Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

PENELOPE'S SHROUD

I sought to be what I have become. You both know that. I made a bargain with Arthur, Lord Godalming. He turned me, in exchange for... well, I expect you can imagine. I'm not like you, Katie, or you either, Genevieve. I was taught that life is trade, that favours must be bartered, not given. It's a very Victorian attitude, one that served to make whores of all girls, panders of all men. We spoke of 'the marriage market' and of a girl's 'value'.

Can you remember what it was like to turn? From an early age, I knew I had power. Over my parents, over my friends, over men. It wasn't just being pretty. Katie, you were cleverer than I. And more honest. That's why Charles preferred you. But you could never have hemmed him in to proposing to you. This, you must remember, was when I was alive and just a girl. Imagine how much stronger I became as a vampire, when I could exert a spell of fascination. At first, I was drunk with the possibilities.

Then, as you know, I became unwell.

Other new-borns drank tainted blood and shrivelled to death. That wouldn't happen to Penny. But it did. You, Genevieve, saved my life when you stopped that quack Dr Ravna from sticking more of his leeches to me. I still have the scars. I can only wear high-necked blouses.

I may have grown, may have changed, but at bottom I am still Penelope Churchward. Pretty Penny. Bad Penny. It may not be an entirely happy position. I admit that I envy you both. You have freedoms I have never known. Charles favoured you both over me and I do not blame him. Once, in the first throes of life as a vampire, I thought I hated you all. I tried to avenge myself upon you by taking Charles. I could have drained him and turned him and, I thought then, made him my slave.

I did not. I came close, but his blood changed me.

That's something no one told me before I turned. I was given to understand vampirism was just a physical thing, the drinking of blood. From the first, I was shocked by all the other things that came with that hot copper gush. The feelings, the contradictions, the information. I didn't know that turning vampire made Penny Churchward a vessel, and that taking blood could fill me up with other persons. A weak vampire, such as I was, can drink too much of a strong warm person and lose her own self, become a reincarnation of her victim. I didn't bleed Charles enough for that. If I had, he would have been drained dead. But I took enough to see myself through his eyes, to see Pamela's face over my vanished reflection, to see the monster I was even before I sought the Dark Kiss.

I fought the blood in me. I struggled to purge myself of Charles. Since then, I have only drunk from the weak, the hollow and the professional. Weak tea, with lots of milk.

I was putting the blame in the wrong quarter. Charles Beauregard did not make me what I was, did not colour my world with blood. Nor, really, did Art. Behind it all, behind the Changes, was Dracula.

He was Prince Consort then. Later, he called himself everything from Graf to Prince, Emperor of the Night to King of the Cats. I always think of him as he first presented himself to Jonathan and Mina Harker, to my poor friend Lucy Westenra, as the Count.

We thought too much of titles then. No, I am being unfair. I was the one who thought too much of titles. When Lucy said she was to become Lady Godalming, I was green with envy. I would only be Mrs Charles Beauregard, though I had hopes he would earn and accept a knighthood, perhaps a peerage. Nevertheless, Charles could only be a new-born in society, while Art was an elder.

Dracula. Yes, I shall get to him.

I recovered slowly from my unwise predations, over a decade. I made myself a coven of new-born get. Most of my brood perished in the First World War and the years afterwards. I had chosen only those who wouldn't put up a fight and would accept me as their mistress. I couldn't fit them for survival. That was a great sadness. There are remnants of my bloodline, the Godalming line. I boasted of them to you, Katie. That was the old Penny, I'm afraid. They are degraded beyond redemption. Sometimes they turn up, after a handout of money or blood. Most are wraiths, consumed by an appetite larger than their personalities.

England became difficult for me. Women got the vote, you remember. Secretly, I had always thought we should have it though I couldn't imagine why any woman should waste herself in politics. I knew that voicing suffragist opinions  -  as you did, Katie, heroine of the age  -  devalued one's worth in the arena that really counted. My mother died, my warm friends grew old. Fashions changed, hemlines rose. Everyone talked on the telephone all the time. I was a butterfly with a pin through it, kept under glass, admired sometimes, not really cared for. You, Katie, were always in the thick of things. You didn't turn into a wax flower. That proved it was not an inevitable part of becoming a vampire. It was something in me, in Penelope. Bad Penny's Blues. It became of paramount importance that I find some use for myself.

After the Second World War, I sought out the Count.

I secured an introduction through Mina, of all people. She was his get, after all, and had kept in touch with his household. When Dracula was established here, at Palazzo Otranto, I visited, and placed myself at his disposal.

It would be an exaggeration to say he accepted my offer. He did not resist.

Picture the scene. I arrive at the palazzo above this beach. My head is full of the stories. Of Jonathan Harker ascending that mountain in Transylvania, arriving at Castle Dracula to be greeted by the King Vampire and his bloodthirsty harem. And of Charles and you, Genevieve, venturing into Buckingham Palace when the Count held court there, to put an end to his red reign.

I thought I knew what to expect. If Dracula chose to kill or enslave me, I would accept that. I owed him that much.

