Thirty-foot diaphanous silk curtains parted in the draught, and they passed through. The effect was of a giant cobweb, billowing open to entice the unwary fly. Servants appeared, under the direction of a vampire lady-in-waiting, and Charles and Geneviève were relieved of their cloaks. A Carpathian, his face a mask of stiff hair, stood by to watch Charles hand over his cane. Silver was frowned on at the Court. She had no weapons to yield...
... he had tried everything to dissuade her from accompanying him, short of disclosing to her the duty he must perform. Beauregard knew he would die. His death would have purpose, and he was prepared for it. But his heart sickened at what might become of Geneviève. This was not her crusade. If it were possible, he would help her escape even at the cost of his own life. But his duty was more important than either of them.
When they were together, warmed by their communion, he told her what he had told no other woman since Pamela.
‘Gené, I love you.’
‘And I you, Charles. I you.’
‘I you what?’
‘Love, Charles. I love you.’
Her mouth was on him again and they rolled together, getting comfortable...
* * *
... an armadillo wriggled by her feet, its rear-parts clogged with its own dirt. Vlad Tepes had raided Regent’s Park Zoo and had exotic species roaming loose in the Palace. This poor edentate was merely one of his more harmless pets.
The lady-in-waiting who guided them through the cathedral-like space of the reception hall wore black velvet livery, the Royal Crest upon her bosom. With tight trews and gold-buckled knee-boots, she looked like the principal boy. Although handsome, her face had lost any feminine softness it might have possessed when its wearer was warm.
‘Mr Beauregard, you have forgotten me,’ she said.
Charles, involved in his own thoughts, was almost shocked. He looked closely at the lady-in-waiting.
‘We met at the Stokers’,’ she explained. ‘Some years ago. Before the changes.’
‘Miss Murray?’
‘The widow Harker now. Wilhelmina. Mina.’
Geneviève knew who the woman was: one of Vlad Tepes’s get. After Jack Seward’s Lucy, the first of the Prince Consort’s conquests in Britain. Like Jack and Godalming, she had been in with Van Helsing’s group.
‘So that fearful murderer was Dr Seward,’ Mina Harker mused. ‘He was spared only to suffer, and to make others suffer. And Lord Godalming too. How Lucy would have been disappointed in her suitors.’
Geneviève saw into Mina Harker, and realised the woman was condemned – had condemned herself – to exist with the consequences of failure. Her failure to resist Vlad Tepes, her circle’s failure to trap and destroy the invader.
‘I had not expected to find you here,’ Charles blurted.
‘Serving in Hell?’
They were at the end of the hall. More doors loomed above them. Mina Harker, eyes like burning ice, looked at them both as she struck a panel, the rapping of her knuckles as loud in the echoing space as shots from a revolver...
... Beauregard remembered the warm Mina Harker, unfussy and direct when set beside Florence, Penelope or Lucy, siding with Kate Reed in the belief that a woman should earn a living, should be more than a decoration. That woman was dead and this white-faced court servant was her pale ghost. Seward had been a ghost too, and Godalming. Between them, the Prince Consort and the skull on the pike had to account for a great deal of human wreckage.
The inner doors opened in noisy lurches and a startling servant admitted them to a well-lit antechamber. The extensive and grotesque malformations of his body were emphasised by a tailored particoloured suit. He was not the new-born victim of catastrophically failed shape-shifting, but a warm man suffering from enormous defects of birth. His spine was drastically kinked, loaf-shaped excrescences sprouting from his back; his limbs, with the exception of the left arm, were bloated and twisted. His head was swollen by bulbs of bone, from which sprouted wisps of hair, and his features were almost completely obscured by warty growths. Mycroft had prepared Beauregard for this, but he still felt a heart-stab of pity.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Merrick, is it not?’
A smile formed somewhere in the doughy recesses of Merrick’s face. He returned the greeting, voice slurred by excess slews of flesh around his mouth.
‘How is Her Majesty this evening?’
Merrick did not reply, but Beauregard imagined expression in the unreadable expanse of his features. There was a sadness in his single exposed eye and a grim set to his growth-twisted lips.
He gave Merrick a card and said ‘Compliments of the Diogenes Club.’ The man understood and his huge head bobbed. He was another servant of the ruling cabal.
Merrick led them down the hallway, hunched over like a gorilla, a long club-handed arm propelling his body. It apparently amused the Prince Consort to keep this poor creature on hand. Beauregard could not help but feel an additional disgust for the vampire. Merrick knocked on doors three times his height...
... she realised, ridiculously late, that Charles was not afraid of whatever he would face in the Palace. He was afraid for her, afraid of the consequences of something soon to happen. He took her hand and held it tight.
‘Gené,’ Charles said, voice just above a whisper, ‘if what I do brings harm to you, I am sincerely sorry.’
She did not understand him. As her mind raced to catch up with him, he leaned over and kissed her, on the mouth, the warm way. She tasted him, and was reminded of everything...
... her voice was cool in the dark.
‘This can be for ever, Charles. Truly for ever.’
He remembered his meeting with Mycroft.
‘Nothing is for ever, my darling...’
... the kiss broke, and he stood back, leaving her baffled. Then the doors were opened and they were admitted into the Royal Presences.
Ill lit by broken chandeliers, the throne-room was an infernal sty of people and animals, its once-fine walls torn and stained. Dirtied and abused paintings hung at strange angles or were piled loose behind furniture. Laughing, whimpering, grunting, whining, screaming creatures congregated on divans and carpets. An almost naked Carpathian wrestled a giant ape, their feet scrabbling and slipping on a marble floor thick with discharges. The stench of dried blood and ordure was as strong as it had been in Number 13 Miller’s Court.
Merrick announced them to the company, palate suffering as he got out their names. Someone made a crude remark in German. Gales of cruel laughter cut through the din, then were cut off by a wave of a ham-sized hand. The gesture gave the congregation pause; the Carpathian jammed the ape’s face against the floor and snapped the animal’s spine, prematurely ending the contest of strength.
Upon the raised hand, an enormous gemstone ring held the burning reflections of seven fires. She recognised the Koh-i-Noor, or Lake of Light, the largest diamond in the world, and the centrepiece of the collection known as the Crown Jewels. Her eyes were drawn to the shining light, and to the vampire who wielded it. Prince Dracula sat upon his throne, massive as a commemorative statue, his enormously bloated face a rich red under withered grey. Moustaches stiff with recent blood hung to his chest, his thick hair was loose about his shoulders, and his black-stubbled chin was dotted with the gravy of his last feeding. His left hand loosely held the orb of office, which seemed in his grip the size of a tennis ball.
Charles shook in the presence of the enemy, the smell smiting him like blows. Geneviève held him up and looked around.
‘I never dreamed...’ he muttered, ‘never...’
An ermine-collared black velvet cloak, ragged at the edges, clung to Dracula’s shoulders like the wings of a giant bat. Otherwise he was naked, his body thickly coated with matted hair, blood clotting on his chest and limbs. His white manhood coiled in his lap, tipped scarlet as an adder’s tongue. His body was swollen with blood, rope-thick veins visibly pulsing in his neck and arms. In life, Vlad Tepes had been a man of less than medium height; now he was a giant.