Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - The Saint-Germain Chronicles

v1.0

September 2006

THE SAINT-GERMAIN

CHRONICLES

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

“Dinner with Me”

Whatever reservations that were left in Jillian’s mind were banished by the

warmth in his eyes. If he wanted more than her company, she decided, she would

deal with that as it happened. As the plane jounced onto the runway, she grinned at

him. “Count, I’d love to have dinner with you.”

He took her hand in his and carried it to his lips. “Dinner with me,” he echoed

her, “dinner with me.”

There was a secret meaning in the soft words that followed, almost lost in the

shrieking of the engines.

“I will hold you to that, Jillian Walker. Believe this.”

contents

letter

THE SPIDER GLASS

letters

RENEWAL

letters

ART SONGS

letters

SEAT PARTNER

letters

CABIN 33

letter

Afterword: MY FAVORITE ENIGMA

A Timescape Book published by

POCKET BOOKS, a Simon & Schuster division of

GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION

Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y.

For information address Timescape Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y.

ISBN: 0-671-45903-1

First Timescape Books printing May,

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster.

Use of the trademark TIMESCAPE is by exclusive license from Gregory Benford, the trademark owner.

Printed in the U.S.A.

Acknowledgments

Fantasy Convention program book, Jack Rems and Jeffrey Frane, editors,

California.

Charles L. Grant, editor, Doubleday.

NIGHTMARES, Charles L. Grant, editor, Playboy Press.

SHADOWS 4, Charles L. Grant, editor, Doubleday.

sanguinarily

this is for my friends and colleagues

Suzy McKee Charnas

Stephen King and

Tanith Lee

editorially

it is quadruply for

Charles L. Grant

philosophically

it is always and ever for

Dan Nobuhiko Smiley

Text of a letter from le Comte de Saint-Germain to Madelaine de Montalia.

Sassev

ert

Parc

Lausa

nne,

Suisse

3

Novem

ber,18

89

Monbussy

Nr. Chalons-sur-Marne

France

My dearest Madelaine;

I read your name and my mind is filled with you, my heart. I am sorry

not to be with you on this day—on all days. But the earrings that come with

this letter will remind you of my love and for a time that will have to serve.

You tell me that you are distressed that Paul has decided to marry that

Swedish woman. And you want to be revenged on them for the hurt they

have given you. No, oh, no, Madelaine. It is not good to feel this way, believe

me. Profit from my mistakes, and forgive them. Not everyone can sustain

love as we can. They have so little time, and we have so much. You once

railed at the shortness of the years, before you came to my life. What is a

decade to you, now? Or a century? And what is it to them. Recall, my heart,

that most of those who love us do so because they cannot love as they wish to

and we offer them empathy and our special consolation. I do not say this

cynically: remember that it took me almost four thousand years to find you,

and even now we cannot love as we would want. Leave Paul to his Swedish

woman and let him believe that vampires are myths to frighten children and

those who read Hoffmann and Polidori.

Yes, I think it would be wise for you to leave Monbussy for a time. The

expedition to Babylon should intrigue you. You are right to deplore most of

the practices of those digging up artifacts. They are anxious to bring up

wonders and in the process destroy greater treasures. Time is your great

asset, as you will learn. When you return to France, you may become your

own niece or granddaughter or any other appropriate fiction.

It is time for me to travel as well; I have been here almost fifteen years.

My country house in England will provide me an interlude of quiet, but I do

not think it would be wise to remain there long. Paris, Lausanne, Madrid, all

of them are too familiar to me. So perhaps I will go to Stockholm, or

Warsaw or St. Petersburg. Wherever I am, I will send you word where you

will reach me. If ever you require my aid, or my company, you have only to

tell me and I will come to you.

You must not lose your courage. Love that can embrace our secret and

our nature is rare, but it illuminates all of life. For it is life, Madelaine, in

spite of our deaths. Believe this, for I assure you, I promise you, it is true, as

it is true that I love you, will always love you.

