'How would you rate your night's work?'
'It was good hunting. I drank from all but one of my kills.'
'Which is more important to you, the feeding or the killing?'
Poe regretted the question. It prompted Richthofen to throw up his guards. At first, Poe had thought the Baron genuinely baffled by such probing; now, he realised Richthofen merely measured his words, taking care to say nothing that might alert an Air Service censor.
The dog, a sad-eyed white beagle, emerged from the grass and padded over towards them. The cur must be surviving on dead men's scraps.
'The victory counts,' Richthofen said, at last.
'And what is a victory to you?'
Richthofen turned away and looked out over still water.
'And what is a lake to you, poet?'
It was an indifferent lake. Murky but not reeking, unbeautiful but not grotesque. A British fighter had come down in it the night Richthofen let Ball's observer away. Wreckage had been dredged out and fixed to the trophy wall in the castle. The body of the pilot had not been found.
'I can't tell you, but I can tell you what feeding is to me, what the blood of women means . .
'Women,' Richthofen snorted.
Theo looked up, killing a smile.
'I do not apologise for my nature,' Poe said. 'Though I have been, of necessity, a soldier, I am not a killer by inclination.'
'My brother claims he would prefer to be a lover than a fighter. But he lies to himself.'
'To me, the act of vampirism is a tender communion, an assuagement of solitude, a reaffirmation in death of life ...'
'You lose me, poet. Do you not kill?'
Poe was ashamed. White, dead women haunted him. Teeth and eyes and long, long hair.
'I have killed,' he admitted. 'When I was a new-born, especially. I did not understand the nature of my condition.'
I am a new-born. I have been a vampire for only eight years. Professor Ten Brincken tells me I change constantly.'
'But you become more a killer?'
Richthofen nodded once. He drew a pistol from a leather holster and fired once, smartly. The beagle, surprised, was pierced through the head. It kicked, gouting blood from its ears, and lay dead.
'Absurd dog,' Richthofen said, suppressing a shudder. For some unknown reason, he found the harmless animal as repulsive as a plague rat.
Theo was alarmed by the casual kill. The shot resounded, assaulting Poe's sensitive eardrums. A flight of ducks burst from a clump of reeds. The dog-blood smell pricked Poe's red thirst. The animal was repulsive, but he remembered the sweetness of Gigi. At Malinbois, warm women were sometimes provided for the fliers. Poe hungered.
'My country requires I be a killer,' Richthofen said. 'I do my duty.'
in centuries to come, you may change greatly. Your country's requirements may change, freeing you from duties. You may become a lover too.'
Richthofen, mild and cold and pale, looked directly at Poe. 'I have no centuries to come. I am a dead man.'
Poe looked at Theo, puzzled.
'I was given to understand that you turned without passing through death? You yourself told me so.'
The Baron looked disgusted. 'I do not mean that, poet. I am a truly dead man. All of us in JG1, we are dead men with temporary use of our corpses. It is likely that we will not survive the war.'
Theo's lips pressed in a serious line. He exhaled smoke and tossed the last of a cigarette into the lake.
'It's Nungesser. You drank his blood. You think his thoughts.'
The tiny coal of the cigarette hissed.
I think my own thoughts, Kretschmar-Schuldorff. But you are right. The Frenchman was like me. He knew he was dead.
Each victory for him was a reprieve. When I killed him, he was not surprised. He had known death would catch up with him eventually. I knew that as I tore his throat out and drank his hot blood.'
'Do you deem those you defeat your comrades?' Poe asked.
'The tragedy of war is the pitting of like against like. We fliers have more in common with those we fight than with those for whom we fight. I shall most likely die in the air. Oswald Boelcke, my teacher, died in the stupidest of accidents. All of us, us so-called heroes, die. We fall from the sky in flames. Only the plodding dogs will survive.'
Poe thought of Goring totting up everyone's score, of Ewers pestering officials for advancement, of Ten Brincken taking measurements, of Kurten and Haarmann tending their master's guns. He thought of Edgar Poe stooping to the writing of propaganda.
'Professor Ten Brincken claims he will make you invincible.'
'He follows us with callipers and a stop-watch, prattling of measurements and science. He has never been in the air. He cannot know. There is no science up there.'
'What is there?'
'You're the poet. You tell me.'
'I can't make poetry of what I don't know.'
Richthofen took off his dark glasses. His eyes did not shrink in the sunlight. His face was set like marble.
'Up there, in the night sky, is war. Eternal war. Not only with the British and French, but with the air. The sky does not wish us in it. Us, the presumptuous ones, it kills. It takes the Boelckes and the Immelmanns, the Balls and the Nungessers, and dashes them to the earth. We shall never be its creatures.'
He did not look up as he spoke.
'After the war, then what?'
For the first time in Poe's experience, Richthofen laughed. It was a brief bark, like a branch snapping.
'"After the war"? There is no "after the war".'
34
An Immelmann Turn
There was an unspoken truce between them: no more talk of banishing Kate from the war.
Charles wanted her about because he wanted an outside view. Through their link, fading as his blood assimilated, Kate knew she comforted him. It was disappointing to be allowed into the counsels of the Diogenes Club not on her own merits but because she reminded this decent old man of other women, the women of his youth: his wife, Pamela, the sainted Genevieve.
As they were driven in an open car to Maranique, Charles dozed, exhausted, drained. She kept a blanket wrapped round his legs and held him upright. In sleep, he had his arm around her.
Who did he dream she was? Having survived Frank Harris, the Terror and thirty years as a vampire, she knew her character was firm. But Charles's ghost women were threatening. She risked becoming one of the phantom sisters who haunted him. Besides Pamela and Genevieve, there were Penelope, Mrs Harker, Mary Kelly, the old Queen, Mata Hari. Apart from Pamela, dead before the Coming of Dracula, vampires all.
Vampire personalities were unstable, shifting. Constantly taking sustenance from others, they became a patchwork of their victims' traits, shrinking in themselves, losing their original characters. Kate's sisters-in-darkness withered in their minds before their bodies gave out.
When she turned, Penelope, Charles's fianc6e, became unrecognisable. A recluse now, she received warm young visitors in her dark house, clinging with tenacity to a life-in- death she despised.
Kate knew she was strong. She was still undead, still herself, still sane. Or as sane as she had ever been. If she'd lived, contrary to what the kindly Charles said, she'd have been a spinster freak, a dotty old aunt in trousers.
This was the road she had cycled the night Edwin was lost. Again the sky was muddy white. This time, it was near dawn not near dark. Again aircraft were aloft. Three Camel fighters returning to the field. They weren't flying from the lines, so they'd not been out on an offensive patrol. They were 'stunting', which was frowned on, turning wheels in the air, each trying to tie the circle tighter than his fellows. For every two pilots killed by enemy action, another died in training or recreational flight. Two Camels harried the third, hawks moving in on prey, trying to force him down.