I stood in the waiting room, looking at my pocketwatch. The manor’s ceilings were high, but the room felt squeezed for all of the clutter in it. Two separate chandeliers fought for attention, the larger one hanging from the center and the smaller pushed near the corner like an orbiting moon. They were both bright silver, made of swooping, curving lines and reflecting enough candlepower to blind. There were two couches which faced each other sternly, like they were arguing over the monstrously large table between them. The couches were high-backed, mahogany like the walls and floors, but like a cathedral in inspiration, with tall pointed staves and overwrought armrests. Nearly every bit of free space had yet another table in it, small and delicate and holding colorful flowers, vases, little gaudy statuettes, and expensive photographs of grim people. The walls would have been quite nice undecorated, but added to the claustrophobic, almost manic air by being covered with mirrors and portraits and convex glass baubles of indeterminate function. I could not imagine the expense of keeping even this single room clean, and for all that the place did not make the owner seem magisterial or powerful but insecure and desperate. Then again, I knew what she wanted, and that is enough to make anyone seem desperate.
I glanced at my burdens. Thomas was where I left him, propped up in the corner of one of the couches. He was swaddled entirely in thick strips of black cloth, pulled around tight. When he was awake he sometimes wriggled and swayed, like a cocooned wretch. Dull moans would escape from within, low and droning and evocative of helpless animals. He had carried on this way through much of the carriage ride here, causing the muttonchopped cabman to glance back at us the entire trip in what I imagine he believed a surreptitious fashion. When we arrived he made no offer to help me sling Thomas over my shoulder and he paid close attention to his horses when I tipped him generously.
My other burden… the box sat on the floor. It was tarted up with blue silks spread from the tall handle down to the bottom corners, like a box tent for tiny fairies. Thinking about the box made me think of its contents, and I quickly returned my attention to my watch.
A door swished open just enough to permit a man to glide into the room before shutting it behind him. It was the butler, the chief of the servants, whose name I had been told at some point during this mad affair. I believe I was supposed to be honored by his personal ministrations, since Her Grace maintained several sets of servants for the several sets of visitors she received. However I found the man so anodyne as to be repellent, a bespoke butler from a butler factory in the east where these things can be done economically. He wore the perfect suit, fine and expensive but not attention-grabbing. He had the perfect shoes and haircut, the perfect stance and gait, the perfect attitude of disdainful obsequiousness that reminded the served whose house they were in without giving the slightest cause for offense. He glided towards me, stopping at the perfect distance away and giving a small bow before speaking.
“Her Grace is most grateful that you have arrived. She will only be a few moments in preparing herself.”
She had probably been ready for hours. I imagined her in the next room over with her own pocketwatch, waiting for a quarter hour to pass before she made her entrance.
“I am honored by her attentions,” I said.
“Would sir care for refreshment?”
I had opened my mouth to decline when I changed my mind. I was worn out from carrying Thomas and the box around all day, and worn out from the months-long escapade required by this client. And during all of this time, through several meetings and long instructions written in a tight, close hand, I had been obliged by the reputation of my firm to be entirely professional, a machine with a pleasant face who would not turn up his nose if a client requested referrals for having their mother drowned in sewage.
“Coffee, if you would,” I said, curtly, though it was late in the evening.
“Of course, sir. I will attend to it myself.”
And with that the butler glided back whence he came, and throwing all decorum to the wind I threw myself down onto the couch next to Thomas. I let myself spread out and sigh, like a human being enervated by long toil. I would be offering to shake hands, next.
It has not yet been a decade since farms of our sort have become legitimate businesses. More than a few of the investors fear recriminalization, even in famously tolerant Britain. Complete and unwavering professionalism has been mandated to mitigate against this, and in truth I was appreciative to be given such an influential client. My personal behavior could affect the profitability of the firm as a whole, could affect even its legal existence! Such was the influence of the Duchess. It would be exciting but for its disquieting nature and the maddeningly bureaucratic process.
The butler returned and in spite of myself I jerked to attention, folding my hands neatly in my lap to prevent them from running amok. Coffee was set down, a small gold-rimmed cup on a small gold-rimmed saucer, both of china so fine they would disintegrate in a breeze. Before I could even dream of doing it myself, the smaller, still finer cup of milk was being poured in and cubes of sugar were being added by means of long, slender tongs that I am sure were real silver. I was prepared to be very irritated when the butler simply vanished and left me to enjoy my drink. The perfect servant.
