14
Blut und Ehre
"Note that one night too, the three blutwursts for Lohengrin's five very sick swans even got ate by nine. That's ten incidents!"
"But are you sure we can count the blutwursts?" queried Joachim, stroking his long, grey straggly beard as he glanced up at the tall professor striding alongside him.
"Oh: Yes!" van Helsing exclaimed, thumping a tight fist down hard into the heavy sea mist to emphasise the absoluteness of his certaintly. "In my experience, a vampire will go for anything with blood in it. They prefer it fresh - and human, of course - but I'm sure that most vampires wouldn't turn their noses up at a blutwurst breakfast. You must remember that when they wake, their energy reserves are usually at a dangerously low ebb; they must find some blood - any blood - very quickly to give them strength for the night's hunting."
The two of them walked quickly through the old streets of Whitby. They had been brought here by tales of attacks on young girls, some of whom were said to have lapsed into a progressive lassitude following the attack, exhibiting all the classic symptoms of anaemia, or lack of blood. It had soon transpired that many other events, not the least of which was the mysterious disappearance of three German blood puddings, pointed to the active presence of that most feared of abominations, the vampire.
The haar - that raw sea mist which plagues the Eastern coast of Britain - had rolled in rapidly and thickly from the expansive vastness of cold grey sea and now visibility in the winding and narrow cobbled streets of the old fishing town was down to a few short yards of soul chilling damp air. Although their watches told them it was still early evening, with the sun not due to set for another hour or more, it might well have been night: such was the gloomy darkness which the thick mist brought into the little ill-fated town. "I shouldn't wonder," van Helsing offered, "if it were not the property of this weather which brought the vampire here. What need has it to wait until nightfall when it's deadly enemy the sun never gets a chance to shine?"
"You may be right," gasped Joachim, having some difficulty in breathing, not so much from the mist as from having to exert himself to keep up with the professor's rapid pace. Under his breath, not wishing to antagonise the proud van Helsing in any way, he added: "But I think not."
Whitby being a small town, it was not too long before they reached the end of the harbour pier. Through the mist, the vision of a dead swan appeared, veiled as in a dream. As one with the good fisher-folk of Whitby, they watched the preparations for the final send off. The King was there to watch, also, sitting shaded in his richly curtained palanquin: pale, feeble, wounded in the thigh; unhealing these long years, he nevertheless had insisted on blessing the occasion with his presence. At his side, a young page held the sacred wood of his broken lance; Around him, a host of the legendary Grail Knights stood proud in guard of honour, their white surcoats greyed by the mist, the blood red crosses on their shoulders dulled, blued, aged.
"Ah, my friend, young Harker, should be here to see this," van Helsing said, the unusually quiet, thoughtful tone of his voice betraying the awe in which he regarded the array of mystic chivalry. "I doubt we shall ever witness such replendency again in our lifetimes. I wonder where he is?"
Joachim laughed. "Off on a tourist trudge, along with Mina and my lamb. This pomp and circumstance stuff doesn't mean much to the young. They're probably gasping for breath half way up the one hundred and ninety nine steps right now."
On board the stricken Swan, Bram, the Stoker, struck a vesta and started one last fire. Not until it was well alight did the Helmsman and Navigator, who might have been called Canopus but wasn't, guide her through the harbour gates, then set her course straight into the welcoming expanse of the German Ocean, sometimes called the North Sea. A fishing coble followed closely for a short distance, returning with the two men as the blazing Swan continued on her way. The raging flames burned off the mist for many yards around, so that all who watched would some day tell their grandchildren how the noble Swan sailed its final fateful journey through a great tunnel back to whence it came; and tell also of how the tunnel slowly closed behind the Swan so that no-one living might see its final destination.
The crowds of simple fisher-folk waited until the King's palanquin, carried on the ready shoulders of Lohengrin, Parcifal, Lancelot and Gawain, and escorted by a double phalanx of the white clad knights, had left the pier before they too walked back into the humdrum of their normal lives. Soon, Joachim and van Helsing remained alone in the chill mist which blotted out town and Abbey and whalebone arch, musing on the spectacle they had just witnessed.
"That," cried van Helsing, suddenly, "is why he's here!"
Joachim smiled to himself. With some folk it is best to put the clues in plain view and let them work it out for themselves. Had he simply told van Helsing of his theory, the old man would probably have dismissed it out of hand, as is the way of old professors - and young professors, also - and then refused even to let it colour his deliberations until events forced it upon him. How many lives might be lost to the vampire in that time?
The old man continued, excitedly. "Don't you see, Joachim? The presence of the Fisher King, along with several tongues of Templars, means that there's a Grail hunt on around here. It's the key to the whole affair: he's not after any old blood; he's after the Grail itself. That Cup of the Saviour's Blood will not only provide him with all the finest of foods a vampire such as he could ever need, or desire, but every draught of it will also repeatedly exonerate and absolve him from each and every sin he's ever committed in his dark past - or ever will commit for all time to come. He will not be just another immortal and immoral blood-sucking murderer, he'll be a totally sinless vampire! If he gets hold of the Grail, neither Holy Water nor The Cross will ever again have any affect on him."
"Nor will a stake through his heart destroy him," Joachim dared to add.
