A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

which I write, I suspect that I may have spent a full day, or even several, struggling in my borrowed tomb, between the moment when I first began to regain my senses, and the time when I could begin to function with reasonable dependability.

      When at last I had regained strength and sense enough to turn my aching head toward the source of daylight—just then extremely irritating even if quite indirect—and squint up from the depths of my refuge, I found myself regarding a patch of blue Italian sky, with one small cloud of bloodless white just visible.

      As usual, the first question to occupy my mind upon becoming fully awake was whether there was some immediate cause—some visitor, perhaps, already present in my sanctuary or on the verge of intruding? Discovering nothing of the kind, I immediately interested myself in the usual second question: For how long a period, this time, had I lain comatose?

      Ominous signs were not wanting that this latest and most mysterious lapse had been a lengthy one—a small shrub, growing at the very entrance of my sunken grotto, was noticeably bigger than I remembered it. Perhaps, I thought optimistically, there is a spring and the plant is especially well watered there. For a time, at least, I could still hope that only months and not whole years had elapsed.

      Sitting up on the earthen ledge where I had slept, averting my gaze from the bothersome pressure of daylight, I took an inventory of my person. I had, of course, acquired no Rip Van Winkle beard—whatever the length of my stay out of the world, I am generally spared that. My limbs were as supple as ever. As a rule most of my biological processes seem to come to a complete halt as long as I am tranced. But on this occasion some drastic changes for the worse in the state of my clothing argued for a long interregnum. Fortunately, I had a spare garment or two on hand.

      Well, whatever the interval had been, there was nothing to be done about it now. Still feeling strangely lightheaded, I declared myself fully awake at last, arose from my hard couch, and bade a silent farewell to my perpetually silent host in his sarcophagus, whose slumbers had already endured much longer than the entire period of my life.

      I was ravenously hungry.

      Fortunately for my hunger and my impatience, the afternoon was already far advanced, and within an hour after arising I was crouched by the upper orifice of the cave, ready to face the dawning night. Emerging promptly at sunset, I soon disposed of a goat that had been grazing on the barren hillside nearby. It had the look of a semi-domesticated creature, and I took care to leave a coin beside the bloodless carcass to reimburse its owners for my nourishment.

* * *

      Even as I completed this gesture of payment, I became aware that I was no longer alone.

      Turning to look in the direction of my sunken grotto, I saw a slender shadow detach itself from the greater darkness of a looming boulder, and for the first time since I had risen from my grave I recognized the presence of another of my kind. How I accomplished this so swiftly I cannot readily explain.

      In the same instant that I comprehended the newcomer’s vampire status, I understood that I was in the presence of a woman. And only a moment later I realized that I knew her— nay, our relationship went deeper than that. We had once been of considerable importance to each other.

      I took a step toward her, blinking in my surprise. “Constantia?”

      “I am pleased that you remember me, Prince Drakulya.” The mockery in the little gypsy’s voice was light.

      “How could I ever forget? —But I see that you are greatly changed.” In another sense, of course, the woman before me was hardly changed at all, for she appeared as young and comely as on that night many years earlier when she had violated my grave.

      “Indeed I have. As none should know better than you, Prince Drakulya.” I doubted then, and still doubt, whether my embraces had been the sole or even the chief cause of her conversion. But if I had had a successor, or a rival, as Constantia’s vampire lover, I was never to find out his name.

      Certainly my little gypsy appeared to me as beautiful as ever. But both of us understood, from the first moment of our first Italian encounter, that our relationship would necessarily be different from now on. Henceforward, as a vampire herself, she might be my nosferatu friend, in a sense my sister, or even daughter; but the love that passes between man and woman we could share no more.

      How had Constantia been able to locate me? Echoing some of the conversation of our first meeting, she gave coy answers to that question and put me off. Probably, I decided, her magical arts were considerably advanced over what they had been at the time of our first encounter.

      I had other questions that I thought just as important: Why had she tried to find me? And why was she in Italy?

      “There are many interesting things in Italy these days, good prince.” It pleased her, for the time being, to be no more specific than that, and it pleased me for the time being not to press the matter. There was much else I wanted to find out, having to do with local and world affairs—by world affairs I of course meant those of Europe and Asia Minor. On such matters Constantia provided information freely. High on my list of things to learn, naturally, was the matter of how and why and by whom I had been drugged, and how closely my shadowy memories on the subject corresponded with the truth.

      Constantia might well have recognized the Borgia offspring from my description of the mysterious young Cesare and Lucrezia. But she swore that she knew nothing. Either she could not or would not help me