Saint-Germain

his seal, the eclipse

THE SPIDER GLASS

An Edwardian Story

^ »

“THERE is a curious tale behind this mirror, actually. I’m pleased you noticed it,”

their host said to the select and exclusively masculine company that had gathered in

the Oak Parlor at Briarcopse after dinner. He reached for the port to refill his glass

and rather grandly offer it around. “Surely you’ll have some. It was laid down the

year I was born—splendid stuff. My father was quite the expert in these matters, I

assure you.”

Five of his guests accepted with alacrity; the sixth declined with a polite,

Continental bow, and the Earl put the decanter back on the silver tray set out on the

gleaming mahogany table. “Don’t stand on ceremony, any of you,” he said with a

negligent wave of his long, thin hand. He then settled back in his chair, a

high-backed, scallop-topped relic of the reign of Queen Anne and propped his heels

on the heavy Tudor settle before the fire. Slowly he lit his cigar, savoring its aroma

as well as the anticipation of his guests.

“For the lord Harry, Whittenfield…” the rotund gentleman with the brindled

mutton-chop whiskers protested, though his indignation was marred by an

indulgent smirk.

Their host, Charles Whittenfield, ninth Earl of Copsehowe, blew out a cloud of

fragrant, rum-soaked tobacco smoke, and stared at the small dull mirror in its

frame of tooled Baroque silver. “It is a curious tale,” he said again, as much to

himself as any of the company. Then recalling his guests, he directed his gaze at his

wiry, middle-aged cousin who was in the act of warming his brandy over one of the

candles. “Dominick, you remember my mother’s aunt Serena, don’t you?”

“I remember all the women on that side of the family,” Dominick said promptly.

“The most amazing passel of females. My mother refuses to mention half of

them—she feels they aren’t respectable. Well, of course they’re not. Respectable

women are boring.”

“Yes, I’m always amazed by them. And why they all chose to marry such

sticks-in-the-mud as they did, I will never understand. Still, they make the family

lively, which is more than I can say for the males. Not a privateer or adventurer

among them. Nothing but solid, land-loving, rich, placid countrymen, with a yen

for wild girls.” He sighed. “Anyway, Dominick, great-aunt Serena…”

Dominick nodded with vigorous distaste that concealed a curious pride. “Most

misnamed female I ever encountered. That whole side of the family, as Charles

says… they marry the most unlikely women. Serena came from Huguenot stock,

back in the middle of the seventeenth century, I think.” He added this last as if the

Huguenot influence explained matters.

“Ah, yes, great-aunt Serena was quite a handful,” the host laughed quietly. “The

last time I saw her—it was years ago, of course—she was careering about the

Cotswolds on both sides of her horse. The whole countryside was scandalized. They

barred her from the Hunt, naturally, which amused her a great deal. She could

outride most of them, anyway, and said that the sport was becoming tame.”

“Whittenfield…” the rotund man said warningly.

“Oh, yes, about the glass.” He sipped his port thoughtfully. “The glass comes

from Serena’s family, the English side. It’s an heirloom, of course. They say that the

Huguenot who married into the family took the woman because no one else would

have her. Scandal again.” Again he paused to take wine, and drained his glass

before continuing. “The mirror is said to be Venetian, about three hundred

forty-or-fifty years old. The frame was added later, and when Marsden appraised it,

he said he believed it to be Austrian work.”

“Hungarian, actually,” murmured the sixth guest, though no one heard him

speak.

“Yes, well.” Whittenfield judiciously filled his glass once more. “Really

wonderful,” he breathed as he savored the port.

“Charles, you should have been an actor—you’re wasted on the peerage,”

Dominick said as he took a seat near the fire.

“Oh, very well. I’ll get on with it,” Whittenfield said, capitulating. “I’ve told you

the glass is Venetian and that it is something over three hundred years old. The

latest date Marsden ventured was 1570, but that, as I say, is problematical. In any

case, you may be certain that it was around in 1610, which is the critical year, so far

as the story is concerned. Yes, 1610.” He sank back in his chair, braced his heels

once more on the Tudor settle, and began, at last, in earnest.

“Doubtless you’re aware that Europe was a great deal more chaotic then than it

is now…”

“That’s not saying much,” the rotund man interjected.

“Twilford, for God’s sake, don’t give him an excuse to digress again,” Dominick

whispered furiously.

