CHAPTER 36
“She’s going,” I whispered to Michael as Chastity slipped away into the crypt.
He breathed a sigh of relief. “I hate this.”
“None of us are thrilled, believe me.”
“I wish I could hear them or see them or something. All I get is mumbling and flashes of light in the corners of my eyes. This is. I don’t know. It’s crazy. I mean, maybe they aren’t there at all and you and Marsden are just—”
“We’re not. I swear there are ghosts and vampires and we are doing what we can with one to stop the other and get Will back. I know you don’t have a good reason to trust me, but try. I do care what happens to your brother and I’m not messing with you.”
His shoulders slumped. “It’s just so crazy. ”
“I know.” I’d have said more, but a misty figure pushed its way out of the crypt through the red doors so it stood on the grass with us.
He was a tall man who stooped horribly and had a small potbelly, so he looked like a numeral six. His hair had thinned into a monk’s tonsure and the bags under his eyes were heavier than those in an industrial laundry. Even pale in death, his nose, cheeks, and ears were reddened by the spiderweb veins of alcohol abuse. He shifted back and forth, as if constantly shuffling his feet.
He addressed himself to Marsden. “I am. I am Barnaby Smith. Of. umm. St. James’s in Clerkenwell. Miss Chastity said you wished to. talk to me?” His voice rose to a squeak at the end.
No wonder he’d been a drunk: The world scared him senseless.
Marsden pointed at me. “She’ll ask the questions.”
“Oh. I. well. All right. I’m at your service Miss. umm. Miss.?”
“Blaine,” I said.
“Blaine? Are you by chance related to Anselm Blaine of Peartree Court?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” I replied.
“Oh. Pity. I always thought him a fine fellow. I. you must pardon me; I find it rather hard to hear you.”
I shifted a little closer to the Grey, watching the colors of the grid and the shapes of ghostly things grow brighter and more solid. Smith looked a bit more like a person in the mist-world, but not so much that I could forget he was long dead. “Is that better?”
“Oh, yes! Quite improved. Thank you.”
This was going to take forever at this rate. I kept my impatience under control and turned my gaze full on Barnaby Smith.
“Mr. Smith, Chastity said you’d seen some Greek amphorae under St. John’s priory. Can you tell me more about them and when you saw them last?”
“Oh. Those. Umm. well. Nasty business. They contained blood and body parts—gruesome, to say the least. I did see them in the old catacomb. That’s under the current crypt—very old, quite probably part of the original foundations from the twelfth century. Terrible condition. Terrible.”
I gave him a stern glance.
“Oh! I am sorry. I—Oh. Ha-ha,” he laughed nervously. “Yes, not to the point. I am sorry. Umm. I’m not sure what they were up to, but the Red Guard who brought them left them for a. ah. a sorcerer,” he whispered. “And some of the Red Brothers—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith. I don’t know who you mean. Could you fill me in?”
He blinked at me. “Oh! I just assumed. You’re with. him. I thought you knew.”
“I don’t. I’m not from the area. I don’t know all the players.”
“ ‘ Players.’ Ah, that is a fine description. But, oh my. if you don’t know—”
“I assume they’re vampires, but what else?”
“Oh! Yes, you do know! What a relief. I found my life a nightmare when I realized—Oh, but that’s not what you want to know.”
“Yes. I need to know about the amphorae, who had them, what happened to them, and if you know anything about a man called William Novak. Or John Purcell.”
“Purcell!” He raised a silvery hand and pressed it to his chest. “My—my stars. Mr. Purcell. I believe he’s a prisoner! I can’t say I have much pity for them, but it’s cruel to see what they do to one another. They don’t die easily, you know. Would that I had been a stronger man in life—but no. I suppose it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
He noticed me crinkling my brow.
“Oh. I do apologize. Here, let me explain.”
“Go right ahead,” I invited. I knew he’d dither less if allowed to tell his tale his own way and I sat on my impatience as he did.
CHAPTER 37
“I really had no idea,” Smith began, “when I came to St. James’s of what a horror was below the surface of our fine parish. It’s a very old parish, you know. The well and the baths I had been there a very long time and it had been quite the pastoral spa once—where the gentry would go to escape the city. There was always some friction between priory and parish. But I didn’t know that. among our parishioners there were so many. of them.”
“Them?” I asked.
“The. vampires,” Smith whispered, and it came out on a cold breath that chilled the warm summer morning. Even Michael shivered, though he plainly hadn’t heard a word. “Once I realized what they were, I was shocked! I was outraged. I–I told the vicar, the rector, the prior. They all laughed at me. Well, in our modern age, who wouldn’t? But the word got out. They knew that I knew and they took delight in tormenting me with the powerlessness of my position. I was just a lay clerk; not a priest or even an assistant curate who could go to the bishop. Oh, my. ”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Oh. I. I find it distressing still. I’m afraid. I took to drink. Weakness. Terrible weakness.” He shook his head for such a long time I thought he’d given up until he said, “I suppose, in its way, the drink saved me. I lost my position and was asked to leave the parish. I could have stayed in Clerkenwell—even a bishop can’t really force you to leave your home—but I ran from it. Oh, not far. This pleasant green here is not too far removed in miles, but a world away to me.
“I made a pleasant life for myself. I married a widow who had a small bit of money and we were not unhappy. But I could not forget what I saw. It haunted me. And. I suppose, that is why. I still feel drawn there.”
I looked expectantly at him, waiting for the rest of the story.
“The. uh. Red Brothers—that is what they termed themselves—had come from the priory originally. I don’t know how they came into being, they were just. there, but there was a falling-out among them. A bloody thing, played out beneath the streets in secret places carved out by the old rivers and the Romans long before the priory was raised there. The slaughter was immense among the servants of the Brothers. The Brothers themselves were too hard to kill, and most escaped unscathed. When they had done with their battle, they broke into two parties and mockingly named themselves after the houses of God below which they had rampaged. They still call themselves St. James and St. John—the Red Brotherhood of St. James or St. John, as they please. The others, the white creatures from the docks, they had no part of it—or none I could see.”
Marsden leaned close to my ear and murmured, “He means the asetem. The docks and south of the river is their haunt.”
“Then what happened recently?” I asked Smith.
“Oh. I. I didn’t see it all. It began a month ago or so. I think. Time. is so hard to tell now. The white ones started showing up and the strife between the Jameses and Johns increased—I feared there might be bloodletting again. But they quieted. Until the Greek jars arrived. I hadn’t paid them much attention at first—I didn’t want to know what they might contain. But I had to investigate when Miss Chastity asked it of me. I can hardly say no to a charming lady.”
He gave me a quick, nervous smile before lowering his head to watch his invisible feet a moment.
“So, you went to see what had happened. ” I prompted.