There were soldiers on guard, then. It was 1946, and the fires of Europe still smouldered. After delays with the guards  -  I was shocked to find I was required to bribe them  -  I was admitted into the Royal Presence. I was prepared to be crushed by the sheer weight of his person. I knew second- and third-hand that the Count was like a whirlpool. Those who went near him risked being caught up by the currents and swirled under.

Dracula sat in a chair, not on a throne. I was not crushed, not whirled. I was not killed, not enslaved.

I thought, at first, that he was dead. Truly dead.

Then an eye opened. Bright scarlet in that mask of withered grey.

I had one of those blood flashbacks, a scrambled memory from an old lover. I was Charles, in Buckingham Palace in '88, silver scalpel in hand. All around was spilled blood and threat, roused monsters moving swiftly.

Then, nothing.

The red eye regarded me with no apparent interest. All my apprehensions washed away. It was most disappointing. I had half expected to throw myself into this maelstrom, to lose the last of the old Penny. If I had become one of Dracula's brides, it would all have been over.

Instead, I found myself mistress of the monster's house.

It was a position someone had to take. I was there.

It was something of a surprise to me, a shock even, that the Count was so biddable. I do not mean that he was weak-willed. Rather, that he no longer had an interest in the world.

It had all become too much for even him.

This is the secret I have kept. Dracula was not what he had been. He slept much of the time. In his waking hours, he would feed and wander in his thoughts. History had caught up with him, and passed him by.

Once, he had been passionate, obsessed with novelty and energy, with new inventions and new slang. I found evidence of his bygone enthusiasms everywhere, from half-built war machines to reports from scientists and scholars, commissioned long ago and now cast aside unread. The papers are under that coffin, waiting to be burned. I give myself the credit for that. I have been under pressure to turn the material over to various factions. Mr Profumo of the War Office appealed to my patriotism, Mrs Luce of the United States to my paranoia, and Mr Gromyko of the Soviet Union to my pacifism. I have resisted them all and Dracula's secrets shall die with him.

That Dracula, the plotter and schemer, the waiter in the wings of history, was dead. I became governess to his ghost, the walking shell of the King Vampire. I don't know what it was that changed him. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All his get who perished in the Nazi Death Camps. A Labour Government in England. The ringing down of the Iron Curtain. Some infection from the morti viventi of Italy. That damned song, the 'Dracula Cha Cha Cha'.

The man who had mastered Bradshaw's Guide and could whistle airs from Gilbert and Sullivan could not cope with broken sound barriers and rock 'n' roll. You can take so much on board, Katie. I've read your articles on Kerouac and Eddie Cochran, on the Mau Mau and Brigitte Bardot, and my head spins. I've tried to keep up, honestly I have. I've read Peyton Place and The Catcher in the Rye and From the Terrace. But sometimes, I just want it all to stop, to be frozen as it was. That's the sliver of ice that first pricks the heart of a vampire who is on the way to becoming the wrong sort of elder, the type the Crimson Executioner was stalking. I understand why the Count wanted to climb into his coffin and pull down the lid.

As you said, Katie, I am an arranger. I was trained to be a Victorian wife, which involved a combination of self-effacing tact, ruthless bookkeeping and stage management. Any of my class could run a country, an army, or a listed company with far more efficiency and imagination than the overgrown schoolboys who hold positions of power. If mankind is to survive the century, I advocate dedicating society not to the principles of Karl Marx or Henry Ford but those of Mrs Beeton.

When I became the effective head of the House of Dracula, I finally found a position. These last few years, I have been Dracula. I have maintained his correspondence, played off the world leaders who've flirted with him. I have procured for him, found him warm bodies to bleed. And when he lost interest even in willing sacrifices, I have fed him, bloating myself on young blood and squeezing it from my veins into his mouth.

The House of Dracula is one of the great fortunes of the world, and will now be dispersed as I see fit, to deserving causes throughout the globe. The House of Vajda, as represented by poor Princess Havisham, wished an alliance so they could return in triumph to their homeland. I am not sure what I thought would happen after the wedding. This was one of my attempts to stir the Count from his lassitude. It was plain he would never consider me a fitting consort, but Asa had bloodline, breeding, and pre-Renaissance savagery. It was my hope that the marriage would wake him up, make him Dracula again.

I suppose I loved him. I suppose I loved Charles.

I came close to killing Charles. While I was delirious and dotted with leeches, I dreamed of simply tearing out the heart you had taken from me, Genevieve, and squeezing it dry in your face.

I did kill Dracula.

I have told myself Charles freed me finally to do the deed. By dying. He was the last of my warm life. I'm sorry, Katie, but you're not alive. Like me. With Charles's death, I passed from living memory and became a ghost.

It was my position to destroy the monster who had changed the world, who had spread the rot of the twentieth century. I know I was living a contradiction. For years, I'd thought I was bringing Dracula to the point where he might enter again on the international stage, but I was always aware that in the end I would kill to prevent that great return. I am a woman. I am entitled to change my mind, to hold two opposite things in my mind at once. I know you understand me, my sisters.

