A/N: With thanks to TheHighestPie for her Beta work, and to the members of Abaissé for providing continued inspiration. I've been caught up with bits and bobs lately, but have completed this and the next chapter. I'm projecting 3 - 4 more chapters, but given how I write that could translate to more.
Chapter 9 – False Dawn
These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer.
Voltaire Dictionnaire philosophique 1764
"Are you making progress?" Courfeyrac asked, not for the first time, leaning over Pontmercy's shoulder. Fortunately Pontmercy, involved in flipping between his English dictionaries and the text he worked with, was too engaged in the project to object. This time, at least, he did more than answer with a monosyllable.
"This is the strangest thing," he commented, brushing his lips with the tip of his quill and frowning over his notes. "I can't be sure, but this line seems to be about using garlic to deter…dead that return? Living dead?"
"Can you render it as 'vampire'?"
"I could, but it's not quite right – English also uses 'vampire', and the word appears throughout the text. Vampire or revenant is the idea, though. He's confusing – he uses English, what I think is Italian and some local dialects and a smattering of Latin. It's an odd work…there seem to be classifications and distinctions in types of revenant. Some are all but human…man-like? Like living beings? That's the sense of it. Dead, and yet not dead. And others are monstrous. I think here, in this specific case, he means they are physically repulsive, but he uses "monstrous" to describe them all in a general sense. They are monsters. Even the ones who are beautiful in the flesh."
"Could it be said that there are traits they all hold in common?"
"Oh, yes!" Pontmercy said, putting his pen down and turning to face Courfeyrac, who regretted distracting him in his impatience for answers. "They all live by consuming the life essence of the living, usually by drinking blood. And they act as a contagion, infecting others." He frowned. "Although there's no one method prescribed for dealing with the infection."
Courfeyrac reproached himself for this line of questioning – he did not want to draw Pontmercy's attention to the urgency of translating this particular part of the manuscript, in case he started asking too many questions in return. The advocate was already scratching his black curls and pursing his lips.
"I still think it terribly strange that Enjolras is so interested in all of this," he commented. "I should think it rather out of his way."
"Ah, that's right…you haven't really heard one of his more elaborate allegorical speeches, have you?" Courfeyrac said lightly. "I think he's planning on using this material to illustrate the threat of foreign intervention in the Republic, and is making use of the idea of the revenants to stand in for spies and informers. He also has some colourful ideas on representing the Assembly, and commentary on Metternich promises to be inspired. He'll marry the vampires of folklore with the classical Striges in a perfect Walpurgis Night of energy and abstract thought." Pontmercy nodded his head, barely comprehending. "You should come and hear him deliver it when it's done," Courfeyrac added cheekily, knowing quite well he was on safe ground, as his friend's avoidance of Enjolras and his political gatherings since their early acquaintance was well known in their circles.
"Ye-e-e-s," Pontmercy drew out. "Sounds like quite an obscure stew of ideas to me."
It had been hard enough to persuade him to do a favour for Enjolras. Courfeyrac had completely forgotten about the Bonaparte incident until Pontmercy had brought it up, but it evidently still rankled for Marius. No use in saying that Enjolras had probably forgotten about it as well. It had taken a touch on Pontmercy's inflated sense of honour – a delicately shaded hint that it would be a return favour to himself, Courfeyrac – to persuade him to translate the work as a matter of urgency. Courfeyrac had also offered payment so Pontmercy could turn it down and thus feel doubly virtuous, hopefully prompting him to finish the translation quickly.
"It is matter of some importance," he hinted again. Pontmercy smiled.
"Well, in that case, you can assist me by translating the passages rendered in Latin."
He really was a good sort of fellow, Courfeyrac thought. No wonder Enjolras insisted on seeing potential there that was not necessarily evident even to Combeferre.
Combeferre measured the dose. His hand had been shaking earlier when he'd eaten a hasty meal, splashing some of the soup the concierge had brought him into his lap, but as he dropped the drug into the water he did not tremble. He watched the droplets disperse and cloud the liquid, an effect that always reminded him of the louche effect of adding water to absinthe and the transformation of the bright green liquid into something cloudy, which was appropriate for what both substances did to the mind of the drinker.
