I sighed, feeling disturbed as I folded the letter and put it away. I could not, of course, tell her the truth of what I was doing in Blackbriar, so my replies had until now been vague. Now, with her temper rising beyond tolerance, I had to think of something to placate her. Our relationship was not an easy one, but it was precious to me. I drew out a fresh piece of expensive parchment I used for correspondence and wrote her back immediately, positing a date during my term break when I might, if all complications subsided, travel to Derbyshire. I hoped this half-promise would be enough to hold her until I could spare some time for the maintenance of our sisterly affections.
The morning following my return, I was summoned down to Miss Sloane-Smith’s office. She kept me waiting in the straight-backed chair opposite the grand throne behind her desk for a quarter of an hour. At last she came in, sat down, put her glasses on the tip of her nose, and peered at me with unbridled displeasure.
“How are you feeling?” she asked without a trace of concern.
“I am much better. I take up my classes again tomorrow,” I told her.
“I questioned your returning to the classroom, looking as you do. But as long as the students do not seem disturbed, I suppose it will be all right.” I noticed her jaw working in irritation. “This arrived for you,” she said, and she rose and extracted a potted plant from behind a screen near the window. “It is from Lord Suddington. He is, of course, very concerned about the school, especially after the rash of misfortunes we have had. It is good of him to take such an interest in the staff.”
The plant was extraordinarily lovely, a cascade of snowy-white star flowers veined with vivid pink. It had to be one of Suddington’s precious orchids.
I was greatly moved by his sacrifice. There was a card addressed to me stuffed among the tendril-like leaves and I opened it.
Dearest Emma, I was so very grieved to learn of your accident. Please accept one of my pets. May its beauty bring you comfort as you recover.
I folded the note. “Thank you, Miss Sloane-Smith. Is there anything else?”
Her mouth twisted, lines of age showing as she shook her head. I left her, taking my gift up to my room and positioning it by the window. As it was a plant that thrived under tropical conditions, I assumed it needed a great deal of light and would die if not kept warm, so I stuffed the cracks around the window with several of my undergarments to keep the draft out. Suddington could not think I would be able to do much to keep the thing alive without benefit of the hothouses he employed but I supposed he thought it would at least bring me a small measure of joy before it succumbed to the less than ideal conditions here.
I made certain my “pet” was as comfortable as I could make it before sneaking down the back stairs in my usual way, hitching up the trap, and escaping down to the village. I had been giving my next move a great deal of thought, and there was something I wanted very much to do before proceeding.
T
his time, I did not sneak into the Rood and Cup, but entered the inn by the front door and sought out Mrs. Danby. She was happy to see me, enough to make me feel guilty for having avoided her on past occasions, no matter how necessary it had been. I had come at an hour too late for luncheon and too early for dinner, and not the hour for tea. Therefore, the dining room was empty, just as I’d planned.
I endured her fussing and proclamations over my recent “accident,” but after my assurances that I was mending just fine, she offered me some of her cider. “And I have the most delicious spice cakes,” she added.
“That would be lovely,” I replied, smiling.
In the corner, her old mother sat wrapped in her rug next to a high-burning fire. Mrs. Danby had no sooner disappeared into the kitchens than I was over by Madge’s side.
“Hello,” I said gently.
The rheumy eyes gazed at me for a moment but remained vague. “Do I know you?”
“We were not introduced, actually. I was a guest here a while ago, and we spoke.”
“I do not remember,” she said in a plaintive way that moved my heart.
“That is all right. I was curious, however . . . ah . . . just a moment.”
I had heard the noises of Mrs. Danby’s return, and, worried she would bustle her mother off again as she’d done before, I hurried back to my table. As expected, she appeared with the tray of cider and cake, which she laid before me.
“Please excuse me, but there’s work to do for the dinner. Janet has decided to go off, fickle girl.” She threw her hands up in the air as she rolled her eyes. “They do, you know, run off with their romantic dreams and leave me far behind. I’d thought I’d have longer with Janet, she’s only sixteen, but it’s old enough, I suppose.”
I started at this news. “Janet is gone? To where?”
“I wish I knew,” she said with a shrug. “But you know how girls that age are.”
I had been made acutely aware of how impulsive and misguided they could be, and perhaps that explained the sense of disquiet that rippled through me.
“Well, then, enjoy your cider while it’s hot, missus,” Mrs. Danby said. “I’d love to sit and have a cup myself, but the custard is boiling and I’ve got a bushel of peas to shell.”
“By all means, Mrs. Danby, go about your business. You do not have to entertain me. I am quite content.”
She smiled. “We are having roasted chickens and parsnips and peas if you wish to stay.”
