The Strain: Another Season
Episode 8

Four Nervous Vendors
Chapter Four

Fonthill Abbey, Great Britain - October 1823
Great Western Hall

The "Fonthill Sale" of legend is taking place. Not the secretive sale of the Abbey and its treasures by William Thomas Beckford to John Farquhar, but the very public auction of all those treasures now freely accessible to society at large - or at least that part of society with the money to indulge their love of beautiful things. This time, Farquhar is the vendor and an extremely nervous one at that, whereas Beckford and his friend Alexander, Duke of Hamilton and Brandon are rabidly enthusiastic bidders. By acting as joint bidders, they buy back most of the lots cheaply, but the Occido Lumen sparks a bad-tempered bidding war. Finally, Beckford can't afford to keep pace with the Duke and the Lumen goes to Hamilton. Beckford and Hamilton row and a physical fight breaks out between them. The friendship is irrevocably broken when Beckford threatens to shoot Hamilton there and then and gets arrested. Farquhar is relieved and the exultant Duke of Hamilton heads to London.

Fet's place, Red Hook, Brooklyn – Present day

'What happened next, Mum?' Dutch asks.

'I returned to your grandmother's home in Maastricht,' Sandra sighs. 'I was bereft, damaged and defeated. Your Dutch family were so kind and understanding that it broke my heart all over again. Bart, your father's brother – the man you knew as "Dad" - was the only one who was a little distant and chilly. Well, maybe your great-great-grandmother Sarah, too. She was warm but quiet, watching from the sidelines until one day she asked me to drop her home.'

Maastricht 1990
Sarah de Bakker's sitting room

The old lady gestures for Sandra to take a seat while she, with a degree of effort, makes some coffee. Sandra is too broken and weary to offer much resistance and drops onto an armchair.

Sandra thanks her for the coffee and sniffs it. 'Is it decaff?' she asks.

'No,' says the old lady simply.

'I'd better not, then,' she says, putting the mug down with a sigh.

There's some more silent scrutiny by the elder lady until she points at the locket around Sandra's neck. 'Cornelius gave it to you?' she asks without inflection.

Sandra wordlessly removes the silver locket and offers it back.

The old lady takes it silently and turns it over and over in her wizened fingers. Her nostalgic smile is very young though. She sighs and whispers, 'De liefde van mijn leven.'

Sandra translates, 'The love of your life?'

Old Mrs De Bakker nods sadly.

'Corey told me,' the girl says sympathetically. 'It contains a picture of his great-grandfather...'

Another nod.

'…my baby's great-great-grandfather...'

A nod.

'…Johannes de Bakker.'

A shake of the old lady's head. Sandra gasps. She gets up and goes to sit next to Sarah on the sofa, she points to the ornately engraved letter on the front of the case.

'What does the "J" stand for, then?'

The old lady turns and looks the girl full in the face. 'It's not a "J", my dear.'

Sandra snatches it and examines it again. The excessive wear at the bottom of the letter means it could indeed be an "F", an "I", an "L", a "T" or even, with the eye of faith, a "P".

Sandra returns the locket to the other's tender handling and asks breathlessly, 'Who?'

The older lady doesn't answer immediately, but eventually sighs. 'I don't remember his name.'

Sandra doesn't appear to completely believe her but doesn't push it.

The old lady leans back and closes her eyes.

'Pieter's father was a German cavalry officer, running away from you British after the Great War.'

'Someone told Corey he was more German than Jew,' muses Sandra.

'Oh yes, there's hardly any Jewish blood in the boys. I'm only one quarter Jew and Pieter and Gude both married blond Gentiles... Well, poor Pieter didn't get to marry his girl…' her voice tails off and she's silent for a minute before resuming brightly as if the interlude had never happened.

'I was Sarah Israëls, granddaughter of the foremost jeweller in Maastricht, Opa (Grandpa) had married a beautiful, blonde Dutchwoman and so had Pa. I took after Ma and Oma (Grandma). Johannes was actually Jozef Jacobse - small, dark, obviously Jewish and hopelessly in love with his boss' granddaughter, who was half his age.'

'Hopelessly?' asks Sandra.

She nods with a laugh. 'He and every man in the city. I was about your age and, believe it or not, just as blonde and beautiful.'

'I do believe it,' says the girl earnestly, making the old lady chuckle. 'Did your lover know your name? Know you were a Jew?'

'Of course,' smiles Sarah and points to the first line of engraving on the reverse of the locket. She stares into the distance, as if reciting from memory. 'Niet alle Duitsers zijn Nazis. Not all Germans are Nazis,' she says. 'I had good cause to try to remember that – in the occupation of the second war.'

The girl puts a comforting hand on the old lady's arm. 'Corey told me about that too. I'm so sorry.'