"My God, you're right!" van Helsing cried, beating tightly clenched fists at the chilling haar. "We have to stop him before he finds the Grail or the world is doomed." And on this dreadful thought, as if to put a seal upon his words and imbue them with greater import and urgency than their meaning already held - if, indeed, that were possible - the just discernible sound of the old church bell tolled out through the mists in hollow warning of the coming night. "Hark!" van Helsing cried. "The sun is setting; we must hurry or all will be lost."
Joachim needed no urging: The vampire was about to rise and feed.
In the ruins of the Abbey, isolated normally by its position on the cliff top but far more so now by the combination of dark night and heavy sea mist, a strange ceremony was already being enacted. The four knights - Lohengrin, Parcifal, Lancelot and Gawain - in preparation for the coming Grail hunt - they had laughingly termed it the 'Whitby Meet' - had, by a tradition writ in many accounts, to spend the entire night in fast, lying humbly prostrate on holy ground. By unwritten tradition, they had supped their fill of strong wine before the beginning of the fast the better to endure a night on the hard, cold ground and, consequently, were all fast asleep. Not part of the same tradition was the gathering of twelve senior Grail Knights, who had formed a circle around the four innocents; nor did the dark altar that had been set at the head of the four recumbent knights figure in any outward show of the religion. Black candles, sputtering in the chilling damp mist, almost failed to illuminate the ritual objects which had been hastily but carefully arranged on the altar's surface: a jewel encrusted skull, a cord, a dagger - its blade inscribed with characters from a language not used for a thousand years -, a simple round bowl, salt, herbs, grain, a smoking thurible, an ancient book....
"Hurry!" cried van Helsing, several paces ahead of Joachim whose heart was pounding in his chest as the two raced in desperation through the steep cobbled streets and began their ascent of the one hundred and ninety nine steps. "I fear we may already be too late!"
In the Abbey ruins, the drugged bodies of a young man and a girl were placed before the altar; and the limp, passive body of a lamb was raised above it by two of the celebrants. Its neck was directly over the simple round bowl. From the shadows limped a figure, stooping, thin, and robed entirely in featureless black. The shadow of a deep hood hid his face from all who would dare to look. "Lady of Wisdom;" cried this high priest of darkness, taking up the athame and touching it to the crown of the skull, "Lord of Understanding: Accept this sacrifice, performed in the full Knowledge of all thy Works, to thy Glory; Let it be the Foundation of thy Kingdom. Let the Blood of the Lamb be our redemption and our one nourishment throughout eternal life." Then, after dropping salt, grain and herbs into the thurible, he placed the edge of the knife across the lamb's throat and intoned loudly: "Whom does the Grail Serve?"
"No!" van Helsing shouted, as the ground began to rock beneath their feet. "It cannot be!" Just ahead of them, stones tumbled from the Abbey ruins; above the Abbey, jagged lightning flashed in eerie silence through the mist.
In the Abbey, before the knightly participants who had fallen to their knees in awe and terror, the simple round bowl gleamed and shimmered, as though transmuted into the purest sun struck gold and set out with coloured tracery in agate ... beryl ... cornelian ... diamond ... emerald ... and every precious stone; and it rang: in loud clear notes that might be that of the trumpet heralding the Rapture, the bowl sang out through the silence of the misted night in every harmony that the seven-note octave had ever carried. At these sure signs, the high priest threw back his hood and raised his soulless black eyes in challenge to the darkness of the heavens; now bathed in divine radiance from the Holy Grail, a new energy animated the timeworn features of the Fisher-King as he bared his elongated fangs in triumphal laughter, anticipating the moment of transfiguration: the culmination of his long quest for the Grail. With deliberate slowness, savouring the performance of this one event which had drawn him on and sustained him through the ages, he raised the gleaming silver blade of the athame in preparation for the single deep cut that would forever end the centuries of his torment.
The shaft of a broken lance struck through his heart.
"Good God!" van Helsing gasped. He looked round to see Joachim writhing on the ground in agony from a dislocated shoulder. "Did you throw that? Of course, you did! A brilliant throw, my friend; and not a moment too soon: one second more, or a few inches either side, and it would have been beyond the scope of any man to stop him. A magnificent throw! Here, I'm a doctor: let me set that shoulder for you."
Before them, in shafts of bright moonlight revealed by the clearing mist, seventeen ancient bodies crumbled one by one into a fine powdery dust, so that, of the twenty-two who had been on the cliff, only five, finally, remained amongst the ruins of the Abbey. And then a gentle, sweetly scented wind descended from the heather moors and gusted through the old stones in searching eddies, quickly swirling away all evidence of the night's happenings, sweeping them over the cliff and consigning them to the cleansing tides of the North Sea. Jonathan Harker awoke and found himself in the arms of his beloved Mina; and while both of them patiently suffered the well intentioned but fussy ministrations of Doctor van Helsing, Joachim - ever the good shepherd - hoisted the lamb on to his aching shoulders and set off, under the aegis of the high and friendly moon, on the long descent down the one hundred and ninety nine steps.
The lamb clutched a simple round bowl to its fleecy bosom, thinking: "I know of a bottomless lake ...."
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This is one of the Tales of Joachim |
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Ink Amera |
(C) David 1/9/2007 |
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