June was following another train of thought. "Who? Who'd give a million dollars?"
The girl in silver earrings smiled. "Some people I know. Men and women who study things like this."
"Like what?"
Connie's smile took on a different quality. "You know. So, you want me to go and look in the mirror? I will, if you come along with me. But maybe I'd better ask Mr. Graves first if it's all right."
Once or twice when Radcliffe and Connie were out of earshot of the others, the young man, belatedly becoming aware of the attraction Connie felt for him, began hinting to persuade Constantia that it would be to her own benefit to help him and June escape from these crazy kidnappers.
Connie answered playfully at first. He was just too cute and she wasn't going to let him go—things like that. But when Radcliffe persisted in being serious, the woman blinked and her face went sober. For once she was entirely serious, and her face, while still as unlined as ever, just might have been a hundred years of age. "You don't know Mr. Graves."
"No," he admitted after a few moments. "No, I don't guess I do."
Chapter Eight
It may help the reader to an understanding of my relations with my brother, to be told that centuries ago I adapted a version of the Golden Rule to serve as my guideline: since the early years of our ongoing quarrel, I have striven to do unto Radu before he does unto me. So far, being slightly older, considerably stronger, and totally untroubled by any fear of consequences, I have been successful in the great majority of our clashes.
But I regret to report that as yet there is no end to our conflict in sight. Sometimes I wonder: What would our father have thought, had he known the true nature of the burden he had placed on me, of responsibility for my brother? Had Father imagined that it might possibly continue for five hundred years and more?
No, I simply cannot imagine the paternal reaction to such knowledge. My mind simply boggles—as, I am sure, father's would have done. To the best of my knowledge, my esteemed parent had never even the least commerce with vampires—though he must have been aware of their existence. I cannot imagine the supposition crossing our father's mind that either of his sons, let alone both, would ever become vampires—certainly he himself had never been granted that wondrous transformation. Or perhaps he had deliberately declined it. I should not like to think that of my father.
Still, an oath is an oath. It was put to me as a matter of personal and family honor, and I as a dutiful son accepted it unquestioningly on its own terms.
Having survived a serious altercation with my younger brother in 1705—remind me to tell you, sometime, the full story of that remarkable encounter—having survived that, as I say, and having firmly reasserted my proper position as head of the family, I considered what course of action to take next. Honor, as we have seen, precluded my having the scoundrel put to death outright. But at the same time, duty and prudence alike required some drastic action.
The best compromise I could arrange with my conscience required devious and difficult arrangements. In the end, as we have seen, I had Radu put underground, alive (well, more or less alive. Just enough, as it seemed to me, to meet the minimum requirements of my pledge to our father.) in one of the quieter churchyards of London. The length of his confinement under these conditions was to be left to chance.
When I gave orders to certain reliable associates of mine, specifying in some detail how Radu was to be transported and put away, I had thought I might look forward to as much as five hundred years of peace. But alas, even though my orders were carried out with remarkable fidelity, that was not to be.
Whilst making the arrangements for this burial, I, as the responsible older brother, considered whether it would be somehow possible to arrange to be notified whenever my younger sibling should be awakened. But I could discover no way to make any such arrangement reliably, and in any case I was not really sure I wanted it. I have resolutely declined to spend my life looking over my shoulder.
The news of Radu's revival—first in the form of a rumor, and then in independent confirmation—reached me in the summer of 1792. Coming decades before I expected it, it struck me with a forcible shock.
Certainly I was disappointed to discover that the fiend was already above ground and prowling again; the punishment had not endured for even a hundred years. Oh, with any luck at all my younger brother might easily have remained inert, only groaning now and then in nightmare, for another fifty years or so. But though disconcerted I was hardly at all surprised. Luck was something that seemed usually to flow in my younger brother's favor.
No doubt you are already thinking that simply condemning a vampire to a long trance must not in itself qualify as punishment. And you are right—there must be additional conditions. Sometimes putting the subject in a trance deprives him of the opportunity to do something above ground that he badly wants to accomplish. For example, achieving the seduction of a certain breathing person, or persons. And there are other ways of arranging matters so that his long and enforced sleep is far from pleasant.
Here is one such possibility: Trance, as we know, is essentially a kind of sleep, and sleep is often stalked by dreams. A nightmare-filled catalepsy, which endures for a hundred years or more, is not at all the same as a long peaceful slumber. The specific details of the nightmare we need not go into here; I have no wish that my readers' own slumbers should be disturbed.
Does it seem to you that such an experience would inevitably drive its victim mad? If you think so, you do not know Radu.
As I started to explain above, before I wandered somewhat off the point, my arrangements for Radu's burial in 1705 included having his head cut off before he went into the coffin. This operation of course was performed, as I am sure you realize if you have kept up with me this far, with no intention of killing the dear boy outright. I made sure that his shortening was accomplished by a steel blade, with nothing in the least wooden about it. (In a later chapter we will have further occasion to contemplate the fact that if a vampire is decapitated by an irresistible force borne in metal—the very description of the guillotine—then the head and body are decisively severed, but not killed.)
Yes, it is virtually impossible for metal to inflict deadly harm upon a nosferatu. Yet massive force, such as the traditional guillotine is designed to apply, can achieve a separation. Under proper conditions each component of the maimed body could be counted on to survive for a long time, and if the two parts were left where one might come in contact with the other, they would inevitably get back together. On the other hand, if they were separated inside their coffin by a wooden barrier, I felt perfectly confident that they—he—could survive indefinitely, howbeit in an incapacitated state, until the barrier was breached, inevitably by time, or sooner or later by the inadvertent action of gravediggers legitimate or otherwise; and the two parts could toil and claw themselves together… thus, Father, did I ease my conscience with regard to my oath to you. I had not killed Radu, whose head and body would someday reunite.
With a wish to keep the whole business as thoroughly out of sight and mind as possible, I caused my brother's mortal parts, vitally dismembered but still undead, to be conveyed into a distant land for burial. This tactic put a broad girdle of the sea, twenty miles at least of salt, tide-flowing water, as a barrier between Radu and his homeland—and, as I had thought, between him and most of his breathing minions of that century. My oath required, of course, that a portion of our native soil sufficient to enable him to survive be buried with him. The logistics of it all were every bit as hard as you might think.