time beforehe accepted the embrace of the Queen. Our correspondent even goes so far as to suggest Vlad might conceivably not be sincere in his abjuration of the Pope of Rome, and that, with Cardinal Newman as his secret confessor, he has imported the perfidious taint of Leo the Thirteenth into the Royal Household. My curly-haired friend, some dunderheads find it easier to forgive a taste for virgin blood than the drinking of communion wine.’
Ruthven shredded the letter. Its confetti joined that of many other derided documents on the carpet. He grinned and breathed heavily, but there was no trace of his apparent excitement in his milk-white cheeks. It struck Godalming that the Prime Minister’s rages were counterfeit, the impostures of a man more used to simulating than experiencing passion. He strode across the room, making and unmaking fists behind his back, grey eyes like fine-lashed marbles.
‘Our Prince changed his faith before, you know,’ Ruthven observed, ‘and for the same reason. In 1473, he abandoned Orthodoxy and became Catholic so he could marry the sister of the King of Hungary. The manoeuvre won him freedom after twelve years as a hostage at Mathias’s court, and a clear shot at regaining the Wallachian throne his bloody foolishness had lost him. That he stuck by Rome for four centuries afterwards tells you not a little about the man’s innate dullness. If you wish to examine the true soul of conservatism, you should look no further than Buckingham Palace.’
By now the Prime Minister was addressing himself not to Godalming but to a portrait. Its beak-nosed profile was turned towards a balancing picture of the Queen that ornamented the same wall. Godalming had only met Dracula once; the Prince Consort and Lord Protector, then a mere Count going by the name of de Ville, had not much resembled the proud creature captured in paint by Mr G.F. Watts.
‘Imagine the brute, Godalming. Brooding for four hundred years in his stinking wreck of a castle. Plotting and scheming and swearing and gnashing his teeth. Festering in medieval superstition. Bleeding dry uncouth peasants. Running and rutting and raping and rending with the mountain beasts. Taking his coarse pleasure with those un-dead animals he calls wives. Shifting his shape like some were-wolf mountebank...’
Though the Prince Consort had personally sponsored the Prime Minister’s appointment, relations between the vampire elders, formed over the course of centuries, were hardly congenial. In public, Ruthven displayed the expected fealty to the elder who had been King of the Vampires long before he was ruler of Great Britain. The un-dead had been an invisible kingdom for thousands of years; the Prince Consort had, at a stroke, wiped clean that slate and started anew, lording over warm and vampire alike. Ruthven, who had passed his centuries in travel and dalliance, was dragged out of the shadows with the other elders. Some might say that a chronically impoverished nobleman – who once remarked that his title and barren acres in Scotland could buy him a halfpenny bun if he had the ha’pence to go with them – had done well out of the changes. But His Lordship, a man whose title could hardly compare with Godalming’s own, was a complainer.
‘Now this Dracula has his Bradshaw by heart and calls himself a “modern”. He can tell you all the times of trains from St Pancras to Norwich on bank holidays. But he can’t believe the world has revolved since he got himself killed. Do you know how he died? He disguised himself as a Turk to spy on the enemy, then his own men broke his neck when he tried to come back to camp. The seed was already in him, put there by some fool of a nosferatu , and he crawledout of the earth. He is nobody’s get. How he loves his native soil, to sleep in it at every opportunity. There’s grave-mould in his bloodline, Godalming. That’s the sickness he spreads. Think yourself lucky that you are of my bloodline. It’s
Ruthven shredded the letter. Its confetti joined that of many other derided documents on the carpet. He grinned and breathed heavily, but there was no trace of his apparent excitement in his milk-white cheeks. It struck Godalming that the Prime Minister’s rages were counterfeit, the impostures of a man more used to simulating than experiencing passion. He strode across the room, making and unmaking fists behind his back, grey eyes like fine-lashed marbles.
‘Our Prince changed his faith before, you know,’ Ruthven observed, ‘and for the same reason. In 1473, he abandoned Orthodoxy and became Catholic so he could marry the sister of the King of Hungary. The manoeuvre won him freedom after twelve years as a hostage at Mathias’s court, and a clear shot at regaining the Wallachian throne his bloody foolishness had lost him. That he stuck by Rome for four centuries afterwards tells you not a little about the man’s innate dullness. If you wish to examine the true soul of conservatism, you should look no further than Buckingham Palace.’
By now the Prime Minister was addressing himself not to Godalming but to a portrait. Its beak-nosed profile was turned towards a balancing picture of the Queen that ornamented the same wall. Godalming had only met Dracula once; the Prince Consort and Lord Protector, then a mere Count going by the name of de Ville, had not much resembled the proud creature captured in paint by Mr G.F. Watts.
‘Imagine the brute, Godalming. Brooding for four hundred years in his stinking wreck of a castle. Plotting and scheming and swearing and gnashing his teeth. Festering in medieval superstition. Bleeding dry uncouth peasants. Running and rutting and raping and rending with the mountain beasts. Taking his coarse pleasure with those un-dead animals he calls wives. Shifting his shape like some were-wolf mountebank...’
Though the Prince Consort had personally sponsored the Prime Minister’s appointment, relations between the vampire elders, formed over the course of centuries, were hardly congenial. In public, Ruthven displayed the expected fealty to the elder who had been King of the Vampires long before he was ruler of Great Britain. The un-dead had been an invisible kingdom for thousands of years; the Prince Consort had, at a stroke, wiped clean that slate and started anew, lording over warm and vampire alike. Ruthven, who had passed his centuries in travel and dalliance, was dragged out of the shadows with the other elders. Some might say that a chronically impoverished nobleman – who once remarked that his title and barren acres in Scotland could buy him a halfpenny bun if he had the ha’pence to go with them – had done well out of the changes. But His Lordship, a man whose title could hardly compare with Godalming’s own, was a complainer.
‘Now this Dracula has his Bradshaw by heart and calls himself a “modern”. He can tell you all the times of trains from St Pancras to Norwich on bank holidays. But he can’t believe the world has revolved since he got himself killed. Do you know how he died? He disguised himself as a Turk to spy on the enemy, then his own men broke his neck when he tried to come back to camp. The seed was already in him, put there by some fool of a nosferatu , and he crawledout of the earth. He is nobody’s get. How he loves his native soil, to sleep in it at every opportunity. There’s grave-mould in his bloodline, Godalming. That’s the sickness he spreads. Think yourself lucky that you are of my bloodline. It’s
Similar Books
