At the end of the tune I would throw a heavy lever and several of the waxed tiles would drop open, the trapdoors sending the screaming courtiers thirty feet to sharpened stakes in the pit below. Almost five hundred years later, in 1932, an archaeologist friend sent me a photograph from the excavations on ~Snagov Island: remnants of the stakes were still visible; the skulls were still stacked in neat rows.
It was three winters after the rebuilding of Castle Dracula that one of my mistresses announced that she was pregnant, thus hoping to gain precedence over my other concubines. Assuming that she was lying, I asked her if she would mind being examined. When she demurred, I had her brought to the main hall while the court was assembled.
She protested her love, her sorrow for her error, but I ordered my bodyguards to proceed. They sliced her womb open from vulva to breastbone and peeled back the walls of muscle and flesh while she writhed, still alive.
“Witness this!” I cried to the whitefaces staring up at me. My words echoed in the stone hall. “Let the whole world see where Vlad Dracula has been!”
Chapter Nineteen
KATE became aware of the pain before she was aware of anything else; she did not know who she was, where she was, or why the world seemed composed of separate stilettos of pure pain, but she knew that she hurt.
She swam up from a great depth, remembering the water above her face at the bottom of . . . of what? . . . of the fall that seemed to comprise all that she remembered of her previous life. She remembered lifting her face through that ceiling of water. She remembered beginning the climb, dragging her injured left arm behind her, blinking water and something heavier out of her eyes as she climbed upward through the mud and nettles and crumbling shale and aspen and thorny pinon . . .
I remember the flames. I remember the taste of ashes. I remember the other bodies in the light from the ambulances and fire engines . . .
Kate gasped awake, blinking wildly. White ceiling. White bed. The functional sag of an i.v. bag. White walls and gray medical monitors.
Father O'Rourke leaned closer and touched her uninjured arm just above the plastic hospital bracelet there. “It's all right,” he whispered.
Kate tried to speak, found her tongue too dry, her lips too swollen. She shook her head violently from side to side.
The priest's bearded face was lined with worry, his eyes visibly assaulted by sadness. “It's all right, Kate,” he whispered again.
She shook her head again and licked her lips. It was like speaking with cotton balls in her mouth, but she managed to make sounds. She had to explain something to O'Rourke before the tides of drugs and pain pulled her down under the ceiling of consciousness again. “No,” she croaked at long last.
O'Rourke squeezed her good hand with both of his.
“No,” she said again, trying to turn and hearing the i.v. rattle on its stand. She shook her head and felt the bandages thick and heavy on her forehead. “It's not all right. Not at all.”
O'Rourke squeezed her hand, but he nodded. He understood.
Kate quit struggling and let the currents drag her under.
The young police detectiveLieutenant Peterson, Kate remembered through the shifting curtain of pain and drugs, came in the morning. The older, sadlooking sergeant stood by the door while the lieutenant sat in the empty visitor's chair.
“Mrs. Neuman?” said the detective. He was moving a breath mint from one cheek to the other and the click of the candy against his teeth made Kate remember the sound her left arm made as she climbed the night before. No, two nights before, she reminded herself, using all of her energy to concentrate. It is Saturday. It was Thursday night that your life ended. It is Saturday now.
“Mrs. Neuman? You awake?”
Kate nodded.
“Can you talk? Can you understand me?”
She nodded again.
The lieutenant licked his lips and glanced at the sergeant, whose gaze remained unfocused or turned inward. “Well, Mrs. Neuman, I've got a few questions,” said the lieutenant, flipping open a small notebook.
“Doctor,” said Kate.
The lieutenant raised his eyebrows. “You want I should call the doctor? You feeling bad?”
“Doctor,” repeated Kate, gritting her teeth against the pain in her jaw and neck when she spoke. “Doctor Neuman. “
The police lieutenant rolled his eyes slightly and clicked his ballpoint pen. “OkayDoctor Neuman . . . you wanna tell me what happened Thursday night?”
“Tell me,” gritted Kate.
The lieutenant stared.
She took a breath. It had been hours since her last shot and everything hurt beyond reason. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “Tom dead? Julie dead? Baby dead?”
The young lieutenant pursed his lips. “Now, Mrs. Neuman . . . what we have to concentrate on right now is getting some details so we can do our job. Then you concentrate on getting better. Your friend, Father Whatshisname, he'll be back pretty soon“
Kate used her good hand to grasp the lieutenant's wrist with a strength that obviously shocked him. “Tom dead?” she rasped. “Julie dead? Baby dead?”
Lieutenant Peterson had to use his other hand to free his wrist. He sighed and said, “Now look, Mrs.Doctor Neuman. My job is to get as much“
“Yes,” said the sergeant. The older man's gaze had shifted to' Kate. “Yes, Doctor Neuman. Your exhusband is dead. So is Ms. Strickland. And I'm afraid your adopted child also died in the fire.”
Kate closed her eyes. The other bodies on the gurneys as they loaded me aboard the ambulance in the glow of flames . . . carbonblack skin, blackened lips pulled back, teeth gleaming . . . the small body in the clear plastic bag made for small bodies . . . I didn't dream it.
She opened her eyes in time to catch the glare the lieutenant was giving the older detective. Peterson looked back at her, obviously irritated. “I'm sorry, Doctor Neuman. You have our condolences.” He clicked his pen again. “Now, can you tell us what you remember from Thursday night?”
Fighting to stay afloat on the waves of pain from her arm and skull, fighting the currents that threatened again to pull her down into the dark, welcome depths, Kate formed each word with care while she told him everything she remembered.
She opened her eyes and it was night. Rectangles of reflected white light on the walls and the glow of a nightlight on the panel behind her were the only illumination. O'Rourke lowered the book he had been reading in the dim light and scooted his chair closer. He was wearing the sweatshirt he had worn in Bucharest. “Hi,” he whispered.
Kate floated in and out. She concentrated on staying in.
“It's the smack on your head,” O'Rourke said softly. “The doctor explained about the effects of the concussion, but I don't think you were really awake when he was explaining.”
Kate formed the words carefully in her mind before allowing her lips to have them. “Not . . . dead,” she said.
O'Rourke bit his lip, then nodded. “No, you're not dead,” he said.
She shook her head angrily. “Baby . . .” she said. For some reason, the “J” in Joshua hurt her jaw and head to say. She said it anyway. “Joshua . . . not dead.”
O'Rourke squeezed her hand.
Kate did not squeeze back. “Not dead,” she said again, whispering in case any of the men in black were beyond the curtain or outside the door. “Joshua . . .” The pain made her head swim, made the undertow stronger. “Joshua is not dead.”
O'Rourke listened.
“Have to help,” she whispered. “Promise.”
“I promise,” said the priest.
Ken Mauberly came on Sunday morning when Kate was alone. Despite the pain, she could concentrate and speak. But the pain was still very bad.