SÉANCE FOR A VAMPIRE
FRED SABERHAGEN
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: SÉANCE FOR A VAMPIRE
© 1994, 2010 Fred Saberhagan
Prologue
Of course I can tell you the tale. but you should understand at the start that there are points where the telling may cause me to become rather emotional. because I–even I, Prince Dracula–find the whole matter disturbing, even at this late date. It brought me as near to the true death as I have ever been, before or since–and in such an unexpected way! No, this affair you wish to hear about, the one involving the séances and the vampires, was not the commonplace stuff of day-to-day life. Hardly routine even in the terms of my existence, which for more than five hundred years has been–how shall I say it?– has not been dull.
It is difficult to find the words with which to characterize this chain of events. It was more than grotesque, it was fantastic. Parts of it almost unbelievable. You’ll see. Pirates, mesmerism, executions by hanging. Stolen treasure, murder, kidnapping, revenge and seduction. Women taken by force, attempts to materialize the spirits of the dead...
I know what you are going to say. Everything in the above list is a bit out of the ordinary, but still the daily newspapers, those of any century you like, abound in examples. but in this case the combination was unique. And soon you will see that I am not exaggerating about the fantasy. Some of my hearers may not even believe in the existence of vampires, may find that elementary starting point quite beyond credibility.
Never mind. Let those who have such difficulty turn back here, before we really start; they have no imaginations and no souls.
Still with me? Very good. Actually no one besides myself can tell the tale now, but I can relate it vividly–because, with your indulgence, I will allow myself a little creative latitude as regards details, and also the luxury of some help in the form of several chapters written decades ago by another eyewitness. He, this other witness, who is now in effect becoming my co-author, was your archetypical Englishman, a somewhat stolid and unimaginative chap, but also a gentleman with great respect for truth and honor.
As it happens I was nowhere near London’s Execution Dock on the June morning in 1765 when the whole fantastic business may fairly be said to have begun. However, somewhere past the halfway point between that date and this, less than a single century ago in the warm summer of 1903, I lived through the startling conclusion. In that latter post-Victorian year I happened to be on hand when the whole affair was pieced together logically by–will you begin to doubt me if I name him?–by a certain breathing man blessed with unequaled skills in the unraveling of the grotesque and the bizarre, a friend of the above eyewitness and also a distant relative of mine. And this adventure involving vampires and séances was enough, I think, to drive the logician to retirement.
But let me start at what I will call the beginning, in 1765...
There had been laughter inside the crumbling walls of Newgate during the night; at a little past midnight a guard in a certain hellish corridor was ready to swear that he had just heard the soft giggle of a woman, coming from one of the condemned cells, a place where no woman could possibly have been. Naturally at that hour all was dark inside the cages, and there was nothing that could have been called a disturbance; so the guard made no attempt to look inside.
Some hours later, when the first daylight, discouraged and rendered lifeless by these surroundings, filtered through to show the prison’s stinking, grim interior, there was of course no woman to be seen. There had been no realistic possibility of anyone’s passing in or out. The cell in question contained only the prisoner, the tall, red-bearded pirate captain, still breathing, just as he was supposed to be–for a few hours yet. breathing but otherwise silent, not giggling like a woman, no, he was still sane–poor chap. And the guard, as little anxious as any of us ever are to seem a fool, was privately glad that he had said nothing, raised no ridiculous alarm.
No one in the prison had anything to say about impossibilities that might have been heard or seen before the dawn.
An hour or so after that same dawn, upon one of those raw June british mornings suggestive of the month of March, a solemn procession left London’s Newgate Prison. At the heart of the grim train emerging from those iron gates there rolled a tall, heavy, open cart in which rode three doomed men, all standing erect with arms chained behind them. Their three sets of leg irons had been struck off only an hour ago, by the prison blacksmith. Once out of the prison gate, the cart, departing sharply from its customary route, turned east. These prisoners had been convicted by the Admiralty Court, and such did not at that time “go west” with the ordinary felons to hang on Tyburn Tree. Instead, a special fate awaited them.
Astride his horse at the very head of the procession was the Deputy Marshal of the Admiralty. Red-faced and grave, this functionary bore in prominent display the Silver Oar, almost big enough to row with, symbol of that court’s authority over human activity on the high seas, even to the most distant portions of the globe. Next came the elegant coach carrying the Marshal himself, resplendent in his traditional uniform, surrounded by his coachmen wearing their distinctive livery. After these, on horseback, rode a number of City officials, one or two of considerable prominence. but whatever their station, few amid the steadily growing throng of onlookers had eyes for them, or for anyone but the central figures in the morning’s drama.
The high ceremonial cart in the middle of the parade came lumbering along deliberately upon great wooden wheels, which, though freshly greased, squeaked mildly. The three prisoners standing more or less erect in the middle of the cart had their backs to one another, and with their arms still in irons had little choice but to lean on one another for mutual support. The executioner–Thomas Turlis in that year–and his assistant rode standing in the cart beside the prisoners, and a Newgate guard walked beside each of the great slowturning wheels.
The cart was followed immediately by a substantial force of marshal’s men and sheriff’s officers, mostly afoot. These walking men had no trouble keeping up; those who calculated the time of departure from the prison had assumed that only a modest pace would be possible. The narrow, cobbled streets made progress for a large vehicle slow at best, and today as usual the throng of onlookers grew great enough to stop the death-cart altogether several times before the place of execution could be reached.
All three of the men who were riding to be hanged today had been convicted of the same act of piracy. The tallest of the condemned, the only one with anything exceptional in his nature or his appearance, was Alexander Ilyich Kulakov, red-haired and green-eyed, rawboned but broad-shouldered and powerful, his red beard straggling over his scarred cheeks and jaw. Kulakov was Russian, but at the moment nationality did not matter. His britannic Majesty’s justice was about to claim all three lives impartially–none of them had any influential friends in London–quite the opposite.
The morning’s procession carried its victims east, as I have said. A little over two miles east of Newgate Prison, passing just north of the great dome of St. Paul’s, through Cornhill and Whitechapel, past Tower Hill and close past the pale gloomy bulk of the squat Tower itself, to Wapping, a district largely composed of docks and taverns, nestled into a broad curve formed by the north bank of the Thames.