Dracula in London

stare at me. I knocked again, fair pounding this time.

“Here now,” Mrs. Brockham frowned at me. “What’s the trouble, Mary Margaret?”

“I need brandy for Miss Lucy!”

We went through a bit more knocking and rattling before she opened the door and went right in. And screamed, her hands flying to her mouth. I squeezed around her and saw Mr. Gage lying half across his desk, his eyes bulging and gray. Dead for hours, likely. I suppose I might’ve screamed, too. It brought Jeannette running, who dropped to the floor in a dead faint, and George, the footman, who as a man was too mindful of his dignity to faint, though he swayed a bit and looked very pale.

“Better tell the mistress,” Mrs. Brockham said, voice gone all weak. “Get on with you, girl!”

I went, my shoes knocking on hard wood. Mr. Gage, dead? Butlers didn’t die, at least not in service, not in that undignified way like they were no better than the rest of us. Up the stairs I went, my heart hammering in my chest.

Crouching there next to miss Lucy and the mistress was Elizabeth Gwydion, with a glass of brandy in her hand that she held to Miss Lucy’s lips.

I wasn’t thinking, mind you. Not a bit of it. I reached out and I slapped it out of her hand, sent it crashing against he polished wood of the wall.

Mrs. Westenra shot to her feet and snapped “Mary Margaret! Whatever has got into you? Stop this instant!”

I gulped down some air and tried to steady my voice, but I didn’t take my eyes off of Elizabeth Gwydion. Behind me I heard the whisper of voices—Penny and Kate and Alice at the foot of the stairs, watching.

“I sent you for brandy,” Mrs. Westenra continued coldly. “When you didn’t return Elizabeth was good enough to fetch some. Now explain yourself.”

“Mr. Gage,” I managed to say. “Mr. Gage has passed, ma’am.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Westenra said faintly. “Oh my. That is most— distressing. How—”

“Don’t know, ma’am.”

“I see.” Mrs. Westenra took a deep breath. “I’ve already sent for Dr. Seward about Lucy. When he arrives, I’ll have him examine the body. I’ll address the staff presently.”

“Yes ma’am.” I dropped a very small curtsy and turned to do what she’d ordered, but she stopped me one more time.

“Mary Margaret,” she said. “Tell Cook to make it a cold breakfast.”

Mind you, she wasn’t a cruel woman, Mrs. Westenra; she was a good employer, never harsh, never unfair. But if you ever wanted to know the difference between upstairs and down, there it was in the one short command. Mr. Gage was dead, and all it meant was a cold breakfast instead of a hot one.

Do? What could I do? We ate our cold meal, waited for Dr. Seward to come and tell us it was Mr. Gage’s heart, most unfortunate, but natural enough. Took him all of a minute to glance at the body and say so, and then he was off to Miss Lucy.

The minute he was out of sight, Alice began to cry, and Penny too, both good for nothing the rest of the day because they were sure the house was doomed. Floors didn’t get scrubbed, or the carpets swept, or the brasses polished. With Mr. Gage and Mrs. Ravenstock gone, Mrs. Brockham didn’t have the heart to force us to it.

Jeannette run off that night, not even asking for a reference. That left me, Penny, Alice, Kate, Mrs. Brockham, and George.

And Elizabeth Gwydion, of course. Herself.

Poison? Oh, of course it was, Nora, whatever Dr. Seward might have said. Herself had tried to kill me already, and she’d done for Gracie and Mr. Gage and probably for Mrs. Ravenstock as well. If I’d had any sense I would have packed my carpetbag and followed Jeannette. But I never did have sense, everyone’s said so.

I stayed, instead. And that night, I dreamed of Whitby Abbey.

In my dream I followed Elizabeth Gwydion there to those tumbled white stones, and in moonlight she was all marble and shadow. Mind you, the place is harmless enough in daylight—I’d climbed the place from one end to the other, as a girl. But this dream-abbey was drenched with black, and every shadow hid horror.

