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

      Something about the hideous figure of the beggar caught my attention, and eventually I left my inconspicuous position and approached him. It was only when I stood close in front of this loathsome creature on his little cart that I was certain he was Basarab, and realized that he was not only crippled but almost completely blind.

      Even at close range some time was necessary to convince myself entirely of my enemy’s identity. The blindness and the disfigurement of his face were most likely due, I now suppose, to syphilis; at the time I hardly wondered about the cause. Basarab’s missing leg, which could well have been the immediate cause of his retirement from military service, most likely had been lost to some spear thrust or cannonball.

      “Alms, sir? Alms?” The voice was that of a beaten man, changed to the point where I should hardly have recognized it. The hand that held up a cup in my direction was shrunken and palsied. I found it hard to believe that I indeed beheld, in this cripple, this ruined husk of a man, who trembled with fear and rage at the jibes of the street urchins, the fierce soldier I remembered.

      Because I wanted to hear him talk again, I pressed a coin into his hand, the smallest coin I had, thinking that I might snatch it away again before I left. He grunted something unintelligible, and hastened to thrust the coin away amid his stinking rags.

      Not enough. I wanted to hear more. I spoke to him in Italian, asking sharply if he was not grateful This time he responded with quavering thanks; oh, yes, I recognized his voice.

      And I was sure, from the way he cocked his head, and squinted as if to make his blind eyes work, that he thought that he ought to know my voice, but could not place it

      “Do you know the name of Bogdan, my good man?” I demanded of him at last.

      “Hey?” He quivered. I think the name meant nothing to him at the moment.

      “Bogdan.” I bent closer, and spoke softly, so that the beggar alone could hear my words. “He came to Italy from a far land. He came here to get away from one who would have killed him, otherwise.”

      And the blind old man shrank back in silence. Perhaps he recognized me then.

      I considered taking back my coin, but it had vanished into some repository within his unspeakable rags, on which I had no wish to soil my fingers. I stood back a step, briefly fingering the hilt of my sword; I remember now that the wood and metal felt awkward in my grip and almost unfamiliar.

      And then I turned on my heel and took myself away, stopping at the first respectable tavern that I came to, to wash the stench of that street corner from my throat, expel its traces from my unbreathing nostrils.

* * *

      That evening, when I reported back to Cesare Borgia to discover what duties he might have for me next, he was eager to know whether I had finally attained my revenge.

      “I tried, my lord duke. But others, as perhaps you already knew, had been there before me.”

      He considered my words, and understood them, and nodded, with a twinkle in his eye. “Ah, Drakulya.” When we were alone, he—like his sister—often called me by my true name. “You are, as I suspected, a true connoisseur of requital As I like to think I am. You have no plans to kill him, then?”

      “My lord, I could not bring myself to do such a great favor for the man I saw today.”

      And Cesare, laughing, applauded my fine sensibilities in the art of vengeance.

      Sometime later, when Madonna Lucrezia, in one of her gentle moods, heard my same confession of an act of superficial mercy, it earned from her a wistful commendation. Sometimes I could not for the life of me be sure when the lady was serious and when she mocked.

* * *

      Such triumph as I felt, in reflecting upon my old enemy’s downfall, was brief. And whatever satisfaction his fate afforded me was overshadowed by a certain emptiness, a sense of loss almost like that which must follow an amputation, in realizing that I had no need to think of Basarab anymore. But then I had already known for a long time that one must expect one unsatisfactory outcome or another when one pursues revenge.

Chapter Fourteen

      When Angie came to her senses she was lying sprawled across the old man’s bed, still physically in the grip of both of the vampires who had attacked her.

      Their jaws had released their grip, one from her throat and one from her right thigh. But their four hands were still fastened on her arms and legs like handcuffs, like frozen claws, like the grip of long-dead skeletons. The sharp-boned fingers still wore their flesh, but the flesh of them now felt as cold and impersonal and stiff as plastic. On waking she could detect no signs of life in either of her assailants.

      What she could feel—and see, and smell, almost to the exclusion of everything else—was blood.

      Her own blood, cooling and sticky, seemed to be everywhere in the bed, and on the bodies lying in it. Angie’s naked skin was smeared with the red stuff, as were the clothing and the waxen faces of her attackers.

      Moving feebly at first, she tried to roll over in the bed, and was prevented by the clutch of those corpselike hands. Beginning to sob, she struggled more and more strongly to free herself from the bondage of those bony fingers. The men who held her did not move, and had she not known them to be vampires she would have been certain that they were dead.

      Tugging at one alien finger after another, she straightened out enough of them to gain release. Breaking free at last, Angie staggered to her feet. The room was dim around her. All along the windows the curtains were still