I had only just lifted the cup to my face, seeking to test its temperature gently, when the room’s largest doors exploded inward to unleash Her Grace in full stride. I had to put my cup down without smashing it while rising to my feet. I imagine I looked like a lanky puppet whose strings have been seized by a child.
“Oh, Edward, sit, sit!” bellowed Her Grace when I had finished standing. I put on my most neutral smile and waited for her to sit first anyway.
This took rather longer than it might have. The Duchess was wearing a gray dress with enormous skirts, like a ballroom piece. She had long gloves on in matching gray and her gray hair was elegantly moulded and strung with pearls. Diamonds glittered on her ears and upon her neck lay a silver chain with a light blue sapphire. Only her eyes had color enough to break the bland picture: they were green and bright with anticipation. At the precise moment she had finished manipulating her skirt and sat down, her own cup of coffee appeared, identical to mine in every way. Perhaps I have become a trendsetter.
I sat down, now, wearing a cultivated nervousness that some older women find delightful and report to their friends as politeness. I folded my hands again and let her look over her cup at me, openly evaluating me the way the landed do. It had been intimidating the first time.
“It has been quite a journey, Edward.”
“Indeed, Your Grace.”
“I am a very lucky woman to have such capable assistance.”
“I am flattered, Your Grace. I only hope we can live up to your expectations.”
She put down her cup. Her bright green eyes had not left mine or blinked since she began talking and I was becoming uneasy. Her Grace had been until now frightened, almost meek, hiding it continuously but ineffectively with her army of servants and plentiful supply of gilded nonsense. I saw her then as a fat old bird, pampered into uselessness and preferring safe corners to open skies. She seemed now a cat newly escaped from imprisonment, prowling along the top of a fence and hunting for the joy of it.
“May I show you something, Edward, dear? I know you are waiting to get to the main course of this affair.”
“Your Grace, I would be honored! Anything you may deign to share is worthy of my small attentions.”
I made sure to appear properly shocked by the very thought of being shown a something by a figure of such dignity and rank. She made all of the right cooing noises, as over a precocious and adorable child.
Her Grace held out one gloved hand and a silent servant handed her a smallish green box. Unlike the rest of her things it seemed designed more for use than display, being simple and unadorned and slightly faded in places, like it had been handled often. I crinkled my face with curiosity and the Duchess leaned forward with her box.
She opened it and revealed it a diptych of photographs. I saw on my left a very old and cracked piece, a daguerreotype or similar, of a young boy dressed up very properly and unhappy with having to sit for a picture. He was perhaps five or six years old, and the picture did not admit much of his surroundings but it was an indoor place. On my right was a newer picture, cleaner, of a man in his twenties wearing a crisp uniform covered in medals and emblems of rank. He stood very straight and looked at the viewer with an almost threatening directness.
“Impressive, isn’t he?” said the Duchess.
“Yes, madam. Most impressive.”
“He was very successful in service to Her Majesty. Very successful.”
Her Grace had pulled the picture back a little and leaned forward to look at it. She looked to be staring into the far distance when she did, her green eyes becoming themselves distant. I felt that she had spent a lot of time tracing these pictures with sad eyes, and while she was looking she seemed to forget the world around her.
“Your son, madam?” I asked.
She snapped the book shut into one hand, sending eddies of dust spinning through the glare of the twin chandeliers. The sound was firecracker loud in the silent room and I jumped in my seat.
“My son…” she said, leaning back slowly until her back was rigidly straight and I was reminded of schoolchildren learning their posture. I cursed myself for speaking and vowed now to say nothing unless spoken to.
“Do you think sons must have fathers, Edward?”
I did not have to manufacture the look of surprise on my face. She was clutching the closed diptych in one hand, squeezing it, and both her bright eyes were turned on me like burning search lamps.
“I think sons can survive most anything, Your Grace,” I finally said, trying immediately afterward to work out if I had meant anything by it.
“I sent my Lorian away to boarding school when he was only eight years old. I was assured it was the correct thing to do, the proper thing. And to whom could I look for guidance? His father had been long passed by then, and my own parents as well.”
She was no longer burning me with her eyes but looking again into the far distance, seeing memories much brighter than old photographs could capture.
“He was such a delight, as an infant. You know, some of my class hardly see their own children! They are raised by governors, tutors, wet-nurses.”
I opened my mouth but closed it quickly, for she was still looking hard at something in her past. She had relaxed her grip on the diptych somewhat, letting it fall to her lap where with her free hand she brushed her fingertips against it, caressing it.
