CHAPTER 8.
Lloyd wandered the countryside on the outskirts of Paris. Clouds covered the stars and it rained gently.
Driven mad with pain and frustration and rage, he had lost all sense of time and self. His life and his past lives merged into one.
He was fleeing the bells of Paris. At the same time he was lost in the French countryside after the foraging party he lead had been ambushed by Napoleon’s Dragoons. He was the only survivor, starved and wounded and the enemy were all around him. At the same time he was marching behind Henry the Fifth on the way to Agincourt. His eye had been gouged from his face during the siege of Harflaur, and they had marched for seventeen days with little food and the most dreadful dysentery.
Half marching, half stumbling across a field, he believed that he heard the blast of a French bugle. He broke into a run towards a patch of woodland at the far end of the field. He body felt far too light as he ran- where was the sword at his belt, where were his pistols or his armour? Why was John Harvey not there to help him?
At the edge of the woods he tripped on a tree stump and fell heavily on his face. The shock brought a small measure of sanity back to him. He stood and looked into the darkness. He could not see the blue uniforms and tall hats of Dragoons or the shine of French Knights in armour, but he could see that the sky was lightening.
Dawn was coming.
He decided that his enemies were still around him, but that his greatest enemy of all- worse even than the cursed bells- was the sun.
He had to seek shelter.
He walked deeper into the wood, thinking that they might just suffice if nothing else could be found. After a few minutes he reached the other side and saw, to his relief, that there was a derelict barn in the corner of the next field. An old structure of crumbling stone with a flat, corrugated iron roof.
Reaching it, he forced open a rotten wooden door and went inside. It smelled of damp and dung, but the one cracked window was too dusty to let in much light. In one corner old barrels, crates, rope, sacks and pallets were stacked. He made a bed out of wooden pallets and old sacks in the other corner and lay down on it.
Exhaustion and relief flowed through him.
He liked it in the barn- there were no bells.
Back in Britain on the evening of the next day, Alice returned to her home. After a couple of lectures in which he had nearly fallen asleep, she had gone for a coffee with Tracy and spent a long time hearing about how great Andy was and how terrible all other men were. All she had to look forward to was a walk with Sam.
She made herself a cup of tea, then sat down at her computer. She wrote three words on her next essay then gave up and looked at her emails. Vlad the Impaler was writing about his pet wolves and ‘what sweet music they make’. Andy had felt the need to email her and tell her how great it was that they were friends again. She didn’t reply to either. Then she read John’s email and felt silly. She had been too short with him last time. He was clearly insane, enough to make her feel sorry for him, but he was also very interesting and quite nice. And helpful. If she really had been writing about people who thought they were vampires for her degree, he would have been writing her dissertation for her. In reality she was studying literature and just really interested in vampires, maybe she would try to write an article about it sometime.
She wrote back,
“Dear John,
Sorry about my last email, had a bad day. Having another bad day today too, but it’s not your fault.
How are you?
That is interesting about Napoleon and stuff. Was Napoleon really very small? Who was The Duke? Do you mean the Duke was Wellington? Did you meet him? Do you remember much from any other time? What was the 15th century like? Have also found that period interesting, Agincourt and stuff.
Am glad that you haven’t killed anyone. What is it like to drink blood? Do you eat food and drink like a normal person?
Thanks for continuing to write to me, it’s very useful.
Take care,
Alice. X”
When Alice woke the next day her first thought was that John would be going to bed. She found it odd that he was always awake when she was asleep, and wondered what it was like to live in the night.
If he really was nocturnal, that was. He might be lying about that, she thought. He might not even really think he is a vampire.
How ridiculous would that be: a girl pretending to a psychology student writing to man pretending to be a vampire.
She turned on her computer immediately and looked at her emails. There was one from her tutor telling her that she had missed a dead line, and one from John, which read;
“Dear Alice.
Am well, thank you. Hope you are feeling better. May I ask what was wrong?
Yes, I knew the Duke of Wellington, he was a great man. Napoleon was indeed very small. When I saw him, he looked like a child dressed up as a soldier and riding his father’s horse.
Was indeed alive in the 15th centery. It was an interesting time, very hard. Was at Agincourt, and yes, I meet Henry V. We went hunting together once. He was a good man, endless energy and confidence, but he was a boy compared to The Duke.
Those are the only lives which I remember well.
Drinking blood is the finest thing on earth. Better than the best wine in the world, and I know, because I have plundered some fine wine in France. I once captured a baggage train with wine for Napoleon himself, he had stolen it from Marie Antoinette’s own cellar and it was three hundred years old. Blood is better than that. And then there is the satisfaction. We crave it constantly, like cigarettes or drugs (so I am told).
Yes, I eat and drink like a ‘normal’ person. But I am unreasonably found of rare steak and red wine.
Yours faithfully,
John. X”
She giggled when she read about Napoleon, but found the paragraph about the blood distasteful.
She made herself a cup of coffee, then wrote back;
“Dear John,
I’m feeling better thanks. Nothing was wrong, just people.
Can’t believe that you were in Agincourt! You must tell me more about it. Have always loved that time, with the knights in shining armour and the amazing dresses for the ladies and the jousting and courtly love and stuff. And Henry the Fifth. You knew Henry V! Was he like in Shakespeare?
I like rare steak too!
Take care,
Alice. X”
John and Molly worked together in the Black Boar that night. Charlotte sat alone near the bar, enthroned like some Nordic Princess, sipping from a bottle of mead and gazing out across the room. Three bikers stood outside smoking. The pub was empty apart from that. The man who Lloyd had been in confrontation with had not returned since that night.