“As I was saying,” Charles went on, “Europe was doing very badly in 1610. That

was the year that Henri IV of France was assassinated and his nine-year-old son

succeeded him, and you know what Louis XIII turned out like! James was making

an ass of himself by prolonging Parliament and by locking up Arabella Stuart for

marrying William Seymour. One of the Tsars was deposed, but I can never keep

them straight, and I believe a Prussian prince was offered the job…”

“Polish,” the sixth guest corrected him politely. “Vasili Shuisky was deposed in

favor of Vladislav, Sigismund III’s son.”

“Very likely,” Whittenfield agreed. “Spain and Holland were having a

not-very-successful go at a truce. The German Protestant States were being harried

by their neighbors… That will give you some idea. Well, it happened that my

great-aunt Serena’s nine times great-grandmother was living…”

“Charles,” Twilford protested, “you can’t be serious. Nine times

great-grandmother!”

“Of course I am,” Whittenfield said, astounded at being questioned. “Serena was

born in 1817. Her mother, Eugeinia, was born in 1792. Her mother, Sophia, was

born in 1774. Sophia’s mother Elizabeth was born in 1742. Her mother, Cassandra,

was born in 1726. Cassandra’s mother was Amelia Joanna, and she was born in

1704 or 05, there’s some doubt about the actual date. There was flooding and fever

that winter and they were not very careful with recording births. Amelia Joanna’s

mother, Margaret, was born in 1688. Her mother, Sophronia, was born in 1664…”

“Just in time for the Plague and the Fire,” Dominick put in.

“Yes, and only three of the family survived it: Sophronia, her mother, Hannah,

and one son, William. Terrible names they gave females in those days. Anyway,

William had four wives and eighteen children in his lifetime and Sophronia had six

children and even Hannah remarried and had three more. Hannah’s mother was

Lucretia and she was born in 1629. Her mother, Cesily, was born in 1607, and it was

her mother, Sabrina, that the story concerns. So you see, nine times

great-grandmother of my great-aunt Serena.” He gave a grin that managed to be

smug and sheepish at once. “That Lucretia, now, she was a sad one—married off at

thirteen to an old reprobate in his fifties who kept two mistresses in separate wings

at his principal seat as well as having who knows how many doxies over the years.

Lucretia turned nasty in her later life, they say, and there was an investigation over

the death of her tirewoman, who apparently was beaten to death under mysterious

circumstances. The judge in the case was Sir Egmont Hardie, and he…”

“Charles!” thundered his cousin.

Whittenfield coughed and turned his eyes toward the ceiling. “About Sabrina.

Let me see. She was twenty in 1610, married to Captain Sir James Grossiter. Cesily

was three and her boy, Herbert, was one. It is a little hard to tell about these things

after so long, but apparently certain difficulties had arisen between Sabrina and

her husband. Sir James had quarreled with his father when he had got into trouble

with his commanding general, and had run off to the Continent, which was a

damned silly thing to do, considering the times. He tried a little soldiering, which

was the only thing he knew, and then got caught for some petty offense and was

flung into gaol, leaving his wife with two children to feed and no one to help her,

and in a foreign country, to boot.”

“Well, she’s not the first woman to earn her bread on her back, but I shouldn’t

think you’d bring it up…” one of the guests was heard to remark.

Whittenfield shook his head. “Most men prefer whores who can speak to them,

which Sabrina could not. And her children were inconvenient for such a profession.

She knew some French and had been taught a few Italian songs as a child, but for

the most part she was as good as mute.” He drained his glass again. “She was

greatly distraught, as you might suspect, and did not know which way to turn.”

“That’s a female for you,” the same guest said, and the sixth guest turned to him.

“What makes you believe that a man in those circumstances would fare any

better?” The sixth guest clearly did not expect an answer, and the man who had

spoken glared at him.

Charles went on as if he had not heard. “She sold all that she and Sir James

possessed, which was not much, and then she began to sell their clothes so that they

had only what they wore on their backs, and that quickly became rags. However she

was able to afford a few bits of food and to hire mean lodgings in a backstreet of

Antwerp. By doing scullery work at a nearby inn, she got scraps to eat and enough

to buy cabbages to boil for her babes. But it was inevitable that there come a time

when she would not have enough money even for these inadequate things, and her

children would have no shelter or food.”

