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

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      For the time being, it was easy enough simply to let the breathing people of Navarre, soldiers, servants, and loyal citizens under good King Jean, bury the King’s brother-in-law. Among a modest host of mourners I followed to his grave my quondam friend and former employer, more recently my enemy. Then I settled back to wait, prepared to allow nature to take its course.

      I am reasonably sure that no one but myself among the crowd at his first interment—the breathers’ ceremony—realized that we were burying a vampire—although some might have suspected. Cesare did start to come out of his death-sleep when being taken to the tomb—his original tomb, in the church. Those of his pallbearers with particularly keen senses might have been aware of him stirring lightly inside his coffin. At one point I even heard him giggling.

      Whether he now comes back and walks or not, I told myself, the news of what has happened to him is going to come as a devastating shock to Lucrezia. Well, I was not going to be the one to carry it back to her. The more I thought the matter over, the more firmly I understood that she must be as guilty as her brother in their plot to use two vampires, an old enemy and an inconvenient lover, to remove each other from the scene.

* * *

      It was while I was listening to the tombside prayers that another interesting point first struck me. It was highly unlikely that Cesare, determined to the end not to become a vampire, would have made provision to have on hand a supply of his native earth against that eventuality. I supposed Constantia in her earlier concern for his welfare might have considered the matter, might even have done something about it. But Constantia was beyond consultation now.

      But as I thought the matter over I realized that there really ought to be no problem at all. The Borgias, as everyone knew, were originally Spanish. Rodrigo, the patriarch, had brought his illegitimate family to Rome only when his climb to high church office compelled him to spend almost all his time in that city. Therefore the ground we trod on here in Navarre—or at least that just across the border in Castile—was Cesare’s native earth.

      Actually, of course, although I did not know it at the time, his birthplace had been Rome.

* * *

      And now my enemy was dead—well, more or less—but certainly not by my hand or connivance. I considered that my vow to Lucrezia was still proudly intact.

      The minor war between King Jean and the rebellious Count dragged on, as such things will. The world of breathers saw me as Lucrezia’s emissary hanging around, doing such occasional intelligence service for the King of Navarre as made me for the time being a welcome guest. I made an earth for myself near Constantia’s resting place, and rested there myself in daytime, slumbering lightly. I considered it my responsibility to be her guardian. Several times at dusk I allowed myself to be seen near the spot, in one impressive shape or another, by a few local inhabitants. After that I felt reasonably sure we were not going to be disturbed.

      And each night, when the last worshipper had left the church in Viana, I stepped in to visit the tomb in which Lucrezia’s brother had been laid to rest. Each night I expected that he would wake, and walk. But night after night went past, and there was no sign of Cesare. Could I have been mistaken? Had he not been made nosferatu after all?

      And then, one night, he—stirred. I could hear him scratching and twitching in his tomb, behind the modest depth of marble.

      It took some maneuvering to get him out, even vampire as I was, without disturbing any of the pious stonework. But once I had him out, there was no possible doubt as to what had happened to Cesare. He was alive, but suffering grievously from want of his native earth. In the process of transformation he had gone from being a drugged breather to a drugged vampire. He could not come properly out of his dazed and dangerous condition: not totally unconscious, but totally helpless. As he lay sprawled on the stone floor of the church, his glazed eyes widened in astonishment to see me still alive, then fixed on me malignantly. But he could not speak.

* * *

      I have never been one to agonize at length over any problem, moral or otherwise. By my lights, to stand by while Cesare died would have been a certain violation of my oath to Lucrezia, as much as directly killing him. I assumed that burying him in Castile would take care of his problem, but my current watch over Constantia took precedence. I considered myself fortunate in being able to enlist some local gypsies—relatives, in some degree, of those dwelling near my home castle, and no strangers to the ways of nosferatu—to take him over the border and plant him there, somewhere, wherever they could find a likely spot, in what was indubitably Castilian soil.

* * *

      I should add here, parenthetically, that nearly two hundred years passed before a Spanish bishop, having studied Cesare’s original grave marker in the Viana church and read his history, became incensed that such a scoundrel should lie in such a holy place, and ordered his bones removed. Those relics—or someone’s—were dug up accordingly, and the pieces that did not crumble into dust were reburied under a nearby road. When, in a more scientific spirit, the supposed site of this second interment of Valentino was excavated in 1871, the bones unearthed on that occasion all disintegrated before anything of a scientific nature could be accomplished with them.

Chapter Twenty

      Mrs. Hassler had gone home around midnight, half-asleep, half-hypnotized, tenderly escorted by Mr. Maule. She was back, unexpectedly, at his front door