Hopefully he would not need to use the drug, but he intended to have it to hand, just in case. He had allowed Enjolras to surface from the heavy dose given hours earlier, and felt somewhat unnerved by how quickly Enjolras had struggled his way back to consciousness. The medication should have kept him under for much longer. Perhaps the batch of the drug was not of the correct strength? Before giving him anything more, he would see if the hours he had slept had had helped restore any lucidity. Had the delusions not begun before he began administering the opiates, he would have suspected they were the cause of his friend's hallucinations and paranoia.
"Enjolras? Are you awake?" he asked gently. He was rewarded with open blue eyes, though the befogging drug's influence could be read in their lack of focus. Or was that dilation part of the illness?
"Yes," came the response in a harsh whisper. "Night is coming on, isn't it?"
Combeferre looked to the shuttered window automatically, although as tightly closed as it was he could not see any light from outside. "It must be. Do you remember anything of this morning?"
Enjolras shook his head, looking tired and bewildered. Save for a slight ruddiness to the back of his neck and touches of it on his nose and chin, there was no trace of the flaming red blisters of the morning. "It eases with the night," he said to Combeferre. "I see things more clearly. I know when he is near…it is like a burning brand in my mind. But I do not think he will come tonight…my thoughts seem clearer, somehow."
He sounds almost matter of fact, Combeferre noticed with a sinking heart. As if he spoke of something that I am completely cogent of, that we talk the same language.
"Enjolras…you do know that you are ill, don't you?"
Enjolras closed his eyes and clenched the hands that lay on the bedspread. At first Combeferre thought that he was trying to curb an angry response, but then he realised that his friend was focusing all his effort in order to speak firmly. The words came clearly and precisely.
"I am not mad, Combeferre. If you were, in this moment, to ask me to name the chief members of every cell from Les Société des Amis du Peuple to the Mutualists and to our friends of Croix-Rousse in Lyon, I could do it. I could argue legal precedents from the Discours de la Méthode. I could recite our oaths."
"Can you tell me about the dark shadow that is stalking you?"
"Not that test…any measure but that."
"This is an illness, my friend…and I do not know if it is organic in origin or…"
"I am sane, Combeferre!" His eyes opened in misery, and looked anything but sane – they were wild, dark and anguished. It was a twisted perversion of the expression Enjolras wore when he saw beyond the material and into that other world, that other plane, one that seemed so real and immediate to him that when he spoke of it you could see it as well. Enjolras could make it seem as real as this world…more real, even, than those everyday people, objects and events that he considered avatars. Now, that transcendent vision had locked on something else, and it was evil. "I cannot see the light any more. When I look for it, there is only the surrounding darkness, and the darkness hungers."
I was wrong to push him, thought Combeferre. His momentary appearance of sanity was an illusion. There is madness in him.
Had there always been madness latent in him? Or had he only just crossed a boundary that should not have been penetrated, plunging into the dark? Jehan was wont to insist that the imaginative world was not a state, it was human existence itself. What if that reality became warped? Enjolras' face had always been turned towards the light, and that light infused him. But if his gaze had become diverted to the dark, then might it not equally permeate him? Like crystal, did he reflect and magnify illumination, or did he invert images?
"Enjolras, I need you to drink this…it will calm you."
Enjolras might have been gazing with horror on whatever terrible visions had taken the place of his idealistic dreams, but he knew well enough what it was that Combeferre offered him.
"No."
"Please. You need to sleep."
"If reason sleeps, then the monsters come."
"But you see them when you are awake."
Enjolras seemed to put in a supreme effort to imitate a rational man. "You're quite right, Combeferre, but I'm sure I can sleep naturally. I do not need the drug."
"Enjolras, you're a terrible liar at any time. Dissembling is not natural to you." He forced a smile. "Please. Trust me. Drink this."
"I'm drowning."
"I would never hurt you. Trust me, as I trust you."
"Oh God…do not ask this of me. I would rather die than…what they desire…what he wants…"
Silently, reacting not at all to the disjointed murmuring, Combeferre held the glass to his friend's lips and supported his head. For a moment he thought Enjolras would refuse, but with a sigh he began to drink. When he had finished he said nothing, merely regarded Combeferre with all the inherent sadness in his eyes to the fore.
"My friend, I will not leave your side. And I promise you – we will find out what is happening to you. I will exert every effort in restoring you to health."
