When Magda had gone, I said to the countess something like, ‘I have to admit I know virtually nothing about you, just that you’re the only child of the late Count and that you’re the mistress of this castle and its estates. Do you live here alone?’
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘But I am the last of the Valvazors, this branch anyhow. I don’t imagine I’ll be around here very much longer.’
I asked her why not.
She said, ‘The kind of life my family used to live in this house is becoming a thing of the past. The Great War has changed everything. Very soon I shan’t be able to survive. In fact I spend most of my time putting the place in order so I can sell up and get out.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘There was a lot wrong with our old ways.’ I didn’t know quite how to take that, but she went on straight away to ask, ‘How are you on the family history?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I begin of course with Benedek Valvazor, who terrorized the whole province two hundred years ago.’
‘Of course nothing,’ drawled the countess with a smile. ‘We begin with Tristan the Wolf in the late seventeenth century.’ Seeing my look of surprise, she went on, ‘Surely you must know of him?’
‘Oh yes, but only as a warrior against the Turks.’
‘He was that too, but he was, or should I say his corpse, was beheaded and burnt and the ashes thrown into the air over running water in 1696.’
‘But he died in 1673,’ I protested, sure of my facts.
‘Right. The story never really leaked out because the king was hard on superstition, and a thing like that would have made him really mad.’
I nodded thoughtfully. Gregory IV had been on the throne at the material time, and his opposition to all forms of pagan belief and practice (and of course anything even remotely to do with vampirism comes under that heading) is a byword among historians of eastern Europe.
The countess said, ‘There’s a whole raft of stuff about Tristan in the files.’
‘Excellent,’ I said, still thinking.
‘Benedek too. But the star of the show is Red Mathias.’
‘Ah. The only vampire known to have been dispatched by a bishop.’
‘We have an eye-witness account by the bishop’s chaplain.’ She was obviously quoting from memory when she went on, ‘So dreadful was the cry when the stake reached the heart that my lord sank to his knees and begged me to pray for his soul forthwith and in that place.’
The utterly matter-of-fact tone in which she said this only made it the more convincing; I wish you could have heard her, Connie. Anyway, that wasn’t the end of our conversation by a long chalk, but it’s as far as I can take you just now. I’m to present myself for dinner in five minutes, and somehow I know that the Countess Valvazor wouldn’t take kindly to being kept waiting. So I’ll stop for now, but as always I have time to say that my loving thoughts go out to you and a little piece of you is here in my heart.
IV — Countess Valvazor’s Journal
Later — It was not Death that came; I am tempted to call it Life. The change was complete and immediate, as soon as I set eyes on him. When — with what reluctance — I sent him away to make ready for the evening, I went instantly to the bookcase and took down the volume of Cantacuzinu I used to treasure so, and the pages fell open at ‘Mary in Spring’, and the tears sprang to my eyes just as they did in the past. Not content with that I hurried upstairs to the gallery and — I had almost forgotten where it was, but the moment I caught sight of the big Puvis de Chavannes, ‘St Martin of Vertou in his Hermitage’, I knew the veil had lifted; the work, by common consent our best picture, was restored in my eyes to all its old power and beauty. If I had needed proof, here it was.
My first impressions of him. Around forty, maybe a year or two older, rather tall, very dark — but I know that, anyone can see that. What else, what more? Honourable, brave, chivalrous, sentimental, a little shy at the best of times, a little cautious, a little fussy, enormously English. I find I forgot to say that, while far from being the best-looking man I ever saw, he is beyond question the loveliest one — no, the only lovely one. Every time he looks me in the eye, and he has a very straight look, I am afraid I will swoon.
A little shy at the best of times — and very shy at the worst of times, like on first meeting the love of his life; he knows that and the rest of it as well as I do. Shy, cautious, even conventional. I must make it easy for him. Certainly easier than I have made it so far, jolted with such violence by my feelings that I behaved as awkwardly as he, cannot remember anything I said for the first few minutes. I must have inquired his business, overridden any protests he might have made against the notion of becoming my guest — I do remember the feebleness of his attempt to seem anything but delighted — and no doubt discussed some of the Valvazor history. During our conversation I discovered something more about him: he is an interesting man. This quality is not necessary in somebody one loves — from what depth of experience do I write that? — but it is very agreeable. I was naturally full of curiosity about his remarks on vampires and what led him to study the subject. By this time I reckon I had ceased to blush and stammer and fall over my own feet like an infatuated schoolgirl.
‘The whole thing fascinates me,’ he said. ‘The idea of a creature once human, now no longer so, and yet in theory and on a low plane immortal, somehow protected from the destructive effects of time, existing at all only at night, its only desire to feed on human blood, driven by nothing else but fear, fear of the sun, fear of the crucifix and of the stake through the heart — it isn’t believable in these modern times and it isn’t in the least beautiful, but I feel its power, a sort of sullen, outlandish, desolate poetry. If I didn’t, I should never have travelled thousands of miles in pursuit of it.’
‘I understand,’ I replied. ‘It’s so much part of the local tradition, or rather it was, that I can’t think of it in any kind of elevated way without an effort. It’s just there. Now, may I offer you a drink, Mr Hillier?’
‘You may and welcome, countess,’ he said with a smile and, when I handed him a martini cocktail of my own making, sipped it attentively and pronounced it excellent.
‘You were saying a moment ago,’ I observed after making sure he was right about my mixing, ‘that your version of the vampire legend wasn’t believable today. It’s certainly hard to believe, but what’s your alternative explanation? Take the story of Red Mathias, for instance. What really happened in that vault? I mean, these weren’t superstitious peasants too terrified to see straight, nor mountebanks telling tall stories in the hope of picking up a few centimes — they were highly educated, responsible men. Are you going to tell me they were lying? What would be the point?’
He shook his head decisively. ‘They weren’t lying.’
‘Then,’ I pursued, ‘Red Mathias was a vampire and the bishop destroyed him.’
‘Not that either,’ he said to my bewilderment, but went on, ‘I can give you the answer in one word. Ergot.’
‘Ergot,’ I repeated. ‘A fungus that grows on…’
‘Rye. Yes. And the contaminated rye gets made into bread, and people eat the bread, and they go mad, for a time, until all the bad bread has been eaten. While they’re mad they see things, they suffer vivid and detailed hallucinations. They have convulsions and die a good deal too. There was a famous case in Prussia in the time of Frederick the Great, when a whole village fancied its dead had risen from their graves.’