Fred Saberhagen - Dracula 08 - Seance for a Vampire

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SÉANCE FOR A VAMPIRE
By
Fred Saberhagen
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
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Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Epilogue
Tor books by Fred Saberhagen
The Berserker Series
The Berserker Wars
Berserker Base(with Poul Anderson, Ed Bryant, Stephen Donaldson, Larry Niven, Connie Willis, and
Roger Zelazny)
Berserker: Blue Death
The Berserker Throne
Berserker's Planet
Berserker Kill
The Dracula Series
The Dracula Tapes
The Holmes-Dracula Files
An Old Friend of the Family
Thorn
Dominion
A Matter of Taste
A Question of Time
Séance for a Vampire
The Swords Series
The First Book of Swords
The Second Book of Swords
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The Third Book of Swords
The First Book of Lost Swords: Woundhealer's Story
The Second Book of Lost Swords: Sightblinder's Story
The Third Book of Lost Swords: Stonecutter's Story
The Fourth Book of Lost Swords: Farslayer's Story
The Fifth Book of Lost Swords: Coinspinner's Story
The Sixth Book of Lost Swords: Mindsword's Story
The Seventh Book of Lost Swords: Wayfinder's Story
The Last Book of Swords: Shieldbreaker's Story
Other Books
A Century of Progress
Coils(with Roger Zelazny)
Earth Descended
The Mask of the Sun
The Veils of Azlaroc
The Water of Thought
SÉANCE FOR A VAMPIRE
Fred Saberhagen
TOR
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
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NEW YORK
Séance for a Vampire
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
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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
imagination and no soul.
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 nearLondon '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 pastmidnight , 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
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month of March, a solemn procession leftLondon '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 theAdmiralty Court , and as 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 slow-turning wheels.
The cart was followed immediately by a substantial force of marshal's men and sheriffs 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 inLondon ; 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, the procession would come to
Wapping, a district largely composed of docks and taverns, nestled into a broad curve formed by the
north bank of the Thames.
And with every rod of progress achieved by the doomed men and their escort, it seemed that the
crowds increased. Last night and this morning, word had spread, as it always did, of a scheduled
hanging. Hundreds went toLondon 's various scaffolds every year, but despite the relatively
commonplace nature of the event, the route of the procession was thickly lined with spectators. As often
as not, when the high cart stalled in traffic, folk leaned from windows or trees to offer the condemned
jugs or bottles or broken cups of liquor.
Kulakov's usual craving for strong drink seemed to have deserted him. He stared past the reaching arms
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and what they offered, and ignored the excited faces; but his two fellow prisoners did their best, even
with their arms bound, to take advantage of the gifts. The executioners, with a practical eye to making
their own job easier, assisted the pair to drink, now and again fortifying themselves from the same jug or
bottle.
One of the Russian captain's former shipmates was well-nigh insensible with drink before the ride was
over.
It was the other of the two English prisoners who, in that age when death was so often a social function,
had a small handful of relatives present; these—weeping, expostulating, or stony-faced, according to their
several temperaments—tagged after the cart and were jostled to the rear by the sheriffs men.
The authorities had long practice with such processions from Newgate; and this enabled them to time the
arrival of the cart at Execution Dock to coincide almost precisely with the hour of low water in the
tidalThames , this being the only time when the gallows was readily accessible.
For hundreds of years, pirates and mutineers had been executed on this spot, while for occasional
variety, a captain or mate would be dispatched for murderous brutality toward his own crew. On this
morning, several of the fruits of last week's executions were still to be seen, each hanging in chains on its
own post. Gulls and weather had already reduced the dead faces to eyeless, discolored leather and
protruding bone, raking the passing ships with empty stares. Their continued presence was intended to
impress the thousands of seamen on those ships as examples of the Admiralty's long arm and exact
justice.
The posts displaying these veteran corpses had been erected along the riverbank at various distances
from the now ominously empty gallows. The latter was no more than two posts and a cross-beam, the
horizontal member being not much higher than ten feet above the strip of muddy ground and gravel
exposed now at low tide.
Somewhat closer to the gallows itself than were last week's bodies, another set of three stakes, also
ominously empty, waited for today's victims.
Crowding nearby land and water were spectators even more numerous than those along the route. Folk
of high station and low were out this morning, their numbers not much diminished by the weather, which
so far had not improved. Every comfortable vantage point, and some perches fit only for the stoic or the
acrobatic, had been occupied. The windows and terraces of taverns and other riverside buildings, as well
as docks and jetties, were thick with onlookers. Scores of small boats passed to and fro, or had cast
anchor in the river. The current was very slow just now, with the tide about to turn. A barge moored no
more than forty yards offshore afforded rows of seats for those willing and able to pay. At a somewhat
greater distance over the broad face of theThames , the crews and passengers of a couple of anchored
ships presented on decks and rigging rows of pale faces. Well beyond these larger craft, the shadowy
shapes of docks and buildings on the south shore loomed out of cold mist and drizzle.