“Ah, you tempt me, but it is frowned upon for us to miss meals at the school, and I’ve stretched Miss Sloane-Smith’s patience to the limit as it is, I am afraid.”
She made a face to let me know what she thought of the headmistress and disappeared. I took my cup and plate and hurried back to Madge’s side. “Do you want something to eat?” I offered.
Her eyes seemed clearer. She remembered me from a moment ago. “My daughter feeds me well.”
I pulled up a chair quickly. “When I was here before, you told me something. You appeared to be very worried, and you spoke about the Cyprian Queen.”
Her face transformed at once. “Hush, child. Do not speak her name.”
“What is it? Is it a person?”
“It is a curse,” she said vehemently.
“You said, ‘They think it is beauty, but it is death.’ Do you remember?”
Her expression wrenched with grief. “Yes. Those were words I will never forget. They were my sister’s words. Beautiful Dora.”
My heart began to pound with excitement. “Your sister knew of the Cyprian Queen?”
“It killed her. Oh, it was long ago, but I’ve never made my peace with it.” Her bony hands emerged, knotted with rheumatism, and clasped one another restlessly. “Dora was so beautiful. When it all began, she was a happy girl. It was like she’d fallen in love. I could see the difference in her right away, but she would tell me nothing. I begged her to confide in me. But she kept her secret, and it killed her.”
“What? What did she do?” I leaned forward. “You can tell me. I will believe you.”
She stared at me. She wanted to, I could see. But no doubt her daughter, and others, had hushed her for so long she didn’t speak easily. “She and the others had conjured a demon.”
“The Cyprian Queen? She is a demon, then? Are you saying the girls practiced witchcraft, and summoned her?”
She nodded. “I suppose. I do not know how it began.”
The door to the outside opened, and I looked up, alarmed that Mrs. Danby had come to check on me and would discover—and put an end to—my interview with her mother. But it was just a man, someone I did not know, coming into the inn. Still, I would only have a few moments before Mrs. Danby arrived to serve him.
“I spied on her,” Madge confessed with an impish smile. “I saw—saw what she did, she and the others. It was sinful, lustful. Evil.”
“A coven?” I said. “Are you saying they practiced witchcraft?” I thought of my attack. Was this Cyprian Queen something else, then, not a vampire at all but a demonic force that preyed sexually on young girls? But that made no sense; Miss Markam had seen bodies drained of blood. And I had the evidence of my own eyes that there was a vampire at work here—I’d staked a mother and child. Even now, the recollection brought a surge of disgust. I would not recover from that day for a long time.
“I do not know,” Madge replied. “I never knew what the Cyprian Queen was. All I could see was what she did to them.” Her old hands locked onto my wrist. I grasped her back tightly. “She excited their blood. They had no modesty. They were caught in a most dreadful fever until they wasted away and expired.”
Several words set off triggers in my brain. “How do you mean, they wasted away?”
“She became but a wisp of a thing, a shade walking among the living, dead long before she ended her own life. And all the other girls, too—girls from the school who had been good girls before it all began to happen. It was as if it was some kind of plague, but I knew it was not. It was the evil of the game they called the Cyprian Queen.”
I frowned. This sounded too much like the working of a vampire. But a vampire was incapable of the carnal act. It made no sense that it would gather a coven of girls to itself to instigate promiscuity. What interest would this hold for one undead?
“I remember at the end, Dora was so bereft.” Old Madge shook her head. She was growing weary, and her grief was getting the better of her. I knew I should stop her, but I did not.
“What happened?” I prompted.
The old woman’s eyes glazed over with tears. Her voice quavered. “Those words, the last I ever heard from her. She told me the Cyprian Queen was death because she needs the blood.”
I nearly came up out of my chair. “Blood? What did she say about blood?”
“There was so much I did not understand. But the girls all died. They wasted away, most of them. Ann flung herself into a bog. Dora hung herself in my mother’s house. Mama told me she would come back.”
“Dora?” My God, had her mother suspected her child had become a vampire and expect her to rise from the dead?
“No. No.” Madge was nearly slurring her words. I could see the bleariness in her eyes, and knew my time with her was over. “The Cyprian Queen, child.” She nodded, wetting her lips fretfully. “She said the Cyprian Queen would return.”
As I well and bitterly knew, the Cyprian Queen had indeed returned to Blackbriar.
I could not in good conscience push her any further. Patting her hand gently, I wrapped her tight in her blanket again. Then I took my plate and cup and returned to my table.
