‘Charles!’ A tiny muscle in Penelope’s throat pulsed. She set down her cup, but left her little finger crooked.
‘There is no accusation, Penelope. I have been in Whitechapel on the business of the Diogenes Club.’
‘Oh, them.’
‘Indeed, and their business is also, as you know, that of the Queen and her ministers.’
‘I doubt that the safety of the realm or the well-being of the Queen is one whit advanced by having you trail around with the lower orders, sniffing out the sites of sensational atrocities.’
‘I can’t discuss my work, even with you. You know that.’
‘Indeed,’ she sighed. ‘Charles, I’m sorry. It’s just that... well, that I’m proud of you, and I thought I deserved the opportunity to display you a little, to let the envious look at my ring, to draw their own conclusions.’
Her anger melted away, and she became again the fond girl he had courted. Pamela had been possessed of a temper, as well. He remembered Pam horse-whipping a blackguard of a corporal who was found to have interfered with the bhisti’s sister. The quality of her anger had been different, though; spurred by actual wrongs done to another, rather than imagined slights against herself.
‘I have been talking with Art.’
Penelope was working up to something, Beauregard realised. He knew the symptoms. One of them was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
‘It’s about Florence,’ she said. ‘Mrs Stoker. We must drop her.’
Beauregard was astounded.
‘I beg your pardon? She’s a bit of a bore at times, but she means well. We’ve known her for years.’
He had thought Florence to be Penelope’s closest ally. Indeed, Mrs Stoker had been highly instrumental in contriving occasions on which the couple were left alone together so that a proposal might be elicited. When Penelope’s mother had been sick with a fever, Florence had insisted on taking charge.
‘It is all the more important that we should openly distance ourselves from her. Art says...’
‘Is this Godalming’s idea?’
‘No, it’s mine,’ she said, deliberately. ‘I can have ideas of my own, you know. Art has told me something of Mr Stoker’s affairs...’
‘Poor Bram.’
‘Poor Bram! The man is a traitor to the Queen you profess to serve. He has been hauled off to a work camp for his own good and may be executed at any moment.’
Beauregard had supposed as much. ‘Does Art know where Bram is being held? What is his situation?’
Penelope waved the enquiry aside as irrelevant. ‘Sooner or later, Florence must fall too. If only by association.’
‘I hardly see Florence Stoker as an insurrectionist. What could she do, organise tea-parties for bands of ferocious vampire-killers? Distract politicians by simpering at them while assassins creep out of the bushes?’
Penelope tried to look patient. ‘We must not be seen to be with the wrong people, Charles. If we are to have a future. I am only a woman, but even I can understand that.’
‘Penelope, what has brought all this on?’
‘You think me incapable of serious thought?’
‘No...’
‘You never considered Pamela to be such an empty-head.’
‘Ah...’
She held his hand, and squeezed. ‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to say that. Pam is out of this.’
He looked at his fiancée and wondered if he truly knew her. She was a long way from the pinafore and the sailor’s cap.
‘Charles, there is another prospect we must consider. After our marriage, we must turn.’
‘Turn?’
‘Art will do it, if we ask. Bloodline is important, and his is of the best. He’s Ruthven’s get, not the Prince Consort’s. That could be to our advantage. Art says the Prince Consort’s bloodline is dreadfully polluted, while Ruthven’s is simon-pure.’
In her face, Beauregard could see the vampire Penelope might become. Her features seemed to push forwards as she leaned to him. She kissed him on the lips, warmly.
‘You are no longer entirely young. And I shall be twenty soon. We have the chance to stop the clock.’
‘Penelope, this is not a decision to be taken lightly.’
‘Only vampires get anywhere, Charles. And among vampires, new-borns are less favoured. If we do not turn now, there will be a glut ahead of us, experienced un-dead looking down on us as those Carpathians look down on them, as the new-borns look down upon the warm.’
‘It is not so simple.’
‘Nonsense. Art has told me how it is accomplished. It seems a remarkably straightforward process. An exchange of fluids. There need be no actual contact. Blood can be decanted into tumblers. Think of it as a wedding toast.’
‘No, there are other considerations.’
‘Such as...?’
‘Nobody knows enough about turning, Penelope. Have you not noticed how many new-borns are twisted out of true? Something beastly takes over, and shapes them.’
Penelope laughed scornfully. ‘Those are very common vampires. We shan’t be common.’
‘Penelope, we may not have the choice.’
She withdrew and stood up. Incipient tears rimmed her eyes. ‘Charles, this means a lot to me.’
He had nothing to say. She smiled, and looked at him at an angle, pouting slightly. ‘Charles?’
‘Yes.’
She hugged him, pressing his head to her chest.
‘Charles, please. Please, please, please...’
15
THE HOUSE IN CLEVELAND STREET
It is like the warm days, is it not?’ von Klatka said, his wolves straining their leashes. ‘When we fought the Turk?’
Kostaki remembered his wars. When Prince Dracula, genius of strategy, withdrew across the Danube to redouble an assault, he left a good many – Kostaki included – to be cut to tatters by the Sultan’s curved scimitars. During that last melée, something un-dead tore out his throat and drank his blood, bleeding from its own wounds into his mouth. He awoke new-born under a pile of Wallachian dead. Having learned little in several lifetimes, Kostaki again followed the standard of the Impaler.
‘That was good fighting, my friend,’ von Klatka continued, eyes alive.
They had come to Osnaburgh Street with a wagonload of ten-foot stakes. There was enough lumber to build an ark. Mackenzie of the Yard awaited them with his uniformed constables. The warm policeman stamped his feet against a cold Kostaki hadn’t felt in centuries. Impatient steam leaked from his nose and mouth.
‘Englishman, hail,’ Kostaki said, clapping a salute against his fez.
‘Scotsman, if you please,’ said the Inspector.
‘I seek your pardon.’ A Moldavian survivor of the Imperial Ottoman chaos that was now Austria-Hungary, Kostaki understood the importance of distinctions between tiny countries.
A Captain in the Carpathian Guard, Kostaki was something between liaison officer and overseer. When directed so to do by the Palace, he took an interest in police matters. The Queen and her Prince Consort were much concerned with law and order. Only last week, Kostaki had trudged around Whitechapel, looking for the spoor of the crude villain they called Silver Knife. Now he was assisting with a raid on an infamous address.
They lined up either side of the wagon: Mackenzie’s men, mostly new-borns, and a detachment of the Carpathian Guard. Tonight they would demonstrate that the posted edicts of Prince Dracula were not just time-wasting whims on parchment.
As Mackenzie shook hands with him, Kostaki refrained from exerting the iron nosferatu grip.
‘We have plainclothes men blocking the escape routes,’ the Inspector explained, ‘so the house is completely bottled up. We go in through the front door and search from top to bottom, assembling the prisoners in the street. I have the warrants with me.’