“They leave you anyway, Edward. That’s the thing of it. I don’t think anybody really considers mothers when they set out to conquer life.”
She was looking at me now and I felt tested, judged. Was she asking after my own mother? That would be a rather unpleasant subject. I am sure I was supposed to agree with her, to say that people- or perhaps only sons- really are unreliable and ungrateful. I have said many untrue things in the presence of my clients and I was not even particularly opposed to this statement. But I was transfixed by her stare and I felt like she was half in a different world, that any response on my part might be judged by standards I did not understand.
“Yes, madam,” I said, quietly.
“After all of my love- so much love, Edward! So much affection and devotion given selflessly into a tiny little bundle. And they beg you for more, cry for it, shriek with happiness when Mother comes to play with them. Until they go off to school. I lost him the very moment he stepped on that train, Edward. When he returned that year...”
She sighed and broke off her piercing look. I suppressed a shudder with difficulty and felt a spell of dizziness as the baubled and spangled room spun back into focus so quickly it seemed like Her Grace was falling away. She was so gray without her lance-like eyes, and everything else was bright and of such choreographed cheer as to be frightfully depressing.
“Yes, madam,” I said, quietly.
“Show me the creature,” she said suddenly, in a tone of command. She indicated Thomas with her eyes and I found I was stuck on those eyes, like they were independent of their gray, sunken master. I froze momentarily, because I had known she would want to see it and I had planned on trying gently to dissuade her. Many well-bred persons cannot abide ugliness, and I was sure it would add a sour note to the entire affair. But my hands were moving towards Thomas’ swaddling cloths before my mind had caught up with them, and there was no turning back.
Slowly, carefully, I peeled off the layers of black cloth. I had clothed and unclothed the beast so often it was no longer difficult but tedious, time-consuming and repetitive and too particular to be entrusted to subordinates. I tried to keep the cloth together as it spooled onto the floor, the outer layer dry but the inner sticky with sweat. For the first time in a long time I noticed Thomas’ smell, and in the precisely pleasant room it seemed appalling and loud. But Her Grace said nothing, and her green eyes were fixed unblinking on the creature.
His head was revealed first as I gently pulled off the inner layer. It was gray, not inoffensive like Her Grace’s dress but slimy, piscine, subterranean. Thomas was essentially bald, with thick black hair growing long from a few random splotches. His eyes were closed, his nose and mouth were smeared with half-dried snot. His head was just misshapen enough to be noticed, his top half like an old, weatherworn mountain instead of a dome.
He wore little else beneath his cloth, only his loins being further covered. He was not really fat but he lacked all muscle tone, with drooping breasts and flopping gray stomach. His arms were sticks, even thinner than mine, and when they fell open without the swaddling cloth his hands were revealed as noticeably overlarge, with long sneaking fingers and crusty, cracked nails. When I was finished unwrapping him I sat back and said nothing, letting Her Grace take in the monster as she’d wished.
“A vampire,” she finally said in a low voice. “It is hard to believe I was so frightened of them as a child. Are any of the old stories true, Edward?”
I hesitated. The science of haemophagic heliophobia is complicated and arcane, and its depth and breadth invite suspicion when it is remembered that the entire subject was so recently unlawful. I felt I had to step with care, but that I had been returned a bit of the power taken from me by Her Grace’s green eyes and unexpected frankness. I was the expert, here.
“Most of the outrageously magical aspects of haemophagia are unsupported by evidence, Your Grace. The afflicted cannot fly or turn into bats, they are perfectly visible in mirrors, they do not react to silver or to religious iconography. Most of their food is solid, actually.”
“Really?” She sounded quite surprised, a common reaction.
“Oh, yes. Blood is… of limited nutritional value. They need protein and fat like any other creature. They are… just animals, really.”
We sat for a time looking at Thomas sleeping, Her Grace with genuine interest. Sometimes I thought that vampires kept their fantastical name even when their reality is revealed as prosaic and underwhelming because they are so nearly similar to so many things that nothing quite suits as a metaphor. Thomas was like a baby, but not; like a man, but not; like an ape, but not. It was easiest just to call them vampires, and compare other things to them.
Thomas’ eyes burst open and everyone jumped back, including myself and the servants who had been pretending to take no interest. Her Grace was excited, holding one hand up to her chest and pulling her precious diptych into her body for safety. The feeling of fright changed quickly into mirth; Thomas’ bloodshot eyes point impossibly outward, each toward its nearest ear, and he very rarely seems to focus on anything at all. The effect was rather comical.