One of the watchers, ensconced in a high-priced seat in the window of a tavern built upon a nearby
promontory, was a dark-haired, smooth-skinned woman of somewhat exotic dress and remarkable
appearance. Despite the sunless pallor of her skin, her countenance was undoubtedly Asiatic. Today she
was keeping to a position where she herself remained inconspicuous, her pallid face shaded from even
this clouded daylight. She was sharing a table—though she was not eating or drinking—with a
well-dressed, well-fed, stoutish man of middle age, named Ambrose Altamont, a commoner very
recently come into startling wealth. The weathered condition ofAltamont 's face suggested that he was no
stranger to the sea and tropic suns.
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The table was bare before the woman—she had assured her new patron that she was not hungry—but
the man had dishes and bottles aplenty in front of him. He was dining early today, by way of celebration,
on lamprey pie—then considered a rare treat—and sampling good wine.
As nearly as I can discover,Altamont at this point did not, strictly speaking, know that the woman with
him was a vampire. That fact and all its implications still lay over his horizon. He certainly understood that
she was strange—for several nights now he had reveled in her exotic antics in his bed. Whatever the
limits of her strangeness, whatever disadvantages were yet to be discovered, here was an attractive
female who gave delight and satisfaction beyond anything he had previously encountered in almost fifty
years of a thoroughly unsheltered life.Altamont might well have betrayed a business partner for her favors
alone—even had there been no jewels.
The creaking high wheels of the tall cart fell silent as the vehicle eased to a halt on Execution Dock.
While the massed guards cleared a space of spectators, the prisoners— their bodies stiff with
confinement, two of them reeling with drink, all three chain-laden—were helped down. The severely
drunken man had to be lifted bodily. Then, one at a time, the sober Kulakov first, the three men were
led—or carried—down through mud and gravel to the rude platform, which consisted of only a few
boards laid in mud beneath the gallows.
Waiting for them at that threshold of eternity was the chaplain, Mr. Ford, Ordinary of Newgate, ready to
lead repentant sinners in prayer or persuade them that they should seek divine forgiveness. No one today
had thought to provide a Russian Orthodox clergyman; but if one had been present, the Russian
doubtless would have snarled at him, as he did at Mr. Ford.
Under the circumstances, whatever prayers were possible for Kulakov, the first victim, were soon said.
Then a ready noose was placed around his neck and he was blindfolded.
Meanwhile, at the tavern table, the pale and sheltered but vivacious lady had allowed herself to be
distracted from the show by a sudden impulse to admire yet again a gift she had very recently received: a
wonderful bracelet, fine gold-and-silver filigree sparkling with red rubies and clear diamonds. This
masterpiece of the jeweler's art came into view upon her white and slender left wrist when she
deliberately drew back her full sleeve to reveal it.
"It fits you loosely," her companion commented, his voice rich with wine and satisfaction.
"I'll not lose it. Where are the other things?" she inquired softly. "Your brother has them, perhaps?" Her
voice was small but determined, her English marked with a strong accent, hard to define, but certainly as
Eastern as her face.
Altamontwinked at her and smiled. "They're where they'll be safe for the time being—and you may lay to
that." Turning away again, he squinted, in the practiced manner of a ship's captain, through his sailor's
brass-tubed glass at the proceedings on shore.
Confident as Altamont was that no one could overhear their talk, he lowered his voice when he added:
"My own suspicion—I've no proof of it, mind—is that they were meant as a gift for the Empress
Catherine of Muscovy, from one of those nabobs in the East. Or they might have belonged to the Russian
church, some of their clergy smuggling them abroad to keep them out of Her Imperial Majesty's hands. I
hear Catherine's developed a taste for churchly property, as did our own dear Henry long ago." He shot
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his companion a sharp glance. "The Russian might have given you a better answer than I can give, as to
who the first owner of your bangle was. Not that it much matters now."
The dark-haired woman did not seem to care. Indeed, her fascination with the beauty of the ornament
was as apparent as her lack of interest in its origins. "Then the other things must be just as rich as this?"
The man almost sneered in his pride and his amusement. "Richer, by God! Half a dozen pieces in all,
rings and necklaces, in the same style, but even more extravagant—a king's ransom. I am surprised you
had no chance to see them on the voyage. You must have shared the Russian's cabin, sailing back
toLondon ."
The woman let her long sleeve drop, concealing jewels and precious metal. "Captain Kulakov kept all
well hidden."
"No doubt. I think he meant to keep such great treasure all to himself, and maybe to some of his men
who knew of it. But to cheat his English partner—"* (*The details of the efforts of the pirate partners to
cheat each other have never become perfectly clear, nor are they essential to our story. A perusal of
Admiralty records of the time indicates that alliances between pirates and politicians were by no means as
uncommon as all right-minded people would like to think.—D.)Altamont smiled and shook his head.
"Well, greed, like pride, goeth before a fall. And now the Russian hath lost all; his treasure, hiswoman,
life itself. Almost I could feel sorry for him—why are they taking so long about his stepping off?" He
squinted through his glass again.