"And if you cannot, then you must fulfil a duty that will be terrible to you, but as necessary as the upheaval we work towards." Enjolras' voice had regained a measure of its harsh, hymn-like cadence. "I must ask you to swear something to me, a vow as solemn as any of our Republican oaths."
"If it something that I can in conscience promise to do, then I will perform anything you ask of me."
"If I cannot be free of this curse, you must destroy me."
A shock of cold fear ran through Combeferre. "It would never come to that!" he protested. "This is an illness, and an illness can be cured."
"Promise me this!" Enjolras continued, earnest, fiercely intense and terrible. "And make the others swear it too."
"You are seeing things darkly now because your mind is fevered and disordered –"
He broke off. Enjolras' expression was as implacable as he had ever seen it. He did not use words, but rather the intensity of his gaze to compel. The frightening thing to Combeferre was that, in spite of the illness, the drug and the madness, in this one moment Enjolras seemed utterly clearheaded and emphatic. God help me if I'm lying to a sick man, but…
"I promise, Enjolras."
Enjolras nodded, barely perceptibly, and his eyes slid closed.
Combeferre took his now accustomed seat beside the bed and sat in thought, half his attention focused on listening to the stentorian tones of his friend's breathing as it slowed, and the rest trying absently to calculate how many days he had been here, how many hours. Time was beginning to assume a distorted quality foreign to his well ordered mind. And Courfeyrac? How much time had he spent here? Where was he now? Prouvaire said he had left in a hurry, but for what cause? That odd message? Combeferre could almost envy Courfeyrac. No matter how wild the chase, it gave him an outlet for his energy, which had to be better than the waiting, the sense of watching a friend slipping away.
That he might lose any of his friends was something he was prepared for, or so he had thought. Last July he had watched Enjolras in cold calculation kill at least two men with impersonal detachment. It was only when the firing had finished, when they had left their position to advance on the Hôtel de Ville as the Guard units turned with the tide of the fight, that Enjolras had spared a look for the fallen men. Combeferre never asked about the twist that had come over his features, an expression that might have been grief or something else.
Worse, he knew, for Enjolras had been the orders he had given. A gap in the barricade, a section undefended, and their leader –holding a besieged position himself that the opposing forces had identified as the source of the directed fire against them - had ordered his nearest man to fill it. Prouvaire.
Jehan had thrown himself in to stop the breach with his own body, showing no more hesitation than Enjolras had in ordering him to it, and Combeferre didn't know which had frightened him more. He crawled forward on his hands and knees to take up a position beside the poet, the youngest of their party, hating Enjolras' orders even as he had to acknowledge their necessity, and to acknowledge that Prouvaire had made his own decisions both in being there and in obedience to their leader
Enjolras would have thrown himself, or any of them, into that gap in the barricade. Only as a final measure, but one that they recognised as a possibility. Like imprisonment in Saint-Michel, exile or even a fatal malady contracted in some pox-ridden slum.
But this was something else. Neither the result of battle nor sickness, but some unidentifiable combination of both. And it was a mystery that was taking his dearest friend.
Am I already letting him go? He looked at his friend's hand on the counterpane, lifeless fingers entwined with his own. The ABC might go on, but how could I leave him behind?
Someone was hammering at the door. It certainly wouldn't be Joly, and even Bahorel would have more sense. Courfeyrac.
He opened the door to his friend, who bounded past him and into Enjolras's bedroom.
"Is he alright?"
"There's been no change – what are you doing, Courfeyrac?" Courfeyrac was at the bedside, had flung down the pile of papers he had in his hands to the floor, and – of all things – was drawing Enjolras' lips up to expose his teeth.
"Combeferre! Have his teeth here – these ones – always been this sharp?"
"Those are canines, and yes! Everyone has pointed canines." Courfeyrac touched his own dubiously, and Combeferre drew up his lip with his forefinger to show his in turn. "There? Satisfied? Now tell me what on earth you're playing at, bursting into a sickroom like this."
He hadn't been drinking – there wasn't a whiff of alcohol to him – but Courfeyrac was clearly very excited. "It's all true – all of it! I have proof!" He swooped to pick up the papers. "I told you it was vampires! Nosferatu! Strigoli! The Undead!" He thrust them at Combeferre.
"Let us have this conversation in the other room…"
"No!" Courfeyrac insisted emphatically. "He must not be left alone for a moment – not for a single second. And we need all the Amis. Oh – and garlic."
