A Matter of Taste

Walking briskly, he came to another bank of elevators almost immediately, just around a corner. When he got to a phone, he could leave an anonymous tip for the police, have them check out Valentine's apartment. But he wasn't sure that would be a good idea. Elizabeth Wiswell was dead now and couldn't be helped. Better not have cops swarming around the building until the old man had died or had recovered enough to face them.

A couple of innocent breathers, talking loudly, joined him, waiting for an elevator. He stood waiting as quietly as he could, neither facing them directly nor making a point of turning his face away. He was still holding the pistol ready under his folded topcoat.

He was going down to street level, not back to the old man's apartment; if the people trapped there were going to have a chance, someone was going to have to help them from the outside.

Chapter 7

The digging, and the nightingale's song, went on above my head. Presently, as I continued to struggle my way toward full consciousness, I could hear with great distinctness the harsh scraping of some iron tool, a shovel doubtless, upon the wooden barrier only a handbreadth above my face. A dusting of powdery earth, along with a few small insects, came sifting down through the cracks between boards. Already, after no more than a mere two years or so in the grave, my coffin was beginning to shrink and warp and fall asunder, even if I was not.

Having reached that stage of vampirish revival in which the mind begins to be competently active, even though the body as yet remains all but completely paralyzed, I considered drawing in a lungful of dusty air and frightening away the intruder with a bellow. Now I could tell that but a single person labored to unearth me. I decided to make no noise. A face-to-face welcome would be more appropriate.

The digging stopped, eventually, to be replaced by a futile tugging, directed first at the head of my container, then the foot. I could hear the intruder gasping with the effort, but neither end could be lifted very far. Evidently to drag my coffin up out of the shallow pit that had once been a secret grave was going to be beyond the lone invader's strength. Instead, there came a new tool-noise. My coffin lid was going to be pried off.

Being already somewhat warped and rotted, as I have mentioned, it came loose readily enough, but only one plank at a time.

Suddenly there was moonlight on my face, reflected and unpainful sunlight in my eyes, enough to make a bright halo of the digger's hair.

I could see at once that my uninvited guest was a woman, young and lithe. Strong, from the way she handled her tools, though not very large; and I could tell by her clothing, garbed as she was in the traditional dress of her people, that she was a gypsy. Bright earrings, forged I am sure of real silver, drew sparks from the moon.

By now I had regained the power of movement. But for the time being I chose to remain still and silent.

Unexpectedly she spoke. 'And there you are, my handsome moroi! As I thought, a power of magic here. More than a year beneath the sod, and your flesh still uncorrupted.' The right hand of the gypsy, who was hardly more than a girl, prodded an exposed bicep with a sharp fingernail and then moved on. 'And here is a nice dagger. Well, that will be of some use.' But the reaching hand made no move to extract the weapon from my coffin yet.

Still I did not move. My eyes were open, but I held them still and dull as those of a corpse; it is a thing that we can do.

The young woman crouched with clasped hands beside my coffin, speaking to me at greater length, almost but not quite as if she thought I could hear her. The tenor of her speech was rejoicing that her surmise had proven correct and that she found my body still uncorrupted.

Next she untied a small cloth bundle she had brought with her and began to go through various magical rituals, blowing foul powder in my face and chanting stupid spells. All totally useless, as most such efforts are. As I surmised at the time and later was able to confirm, they constituted an effort to keep me quiet while she hacked off various parts of my anatomy. I waited, joyfully anticipating what was going to happen when I finally moved, and waiting to see if my visitor had any more preliminaries in mind before she began to use her knife.

But there were no more. When the despoiler of my grave raised my right arm, took firm hold of the forefinger, and drew her own small dagger, I judged that the time had come to act.

I had long since left behind me many of the common susceptibilities of breathing flesh, and my assailant would have faced a most difficult task in trying to hack me to pieces with any implement of metal. But I did not allow her to make the attempt. As she held up my arm, tugging hard against a certain inherent stiffness—more appropriate to a day-old than a year-old corpse—I suddenly returned her handclasp. My own grasp was gentle, but still sufficiently firm to insure that the digit she was attempting to isolate should not be left undefended.

The young woman's first reaction was disappointingly restrained; she only gasped, and would have pulled away, but my grip was vastly too strong to allow that. Courageous as she was, I think that in the next moment she might have fainted. But now I had shifted the direction of my gaze, and with my eyes locked on hers I willed her to retain consciousness.

Her next move was a wise one, to throw down the knife she had been holding in her free hand. Then she began to mutter, and presently declaimed aloud, first prayers and then more abominations of witchcraft.

I spoke to her for the first time. 'I command you, girl, cease this shameful, wicked way of speaking. If you are going to pray, pray properly!'

Her response surprised me: 'And who are you, moroi, to call me wicked? Or to give me instructions in prayer?' And she tossed her head in a gesture of defiance.

She had again used the term for undead, and for some reason that gave me pause. Despite all my recent experience I had never yet thought of myself in such a way. 'Well,' I said at last. 'I am undead indeed. But when you come right down to it, what does that mean, except that I am, thanks to the good God, still alive?'

My captive uttered a little yelp of shock and astonishment, an almost endearing sound. 'You dare to speak the good Lord's name? Hell strike you down!'

Again it was my turn to be surprised. 'Indeed? And why should He do that?'

She was shivering, though the night was not that cold, and seemed unable to answer. 'I am Vlad Drakulya,' I told her after a pause. 'Once Prince of Wallachia. But I suppose you knew that, woman. If not, whose grave did you think you were violating? And what is your name?'

'I am called Constantia.' She was shivering more and more with fear by this time, though somehow managing to keep her voice almost under control. Courage has always fascinated and impressed me.

I squeezed her hand—still almost gently. 'And on what task, good Constantia, were you about to employ your dagger? Did you think my fingernails might be in need of trimming, after so long in the grave? Is that what brought you here tonight?'

She stared at me, and then produced a tremulous little smile. If my grip was causing her pain she gave no sign. Her spoken answers remained evasive. But of course I understood perfectly well that what must have brought her to my grave was the practice of witchcraft—doubtless she had meant to excise more than one portion of my anatomy to aid her in her spells. Dead men's eyes, fingers, testicles—the witch's shopping list is long—were and are considered of great value. Most in demand are the parts of executed criminals, followed by those of men of spiritual power. Looking back, I can believe that I was considered as belonging to both categories.

How, by what means of bribery or divination, this little apprentice witch had learned the location of my grave I was never to discover. She must have assumed that the body of Prince Drakulya would possess some special efficacy to aid her in her work. But as the situation actually worked out, she was, I believe, content to leave my bones intact, forgetting her original purpose in the dazzling light of her discovery that I was not dead after all. Yes, I know she had expected to find an undead, or thought she had; but to actually observe the fact was something else. Gypsy witches of the time, and Constantia in particular, were not known for the fine precision of their logic.

'Why do you call me moroi?' I asked her more than once on that first night as I helped her to fill in my grave above the empty coffin. Of course I knew what the name meant, but to me it was no more than a superstitious word applied by foolish peasants to some of their more unsettling nightmares.

Sometimes, when I asked her this, she must have thought that I was angry, for in answer she would only shake her head and maintain silence. On other occasions, a few minutes earlier or later, she must have considered me to be in a good mood, for she tried to argue that I did indeed fit that category. Not that she had ever known anyone else who was moroi.

Our acquaintance prospered from the start, though for some weeks after our first encounter I refrained from