your so beautiful wife. They knew you had found love and that you were a different man to the one they had known. They saw that your marvellousness was now, to you, a curse, and they were troubled. They take a pride in serving you, it is their way of repaying you for the service you do for them, but that service on both sides has always been willing. Now it is not so. And so they came to me, to ask me what was to be done, and I bid them bring me here so that I might tell you of that which you must know.’
The fire was leaping brightly in the grate. The atmosphere was peaceful. The furniture was faded but wholesome, and the sunlight was beaming benignly through the windows.
How strange it is, thought Elizabeth, that everything should be so peaceful when such dark secrets are being laid bare.
‘Can you truly offer me a way to be rid of the vampyric part of me?’ asked Darcy, still disbelieving but with a note of hope in his voice.
‘I can, if that is what you desire. But think long on this, Old One, I beg of you.’
‘I have thought of little else this past year. I have wanted and wished for this thing but I thought it could never be.’
Nicolei nodded.
‘If that is so, I will help you. My wish is to serve you, and if this is the service you desire, then I will give it, willingly.’
‘How is it to be accomplished?’ asked Darcy, looking down at him intently.
‘I can do no more than point you on the first part of your journey,’ Nicolei said. ‘The answers you seek are to be found in a chamber beneath the ground. It is so old that a Roman temple has been built on top of it, and the temple itself is of a venerable age. But before you set your foot on this path, beware, for there is great danger. Once it was tried in my forebear’s time many centuries ago. I do not know what happened to the vampyre who tried it, only that he never returned.’
‘There is danger in everything,’ said Darcy. ‘There is danger in living, and an enterprise such as this one does not come lightly; there is always a price to pay. But I am willing to pay it. Where is this temple?’
‘That I do not know. I know only that it is set on a cliff in a green hollow, with the sea in front and a greater cliff behind and a tree growing above it. I know of three temples close by but none of them are like this. They have the sea, or the cliffs, or the hollow, but not all three, and I know of no temple with a tree close at hand.’
‘And yet it is familiar, what you describe,’ said Darcy thoughtfully. ‘I think I have seen this place, some ten miles to the northwest of here.’
Nicolei frowned, as though trying to recall the place of which Darcy spoke. Then his brow smoothed and he nodded, but he said, ‘I know the place you speak of, but it is not a Roman temple; it is the ruin of a monastery.’
‘But beneath it there is a temple,’ said Darcy. ‘I found it when playing there once as a boy. I fell through the floor of the monastery when exploring the cellars and found myself in a strange place ringed about with columns and statues. It was very old and I am sure it was a temple. The statues seemed to be of the Roman gods.’
‘This, then, might be the place,’ said Nicolei cautiously. ‘If so, the chamber you seek will be there somewhere underneath.’
‘Then I must go there. I saw no way down at the time, but there may be one, hidden,’ said Darcy, taking his arm from around Elizabeth’s waist.
‘I will go with you,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Darcy. ‘You heard Nicolei; it will be dangerous.’ When she was about to protest, he said, ‘You cannot come with me. There is more than just my desire to protect you at work here, there is fate, too. Remember the castle, Lizzy. Remember the axe. Remember when it fell from the wall, and the meaning of the portent, that you would cause my death. You cannot come with me, my love. I must go alone.’
Elizabeth thought back to the days at the Count’s castle. How long ago they seemed. She remembered the axe