Now Kulakov’s body, hands still chained behind its back, had been dragged some twenty-five or thirty yards from the gallows, to its next temporary resting place. There with some difficulty it was being chained upright, feet at ground level, to one of the three tall, empty stakes that had been driven deep into the muddy sands. by tradition, the freshly hanged at Execution Dock remained so mounted until their already lifeless lungs had been drowned thrice by the high tides.
One after the other, the Russian’s now-unbreathing comrades joined him, were fastened to the trees which stood one on either side of his, forming a ghastly Golgotha. Surely, in some of the onlookers’ minds, the tableau evoked thoughts of a certain antique and much more famous triple execution. but no one commented aloud upon the fact.
By the time the dead body of the third pirate was thus displayed, and the day’s task of the hangmen essentially concluded, many of those watching had gone on about their business.
But perhaps they had missed something of importance. Did a murmur of morbid excitement pass through the remaining crowd when the central one of the newly chained corpses was seen to move? Could it be that the captain and ringleader of this pirate band was still not dead after having been hanged for a quarter of an hour?
Such an event would not have been without precedent.
We will assume that Altamont, in his dry way, even commented to his companion upon the most famous such case, which some of those watching Kulakov might have seen with their own eyes–that of William Duell, executed at Tyburn a quarter of a century earlier, in 1740. Duell, though only sixteen years of age when hanged, had been widely noted for his sadism. Convicted of rape as well as murder, his body was turned over to medical anatomists... but when finally placed on the dissecting table it displayed certain faint signs of life. The surgeons, ready to try a different experiment than that originally scheduled, applied their skills at healing and soon had the patient sitting up, drawing deep breaths and drinking warm wine.
Duell had cheated the hangman after all. Returned to Newgate, he was eventually ordered to be transported to America.
Hangings here at Execution Dock, with tide-drowning added as a flourish under Admiralty auspices, were somewhat more thorough. No one put up on one of these stakes for show had ever tasted wine again. Certainly the sharp-eyed Altamont did not find the signs of life so stubbornly displayed by today’s first hanged man at all perturbing; rather amusing.
Altamont, alternately smirking and frowning over his latest glass of hot buttered rum, made a few remarks on the case of young Duell to his fair companion, who took a somewhat different view of such phenomena.
The woman said in her abstracted way: “I think we will not have to worry about Kulakov–he will die today. I spent but little time with him last night.”
“Oh, he’ll die today, and no mistake.” The man stared at her for the space of several rummy breaths before adding: “Up to your mystification, are you, Doll? I’ve noticed you have a taste for riddles. but do go on with it–I like it well.”
Altamont and the very un-English woman he called Doll–he had tried her real name once and found it unpronounceable–remained in their snug tavern window for an hour longer, until he had made sure with his own eyes that the swiftly running tide had raised the surface of the Thames well above that pale dot of a distant, red-bearded face. Then, humming a sea-song to himself, and more than content with the day’s events so far, the prosperous observer called for his waiting carriage, offered his arm to his woman, and leisurely took his way to the Angel Inn on the south bank, where snug warm rooms awaited them.
Early next morning Turlis and his helper returned to the scene to check on their most recent handiwork. June at that latitude brought full sunlight well before many folk of any class or inclination were up and about. both men expressed mild surprise on observing that the central stake of the three was now unoccupied, the chains in which they had hanged the Russian’s body for display now lying in the mud below, still looped and locked together but quite empty. Surely mere tide and current could not have done this–yesterday these experts had secured their trophy well. but there were obvious explanations. Either relatives had shown up belatedly to spirit his corpse away–or someone, even in this enlightened seventh decade of the eighteenth century, had coveted morsels of hanged man’s flesh as an aid to practicing the black arts of magic.
The hangmen, discussing these possibilities, were momentarily distracted by the sound of shrill feminine screaming. The sound was repeated several times, carrying readily over the water, through the bright incongruous early morning sun, all the way from the south shore. Only momentarily distracted; at the river’s edge in Wapping, such racket was common enough. Actually, what Turlis and his comrade heard were the screams of horror uttered by some innocent female servant who had just opened the door of a certain room in the dockside Angel Inn.
More than a hundred years would pass before any rational investigator connected that hanged man’s disappearance during the night with the shocking sight which met the maid’s eyes a few hours later. Not that the maid was startled by the walking undead form of Alexander Ilyich Kulakov–she was perhaps an hour too late for that. No, she had unsuspectingly come upon a corpse much more severely mangled.
Shortly after the midnight immediately following the execution, Altamont had been awakened by something in his room. It was a supreme despair, more than terror, that choked off his first scream in his throat when he beheld what had roused him and now stood beside his bed. It was the figure of Kulakov, still wearing the prison clothes in which he had been hanged. The Russian’s red beard was dripping water, his dead face a ghastly livid hue, his strangled throat, though no longer required to breathe, made croaking noises. but his limbs were free of chains, and his white hands were half-raised and twitching, groping toward the bed. The pirate’s eyes, the only feature appearing to be fully alive in that corpse-countenance, were fixed on Altamont.
Doll in turn was awakened by Altamont’s hoarse abandoned cry. On seeing Kulakov, she registered mild surprise–so, she had been wrong about Kulakov’s dying a true death yesterday! It was obvious to her that the Russian, stimulated by Doll’s repeated attentions on the voyage and in his Newgate cell, had, after all, become a vampire instead.
The woman immediately slid her compact, dark-nippled, quite un-English body naked from the bed. She smiled, and before her bedmate’s uncomprehending eyes melted into mist-form and disappeared–only pausing long enough to pick up her jeweled bracelet from the bedside table, and slip it on her wrist. The bangle went with her when she vanished–we who are wont to travel in that fashion commonly carry with us a few small items, most commonly our clothing, when we go changing forms.
Kulakov paid little attention to either the woman’s presence or her departure. The red rage filling his whole mind concentrated his attention elsewhere. In the next moment, the hands of the undead man had fastened their icy, awkward grip on Altamont. Then the vampire– new to the powers he had been given, almost as bewildered as his victim by his own seemingly miraculous transformation, and still unsure of how to handle it–plucked the treacherous, nightshirted Englishman like a louse out of his bedclothes, and cast him aside with stunning force. In the next moment Kulakov, moving in a kind of somnambulistic fury, groaning and grunting foul Russian expletives, began ransacking the room in search of his stolen treasure. Drawers, bags, and boxes were hurled about and emptied, furniture shifted in a grip of giant’s strength. All in vain.
A moment later the searcher grunted in befuddled triumph, on discovering some small, hard objects sewn into a quilt or featherbed. Carrying his find to the moonlit window, smashing the dim smoky glass in a reflexive move to gain more light, (not that his newly empowered eyes really needed any more; but Kulakov did not yet understand this fact) he ripped the cloth to shreds. Inside, to his great disappointment, the searcher discovered only sand and gravel, what was to him mere ordinary dirt. In anger he hurled the torn cloth from him, letting its worthless contents scatter into the Thames below.