'My hussar wasn't like those Nazi wolves.' She sighs again. 'He was sweet and gentle and generous. He was scared of me at first, and I of him. Such blue, blue eyes. So very handsome. Brave and noble yet burdened by self-doubt. A beautiful man with a beautiful heart.'

Sandra releases a sigh of pent up fear. Perhaps, this description finally disqualifies someone who had been plaguing her nightmares.

'You still love him very much,' Sandra says and pauses for a moment. 'But why did he leave you, alone and pregnant?'

'He had to,' she explains. 'He was being hunted by the British Expeditionary Force enforcing the German retreat. He had to run for his life. He never knew that I was carrying his son because I didn't know then. The evening before he had to take off, he'd given me his photograph from his pay book. I was going to get one taken of me - for him to keep - but he had to flee and I never saw him again. I assumed that he'd been caught and killed. I had my grandfather make this locket and I put the picture inside and welded it shut forever. Jozef caught me doing it and I broke down and told him everything – the baby, the whole story. He offered to marry me and I had no choice but to accept. It was not as easy to be a single mother then, as it is now.'

Sandra snorts as if she doesn't think her future will be all that simple.

'My husband was a good man and I came to love him,' the old lady continues. 'It was a different kind of love, of course.' Her thoughts suddenly jump track. 'Has Bart proposed yet?'

'What?' Sandra is shocked.

The elder lady pats her knee. 'He will, my dear, if I have to kick him up the zitvlak myself. Poor boy, he fell in love with you the same day his brother did. You must not tell him, or anyone else, this tale, by the way. No one else alive knows the truth and their Jewishness is part of their identities. It would destroy them to hear this.'

Sandra leans back to take in this new information while the other lady continues her story.

'When Pieter was born, at the end of Summer '19, we agonised over whether to have him circumcised. We both identified as ethnically Jewish but neither of us were active in the religious or civic Jewish community. Jozef felt it was an important event to give our son a sense of belonging but I didn't want my perfect little boy to be mutilated. We were both aware of anti-Semitic feeling rising in the Netherlands and her powerful, but temporarily crushed, neighbour, Germany. Pieter was obviously blond and blue-eyed even at eight days old and I put my foot down. Jozef was powerless to resist his young and beautiful wife,' she chuckles, 'and, recognising that my Aryan appearance added to the boy's ability to pass as non-Jewish, he changed his name to Johannes de Bakker. In the end, the decisions saved me and our son but not my darling Johannes.'

She pauses for a sip of coffee and Sandra squeezes her hand reassuringly again.

'Over the intervening decades we distanced ourselves from the Jews of the Netherlands and, when the Germans invaded in 1940, we escaped detection and deportation. Johannes was in his fifties and a railway worker in a reserved occupation. They needed the railways manned for efficient transport of Jews to camps. Poor, dear Johannes was nearly destroyed by the guilt. Pieter was twenty and was recruited into the German army. Maastricht is a border town, you see, and Pieter was so impressively Aryan, that it seems they couldn't resist him. My decision was vindicated at his medical and there was no further suspicion of Jewishness over our family. Pieter was sent to France leaving a pregnant fiancée.

'Johannes and I were alone again. I was forty but still, if I might say, a dazzling beauty. As you will be too, I'm sure, my dear. I knew my looks put Johannes and me in danger so I did what I could. I cut my hair, put coal dust under my eyes and I got as fat as I could on the food shortages. But it was not enough. One night, some younger officers got drunk and broke in. Johannes helped me escape but he was killed.

I went straight to the highest ranking (and least offensive) Nazi officer in the city and offered myself to him in exchange for my protection and the execution of Johannes's murderers. I know you think you have done some terrible things in order to survive and protect your baby and I don't need to know what. But now you know that I did, too. And, right or wrong, I'm still alive and so's Pieter and so, through Gude, was Cornelius to save you and his son or daughter. Who knows but that you or my great-great-grandchild will do momentous things one day?' Sandra is now sobbing with sympathy and hormones, but it is a stoic, dry-eyed old Sarah who comforts the girl with a bony hug.

The elderly lady returns the locket to Sandra's palm and closes her own wrinkled hand over the girl's. 'Keep it,' she says. 'And now I think you have something else you want engraved upon it.'

London - November 1836

An ancient Egyptian mummy is being dissected (or desecrated) by Thomas 'Mummy' Pettigrew, as the entertainment after a society dinner party. Alexander, Duke of Hamilton and Brandon is in attendance. He seems much older than his nearly seventy years of age would suggest. He is enthralled by the mummification process and the ancients' afterlife beliefs as elucidated by Pettigrew.