“I’m going with Charlotte on her next dig,” Molly said as she cleaned the bar. “Up to The Boarders, an excavation near Hadrian’s Wall. We wondered if you would like to join us.”
“Thanks,” he replied. “Not sure if I can make it though. Would be hard to find people to cover for us both.”
“Charlotte thinks you need a holiday.”
John liked the way Molly was always blunt with him. It was true, he hadn’t had a holiday for over a year, and he was getting a bit worn out.
“Okay, thanks,” he said. “But only for a few days.”
“We’re only going for a long weekend. Off on Friday?”
“Sure.”
One of the bikers came in and bought a round, then went back outside. Seeing that the pub was quiet, Molly finished cleaning and was about to go over to Charlotte’s table when Dave walked in.
“Evening Molly,” he greeted her.
“Evening Dave,” she replied. “What are you drinking?”
“You didn’t reply to my text last night.”
“Sorry, I’ve been busy.”
“Can I see you tonight?”
“No, sorry, Charlotte’s here. I told you last week…”
“How about at the weekend?”
“We’re going away at the weekend. I’ll see you next week.”
“Okay. But we need to talk.”
She leaned over the bar and kissed him on the check. He managed a weak smile, then walked out.
“I wish he wouldn’t come into work like that,” she said.
“He just wanted to talk to you,” John replied.
“He’s like a puppy.”
“He’s in love with you.”
“No, he just thinks he is.”
John got home from work, poured a glass of wine and read his emails.
He wanted to ask Alice if they could meet. He didn’t know where she lived, but he was willing to travel anywhere.
But he decided against it. Maybe Molly and Charlotte were right. Maybe he was getting too obsessed and really needed a holiday and a vampyre girlfriend.
And what would he do if they met? Would they be friends, would he try to seduce her, would he bite her throat and drink her blood. He didn’t trust himself.
Instead, he wrote;
“Dear Alice,
Sometimes I miss the reign of King Henry the Fifth. It was a far simpler time. There was God and the King, and one’s Lord, and everyone knew their place. Things were as they ought to be, and if something happened it was because God made it happen and so it was right. They were hard times too. It was the lot of a rich man to fight and of a poor man to work. Violence and death was our world, and endless toil and utter poverty was the world of the masses.
King Harry was a lot like in Shakespeare. Every inch the King.
Served as a Man At Arms under the Duke of Cumberland at Agincourt. My friend and I had both been wounded weeks earlier, and all of us, English and Welsh, were wounded or sick. Stood with a few hundred Men at Arms and a few thousand archers against five times our number of French knights. It was said that every knight and every aristocrat it France had come to fight us. But we stood against them, and Harry said that God was on our side so we would win, and we believed him.
Before the battle, Harry ordered us all to kneel and kiss the ground. Then we all took up a piece of earth and put it in our mouths. It seems like madness when I write of it now, but it seemed natural at the time. It was like some strange Mass, with the land instead of the body of Christ. Really, it was a way of showing that it was our land. Not France, but Harry’s Land. England’s Land. It showed we loved it, and we owned it.
We advanced half way across the field, trampling through the mud in our rusting plate armour. Then our archers fired at the enemy, literally turning the sky dark with arrows. Then the French charged. It is all a blur after that. We fought them for three hours, and killed them in their thousands.
It was the archers who won the day for us, them and King Harry, but we said that it was God.
Take care,
John. X”
He turned off his computer and poured himself another glass of wine.
There were other things that he remembered from that day; but he did not want to tell her of how they had massacred the French prisoners, or how their baggage train was robbed, or how Lloyd had saved his life.
Alice read his email after breakfast the next day.
It fascinated her. She loved that period in history. She had read before about the massed archers winning the battle, but she had not heard about the strange soil eating ritual. The idea of reincarnation and past lives interested her too, even though she knew it was illogical.
She found it interesting how people were willing to believe impossible things. People believed in God, even though the world was cruel and random. People believed in magic and miracles, despite science. But there was more to it than that, people believed ridiculous things every day of their lives. People could see the homeless on the streets every day on the way to a job they hated, and still believe that Capitalism was a fair system. They could watch TV every night and believe that anyone could be famous, and that the people who were rich and famous deserved to be. Every one had to forget, for most of the time, that they were going to die, because life would be unbearable otherwise. Maybe, she thought, that was why people believed in God, or that they were vampires, or that they reincarnated.
Fear of Death.
Tracy had once said to her that life in the capitalist world was like in Alice in Wonderland; you had to ‘believe in seven impossible things before breakfast’.
There was an essay in that somewhere.
But on the other hand, a little part of her wanted to believe it all. To believe that she really was writing to a vampire who had been in Agincourt. To believe that everyone lived forever.
She considered writing back, but she had an essay to finish, and then she had to meet Sam.
Baron sat in his smoky office. Outside his shuttered windows the sun set over a misty night in Paris. His gun, freshly cleaned and polished, sat on top of a pile of unfinished paperwork on his desk.
He was far from happy that Lloyd and the girl had disappeared without paying their bill. The cut on the wall and the note in her room, and the discarded dagger which he found in the street, told him that something was amiss. He had trusted his old friend, or at least trusted him as much as anyone in the world- which wasn’t very much. He was quite sure that Lloyd would return soon with his money.
However, he was even more sure that if Lloyd did not return with the money in the next three days, then certain people would receive certain anonymous tip offs regarding the string of brutal murders which had recent occurred in France.
He looked once again at his paperwork, sighed, and lit another cigarette.
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