Lydia kept her face from showing the inner shudder she felt at the thought, but even as it went through her, another part of her mind was busy piecing together implications. Around her in the blanched moonlight the whole city seemed to lie in a drugged dream of mist and shadow, still with a stillness like death. Ysidro's world, she thought. The fag end of nighttime. The sense of being the only one left alive.
"That means-it must mean-Ernchester has gone to Constantinople."
"Even so," Ysidro agreed. "According to Batthyany's countess, Anthea claimed that she had been used as hostage to force Ernchester to the will of Karolyi and Fairport. It implies, of course, that Ernchester did not come to Vienna of his own accord, and so they hunted him no further."
"But James saw him get on the train with Karolyi of his own accord," Lydia said, puzzled. "After Karolyi was dead and Ernchester freed, why would he flee?"
"The fact that Charles got on the train of his own accord," Ysidro said softly, "does not mean that he did so of free will. And it would explain what has troubled me from the start. Ernchester is not a politician's choice-that slut Grippen has lately got in St. John's Wood is stronger to the hunt and the kill than Charles. But someone knew enough about him to know that he could be ruled. That a threat against Anthea would bring him. That to hold her would be to guarantee his conduct."
"Would Karolyi know that?"
"Evidently."
They had reached the house in the Bakkersgasse again. Unwilling, perhaps, to give up possession of those dark streets that were their sole dominion, Lydia and Ysidro sat as if by unspoken agreement side by side on the marble rim of the small fountain before the house. The gaslight wavered on the surface, made watching pits of the eyes of the bronze emperor above the water and touched the lower half of Ysidro's face, giving the effect of a carnival mask through which fulvous eyes gleamed like marsh fire as he spoke.
"Will you return to London, mistress? The trap here is sprung."
Lydia hesitated, feeling for one minute the overwhelming desire for the comfort of the things she knew, the world of research circumscribed by the university's walls. But she knew perfectly well, as the thought of it formed in her mind, that only a trap had been sprung.
"It isn't... it isn't over yet, is it? Whatever started this. Not anywhere near it."
"No."
Frightening as it had appeared in the beginning, Vienna hadn't been so bad.
"Would it be of help to you for me to go on to Constantinople? Because that's what I would prefer to do," she added, seeing the swift thought behind the Spaniard's eyes.
"It would be of help in finding Ernchester, yes." He frowned, as at some unexpected thought. "I would not have you undertake unnecessary risk-yet you know your husband's thought, and the legitimacy of your inquiries will help in the search for the heart of this matter."
He paused again, considering, and there was, Lydia thought, just the smallest trace of surprise in the enigmatic eyes.
"Curiously enough," he went on, "Charles has been in Constantinople. This was many years ago, but there might be some there who knew him when he-and possibly they- were living men."
"But it doesn't make sense-" Lydia pulled her collar closer about her face. "-if vampires are all as-as jealous of interlopers as the Count Batthyany is. That is... are they?"
"Mostly," said Ysidro. "Burning Fruhlingzeit as a warning was one of the milder expressions of displeasure I have encountered. Master vampires are not to be jested with when they conceive their territories in threat. Yet only a vampire could have summoned Ernchester to Constantinople. Only a vampire would know the threat that would bring him. Only a vampire would know that, of all the vampires I have met, Ernchester is one of the few capable of love."
Eleven
"Do vampires not love?"
Ysidro looked up from tallying his points. Lydia had scored sixteen for eight through king in hearts, with the nine making up a quart; Ysidro, by not declaring a sequence in diamonds, had managed to win most of the tricks, including the last. It hadn't saved him.
They had spent the day among the ancient basilicas and rose farms of Adrianople, owing to Ysidro's flat refusal to travel during the hours of light. Now the rough hills of Thrace, through which they had creaked with maddening slowness all of last night, seemed, as far as Lydia could tell, to have evened out. The train was a good one, German built and fitted, but even this first-class car smelled of garlic, strong coffee, tobacco, and unwashed clothing. On the platforms of Sofia and Belgrade, Lydia had observed that the farther east one got, the more casual railway personnel seemed to be about the presence of livestock in passenger cars. At Adrianople, earlier in the evening, she'd seen a Bosniak family casually load two goats into the third-class carriage, the father holding the long-fleeced kid in his arms and stepping back politely to let a bearded Orthodox priest climb on ahead of him, while farther down the platform people passed crates of chickens in through the windows.
Aunt Lavinia had always said that travel was broadening. Lydia suspected this was not what she meant.
The noise in the other first-class compartments seemed to be lessening, though in the corridors the tobacco fug still lay thick. Miss Potton, after her usual stubborn struggle to play a game in which she had neither aptitude nor interest, had fallen into a doze at Ysidro's side. For nearly an hour the only words exchanged had concerned the lay of the cards and the trading of points, but Lydia suspected that the governess was as jealous of those as she was of other conversations Lydia and Ysidro had.
The wheels clacked steadily, like mechanical ram. Ysidro finished his tally, the steel nib of his pen scratching softly on the cheap yellow pad, the friction of his cuff on the tabletop a dry whisper against Margaret's stertorous breath and the occasional bursts of laughter or speech audible through the compartment wall.
It was a long time before Ysidro replied.
At length he said, "As humans understand it?"
"How do humans understand it?" Lydia gathered the cards, turned them in her hands. Living half by night-half in the sunken silences of darkness-had given her a small degree of understanding of something Ysidro had mentioned early on, that vampires' senses were far more sensitive than those of humans. With blackness pressing the window and gloom thick beyond the circle of the gas burner's solitary light, every sound, every sight, seemed portentous, fraught with meaning beyond the simpler shapes of day.
"You said back in Vienna that Ernchester was a rarity among vampires, because he is capable of love. I wondered what that actually meant."
"As with the living, among the Undead love means different things to different individuals." He turned his head, champagne-colored eyes resting briefly on the woman who snored beside him in her muddle of yarns. After a moment her head lolled more heavily and her breathing deepened still further; she slumped against him, and with a fastidious care he leaned her into the other corner of the seat. In the five days it had taken them to work their way south via local trains- for the Orient Express only left Vienna on Thursdays-through Buda-Pesth, Belgrade, Sofia, Adrianople, waiting sometimes for most of a day for the next train that departed after sunset-Lydia had been occasionally aware of the highly colored romantic dreams that illuminated Margaret Potton's sleep. In all of them Ysidro had been a vampire, outrageously Byronic in black leather and pearls, with daggers sticking out of his boots.
In all of them, love had been implicit. His professed, passionate love for her, bonding them, drawing her like a silver rope into love for him.
Whatever love is, Lydia added to herself. It would hardly do, at this point, for Margaret to hear any true opinion of Ysidro's on the ability of vampires to love.