'Do they expect me to walk?'
In Ewers's tirade, 'us* had been replaced by 'me'. It was no feat of ratiocination to deduce that Ewers felt his was the important mission at Château du Malinbois, and Edgar Poe merely the hanger-on. If Ewers were such a magnificent wielder of the mighty pen, why had not he been engaged to create this marvellous book?
Ewers had two heavy trunks to Poe's one travelling bag and was unused to arriving at a station without exciting a swarm of gaudy-uniformed porters eager to serve his purpose to the death. Peronne was given over entirely to the military. Any Frenchmen normally employed as attendants were either dead or a few miles off, pointing rifles at the German lines.
Having borne its latest cargo of grey-clad bodies to the altar of war, the locomotive breathed angry dragon-steam. The huge, black engine had a smokestack to shame a paddle-steamer. The crest of Dracula was picked out in gilt on the boiler, somewhat obscured by mud and soot.
The Graf's first appointment in the Kaiser's service was as Director of Imperial Railways. Deviation from the timetable by more than five minutes was punishable by three strokes across the back with the flat of a heated sword. If a miscreant engineer committed a second offence, he was thrown alive into his own furnace. The Graf s foresight became evident in the first hours of the war: eleven thousand individual trains were diverted from civilian service to convey several million reservists from their homes to regimental depots and then to the front. The Schlieffen Plan, devised under the Graf s patronage, was less a campaign strategy in the nineteenth-century sense than a colossal railway timetable.
'Hoy,' Ewers shouted, 'my luggage.'
Vast wheels ground as the train readied to move on. Ewers ran up and down, coat-tails flapping in scalding steam. Brass-bound trunks were tossed out of a carriage on to the platform. Good German workmanship showed as the sturdy cases buckled but did not break. Ewers shouted threats at the departing train, promising numbers and names had been noted down and that steps would be taken to ensure swift dismissal and punitive treatment.
There was a bad smell in the air. Poe recognised it from his last war. The war for Southern Independence. The one they had lost. He had never really purged the taste from his spittle. Mud, gunpowder, human waste, fire and blood. There were new ingredients, petrol and cordite, but the underlying stench was the same on the Somme as at Antietam. For a moment, he was overcome. Death crowded in on his brain, a black flag wrapped around his head, suffocating, blinding, choking.
'What arc you standing there for?' Ewers snapped. 'You look like a scarecrow. *
Ewers did not feel anything. That said much about him.
'Pah,' Ewers spat, waving a dismissive arm.
Poe calmed. He must feed, soon. As always when at the lip of exhaustion and starvation, his senses were more acute. To feel too much is to be mad.
It was little wonder no car waited for them. Beyond the shuttered ticket office and a shelled-out waiting room was military chaos. Soldiers arriving at or returning to the front were sorted into divisions and found places on carts and lorries that took them to where the fighting was done. Sergeants shouted, with the universal bark of sergeants all through history. Men jumped, rifles and kit tangled.
Ewers reluctantly abandoned his trunks into the care of a fire-eyed little corporal with a dash of moustache and a stiff-armed salute. Poe saw in the man the makings of a martinet. They went out on to the station forecourt.
The wall of the ticket office was bullet-pocked at chest height. Rough wooden caskets were stacked to the height of a telegraph pole. An open coffin by the pile was filled to the depth of an inch with undisturbed snow, as if awaiting an Eskimo vampire who slept on a layer of his native ice. Peronne had been extensively bombarded several times and few buildings were undisturbed.
Windows were blown out, roofs sundered, doors burned through, chimneys toppled.
'You there,' Ewers shouted at a sergeant, 'which way to the Château du Malinbois?'
The sergeant, a burly and moustachioed warmfellow, cringed at the sound of the name and shook his head, muttering darkly.
'You don't want to go to the castle, sir,' he said.
'Quite the contrary. We do the business of the Kaiser.'
Ewers was exasperated but Poe was struck by the sergeant's evident fear and disgust. Malinbois was obviously a house of unhappy and frightful repute.
'The castle is a bad place,' the sergeant explained. 'Dead things live there. Things that should be walled up and forgotten.'
Ewers snarled, showing fangs. The soldier was not troubled by the vampire display. So, worse things waited at the château. Poe's interest was almost excited. The sergeant tottered off, leaving Ewers exhaling steam like a train.
'Superstitious peasant,' Ewers spat.
Poe's fangs ached and his heart burned. He needed to drink. Ewers promised luxuries at Malinbois but this fabled castle seemed ever more remote. Official posters warned against fraternisation and disease. It was forbidden to drink the blood of French civilians. It might just as well be forbidden to breathe French air.
A child stood under a street-lamp watching the soldiers, a girl of eleven or twelve. Dressed in a clean pinafore, she had very white skin. In the fall of light, she shone. She was warm. Poe heard her heart beat, heard every rustle of her clothes. Through the fug of war, he tasted the sweetness of her breath.
She looked at him with old eyes. For an instant, she was Virginia. They all looked like Virginia, no matter the colour of their eyes or the style of their hair. There was always a touch of Virginia. He was drawn to the child, pulled across the cratered street, There was already an understanding between them.
'Herr Poe,' Ewers called, distant and irritated.
Reaching the light, he hesitated. The girl's face glowed with life. He was not sure he could touch her without being burned.!
Caution fought his impulses. She was not Virginia. This was a practised French flirt. She was here for someone like him. He saw scabs on her throat, healed bite-marks spreading like a rash from just under her tiny ear down to her collar. She smiled. Her teeth were not good.
Ewers, who had caught up with Poe, voiced exasperation, but did not get between them. He recognised Poe's need.
'If you must,' Ewers said. 'But be quick about it. We are expected at the château.'
Poe imagined Ewers was in another country. His voice was faint, the girl's heartbeat loud. With practised ease, she took his hand and tugged him past the light, towards an alley.
'This is what the posters warn against,' Ewers complained.
Ewers could not spoil the moment. There was already a perfect love. Poe could not close his mouth over his incisors. He cooed, trying to soothe the child. She was not disturbed by his fierce expression.
'Hurry up, Poe. Bite the whore and be done with it.'
Poe waved his hand to silence Ewers and was drawn into the dark, pulled down to his knees. He felt cobbles through his thin trousers. Rinds of hard ice lodged between the stones. The girl slipped into his arms and kissed him gently on the cheek and lips. Her taste was fire. Overpowered, he forced her head back and clamped his mouth to her pulsing neck. Old wounds opened as his teeth slid through her skin. Sweet blood seeped into his mouth, covering his tongue.
He drank, greedily, impassioned. The child writhed in his embrace. As he drank, he knew her. Her name was Gilberte, but her family called her Gigi. He saw her father shot, her mother run off. He saw her in other embraces, suckling other vampires. Her short life was beautiful tragedy. Her blood was poetry.
'Careful, you'll kill the little beast,' Ewers said, hands on Poe's shoulder, wrenching him away.