“What on earth has that to do with the glass?” Twilford asked, blustering to

conceal his perplexity.

“I’m coming to that,” Charles Whittenfield said with a great show of patience. “If

you’ll let me do it in my own way.”

“Well, I don’t see how we can stop you,” muttered an older man sitting in the

corner hunched over his pipe.

“Everard, please,” Dominick put in imperiously.

The older man gave Dominick a contemptuous glare. “No manners these days.

None at all.”

“Pray go on,” said the sixth guest in slightly accented English. It might have been

because he was the only one not drinking that his clothes were the neatest and most

elegant of any man’s in the room.

“I intend to,” Whittenfield said to his guests. “As I’ve intimated, my

many-times-great-aunt Sabrina was stranded in Antwerp because Sir James was in

prison and she was destitute. She had been cast out by her family when she had

elected to follow her husband to the Continent, so she could not turn to them for

relief, not that she was the sort who would have, in any case. Of course, Sir James’

family had washed their hands of him some years before and would have nothing to

do with him or any of his. Sabrina could play the virginals and had a fair knowledge

of botany, as many well-bred women did in those days, but those were the limits of

her skills. Yet she must have had courage for all of that, because she did not despair,

or if she did, she conquered it. She was determined to keep her children with her, as

the alternative was giving them to the care of nuns, and being a good English

churchwoman, she could not bear to surrender her unprotected babes to Roman

Catholics.” He recrossed his legs. “My uncle George married a Roman Catholic, you

know. There was the most frightful uproar and dire predictions, but Clara has

shown herself to be a most reasonable woman and a truly excellent wife. No trouble

there, I assure you. So all those warnings came to naught.”

“The glass, Charles, the glass,” Twilford insisted.

“I’m coming to that,” the young peer protested with mock dismay. “You’ve no

patience—positively you haven’t a jot.” He held out his glass for refilling as Everard

helped himself to the port. “So,” he resumed after an appreciative moment, “I trust

I’ve made her predicament clear to you. Her husband was in prison, she had no one

to turn to, her children as well as herself were in real danger of starvation, she was

living in the poorest part of the city in a low-ceilinged garret in a house that should

have been pulled down before the Plantagenet's fell. There was no reason for her to

hope for anything but an early grave in Potter’s Field.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Dominick interrupted. “Very touching plight. But as her daughter

had a daughter we must assume that all was not lost, at least not then.” He splashed

a bit more brandy into his snifter and lit up another cigar.

“Well, Charles, what happened?” Everard demanded. “Did she catch the eye of

an Earl traveling for pleasure, or did some other person come to her aid?”

“Not quite that,” Whittenfield conceded. “Not a traveling Earl in any case, but a

traveling Count.”

“Same thing,” Dominick scoffed.

“He was, as you perceive from the title, a foreigner,” Charles persisted. “He had

arrived in Antwerp from Ghent some time before and had purchased one of the

buildings not far from where Sabrina lived in terrible squalor.”

“And he gave her the mirror for primping,” Everard finished. “There’s nothing

very mysterious about that.”

“Now, that’s the odd part of it,” Whittenfield said leaning forward as he spoke.

“He didn’t give it to her, she bought it for herself.” He did not wait for his listeners

to exclaim at this, but went on at once. “But that comes later in the story. Let me tell

it as it must be told.” He puffed his cigar once and set it aside again. “She became

acquainted with this foreigner through an act of theft.”

“What could anyone steal from her?” Twilford asked of the air.

“You don’t understand—it was Sabrina who was the thief.”

The reaction ranged from guffaws to shock; the sixth guest gave a small, wry

smile and said nothing.

“Yes, she had decided to steal money so that she and her children could eat that

night. You must understand that she had not stolen before and she knew that the

penalties for it were quite harsh, but she had come to believe that she had no other

choice. It was late in the afternoon when she saw this foreigner come to his house,

and she determined to wait for him and accost him as he came out. She thought

that since the man was not a native of the place, he might be reluctant to complain

to the authorities, and of course, since he was foreign, he was regarded with a

degree of dislike throughout the neighborhood.”

