‘I heard of something like that in one of the mountain villages.’
This surprised him. ‘Not recently?’
‘No, it was before I was born.’
‘Now these hallucinations are very easily communicated,’ he told me in the most charming professorial way imaginable. ‘If one man says he sees something, his friends will say they see it too. So if the original hallucination is of a creature returning to its coffin just before daybreak…’
‘Yes, but why should it be that rather than anything else?’ I objected.
‘An old folk-belief based on some long-forgotten incident such as the robbing or desecration of a grave. If this were Scandinavia people would “see” trolls and ogres.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘As time went by more care was taken to prevent ergot from getting into the bread. The vampire has died out in the last thirty or forty years because of improved baking methods.’ The smile he sent me then made me catch my breath. ‘I see you’re not convinced.’
‘There must be something more,’ I managed to say; ‘something strange and unearthly. You’re too reasonable, Mr Hillier.’
‘I can assure you, countess,’ he said, laughing, ‘I’m not too reasonable to find the mystery still absorbing when I think I know the explanation. But I’ve digressed. The family history. What about Baron Aleku Valvazor?’
‘My great-uncle. We have something.’
‘I hope it’s good. The accepted story is a sad let-down. All those promising tales about the young girls who died with the name of Aleku on their lips, and then he goes and dies himself, of typhus, and that’s that.’
‘I don’t think he’ll disappoint you altogether.’
‘We shall see. That’s a fine portrait of him in the hall.’
‘I noticed you were examining it. You’ll see more of him. I mean of course there are other pictures of him in the castle.’
He seemed to find this less than obvious, but remarked mildly, ‘On the evidence so far, a remarkable-looking man.’
And there I have to stop. In a moment my beloved and I are to meet again, and I must strive with all my might to prevent myself from perpetrating some idiocy. But I want to say one more thing. Thank you. It’s all I can say.
V — Stephen Hillier to A. C. Winterbourne, St Matthew’s Hall, Oxford, England
Castle Valvazor,
Nuvakastra,
Dacia
1 September 1925
… This brings me almost to dinner-time yesterday. You’ll have to forgive me, Charles, for telling my story in the strictest, most unadorned chronological order, without forward references to what I later did or discovered; I feel it’s only in that way that I stand the remotest chance of making sense of it.
After a couple of wrong turnings (the place really is huge) I found my way to the parlour pretty exactly at the appointed hour. A short, wiry man of about sixty, who I saw at once wasn’t a Dacian, rose politely to greet me. His name is Robert Macneil and he acts as a kind of steward, supervising the affairs of the castle and its estates and also acting as librarian — it was to fill this post that he had come to Valvazor in the first place. So much I had been told already; what I saw or thought I saw for myself was that, under a veneer of reserved amiability and a kind of donnishness more suggestive of the stage than any seat of learning I know, here was a very tough, determined fellow indeed.
Naturally I didn’t reach this conclusion all at once; other things had a claim on my attention. Or rather… Old boy, I despair of conveying to you the brilliance of her eyes, the profusion of her glorious hair, the voluptuousness of her figure, anything about her in a way that will do it justice. I had fallen for her like a ton of bricks literally the moment I set eyes on her. At that stage I didn’t dare to wonder about her feelings for me. No use telling myself I shouldn’t be in my present state; it seems to me that, again literally, I had no choice. By the way, we’ve known each other long enough for me to be able to admit to you that I’ve made the lady sound less than sensational when writing to Connie. Verb. sap. No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t try to be flippant about it. Casual adventures aren’t my style.
Well, the three of us dined in a modestly sized room that is clearly not the one in use on grand occasions; hardly a pigsty all the same. The vaulting overhead reminded me a little of that at the western end of the chapel at Matt’s, though any resemblance must surely be fortuitous. We went from a delicious potato soup to chicken konstanta (with plum sauce) and thence to fingers of cheese dipped in a harsh local mustard. Two wines were offered, the red vigorous enough, the white a little thin, I thought, but the countess evidently preferred it. The Scotchman did most of the talking, and most of what he said was on the subject of vampirism. I’ll just summarize those parts of his discourse which were wholly or partly new to me.
‘Many details of the vampire legend turn out to have no basis in fact — I mean of course no basis in recorded statements, the testimony of alleged witnesses and so forth. For instance it’s widely believed, even in parts of this country, that the creature casts no shadow, and no reflection in water or looking-glass. How could that be so? As is clear from its other attributes and activities, a vampire is flesh and blood, in however modified a form. Then the alleged protection given by a crucifix — nothing more than a sign of the Church’s attempt to Christianize the essentially pagan rituals used to ward off or destroy the vampire. Which brings up another question — why should the being have to be in its coffin for destruction to be effective? Benedek Valvazor himself was decapitated and annihilated on the roof of this very castle. A spike or nail hammered into the skull is also held to be effective. There are other methods which strike one as bizarre in the extreme; the Cretan islanders, for example, boil the vampire’s head in vinegar. It seems the only means generally found serviceable is exposure to direct sunlight. Causing total disintegration. Into dust.’
At this point in his remarks Macneil saw what I had that moment seen, that Countess Valvazor was looking distinctly uncomfortable, even unwell.
I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ I think I may have shouted a little in my anxiety.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, and took a deep breath. ‘I guess I am a tiny bit squeamish after all.’ She managed a smile then. ‘And those were my ancestors you were talking about, darn it.’
‘Indeed,’ said Macneil. ‘How could I forget that? Countess, you haven’t touched your food.’ Here he too smiled, but in a very different, not altogether pleasant way. ‘Eat it up, now.’
She shrugged her shoulders and did as she was told. At the end of the meal, the servant Magda brought in Turkish coffee, devilish sweet and strong. An eau-de-vie of the country, made it seemed from greengages, was also produced, but all three of us declined, Macneil because, according to him, he was off to bed shortly, having had a long day and being faced with an early start in the morning. He added that he would be in the castle library and at my disposal from eight o’clock onwards. Before finally departing he cautioned me against staying up too late, on the grounds that, even at these comparatively modest altitudes, a visitor found he needed his sleep. His actual leave-taking was civil enough, but the impression he’d made on me was by no means unequivocally favourable. I tried to convey this tactfully to the countess, who took my point at once.