Combeferre wondered if the lack of sleep and the anxiety had made him lightheaded. Or perhaps he had fallen asleep and was merely dreaming that Courfeyrac was dancing around the room raving of monsters. Courfeyrac finally seemed sensible of the impression he was making, brought up sharply to himself by Combeferre's expression, and made the effort to settle. He was usually at his best in a crisis.
"You must read these papers. It all fits together, Combeferre." Combeferre was shaking his head, so Courfeyrac began again, relating his meeting with Guérande. As he spoke, Combeferre began making the connections, flipping through the papers where the dreadful words stood out sharply in the black ink of Pontmercy's scrawl.
Plague of monsters.
Exsanguination.
Lingering death of the victims.
Mesmerism.
Enjolras's strange behavior that night at the Comédie-Française...the man Bossuet and Bahorel met...oh, God, the neck wound and the anemia…the blisters…
Enjolras' fear.
He was trying to tell us. And I drugged him into oblivion.
Combeferre instinctively gravitated protectively towards Enjolras, who had not moved during the entire exchange, but lay cold and pale and stricken. It was all true. And if were true –
Enjolras, had their position been reversed, would have been calm. Define the obstacle, and then attack it. One must understand the disease, be it an organic condition or a social malaise.
"Where is Joly?" Courfeyrac asked.
"He's picking up some supplies – he should be back soon. And then we need to decide a course of action. Let me read this. Can you fetch me some writing materials? Bring me Enjolras' portable writing desk. And we need light in this room."
Combeferre wanted to be prepared to immediately conduct a new examination of their friend, in whatever light these notes could shed on what was happening by the time Joly returned.
Reading and writing swiftly, with some exchanges back and forward with Courfeyrac assisting, Combeferre quickly distilled the notes down to their salient points. Polidori's mind and approach were not as scientific as could have been hoped but there were some pertinent facts to be discerned through the opacity of the English Romantic's fascination with the Gothicism of the tales. Chief among the marks of vampiric infection was the damage to a vein or artery and the anaemia. Enjolras' confusion, the illusory madness, was more difficult to place. Victims under the mesmeric influence of the undead seemed weak, but usually knew little to nothing of their attackers. The violent rejection – the ravings that half-hinted at the source of the injury – found no echo in Polidori's text.
There were enough points of similarity, though, that Combeferre was able to undertake the not inconsiderable task of convincing Joly when he returned. Courfeyrac watched anxiously as the two murmured back and forth, re-examining the patient from the little they now knew. Combeferre's professional composure was visibly shaken only once, when they took note of the fading bruises on his friend's upper torso.
"I think we may take it now that these are the marks of restraint –" he broke off abruptly.
"We weren't to know," Joly said calmly, squeezing his friend's arm slightly. "I can still hardly credit any of it, but we must go where the evidence leads us." Combeferre nodded and they returned to cataloguing the physical symptoms.
Courfeyrac could hardly restrain his joy when Bahorel called in, bringing an update from Feuilly. Bahorel brought with him a solid confidence, not just through his physicality, but through his sheer practical knowledge and an experience of life that exceeded their own. To Courfeyrac's surprise, he received the explanation of Enjolras' condition with complete calmness.
"You forget – my family hails from the Cévannes. A little hamlet on the floor of a valley, ringed by the forest. When the wind howls down from the mountains you could believe in almost any ravening evil, and I grew up with these stories. Besides, I've been hearing tales of something that stalks and kills in the Paris streets for weeks now. And have had Grantaire battering my ears with long rambling stories of corpses drained of blood."
"So what now?" Joly asked. "What can we do tonight?"
"Not much chance of getting through to the ABC and...I'd hesitate to send off anyone alone."
"I certainly wouldn't care to venture down a dark street after reading that manuscript!" Courfeyrac agreed.
"We'll hole up here for the night," Bahorel said. "Combeferre, you and Courfeyrac need sleep. Do you know where Enjolras keeps his munitions?"
"I'll get his fowling piece," Combeferre said quietly, going into the annexe.
"Would a gun be effective?" Courfeyrac asked. "If these creatures really are dead – and I really can't believe I'm uttering those words – would a bullet make much of a difference?"