Everard shook his head. “Sounds like a rackety thing to do.”

“It was better than starving,” said the sixth guest.

The other man with the pipe coughed and made a gruff protest. “But what is the

point of all this, Whittenfield? Get on with it, man.”

“Lord Graveston, you are trying to rush me,” Whittenfield said with the slightest

hint of a slur in his pronunciation. “That won’t do. You’ll have to listen, the same as

the rest.”

“Then stop this infernal dallying about,” Lord Graveston said with considerable

asperity. “At this rate, it will be time for breakfast before you’re half done with your

story, and we’ll never know what the point of it is.”

Whittenfield shrugged. “I don’t see the virtue in haste when one is recounting the

travail of a family member, but if you insist, then I will do my humble best…”

“For all the saints in hell, Charles…” Dominick expostulated.

“Very well,” Whittenfield sighed lavishly. “Since you insist. As I told you, Sabrina

conspired to set upon this foreigner and rob him so that she would have money for

food and lodging for her and her children. She went down the street at night, filled

with terror but determined now on her course. There were beggars sleeping in

doorways, and a few poxy whores plied their trade in this quarter, but most of the

denizens of the night left her alone. She was an Englishwoman, don’t you see, and

isolated from them. It was a cold, raw night and her shawl did not keep her warm.

Think of her predicament, gentlemen—is it surprising that she nearly turned back

half a dozen times?”

“What’s surprising is that she attempted it at all,” Dominick said quietly. “Not

that I approve of thieving, but in this case…”

“Precisely my point,” Whittenfield burst out, the contents of his glass sloshing

dangerously. “Most women would have not been able to do a damned thing, at least

not any of the women I know. Sabrina, though, was most—unfeminine.”

“Hardly that,” murmured the sixth guest.

“She reached the house of the foreigner and slipped into the doorway of the

shuttered baker’s shop across the street, and set herself to wait for her prey to

appear.”

“How do you know that?” one of the guests interrupted. “How do you know that

her shawl wasn’t warm, or that there was a baker’s shop where she could wait for

the man?”

“I know,” Whittenfield said with a faintly superior air, “because she kept a diary,

and I’ve read it. She devoted a great many pages to this unfortunate time in her life.

Her description of the rooms where she lived with her children almost make me

itch, so deeply does she dwell on the filth and the vermin that lived there.” He

shuddered as proof of his revulsion.

“Well, you’ve got to expect that poor housing isn’t going to be pleasant,” Twilford

observed, appealing to the others with a wave of his hand. “Some of the tenant

farmers I’ve visited—appalling, that’s what it is.”

“Now who’s digressing?” Whittenfield asked.

“Charles is right,” Dominick admitted. “Let it keep, Twilford.”

“Well, I only wanted to let you know that I had some comprehension of what…”

Twilford began but was cut off.

“We can all agree that we’re shocked by the reduced circumstances of your

whatever-many-times-great-aunt,” Lord Graveston said portentously. “Get on with

it.”

Whittenfield glared around the room to be certain that all his guests had given

him their attention. All but one had. His sixth guest was staring at the spider glass

with a bemused smile on his attractive, foreign face. Whittenfield cleared his throat

and was rewarded by the sixth guest’s reluctant attention.

“Pray forgive me,” he said politely. “That glass…”

“Precisely,” Whittenfield said. “That is why it has remained intact for so long, I

am convinced. In any case, I was telling you about how Sabrina Grossiter came to

try to rob this foreigner in Antwerp. She took up her post outside the baker’s shop,

hidden in the shadows, and waited for many long hours. She had thought that the

foreigner used the house for romantic assignations, but that did not seem to be the

case, for no woman came to the house, or man either, for that matter. Well after

midnight a middle-aged man in servant’s livery left the building, but the foreigner

remained. It was cold, very cold and Sabrina’s hands and feet were numb by the

time she saw the lights in the upper windows go out. She hoped that the foreigner

was going to leave so that she could at last try to take his purse. There was no one

else on the street: even the beggars had found whatever shelter they could.”

“Sounds a foolish thing to do, wait up half the night for a man to walk out of his

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - The Saint-Germain Chronicles

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