Barbara Hambly - Renfield: Slave of Dracula

- Slave of Dracula

Barbara Hambly

Copyright 2006

For George

With special thanks to Neil Gaiman

* All passages indicated with an asterisk are taken verbatim from Bram Stokers Dracula *

R.M.R.'s notes

20 May

7 flies, 3 spiders

I've filled many notebook pages and scraps of paper with these daily reckonings. Sometimes I look at them and they make no sense to me, nothing at all but scratchmarks. In more sensible moments, I think the counting is just a sad form of mental mischief. It's a way to avoid thinking about the truly essential question, which is, of course, what does a single housefly mean?

Letter, Miss Mina Murray to Miss Lucy Westenra 20 May

My dearest Lucy,

I am writing this to you in the happiest of moods. Can you guess why? Yes, I've heard from Jonathan today! He writes from Bistritz, the post-town nearest Castle Dracula-to receive a letter a mere two weeks after it was posted is a miracle, for Transylvania. What a great thing it is, to be living so close to the threshold of the twentieth century! He still has heard little concerning his client the Count, save that he is rumored to keep not one but three beautiful wives. This may be proper form beyond the woods and east of the Danube, but I know you will agree that it is two wives too many. I've always felt that I am too trusting or too unimaginative to know the pangs of envy. Still, I must admit to a moment of jealousy, and in my idle dreams these women cannot help but notice how fine a man my Jonathan is.

I know that it would be unreasonable of me to expect Jonathan's business with the Count-the purchase of property here in England somewhere-to be finished in more than a few days, yet already I begin to fret that he has not outdistanced his own letter and arrived on my doorstep before it. I will write Mr. Hawkins, Jonathan's employer, that after Jonathan and I are married, when my husband must travel so on company business, I must go with him. Naturally I will tell Mr. Hawkins that I can be of great benefit to his firm with my record-keeping and skill at the typewriter, and further, that the company need not pay me a shilling. I don't know if I could bear another such separation, and I know that Jonathan surely feels the same-when he can turn his thoughts from the Count's captivating wives.

Well, dear Lucy, you mentioned that you will be having dinner soon at Rushbrook House. I have not met your Dr. John Seward, but you have written that he is handsome and quite out of the ordinary. I should suppose so. No ordinary man would invite a young lady to dine at a madhouse.

Your loving, Mina

Cook says, must she obey every order from that Mr. Blaine? Because if she does, she says she won't be able to get the chicken on the table in time."

Dr. John Seward briefly closed his eyes and didn't even try to imagine what contradictory order given by the elegant butler Blaine-borrowed for the occasion from the local baronet, Sir Ambrose Poole-would preclude Mrs. Davies having the chicken ready for dinner with Mrs. Westenra and her daughter. Ordinarily, the maid's question would have intrigued him. (Did he command her to polish the borrowed silver tureen that Sir Ambrose brought along with him? To fetch newer and fresher lettuce-leaves wherewith to line the platter?) Now it represented yet one more minor monster tussling with his trouser-leg as he prepared for the major encounter of the evening.

In the quiet, steady voice he'd perfected in a decade of dealing with the insane, he replied, "Please tell Mrs. Davies to use her best judgment, and to refer Mr. Blaine to me if there seems m be a conflict. Tell them both that getting the food on the table for dinner is my first priority."

The housemaid Mary nodded, the expression in her eyes clearly proclaiming that there was some major portion of Seward's instructions which she hadn't understood, and she darted back through the door of the little pantry and clattered down the corridor to the kitchen. Seward wondered if he should go after her and ascertain what part of his instructions were going to be garbled in transmission this time, but the chiming of the pantry clock claimed his attention like the salvo of a battle's opening guns.

Eight.

Dear God, they would be here any minute.

You've confronted cannibal savages in the South Seas on thatround-the-world voyage with Lord Godalming's daffy brother, Seward reminded himself. You've faced of fagainst Comancheros in Texas out to murder you and your friends for your boots. Can one respectable English matron out to secure A Good Match for her daughter be worse?

O f course she can.

As he passed through the dining-room-its faded silk wallpapers and graceful proportions a reminder of the house's patrician origins-he encountered Dr. Hennessey, his night surgeon, pouring himself what was clearly his third or fourth cognac of the evening.

"Cheer up, Johnny," encouraged the older man with a rather hazy grin. "This girl-she has money, eh? And she's pretty? How about this mother of hers, then ... She has money, too?"

Seward blenched at the thought of the fat-bellied and sweaty Irishman-the best that Rushbrook Asylum could get for its rather limited funds-sidling up to Mrs. Westenra with propositions of a double wedding, and said, "I believe the money is all secured in an unbreakable trust," a patent fabrication that he hoped would hold for the evening. "As for Miss Westenra..."

The bell pealed and the attendant Langmore, bedight in livery borrowed like everything else for the evening from Sir Ambrose, strode through from pantry to hall, shouting, "I'm comin', then, keep your..."

Seward strode ahead of him, cutting him off at the hall door and preceding him into the small and rather gloomy entryway that had been carved out of what had once been the house's library. All the grand rooms in the main block of Rushbrook House had years ago been converted for the use of the doctors and the patients: the original dining-room into a clinic with a dispensary in the pantry, the drawing-room into a day-room for the quieter patients, the morning-room for hydrotherapy, and the billiard-room-rather grimly equipped with several patent tranquilizing chairs and a Swing. Many of the rooms of the wing allotted to the Staff had a tinkered-with look, where a side door had been given the trappings of a main entrance and rooms originally spacious had been divided to approximate a normal household.

Mrs. Westenra was taking in all these alterations with a cold blue eye that missed not a halved window nor a single square inch where brick had been substituted for marble. "How very cozy," she said as Seward escorted her and her daughter across the threshold, and through the hall into the rest of the original library, now doing duty as drawing-room for the Superintendent, i.e. himself. "What a very clever use of space."

"I think it's charming." Lucy shrugged her wrap into Langmore's waiting hands, giving the attendant-cum-footman one of those sweetly dazzling smiles that, even glancing, had won Seward's heart the night he'd first encountered her at a party at Lord Godalming's. Then she turned the full brightness of her eyes on him. "Are those hyacinths from the garden here at Rushbrook, Dr. Seward? I thought we saw a garden, didn't we, Mama, as we drove up?"

"You did indeed, Miss Westenra. Several of our patients enjoy working with plants and flowers. Not only enjoy it, but seem to find it calming to their minds and nerves." He took her gloved hand, and guided her to a chair: a delicate girl, too thin for her medium height, her flaxen hair dressed in a feathery chignon that further emphasized this ethereal quality.

Mrs. Westenra gave an exaggerated shudder. "I hope you didn't have them coming into this part of the house and arranging the flowers, too, Dr. Seward." Like her daughter, she was a thin woman, her pallor an exaggeration of Lucy's alabaster delicacy, her eyes the chill antithesis of her daughter's hopeful trust. She glanced pointedly at Langmore. "Or do you use them in your household? I daresay it would take more courage than I possess, to live never knowing when I'd come through the door and find myself face-to-face with a lunatic." She turned as she said it, and drew back a little as Dr. Hennessey entered, red-faced and swaying slightly, a now-full-again glass of cognac in his hand.