I laid the groundwork long in advance. I had the weapon brought to the palace by the warm tool I then schooled to take the blame. I used Dracula's own gold to purchase the silver scalpel of Jack the Ripper, the weapon that killed Art and the old Queen, that was the symbol of the revolution against Dracula in which you, Katie, distinguished yourself. It was stolen for me by a vampire cracksman of our vintage, a fine Victorian scoundrel, and smuggled here by the American who will soon be charged with the murder of Count Dracula. Don't feel too sorry for him. He is a genuine and unprincipled vampire slayer, and a thoroughly bad lot, if amusing at times.

I had the scalpel for months. I had in my mind Charles's memory of holding the knife, and now I held it myself. I would put on gloves and play with it, enjoying the tingle of silver through cotton. I touched its point to my tongue once, and shocked myself unconscious. I am sorry not to have it still. It has so many associations. I am glad that I could give it yet one more layer of meaning.

Maybe I was waiting for Charles to die.

Maybe I was waiting for an audience.

Maybe I was waiting to be convinced against my plan.

This story is not all to my credit. I admit Princess Asa proved to be a great personal trial. I saw I had miscalculated and that she intended to force me out of this household after the marriage. She was furious that Dracula would not come out of his crypt and meet with her and even began to suspect an imposture was being practised. She remembered the Count's habit of employing doubles to take his place on the field of battle  -  do you recall that Hungarian actor who perished in the First World War, Katie?  -  and wondered if I was not trying to palm a survival of that practice off on her.

If I were a passionate murderess rather than a scientific one, I should have cut her throat and left her to drain. As it turns out, that might have been a mercy. Whatever happens, I shall see she is taken care of. In her current state, she's no harm to anyone. The passing of Dracula was like the sinking of a continent, and Princess Asa's mind has been sucked into the maelstrom by the whirlwaves.

Dracula meant so much to us all. When the elders gathered for the ball, you saw how many were imitations of him. They dressed in fashions he once set and then abandoned, all those red-lined black capes and starched evening shirts. They styled themselves Counts and Princes and Barons as he did. They relived excerpts of his biography, like the leading men of provincial touring companies, echoing his deeds always.

Why was it I who killed him?

Do you remember Van Helsing, Katie? And you know how Mr Stoker in his strange book imagined the professor and his stalwart band pursuing the Count and cutting him down? In Mr Stoker's world as it should have been, they were all strong  -  Mina, Jack Seward, Jonathan, even Art  -  and in the ordinary course of the world as it was, they would have been strong enough. But Dracula was more than a man, more than a vampire elder. He was an idea, a philosophy, a big simple answer for an age that was tiring of complicated questions. We cannot blame him. We chose him.

It was time someone ended all that.

I was best placed for it. I was not, so far as I am aware, a puppet of that creature we encountered in the Colosseum. She was there, though. You were right about that, Katie. I think her ideas about vampire elders were shaped by his presence, just beyond the boundaries of her territory. Everything she assumed about him and read in the hearts of those who were imitations of him, was untrue of you, Genevieve, as it will be untrue of you, Katie. But it will be true of me.

My heart is dead. My loves are gone. There will be no more.

When I entered his tomb, the Count made no attempt to resist. It was not a scene like the one Mr Stoker describes: the timid vampire slayers approaching the overwhelming monster and standing up to him, invoking forces of great good to overcome titanic evil. I believe he was expecting me. He waited in silence. He did not want to go to his own party.

I killed him because I hated him, and everything he had done to my world. I killed him because I loved him, and wished to save him from the humiliation that would come if his condition were public knowledge. I killed him because I could.

I stuck the scalpel into his heart. He took hold of it  -  very perceptive, Katie  -  not to pluck it free but to hold it in place, as if he didn't trust his heart not to spit it out of his chest.

You see, in my crime, I had an accomplice. Count Dracula himself.

At the end, as his heart burst, I saw the old life in his eyes. He had triumphed over death for so many years, but his final victory was over life. His own. It took all his great strength, and he could not have done it without me.

I think I was his creature, as the Crimson Executioner was that witch's creature. He took me in and, through subtle influence, shaped me into the sword he would fall upon. Maybe I am reading too much into a few glances, trying to heave the guilt from my shoulders. That would be quite in character, as I'm sure you can attest, Katie.

I left him to die alone.

It was the child, I am convinced, who took off his head and made a plaything of it. As we know, she is inclined to the theatrical. I think we were supposed to see that flourish, the head on the pike, as a warning. She didn't make me do what I did, but she knew what I was doing. I can't explain that, but I think we have learned not to ask for explanations with regard to her. You got caught up in all that, Katie. You were the one there when the girl fetched off his head and all the blood poured out. I am sorry. I did not mean for you to be hurt. This was a private matter, between myself and the Count. But it could not remain private, for you must always blunder or force your way into everything. That used to annoy me a lot. Now, I am thankful for it.

There. Now you have it. My story.