entering.
Henry looked at me as though I were feverish. “We have no boat!” he said.
“We will obtain one.” I was already running. “But we must get there fast. The wind is from the southwest. It will blow us straight to Bellerive!”
Elizabeth and Henry followed, easily keeping pace with me, for I was much weakened by my ordeal, and fighting for breath. We neared the city’s ramparts, and on the broad street that led down to the harbor, I saw three guardsmen with torches, making their way toward the gates to close them for the night.
“Hurry!” I gasped. Calling upon the last of my endurance, I raced on, streaking past the guards, through the archway and onto the broad quay. Creaking at their moorings, tall ships were silhouetted against the dark sky.
I rushed toward the marina, where the smaller boats were docked. There was a great deal of activity on the wharves, as sailors boarded and disembarked from their ships. Those wishing to spend their night within the city walls had only a few more minutes to get there. Not that there was any shortage of company quayside for the sailors. Small braziers burned everywhere, and there were whistles and hoots and the shrill laughter of loose women. The three of us fit right in. We must have looked like urchins, me especially, with my sooty face, singed hair, and bloodied bandages.
At the marina my heart sang when I saw a smallish boat newly tied up against a slip, and two fishermen hauling out their catch. I rushed to them.
“I have need of your boat for one night,” I panted. “Name your price, please.”
They looked at me as though I were deranged, until they saw my purse. I spilled a pile of silver coins into my palm. “Will this do?” I asked.
They looked at each other, knowing very well that the amount was nearly the value of their boat.
“Who are you?” one of them asked.
“Do we have a contract?” I said.
“You know how to sail her?” he demanded.
“Indeed.”
I put the coins into his hand and closed his fingers around them. “I’ll have her back by tomorrow night,” I promised, and stepped aboard. “Henry, Elizabeth, we don’t have much time.”
There was a bit of bustle and confusion, for the fishermen had not quite unloaded their catch, and Henry and Elizabeth helped them, while I relit the beacons and readied the boat for sail.
“Where are you bound?” one of the fishermen asked me.
“Bellerive.”
“You’ll have the wind,” he said, pushing us away from the slip. “If you get out of the harbor in time.”
“Haul up the sail!” I sang out to Henry. “Elizabeth-the jib!”
Even as they pulled the halyards, I was at the tiller, trimming the mainsail so she best caught the wind.
“Mainsail up!” cried Henry.
“Forward now, Henry. You’re my eyes.”
“Jib’s up,” said Elizabeth.
She was a fine sailor, a better one than Henry, and I wanted her in the cockpit, ready to trim the foresail for me.
The moon was bright, mercy of mercies, silvering everything. I stood at the tiller, guiding the boat out of the marina and into the harbor proper. At its mouth a tower rose from either shore. Fires burned at their summits, making silhouettes of the watchmen.
Within these towers were the giant winches which carried the chain that closed the harbor. Once, Father had taken Konrad and me inside to see the great windlasses. Five men were needed to turn the cranks and haul the weed-strewn chains from the lake bed. When the men finished winding, the chains stretched tautly across the harbor mouth, one three feet above the water’s surface, the other fifteen.
Those chains were strong enough to snap the masts off much bigger ships than mine.
In a moment we caught the wind fully, and I gave the order to let out more sail. With satisfaction and a quickening heart I felt our bow dig deeper into the water.
In the distance a watchman shouted out from one of the towers:
“Bear away! Bear away!”
I held my course.
“They are signaling at us!” Henry cried from the bow.
I knew that in both towers the men were turning the windlasses-but I also knew we still had several minutes before the chains rose.
We ran with the wind, the water churning at our sides. I set my course for the center of the harbor’s mouth, for it was there that the chains would be last to break the surface.
“I see it near the shoreline!” Henry cried. “Victor, bear away! We’ll strike it!”
I did not. “Elizabeth, mind the foresail!”
She let out her sheet a few more inches, and I could feel it give the boat just a bit more lift.
To either side I saw the giant links breaking the surface one after the other, soaring up into the air. If just one were to strike us, it would dash our hull to pieces-and us with it. I tightened my hand on the tiller. I would not stray from my course.
We were nearly there, about to cross the line. Links shot up to the left and right, drenching us with spray and weed and lake mud. Closer and closer they came to our boat. Almost through, but not quite. I gritted my teeth. And then, not ten feet behind my rudder, the entirety of the chain breached the water like some great leviathan come up for air.
“We did it!” Elizabeth cried.
“Thanks to your fine trimming!” I exclaimed.
Henry exhaled and shook his head, holding on to the shrouds for support. “I was not made for such adventuring,” he called back to me. “That could very easily have gone the other way, Victor!”
“Think of what fabulous material this will give you, though, Henry,” I said, and sank down beside the tiller, utterly spent. The shoreline was well known to me, even by moonlight. In the distance I saw the dark outline of Bellerive’s promontory, and set my course. If the wind continued strong, we would be at the chateau’s boathouse within an hour.
“The elixir,” I said, suddenly anxious. “Elizabeth, you still have it?”
She drew it carefully out from a pocket of her dress.
“It’s intact?” I asked, holding out my hand.
“You don’t trust me?” she asked, with some irritation.
“It will ease my mind to hold it.”
With some reluctance she passed it to me. I slipped the vial from its protective leather sheath. The glass was unbroken, the cork still firmly in place. I put it back into the sheath and then into my own pocket.
The wind held steady, the sails needed no trimming, and there was little to do for the moment. Henry returned to the cockpit.
“What of Polidori?” he said.
“The fall was not high enough to harm him,” I replied.
“We cannot leave him trapped in his cellar,” said Elizabeth.
“The wretch may have some other means of escape,” I said. I could not summon any sympathy for the fellow, and was surprised at my cousin’s compassion. “But we will send word to the city guard tomorrow. They can rescue him in his forbidden laboratory.”
We sailed in silence for a while, Elizabeth looking up at the stars. I thought of how many times all of us had done so, and drifted and talked and shared our thoughts.
“Can you see the future now?” I asked her.
“No.” Her face was drawn, and I thought I saw a flash of tears in her eyes. “What if it doesn’t work, Victor?”
The same question had been echoing in my head, and doubtless in Henry’s, too.
“We’ve done something extraordinary, the three of us,” I said fiercely. “We’ve obtained the Elixir of Life. It is no spell or incantation. It’s no different from Polidori’s vision of the wolf. Or Dr. Murnau’s medicine. The elixir will work. We must believe it.”
