The vampire's smile vanished as swiftly as it had been put on; In any case, it had never reached his eyes. Like every other gesture or expres-sion about him, his smile had an odd, minimal air, almost like a carica-turist's line, though Asher had from it a sudden impression of an an-tique sweetness, the faded-out shape of what it once had been. For a moment more Ysidro studied the averted profile and the silvery-fair heads of the two children pressed against the woman's shabby serge shoulders. Then his glance returned to Asher's.
"From the time Francis Walsingham started running his agents in Geneva and Amsterdam to find out about King Philip's invasion of England, your secret service has had its links with the scholars," he said quietly. The antique inflection to his speech, like its faint Castilian lisp, was barely discernible. "Scholarship, religion, philosophy-they were killing matters in those days, and at that time I was still close enough to my human habits of thought to be concerned about the outcome of the invasion. And too, it was still respectable among scholars to be a war-rior, and among warriors to be a scholar, which it is no longer, as I'm sure you know."
Asher's old colleague, the Warden of Brasenose, sprang to mind, tutting disapprovingly over some minor Balkan flare-up in the course of which Asher had nearly lost his life, while Asher, cozily consuming scones on the other side of the hearth, had nodded agreement that no,h'rm, England had no business meddling in European politics, damned ungen tl emanly,hrmph, mphf. He suppressed his smile, unwilling to give this slender young man anything, and kept silent. He leaned his shoul-ders against the sooty brick of the station wall, folded his arms, and waited.
After a moment Ysidro went on, "My solicitor-a young man, and agreeable to meet with his clients at late hours if they so desire-did mention that, when he worked in the Foreign Office, there was talk of at least one don at Oxford and several at Cambridge who 'did good work,' as the euphemism goes. This was years ago, but I remembered it, out of habit, and of interest in things secret. When I had need of an-agent-it was no great matter to track you down by the simple expedient of comparing the areas about which papers were published and their prob-able research dates with times and places of diplomatic unease. It still left the field rather wide, but the only Fellow younger than yourself who might possibly have fit the criteria of time and place would have diffi-culty passing himself off as anything other than an obese and myopic rabbit..."
"Singletary of Queens," sighed Asher. "Yes, he was researching in Pretoria at the same time I was, trying to prove the degeneracy of the African brain by comparative anatomy. The silly bleater still doesn't know how close he came to getting us both killed."
That slight, ironic line flicked into existence at the corner of Ysidro's thin mouth, then vanished at once. The train came puffing in, steam roiling out to blend with the fog, while vague forms hurried onto the platform to meet it. A girl with a face like a pound of dough sprang from a third-class carriage as it slowed, into the arms of a podgy young man in a shop clerk's worn old coat, and they embraced with the de-lighted fervor of a knight welcoming his princess bride. A mob of un-dergraduates came boiling out of the waiting room, noisily bidding good-by to a furiously embarrassed old don whom Asher recognized as the Classics lecturer of St. John's. Linking then: arms, they began to carol "Till We Meet Again" in chorus, holding then- boaters over their hearts. Asher did not like the way his companion turned his head, studying them with expressionless yellow eyes as if memorizing every lineament of each rosy face. Too
like a cook, he thought, watching lambs play at a spring fair.
"The war was my last job," Asher went on after a moment, drawing Ysidro's glance once more to him as they crossed the platform. "I became-unsuitably friendly with some people in Pretoria, including a boy I later had to kill. They call it the Great Game, but it's neither. I came back here, got married, and incorporated the results into a paper on linguistic borrowings from aboriginal tongues." He shrugged, his face now as expressionless as the vampire's. "A lecturer's salary isn't a great deal, but at least I can drink with my friends without wondering if what they're telling me is the truth."
"You are fortunate," the vampire said softly. He paused, then contin-ued, "I have taken a first-class compartment for us-at this time of night, we should have it to ourselves. I will join you there after the train leaves the station."
Oh, will you? Asher thought, his right eyebrow quirking up and his every instinct and curiosity coming suddenly alert as the vampire moved off down the platform with a lithe, disquieting stride, his dark Inverness cloak flaring behind him. Thoughtfully, Asher sought out their compartment, divested himself of bowler and scarf, and watched the comings and goings on the platform with great interest until the train moved away.
The cloudy halo of the platform lights dropped behind them; a scat-tering of brick buildings and signal gantries flipped past in the foggy dark. He saw the gleam of lights, like an ironic omen, on the ancient markers of the old graveyard, then on the brown sheet-silk of the river as they passed over the bridge. The darkness of the countryside took them.
Asher settled back against the worn red plush as the compartment door slid open and Ysidro entered, slim and strange as some Egyptian cat-god, his fair, cobweb-fine hair all sprinkled with points of dampness in the jolting flicker of the gas jet overhead. With a graceful movement, he shrugged out of his slate-gray Inverness; but, in spite of his flawless Bond Street tailoring, Asher was coming to wonder how anyone ever mistook him for anything human.
Folding his hands on his knee, Asher inquired casually, "Just whom are you afraid of?"
The long, gloved hands froze momentarily in their motion; the saf-fron eyes slid sharply to him, then away.
"In this day and age I'd be surprised to learn it's a mob with a crucifix and torches, but a man doesn't jump on a train at the last moment unless he's making damned sure who gets on ahead of him, and that no one's coming behind."
Ysidro's gaze rested on him for a moment longer, calm as ever, though his whole body seemed poised for movement; then he seemed infinitesimally to relax. He set his coat aside and sat down. "No," he said presently. "That is our strength-that no one believes, and, not believing, lets us be. It is a superstition that is one of the many things 'not done' in this country. We learned long ago that it is good policy to cover our traces, to hide our kills or to make them look like something else. Generally it is only the greedy, the careless, the arrogant, or those with poor judgment who are traced and killed, and even they not imme-diately. At least so it has been."
"So there are more of you."
"Of course," the vampire said simply. He folded his gloved hands, sitting very straight, as if, centuries after he had ceased to wear the boned and padded doublets of the Spanish court, the habit of their
armoring persisted. Long used to judging men by the tiny details of their appearance, Asher marked down the medium-gray suit he wore at fifty guineas or better, the shoes as made to order in the Burlington Arcade, the gloves of kid fine as silk. Even minimal investments, he thought dryly, must accrue an incredible amount of interest in three hundred years...
"There were some-two or three, a master vampire and her fledg-lings-at one time in Edinburgh, but Edinburgh is a small town; late in the seventeenth century the witch-hunters found the places where they hid their coffins. There are some in Liverpool now, and in that packed, crass, and stinking cesspit of factories and slums that has spread like cancer across the north." He shook his head. "But it is a young town, and does not offer the hiding places that London does."