Afterwards, he accosts the Egyptologist. 'Mr Pettigrew, I have an unusual commission for you, but first you must satisfy me that you are able to create a mummy as expertly as you take one apart.'

'Certainly, your grace, I am the only man in England, nay Europe, with the necessary skills.'

'I want you to mummify me upon my death,' the Duke says without preamble.

Pettigrew doesn't bat an eyelash and only asks, 'Would you like a sarcophagus?'

'Yes! Yes! Everything. I wanted to be entombed like a Pharaoh. If I am spared long enough, I intend to have a pyramid built at Hamilton Palace but the doctors tell me that is unlikely.'

'What a splendid coincidence, sir,' says Pettigrew rubbing his hands. 'I am presently negotiating the purchase of several sarcophagi from Paris. However, the vendors are requesting the most peculiar addendum to the conditions of the sale.'

'Oh?'

'They want someone smuggled across the Channel in one of the sarcophagi.'

'Well, I don't see the problem with that Pettigrew, my good man. I'll send him a ticket for a first class cabin myself.'

'No, sir - you misunderstand - he wants to travel in a coffin.'

'Why the devil would he want that?'

Pettigrew shrugs.

'Bloody Frogs! I'll never understand the buggers.' Hamilton waves his hand accommodatingly. 'Oh well, whatever he wants.'

Docklands, London - September 1837

Half a dozen dodgy-looking men are creeping around a darkened warehouse full of wooden crates. When they encounter a consignment from Paris stamped with the delivery address of His Grace the Duke of Hamilton, they are particularly interested. Two men keep watch for the ineffectual security while the others investigate the huge crate with crowbars. They are obviously practiced and before long they are swearing in awe at a hermetically sealed, beautifully decorated sarcophagus. A grubby switchblade releases the seal. They are about to prise off the massive lid when the slab of rock, weighing about a ton, is catapulted into the air and a figure leaps out. The pale, noseless face and black eyes instantly identify it as strigoi. His dapper black tailcoat and top hat suggest that he is a Chosen. His words confirm it. 'Where am I?' he asks with a trace of French accent.

His unwitting liberators gibber inarticulately, looking him up and down in horror. The beast might be sporting a long coat but that's all he's wearing – his doll-smooth, white body is clearly visible. He seizes the nearest thug and brings him right up close to his hideous face.

'Where am I?' the creature repeats. The enormous brute faints and the vampire sighs, extends his stinger and drinks him. The other five scatter but the monster is phenomenally fast and drains all but one who he restrains surprisingly gently.

'I won't hurt you, monsieur,' he says smoothly, 'if you would but tell me where, in England, I am.'

'London, sir,' blurts the ruffian. 'East end. Newham to be exact, sir.'

'Is Hamilton far?'

The man looks blank.

'Lanarkshire.'

More blankness.

'Scotland?' The strigoi seems almost to have given up hope of any lucidity on the part of his new friend.

'Miles, sir,' says the man, relieved to get a grip on events once more.

'In what direction?'

'Norf, sir. Dun ask me anymore'n that.'

The gentleman vampire releases him and the man farts with relief. The vampire steps away in disgust and then drinks him like his comrades. Then he shrugs and flits away into the night.

Mansion House, London - January 1838

The Lord Mayor, Sir John Cowan, has called a public session at the Mansion House to address the strange case of the demonic individual who the popular press and penny dreadfuls have dubbed "Spring-heeled Jack". Prior to his civic appearance, he discusses the reports with his aides behind the scenes.

'How do these poor gels describe the villain, then?'

'Well he can leap huge distances, hence the sobriquet, Sir John,' reads one. 'He has smooth, waxen white skin, black iris-less eyes which sometimes glow red …er…shard-like teeth…sharp claws…bald head…gruesome fiendish countenance…no nose…and…er…no…er…' The embarrassed secretary gestures to his pelvic region.

'No what, man?' snaps Sir John.

A second advisor comes to the aid of the self-conscious young man. 'No privates, your worship.'

'What!?'

'But that doesn't seem to matter 'cos he has a massive one in place of a tongue.'

'What? Really? Is that how these innocent serving wenches described it?'

'Regrettably so, sir, but with two prongs on the end.'

'By God! Did they? Well, we can't release that. Servant girls have a bad enough reputation as it is. Here's what we say – everything else is fine, we'll embellish some of the stuff along the lines of "eyes like glowing balls of fire"…he wears white, skin-tight oilskins and a helmet…'

'…and the tongue-phallus?' prods the more forthright assistant.

'He breathes fire – a long purplish flame. Some mundanity and a lot of far-fetched nonsense – that'll give the pressmen something to get their teeth into. I reckon they know all about the real story, anyway. It's probably some young rascal who's been dared to dress up and frighten young women senseless for a wager. Right then, let's get this over with…'