his long incarceration by the Turcomans had left him out of touch. Even so he could tell that something momentous was afoot, and that before long there would be another attempt on Aleksandr’s life.
But that was not Iuda’s most pressing concern; he was becoming thirsty. He had not fed since Dmitry and Zmyeevich had provided him with the meagre feast of the boy in Moscow. Before that there had been nothing since Geok Tepe. The sentries at the fortress delivered food twice a day, but it was of no use to him. He wasn’t yet on the point of becoming weak or lethargic, but the time would come. He needed to get out.
He had faced a similar problem with the vampire he kept prisoner beneath his father’s church in Esher. His first instinct, on discovering that what he’d captured was not human, had been to kill it. He was still young enough to have an instinctive sense of what was good and what was evil, and to have a revulsion for the latter, but his first problem had been to devise a mechanism. He knew little of vampire lore. He’d heard tales that daylight could harm them, but while some stories said it would bring death, others were quite clear that it would merely weaken the monster. During the day the creature lurked in a dark corner of the crypt and so Richard never had the opportunity to experiment on the effect light might have on it, except to make the observation that it was afraid of the sun. But even as he realized the difficulties he might have in killing the creature, he also began to question the need for it. His father’s attitude continued to hold sway; the rat and the butterfly were not killed for killing’s sake, but in order to study them. If more could be learned from a live specimen than from a dead one, then life should remain.
He boarded up the small window by which he’d trapped the monster and instead gained access to it through the church. His father never went down into the crypt, and Richard now stole the appropriate keys so that he would not be able to, even if the whim took him. The entrance was hidden behind the triple-decker pulpit that stood almost midway down the nave, overlooking the Chamber Pew where the local nobility – the Pelham family – could worship in isolation from the masses. Richard’s father could preach directly at them, either from the top tier when he delivered his sermon, the middle when he read the lesson or the bottom when he had more secular announcements to make regarding the parish. It was from behind this bottom level that steps led down to a wooden door, and beyond that there was an iron gate leading to the crypt. Richard could sit between the two and converse with his specimen in complete safety.
It was two days before he got any reply to his questions.
‘Yes, I am a vampire.’
His English bore a heavy French accent, though Richard had already suspected his nationality from the manner of his dress.
‘Your name?’ Richard asked.
‘Je suis Honoré Philippe Louis d’Évreux, Vicomte de Nemours.’
‘You’re staying at Juniper Hall?’ Richard stuck with English.
‘Not any more, it seems.’
Richard smiled. ‘But you were?’
The vicomte nodded.
‘How long have you been a vampire?’
‘Twelve years.’
Richard noted it down in his journal. ‘And before that, you were a normal man?’
‘Oui.’
‘And how did the transformation take place?’
Richard copied down every detail of Honoré’s story, occasionally interrupting to ask questions but generally allowing him to tell it in his own way. That battered exercise book was to become the first volume of Iuda’s vast collection on the study of the vampire. He spent every moment he could down there, learning of Honoré’s strange life. His father scarcely noticed his absence. Only Susanna made any comment on his recent unusual behaviour, but he told her nothing. There had been a time when he might have been tempted to take her into his confidence, but since their kiss he had felt wary of her – afraid of the power she might have over him.
It was after two weeks that the issue of Honoré’s sustenance had arisen. It came in the middle of their normal interrogation. Honoré had never asked anything of Richard and when the words came from him, it was more of a plea than a demand.
‘Feed me.’
Richard had already been considering the issue. There was a series of possible solutions, each