rage. “What happened then? When you woke up inside the tomb?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “Well…”
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STYRIA (1698):
For an endless moment I panicked. Gulping in the stuffy air inside that stone box, I began crying out for help, and reached up to batter at the stone slab with my fists, though what little remained of my rational mind knew that could do no good. I fully expected to break my hands in a futile attempt to escape.
Instead, I felt, with utter incredulity, the slab begin to shift. When I pushed it again, with both hands, it slid aside and toppled heavily to the floor.
That was my first introduction to the powers of what I had become; the strength that was now mine.
I was, as I discovered, in a mausoleum. There was almost no light but a little glimmer of starlight that came in through a window set high in the wall, but somehow, even with that little, I saw clearly. That was the second thing I discovered; that I could see so well, even in the near-dark. I still didn’t understand that these things were because I was no longer what I’d been. I just knew that I had to get out of there.
The door was, of course, locked from outside. Even desperately pushing at it didn’t budge it the breadth of a hair. There was only that tiny window high up on the wall, which seemed impossible to reach and far too small to get through. But I still made a desperate jump for it, and somehow, to my astonishment, my fingers gripped the edge and then I squeezed through it, without any effort at all.
That scared me. Even as I dropped to the grass outside, I was frightened.
Clearly something had happened to me, something that had changed me in ways that were totally unfamiliar. Getting to my feet, I first looked down at myself. I was no longer wearing the ball gown and boots, of course. I was in a simple white dress, with soft cloth shoes on my feet. It was a funeral dress. I’d been buried as the dead were buried.
But I was alive, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I?
Where was I, anyway?
All around me were trees. It was the middle of the night, but with my new vision I had little difficulty in finding my way. There was a path leading from the locked mausoleum door through the wood. I followed it and presently emerged from the forest.
Up ahead was a small village, and, towering above it, a schloss I knew all too well.
I was standing below Schloss Karnstein.
My first impulse, of course, was to rush to the gates and batter on them, demanding entrance, and telling everyone that I was still alive. But some sixth sense, born of the fear that had struck me when I’d found myself able to leap a wall and squeeze through a window, made me hesitate. They had buried me, and they must have believed me dead. What would they think if I came rushing out of the night, having somehow escaped my stone tomb and the locked doors of the mausoleum? Would someone not immediately think that I was something unnatural, something evil?
Of course they would.
I should do something else, I thought. I should go to the village, and see if I could hear anyone say anything, if anyone was talking about me.
It was a foolhardy decision. There were, of course, no electric lights in those days, and in tiny villages like this even tallow candles were a luxury. People worked all day to exhaustion, ate by the light of their hearth fires, slept soon after dark and seldom stirred until dawn, when they got ready for another brutal day of work again.
Still, I was fortunate. Not that I heard any conversation, but just as I drew close to the first house I noticed a stirring, and a cow blundered out of the small shed which was her home. I looked at her and my senses were suddenly filled with the thought of the blood surging through her veins, so rich and dark, and I as abruptly became aware that I was very, very hungry. I had never been so hungry in my life.
The next memory I have is of kneeling beside the cow’s corpse, wiping my lips, the rich thick fluid sloshing in my belly. Stricken as suddenly with the fear of being seen, I jumped to my feet and fled, running faster than I had ever run before, yet without any tiredness, running until Schloss Karnstein lay far behind me and the eastern sky was lightening with the dawn.
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ITALY (PRESENT DAY):
“And that was my first victim,” I said wryly. “A poor unfortunate cow. It took me a long time to learn to control the bloodlust that came over me. For many days I wandered the paths and forests of Styria, sleeping during the day, preying on anyone I could find at night, until my shoes were worn through and my dress ragged, until I found my feet bringing me back to Schloss Karnstein.
“By that time I’d learnt a few things, enough that I could manage to get into the Schloss and steal a set of my old clothing, while everyone slept. My parents were not in residence; the death of a daughter would not come in the way of their presenting themselves at the Imperial Court in Vienna. I did not trust myself to visit Mademoiselle de F________’s bedchamber. I did not want to harm the poor old girl. I was utterly ruthless with my prey in those days, killing without hesitation and feeding until I could no more. I didn’t want to do that to her. I still wonder sometimes what happened to her. I hope she had a comfortable life in her old age and didn’t mourn me too much.
“My parents I didn’t expect to mourn me at all.
“For years afterwards, I made my home back in that old mausoleum, stealing out at night to look for prey, drifting back at dawn again. But I was always wary, and when I discovered people were darkly muttering about the need to track down the creature that had been doing such damage, I decided it was time to leave. You can guess for yourself what happened after that.”
“You found me.” Enid took my hand and kissed it. “That’s what happened next, you found me.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” I smiled, some of the tension in my body dissipating. “Well, Miss Enid, we need to get to sleep while we still can. We need to set out early tonight if we’re to find sustenance. I can tell you I’m not going to try to feed from a boar again.”
Enid was about to say something, but suddenly cocked her head. “What’s that?”
A moment later, I heard it too, men’s voices approaching. I recognised the language as well, one I had some familiarity with: Dutch. And a little after that, we saw them too, two immensely tall, ginger haired men walking along the path, huge rucksacks on their backs and digital cameras dangling on straps around their necks.
Enid and I waited till they’d passed safely out of earshot before we released the breaths we’d been holding. “Well!” she said. “So we just have to follow them to wherever they’re camping.”
“Yes.” I got up. “I suppose we could just sleep tomorrow instead. Pack up your sleeping bag and let’s get going.”
We are predators. We do what we have to do to survive. It may be cruel, but that’s how life is.
We got going.
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