A prosperous man, Mr. Altamont, even before his recent dramatic accession of new wealth. He felt
himself capable of handling even greater prosperity without undue difficulty. At the moment, his
countenance was alternating between frowns at the delay and a faint expression of abstract pleasure as
he shifted from wine to hot buttered rum while watching from his comfortable chair.
The pallid woman remained patiently seated with him. Though the air on this June morning had turned
quite mild, she was glad to shelter here indoors; in her case, it was in fact neither chill nor damp but the
mild English sun that threatened.
On shore the experienced Thomas Turlis, and his assistant who was hardly less qualified, were
proceeding about their business with deliberate speed. The junior member of the official team had already
climbed to straddle the cross-beam, where he sat waiting until Turlis had guided his first victim halfway up
the ladder, Kulakov's feet on the rungs awkward with the weight of chains and terror. Then, receiving
from his senior's hand the loose end of the short rope already snug around the victim's neck, the assistant
quickly and efficiently secured it tightly to the heavy cross-beam.
The red-haired man cried out, loudly and articulately, in the last moments while he waited for the noose
to choke off his breath.
"Al-ta-mont!"There followed a string of violent un-English words, sounds carrying well across the
water between the two points on the curving shore.
"I understand very little Russian, really," the man at the table remarked comfortably. "Which no doubt is
just as well."
"I un-der-stand a little, as with Ain-glish," the watching woman remarked abstractedly. "I spoke to him
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last night," she added after a pause. "He think he have give the jewels to you only for safekeeping, not?"
"You saw him last night?" Briefly her companion turned a puzzled but fascinated frown in her direction.
"Really, I think that you did not, for you were pretty steadily with me. As I have good cause to
remember, having got but little sleep." LecherouslyAltamont displayed bad teeth. "But you know, I would
wager my new fortune that it would not be beyond you to gain entry to a condemned cell—not when the
guards are men."
"I spoke to him," the woman repeated. Not with an air of insistence, but as if she had not heard her
companion's denial. "But he would not believe that I was real. I think these Russian must be very—what
is word?—su-per-sti-tious." Pulling her dreamy gaze back from the shore, she fastened it upon the man
beside her. "Will you believe me,Altamont , when I try to tell youwhat I am?"
He made a small noise compounded of amusement and satisfaction. "I think I understand well enough
what you are. So, you visited the condemned cell, did you, and had a chat? And what do you want me to
think that you told dear Alexei? That we have both betrayed him? That the jewels are all mine now, while
he is come to dine today on hearty-choke and caper sauce?"
The woman very slightly shook her head. "He did not need me to tell him that you keep the jewels."
Perhaps she intended to offer some explanation about her activities last night, or drop more teasing hints;
but at the moment, her full attention, like that of all other watchers, had become focused on the shore.
For the space of a held breath, the raucous cries of even the least reverent onlookers were silenced.
Turlis, the older and paunchier of the hangman pair, with his feet planted solidly in mud—the planks had
been disarranged in Kulakov's last awkward stumbling—took hold of the ladder and with a strong,
twisting wrench, deprived the bound man of all physical support... except for that now afforded him by
taut hemp, the smoothly clasping noose.
The drop was a short one, no more than three feet at the most, in this case not nearly enough to break
the neck bones, to tear and quickly crush out life and consciousness from the vulnerable soft tissue of the
spine and brain stem. There was only the steady, brutal pressure of the rope to squeeze the windpipe,
veins, and arteries. Kulakov's powerful frame convulsed. His bound arms strained, his legs and feet
moved in a spasmodic aerial ballet.
Hearty-choke and caper sauce.
The fact that Kulakov had been first to be hanged meant that comparatively few among the audience
were paying his prolonged death struggle as much attention as it must otherwise have received; rather, the
fascinated scrutiny of the mob now rested in turn upon each of his colleagues.
Altamont commented knowingly to his companion that the knot of the rope had very likely slipped from
the favored location behind the Russian's ear to behind his neck—but how could Altamont have known
that, at the distance, unless he had made some private arrangement to have the knot deliberately adjusted
in that wise? Trying to get the better ofAltamont , as the man himself would have assured you, was likely
to result in truly frightful punishment.
As for Kulakov, he had been denied his broken neck, so that he hung for a quarter of an hour,
intermittently twitching and tensing in agony, all breathing not quite cut off.
"Are they not going to finish him?"Altamont 's comment, coming after five minutes or so, was dryly
lacking in surprise. "It would seem not."
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摘要：

 SÉANCEFORAVAMPIREByFredSaberhagenCONTENTSPrologueChapterOneChapterTwoChapterThreeChapterFourChapterFiveChapterSixChapterSevenChapterEightChapterNineChapterTenChapterElevenChapterTwelveChapterThirteenChapterFourteenChapterFifteenChapterSixteenChapterSeventeenChapterEighteenChapterNineteenChapterTwen...

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