As it happened, I was in the nick of time. Mrs. Danby bustled in, drawing a pint for the new arrival from the bar in the corner, and I paid my bill while I had her in the room. I gathered up my cloak and reticule. As I was doing so, the man stood and came up to me.
“That old woman is mad,” he said sharply.
“Excuse me?”
He was holding his cup, already half-drunk. And it was not the first of the day, I could see by the red veins in his eyes. The broken blood vessels in his face attested to the fact that this was no doubt a habit.
“She spreads lies to get attention. She is daft and so are you if you give her disgusting fantasies any credence.”
“I do not think, sir, that it is any of your business.”
“It is my business when poison is spread for the amusement of others, when it hurts me and mine.” He glared at me haughtily. “You do not remember me, do you?”
“Should I?”
“You are a teacher at the school.” His lips curved smugly. “You would do well to curb your insolence. I shall have to speak to my cousin.”
“If you feel so inclined, then I cannot stop you, and as for your cousin—” I was saved from sending both of them to perdition when footsteps on the stairs leading to the guest rooms upstairs cut me off and Valerian stepped into view.
“Emma!” he said, surprised.
The man glared back and forth between the two of us before tossing back the rest of his ale and slamming the cup on a nearby table. He stormed off, banging the door behind him. I glanced over at Madge, but she was already dozing and this disturbance had not wakened her.
Valerian took in the little scene, and looked questioningly at me. “Are you here to speak to me?”
“No,” I said, and, clutching my belongings, I headed for the door.
He caught up to me in time to cover my hand as I was lifting the latch. “When are you going to forgive me?”
“I was not aware you had asked my forgiveness,” I said.
“I told you I was sorry.”
“That is a comfort to me,” I replied with a studied politeness I knew drove him mad.
His sharp features took on a hard cast. “You have to talk to me sooner or later. There is too much at stake.”
“Then it will have to be later. I must get back to school before I am missed,” I said, pushing aside his hand and lifting the latch. When I was outside, however, he fell into step with me as I headed for the stable where I’d left the trap.
“At least tell me what you were doing here,” he said. “You may not like to admit it, but I can help you.”
He was right on both counts. I did not like admitting it, but he could help me, and I was not too proud to reach for that help. My steps slowed. “I spoke to the old woman.” I told him about my short conversation with Madge.
“So the girls are involved in a cult that revels in promiscuity?” This clearly puzzled him as much as it did me. “And this sort of thing happened before?”
“It appears so.”
“But it makes no sense,” he said. “A vampire cannot have sexual relations with a human. Quite possibly, you are better versed in the revenant world than I at this point, so you know their lust is purely for blood. The pleasures of the flesh hold no allure for the undead.”
“And yet these girls are engaged in some kind of . . . orgiastic cult. And it all happened exactly this way all those years ago—perhaps fifty years or more. That cannot be coincidence.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe there’s something here, just as there was something in Avebury that had been there since ancient times. Something that draws this sort of phenomenon.”
“Is it a vampire, though? Or something else? There is quite a tradition of witchcraft in these parts. Perhaps we are not dealing with a vampire at all, but some other form of being.”
He frowned. “Who is the witch? Serena Black? She’s the only one they call
witch
around here.”
I thought about this. “And before that there was Winifred. But they are merely women who know of herbs and act as local healers. Even if it is often the case that superstition has caused them to be called the devil’s handmaidens or witches.”
He nodded with a sigh. “It is too medieval to be believed, but in these rural regions, the old traditions die hard. Still, I cannot believe the girls really conjured up a demon. Why would that explain how the same thing happened twice, separated by so many years?”
What, then, had attacked me? My flesh began to crawl at the thought of it. “I do not know if witchcraft can be real,” I said, untying the reins of the piebald roan that pulled the trap. “But I cannot be too quick to dismiss the existence of real witches. There are those who would staunchly deny the reality of vampires, after all. In fact—most rational people would.”
Valerian took the reins from me and led the horse and wagon out to the street. “You would think the secret archives would mention such a thing,” he said.
“Each place has an area of specialty,” I told him. “The archive in which I studied might just have been the wrong place for learning about witches.” I turned away abruptly and said, “I cannot stay away from school any longer. Lately, I have been taking too many risks. It wouldn’t do to lose my post.”
He helped me into the driver’s box. The pressure of his warm fingers where he gripped my glove sent a sharp reaction through me, sweet and soothing like cool water poured over feverish skin. I pulled away and snapped the reins, and the trap lurched away.
It was not that I reviled his touch. I did not. In fact, I craved it and that terrified me nearly as much as any vampire. I had to take care not to get too attached to Valerian Fox. There was a time I thought I might fall in love with him. Now I saw that that would be disastrous.