Dracula? Oh, aye, I’ll give you Dracula, you silly bint, because that’s who came to her there in the dark shattered ribs of the church. He poured himself out of the shadows, tall, he was, tall and cream-pale, with heavy foreign features—red, red lips the only touch of color to him.

The evil of him made my skin crawl, even as far away as I was. He looked like a man, but he wasn’t, he was more, he was worse, and he stank of rotting blood.

Elizabeth dropped right to her knees in front of him, drowning herself in a thick puddle of fog.

“Well?” His soft, deep voice carried to me on a dream wind. “Is it done?”

“She is prepared for you, master,” Elizabeth said, and she looked up at him with a slave’s devotion, fair turned my stomach. That accent to her voice, the one she claimed was Welsh, it sounded thicker now, and I was dead certain it came from farther away than Cardiff.

“Excellent. I will go to her soon. The others?”

“Servants of no consequence.” Elizabeth’s face twisted in sudden distaste. “There’s a meddling maid who deserves your personal attention.”

“I do not stoop to battling servants,” he said. “If you think she does not recognize her place, then show it to her, Elizabeth my beauty. Teach her the pleasure of obedience.”

She groveled to him. She crawled to him, crawled. It made me sick to see anyone, even Elizabeth, stripped of dignity like that. He put a booted foot against her ribs and rolled her on her back.

The pleasure of obedience, indeed. I’d see him in hell first, and her too. At that moment he—the thing—turned and met my eyes. Not surprised at seeing me—he’d known I was there the whole time.

It was like staring into the sun, all that blinding hunger. He drank me down like a bracing tot of hot gin.

“Well.” He smiled slowly, those red lips parting like the edges of a new wound. “A dreamer.”

He rushed at me, darkness and the stench of rotten blood, and I screamed myself awake.

Dr. Van Helsing had been in and out of the house by that time, though I’d had aught to do with him. He’d come back to do some terrible strange thing to Miss Lucy, taking blood from Mr. Holmwood and putting it in her veins. A Godless thing to do, I still say; no good can come of a thing like that. Still, Dr. Van Helsing had a kind way about him, and I saw him cross himself once, when they were praying over Miss Lucy. So I knew it was likely we had a bit in common—and, anyway, he was foreign.

I made myself bold and talked to him uninvited.

Yes, of course I know it could have gotten me shown the door! Blessed Mary, well I know it! But I had to do something, so I spoke to him about the dreams, and Elizabeth Gwydion, and all the deaths below stairs. Which he hadn’t heard, of course—the deaths of servants weren’t worth mention, I suppose. And he was gravely worried about it. Did you know he smelled like caraway seeds even then? And a sharp mint he liked to chew. He was ever so nice to me, and he told me to watch Elizabeth Gwydion close, and tell him what she did. He’d be gone that night and the next day, going back to his home, but he’d receive my report on his return.

Mind you, the household was in chaos. No butler, no housekeeper—poor Mrs. Brockham wasn’t up to the task. And the maids were in hysterics, terrified of losing their positions but even more terrified of leaving them. George, the footman, insisted nothing whatsoever was wrong, but then he was a dim sort, and as the only man in the house, I suppose he had to say it. So there was no one left to tell me that I couldn’t stay with Miss Lucy. I sat up outside her room that night, and when Elizabeth Gwydion came to the door I told her right sharp to be on her way. Later that day, going down the stairs I’d traveled at least a thousand times, something wrenched hard at my foot and I fell. It was a fearful long fall, but I turned on my side, wrenched my shoulder, bruised something terrible—and I didn’t break my neck, like poor Mrs. Ravenstock. Must have been a terrible disappointment for Miss High-and-Mighty Elizabeth.

After that, it was a quiet night. I suppose I fell asleep in the chair outside of Miss Lucy’s room. I woke up in pitch darkness, and something cold was touching my throat.

Well, you might imagine, I drew breath to scream, but a hand clapped over my mouth, and I pushed, pushed hard, threw myself off of the chair and down to the carpet. This time I did scream, and loud enough to wake the