“Oh!” said the Duchess. “My. Hard to imagine them as dashing villains, isn’t it?”
I smiled.
“I cannot imagine a vampire running a castle, madam, however rustic. But it’s not…the affliction invariably destroys the reason of the afflicted, we’ve never been able to fully stop it. Usually, the more, erm, physically capable and extroverted the subject the quicker they deteriorate. Most of them die within the first few weeks, using up all of their body fat without being able to plan enough to get appropriate food.”
“Can they speak?”
“Sometimes. Thomas here has never spoken, but I’ve had conversations with subjects before. If they are lucky, if their own stock and strain are the right type they may last several months as high-functioning individuals.”
“But no longer?”
“There are rumors,” I said. “If fed and kept appropriately a vampire can live for centuries. So an intelligent vampire could be quite a power, madam, if it were real. But most of us don’t believe it’s possible.”
“Thomas has been… husbanded?”
This was what I was most desiring to avoid, for the truth of haemophage-breeding is not a pleasant one, despite the consistent demand for vampire blood. Past centuries of practice in the shadows has not helped our reputation, and as the world becomes more liberal and democratic our ways become more anachronistic. It is one of the reasons my firm so desires the support of the influential, that we might bring the practices of science more fully to bear on our field.
“Yes, Your Grace,” I said. “We cultivate strains very carefully. As you know, most of our stock comes from criminals and the very recently deceased, and we have learned how to match strain for stock with great precision. In general we do not breed for intelligence but for longevity and passivity. I certainly won’t bore you with the many types and subtypes we’ve classified but Thomas here is, ah, pedigreed, so to speak.”
“For longevity?”
“Yes, Your Grace. Anyone given Thomas’ affliction will live, without aging, for a time period considerable in excess of what is common. I must-”
“How long?”
She turned her green lances on me and I shook openly, losing at once whatever preeminence my expertise had given me. A great many vacillations and half-truths spun through my mind but in the glare of her eyes I rejected them.
“Ten years,” I said. “No longer.”
She nodded and removed her beams, looking again into that far distant place within herself. I relaxed a little; we had of course discussed the time table in the past but I had so worried that the reality of the situation would nullify her previous assurances, that the smell and sight of Thomas would remind her of the sordidness of it all. Now, though, she seemed quite committed; I felt she had long ago made her decision and would not change it for anything.
“Show me,” she whispered. She was still looking into the distance, she was trembling with fear and excitement. I felt my own nerves electrifying, pulsating, as I reached down and lifted the small box onto my lap. I blocked out all memory of the acquisition process and focused on impressing my client.
I slid the blue silk off of the box, revealing a wooden cube with many slits and holes for air. I moved the handle out of the way and with shaking limbs I pulled open the top of the box. I reached in with both hands and pulled out the contents for Her Grace’s appreciation.
It was a naked, squirming boy child, an infant, the marks of Thomas’ bite still fresh. He was half asleep and unafraid, making him the bravest of all of us in the room. Her Grace had pulled her arms inward, so I held the… thing, up under its arms and away from my chest.
“Will it turn gray?” she said, still whispering.
“No,” I said. “Not if you feed it as we discussed.”
“Will it… can it think at all? In any way?”
“There is some precedent in the literature, Your Grace. We believe it will behave as a human infant for the duration of its existence.”
“Will it… love me?”
I found myself unable to answer. I stood up and held the thing out over the gaudy table. Her Grace hesitated, her eyes flaring open wide with true fear, before she dropped her diptych and seized the creature from me, pulling it close to her. It woke up and began to cry, balling its little hands into fists.
“There, there,” said the Duchess, looking close into its eyes. “Don’t cry, little one. Mother is here.”
I let myself relax, for the look on her face told me that we had been successful in our efforts. Our firm would be assured the support of one of the most influential personages on the hemisphere, and I the gratitude of important people. I allowed myself to watch Her Grace ingratiate herself with the creature, cooing and tickling. She stood up suddenly and began to leave the room, swaying gently and looking only at her acquisition.
“Mother is always here, little one,” she said as her servants opened the doors and followed her down a long hallway.
I stood up, giving up my fight with a frankly undignified smile. I hadn’t really appreciated how worried I had been about the whole affair. I turned to Thomas, and I began to wrap him up tightly for the journey home.