“We can starve, but that is rare, for our gifts are great. The attraction Rózsa exerted upon you, against your natural inclinations, is an example. It acts as a lure to call our chosen to us.”
“Where is Rózsa?” I broke in. “She said once that I called her, one night when I was unhappy and alone.” Geoffrey nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes, where we become emotionally involved a link may be forged. She is in Paris now. We sent her away when you first awoke last summer.”
“Last summer? But—”
“Anon, Kit. I will lend you my journals from the period. It was for the best, as you will see,” Nicolas counseled, and with that I had to be content as Geoffrey continued his discourse.
“We do reflect in mirrors, being, as you have pointed out, of solid flesh. That misconception came about, I believe, when men, knowing less of optics, thought that what a mirror reflected was the soul, and it is supposed we have none. The sun is not necessarily deadly to our kind, and still less so the older we are, but prolonged exposure can damage us past the point of healing ourselves without aid, and daylight is not our natural element: it can leave us sluggish and vulnerable. The lethargy it induces is heaviest when we are newly risen, and that is when we are at our most vulnerable.
“We do not change our shapes, but our servants do, accounting for that myth, I think. It is useful to us, is it not, that mortals are misled in so many particulars?” I stared pensively at the fire.
“That is not the first time that ‘mortals’ have been referred to. Are we, then, immortal?”
“Virtually, Kit, virtually,” Nicolas answered. “How old would you guess me to be?” I studied the figure before me.
“Fifty?” I hazarded. Von Poppelau nodded solemnly.
“So I was, and more, when I died more than ninety years ago.” He settled back in his chair to tell his story.
“I was in the Low Countries when I received the letter from Rózsa’s mother, Anna, my god-daughter,” he said. “She was in Barcelona with her husband, Adán Francisco de Salinas y Verdad. They had run afoul of the Inquisition, and she feared for their lives, and for their young daughter. I left immediately, but I came to Barcelona too late to save Anna and Adán: they had been burnt as heretics.
Rózsa, their daughter, was to be put to the question on her fourteenth birthday, late in October. She was imprisoned in a convent outside the city, and the Abbess agreed with me that her nuns would be much more edified by the sight of five hundred pieces of gold in the abbey coffers than by that of one more girl being burnt to the glory of God. I waited in the darkened chapel for the girl to be brought to me, fearing our capture, and knowing the penalties if they took us alive; I fingered my dagger and resolved that would not be. The Abbess brought the girl, pitifully thin and abused, and vanished with her gold.
“The convent priest surprised us as we were leaving. I thought for a moment that the Abbess had betrayed us, but no, he was alone. I was fast approaching my threescore years, but still hale and vigorous withal. I leapt upon him, knocking him to the ground. Rózsa had seemed distant, indifferent to what happened to her, but no more. She sprang on the priest, jerking the cord from his waist and swiftly binding his hands behind him. I stuffed his cowl into his mouth, knotting his rosary securely about it to gag him. Between us we wrestled him into the sanctuary and hid him in the shadows under the altar.
“Without a word we left the church and mounted the waiting horses, which I had hidden a little way off. We rode for the harbor, only pausing once, for Rózsa to change into the boy’s clothing I had brought for her. Her hair had already been cut short by the nuns.
“We went by sea as far as Genoa, and overland from there to Budapest, where I took Rózsa to her aunt’s house. The journey had taken almost two months, and the child looked much healthier, though still painfully thin. The bitch wouldn’t see us, just sent word by a servant that as far as the family was concerned Anna had died the day she had married a Spaniard, and the dead bear no children,”