Saberhagen, Fred - Dracula 04 by Thorn

Author:Thorn
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Fourteen

The servant whose howls had wakened me was a weepy old woman, her past scarred, as I now suppose, with tragedy of one kind or another that must have driven her half mad. She was diligent about the house, but given at times to supernatural fantasies. Her cries continued in the middle distance as I sat there in my bed, I know not for how long, looking at that dagger on the pillow and fatalistically pondering its meaning. I did not require the noise of the ancient seeress to convince me of disaster.

The only logical conclusion I was able to reach regarding the dagger was that Helen had considered killing me with it before she fled—already, somehow, I had no doubt that she was gone—but had then for whatever reason decided against my murder. Still, she wished me to realize that the topic had been under consideration, and she had left the dagger so aimed to symbolize the fact.

Besides this vaguely humiliating and cryptic communication, no message from my departing wife could be discovered. As matters turned out, the old woman was screaming for no more occult reason than having been told of her mistress's defection by one of the grooms. This unusually unintelligent lad, while about his morning chores an hour or two earlier, had chanced to see Helen leaving. He reportedly belatedly how she had ridden off into the predawn mists on her white palfrey, a thin roll of clothing with a few other belongings tied up behind her sidesaddle, and ac-companied by a cloaked male figure astride another horse.

The lackwit groom stuttered and stammered this story again to me, adding that it had never occurred to him to raise an alarm when he saw this. It meant nothing to him, he asserted, that his mistress should have decided to go for an early morning ride. Herein he was mistaken; it meant in fact that I paused to slit his nose for him before I took to the road myself in a frantic effort to pick up my lady's trail.

It turned out that there was no trail, at least none that I could find. In a state of rage that grew ever

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colder and more pure, I rode at a good speed for an hour along the road that led in the opposite direction from Florence, but caught no sight of the one I sought. Nor would any of the folk I questioned in passing admit to having seen Helen ride that way with her secret lover, with that faceless, unidentifiable figure in the groom's stammered story, a man who would be glad to settle for losing part of his nose when I caught up with him.

As for what I meant to do to Helen… I do not remember making any specific plan of vengeance then.

But it was well for her that morning that I could not find her.

Of course I might well be pursuing in the wrong direction, and after an hour I turned round.

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