The Saint-Germain Chronicles

v1.0

September 2006

“Dinner with Me”

Whatever reservations that were left in Jillian’s mind were banished by the warmth in his eyes. If he wanted more than her company, she decided, she would deal with that as it happened. As the plane jounced onto the runway, she grinned at him. “Count, I’d love to have dinner with you.”

He took her hand in his and carried it to his lips. “Dinner with me,” he echoed her, “dinner with me.”

There was a secret meaning in the soft words that followed, almost lost in the shrieking of the engines.

“I will hold you to that, Jillian Walker. Believe this.”

letter

THE SPIDER GLASS

letters

RENEWAL

letters

ART SONGS

letters

SEAT PARTNER

letters

CABIN 33

letter

Afterword: MY FAVORITE ENIGMA

Acknowledgments

“Art Songs,” Copyright © 1981 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. From the 7th World Fantasy Convention program book, Jack Rems and Jeffrey Frane, editors, California.

“Cabin 33,” Copyright © 1980 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. From SHADOWS 3, Charles L. Grant, editor, Doubleday.

“Renewal,” Copyright © 1982 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. From SHADOWS 5, Charles L. Grant, editor, Doubleday.

“Seat Partner,” Copyright © 1979 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. From NIGHTMARES, Charles L. Grant, editor, Playboy Press.

“The Spider Glass,” Copyright© 1981 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. From SHADOWS 4, Charles L. Grant, editor, Doubleday.

 sanguinarily

this is for my friends and colleagues

Suzy McKee Charnas

Stephen King and

Tanith Lee

editorially

it is quadruply for

Charles L. Grant

philosophically

it is always and ever for

Dan Nobuhiko Smiley

Text of a letter from le Comte de Saint-Germain to Madelaine de Montalia.

Sassevert Parc

Lausanne, Suisse

3 November,1889

Monbussy

Nr. Chalons-sur-Marne

France

My dearest Madelaine;

I read your name and my mind is filled with you, my heart. I am sorry not to be with you on this day
—
on all days. But the earrings that come with this letter will remind you of my love and for a time that will have to serve
.

You tell me that you are distressed that Paul has decided to marry that Swedish woman. And you want to be revenged on them for the hurt they have given you. No, oh, no, Madelaine. It is not good to feel this way, believe me. Profit from my mistakes, and forgive them. Not everyone can sustain love as we can. They have so little time, and we have so much. You once railed at the shortness of the years, before you came to my life. What is a decade to you, now? Or a century? And what is it to them. Recall, my heart, that most of those who love us do so because they cannot love as they wish to and we offer them empathy and our special consolation. I do not say this cynically: remember that it took me almost four thousand years to find you, and even now we cannot love as we would want. Leave Paul to his Swedish woman and let him believe that vampires are myths to frighten children and those who read Hoffmann and Polidori.

Yes, I think it would be wise for you to leave Monbussy for a time. The expedition to Babylon should intrigue you. You are right to deplore most of the practices of those digging up artifacts. They are anxious to bring up wonders and in the process destroy greater treasures. Time is your great asset, as you will learn. When you return to France, you may become your own niece or granddaughter or any other appropriate fiction.

It is time for me to travel as well; I have been here almost fifteen years. My country house in England will provide me an interlude of quiet, but I do not think it would be wise to remain there long. Paris, Lausanne, Madrid, all of them are too familiar to me. So perhaps I will go to Stockholm, or Warsaw or St. Petersburg. Wherever I am, I will send you word where you will reach me. If ever you require my aid, or my company, you have only to tell me and I will come to you.

You must not lose your courage. Love that can embrace our secret and our nature is rare, but it illuminates all of life. For it is life, Madelaine, in spite of our deaths. Believe this, for I assure you, I promise you, it is true, as it is true that I love you, will always love you.

Saint-Germain

his seal, the eclipse

An Edwardian Story

^
»

“T
HERE
is a curious tale behind this mirror, actually. I’m pleased you noticed it,” their host said to the select and exclusively masculine company that had gathered in the Oak Parlor at Briarcopse after dinner. He reached for the port to refill his glass and rather grandly offer it around. “Surely you’ll have some. It was laid down the year I was born—splendid stuff. My father was quite the expert in these matters, I assure you.”

Five of his guests accepted with alacrity; the sixth declined with a polite, Continental bow, and the Earl put the decanter back on the silver tray set out on the gleaming mahogany table. “Don’t stand on ceremony, any of you,” he said with a negligent wave of his long, thin hand. He then settled back in his chair, a high-backed, scallop-topped relic of the reign of Queen Anne and propped his heels on the heavy Tudor settle before the fire. Slowly he lit his cigar, savoring its aroma as well as the anticipation of his guests.

“For the lord Harry, Whittenfield…” the rotund gentleman with the brindled mutton-chop whiskers protested, though his indignation was marred by an indulgent smirk.

Their host, Charles Whittenfield, ninth Earl of Copsehowe, blew out a cloud of fragrant, rum-soaked tobacco smoke, and stared at the small dull mirror in its frame of tooled Baroque silver. “It
is
a curious tale,” he said again, as much to himself as any of the company. Then recalling his guests, he directed his gaze at his wiry, middle-aged cousin who was in the act of warming his brandy over one of the candles. “Dominick, you remember my mother’s aunt Serena, don’t you?”