"From the tales I remember, a bullet fired at the walking dead will leave a mark, and seems to drive them off. That's how it usually goes in folklore – they identify the revenant when they locate the body by the wound inflicted by a gun or some other weapon. Decapitation would be better. Or burning. But we need to find where the afflicted corpses are interred."
Combeferre returned with the gun, and handed it with powder and bullets to Bahorel, who began loading.
"Remind me to get Enjolras a better piece than this," Bahorel commented. "He could really afford something more suitable."
Courfeyrac brought in an extra two chairs so all four could be seated, as Combeferre evidently had no intention of sleeping just yet. He returned to his notes, conferring quietly with Joly. Courfeyrac extracted a pack of cards from his pocket. "Enjolras doesn't have a card table, but shall we see if we can balance these on our knees?" he asked Bahorel.
Sometime after midnight, Courfeyrac raised his head. "Did you hear that?"
Combeferre, on the verge of dozing, shook his head.
"A scratching at the pane-"
Bahorel cocked his head for a moment as they listened intently, then – picking up the loaded gun from his lap - moved quietly to the widow. He drew the curtains abruptly and threw open the blinds. A moment's pause and he cautiously surveyed the street, staring long off to his left, motionlessly scrutinising something. They held their breath before he turned back to the room.
"Nothing there-" the slightest hesitation, then he shook his head. "Nothing. I thought for a moment I saw movement at the end of the street, but it was either my imagination or some late night passerby."
"Our nerves are overstrained," Combeferre said. "Courfeyrac, I suggest you get some sleep. Go into the other room and lie down."
Courfeyrac nodded wearily and moved out. Sleep did not come easily, though, as every noise in the street started him awake, and he had the uneasy feeling that if he went to the window to look out, something he dared not think of might be looking in. Towards two o'clock in the small hours of the morning – the Wolf Hour, as he had once heard his old nurse call it - he heard Enjolras cry out in nightmares. He clutched the pillow to himself and closed his eyes tightly as the reassuring voices of his friends came from the other room, and finally fell asleep waiting in desperation for the dawn.
Although they agreed that there was little danger of the vampires themselves being abroad in daylight, Bahorel pointed out that they did not know whether the creatures might act through any human agents, and had appointed himself to watch over Enjolras during the day while the others put together what sources they could. They would meet that evening to decide what strategy to adopt.
A matter of some discussion had been what to tell Enjolras, should he become conscious enough to question them. Waking to find Bahorel sitting in the corner of the room with a volume of English poetry he was slowly translating in one hand and a loaded weapon close to the other might require some explanation, as the practical Joly pointed out.
"He should sleep –" Combeferre said uncertainly. "That seems to be the pattern – it is with the evening that he becomes restless." Resolutely, he refused to dwell on the implications of this in light of what they now knew. "I'll be back well before evening, in any case, but I'll leave you the necessary materials to…to dose him, if he becomes agitated." Bahorel nodded firmly, to all appearances more resigned to the possible necessity than Combeferre himself. "I don't want to do that, but I don't know how else we are to restrain him...unless we do so physically."
"Send back Bossuet to me, in case I need someone to help me or act as a runner to get word to you," he suggested. "He's hasn't darkened the door of the Bibliothèque in years, and would probably wind up spilling ink all over the manuscripts or setting fire to the rare books by some form of spontaneous combustion were he to enter the proximity of anything actually irreplaceable."
Combeferre agreed, giving his friend a final glance over before he left. Knowing the cause of that hectic colouring, that harsh breathing, had the unexpected effect of making him reluctant to touch his deeply slumbering friend. Steeling himself to it, he took one of the thin wrists in his hand and counted out the sluggish beats. Refusing to allow himself to wonder if that strong heart was by infinitesimal degrees slowing to stillness, he checked the neck wound. The mark of the creature that attacked him, stigmata of evil. Even rebinding it could not cover his revulsion, as he knew that beneath the padding and cloth he tied around the neck – awkward, given the location of the wound – the spiritual contamination might be as virulent as any infection.
But this was still Enjolras – his friend. The words he had spoken the night before were some indication of the struggle being fought beneath that deceptively placid countenance, that beautiful, chilling mask touched with the unnatural colouring of the living death that stole about him and threatened to consume him. Combeferre bent over and kissed him on the forehead. "Stay with us," he murmured. "Don't go into the dark."