“I remember all the women on that side of the family,” Dominick said promptly. “The most amazing passel of females. My mother refuses to mention half of them—she feels they aren’t respectable. Well, of course they’re not. Respectable women are boring.”

“Yes, I’m always amazed by them. And why they all chose to marry such sticks-in-the-mud as they did, I will never understand. Still, they make the family lively, which is more than I can say for the males. Not a privateer or adventurer among them. Nothing but solid, land-loving, rich, placid countrymen, with a yen for wild girls.” He sighed. “Anyway, Dominick, great-aunt Serena…”

Dominick nodded with vigorous distaste that concealed a curious pride. “Most misnamed female I ever encountered. That whole side of the family, as Charles says… they marry the most unlikely women. Serena came from Huguenot stock, back in the middle of the seventeenth century, I think.” He added this last as if the Huguenot influence explained matters.

“Ah, yes, great-aunt Serena was quite a handful,” the host laughed quietly. “The last time I saw her—it was years ago, of course—she was careering about the Cotswolds on both sides of her horse. The whole countryside was scandalized. They barred her from the Hunt, naturally, which amused her a great deal. She could outride most of them, anyway, and said that the sport was becoming tame.”

“Whittenfield…” the rotund man said warningly.

“Oh, yes, about the glass.” He sipped his port thoughtfully. “The glass comes from Serena’s family, the English side. It’s an heirloom, of course. They say that the Huguenot who married into the family took the woman because no one else would have her. Scandal again.” Again he paused to take wine, and drained his glass before continuing. “The mirror is said to be Venetian, about three hundred forty-or-fifty years old. The frame was added later, and when Marsden appraised it, he said he believed it to be Austrian work.”

“Hungarian, actually,” murmured the sixth guest, though no one heard him speak.

“Yes, well.” Whittenfield judiciously filled his glass once more. “Really wonderful,” he breathed as he savored the port.

“Charles, you should have been an actor—you’re wasted on the peerage,” Dominick said as he took a seat near the fire.

“Oh, very well. I’ll get on with it,” Whittenfield said, capitulating. “I’ve told you the glass is Venetian and that it is something over three hundred years old. The latest date Marsden ventured was 1570, but that, as I say, is problematical. In any case, you may be certain that it was around in 1610, which is the critical year, so far as the story is concerned. Yes, 1610.” He sank back in his chair, braced his heels once more on the Tudor settle, and began, at last, in earnest.

“Doubtless you’re aware that Europe was a great deal more chaotic then than it is now…”

“That’s not saying much,” the rotund man interjected.

“Twilford, for God’s sake, don’t give him an excuse to digress again,” Dominick whispered furiously.

“
As
I was saying,” Charles went on, “Europe was doing very badly in 1610. That was the year that Henri IV of France was assassinated and his nine-year-old son succeeded him, and you know what Louis XIII turned out like! James was making an ass of himself by prolonging Parliament and by locking up Arabella Stuart for marrying William Seymour. One of the Tsars was deposed, but I can never keep them straight, and I believe a Prussian prince was offered the job…”

“Polish,” the sixth guest corrected him politely. “Vasili Shuisky was deposed in favor of Vladislav, Sigismund III’s son.”

“Very likely,” Whittenfield agreed. “Spain and Holland were having a not-very-successful go at a truce. The German Protestant States were being harried by their neighbors… That will give you some idea. Well, it happened that my great-aunt Serena’s nine times great-grandmother was living…”

“Charles,” Twilford protested, “you can’t be serious. Nine times great-grandmother!”

“Of course I am,” Whittenfield said, astounded at being questioned. “Serena was born in 1817. Her mother, Eugeinia, was born in 1792.
Her
mother, Sophia, was born in 1774. Sophia’s mother Elizabeth was born in 1742. Her mother, Cassandra, was born in 1726. Cassandra’s mother was Amelia Joanna, and she was born in 1704 or 05, there’s some doubt about the actual date. There was flooding and fever that winter and they were not very careful with recording births. Amelia Joanna’s mother, Margaret, was born in 1688.
Her
mother, Sophronia,
was born in 1664…”

“Just in time for the Plague and the Fire,” Dominick put in.

“Yes, and only three of the family survived it: Sophronia, her mother, Hannah, and one son, William. Terrible names they gave females in those days. Anyway, William had four wives and eighteen children in his lifetime and Sophronia had six children and even Hannah remarried and had three more. Hannah’s mother was Lucretia and she was born in 1629. Her mother, Cesily, was born in 1607, and it was
her
mother, Sabrina, that the story concerns. So you see, nine times great-grandmother of my great-aunt Serena.” He gave a grin that managed to be smug and sheepish at once. “That Lucretia, now, she was a sad one—married off at thirteen to an old reprobate in his fifties who kept two mistresses in separate wings at his principal seat as well as having who knows how many doxies over the years. Lucretia turned nasty in her later life, they say, and there was an investigation over the death of her tirewoman, who apparently was beaten to death under mysterious circumstances. The judge in the case was Sir Egmont Hardie, and he…”

“
Charles
!” thundered his cousin.