Magistrates of Hell

Esteban Sierra of Rome (does he REALLY have a house in Rome?) had made arrangements not only to open a substantial account in the Banque Franco-Chinoise, but also to rent a storage room in its underground vault. For ‘antiquities and objets d’art’ said the application, in that strong, vertical handwriting with its odd loops and flourishes. Current contents: a single large trunk.

Don Simon had told Jamie once that vampires knew when the living were on their trail. People who lingered once too often on the sidewalk opposite a suspect house. Faces seen in neighborhoods where the vampires, with their hyper-acute awareness of human features, knew every face. By showing even an interest in the underground bank-vault, the ‘antiquities and objets d’art’, Lydia was aware she had committed the paramount sin of bringing ‘Esteban Sierra’ to the attention of anyone. She – and Jamie – had only lived this long because Ysidro understood that they knew the rules.

She left the curtains of her window half-open, half-closed yet again, as she had last night and the night before.

In the morning she sent Count Mizukami a note.

The Count was the soul of discretion. He had watched events in China long enough – and had sufficient familiarity with its current ‘acting’ President – to understand the danger of a single wrong word, the smallest misplaced whisper, flying to official ears. He accepted without question Lydia’s word that nothing must be spoken of her visit to the bank vault. He must acquire permission, and the keys, but only Lydia would be permitted to enter.

The aplomb with which he made these arrangements – with which he could make such arrangements – caused Lydia to wonder a good deal about the contents, and renters, of the bank’s other strongrooms.

Just before closing time on Wednesday, the sixth of November, Mizukami and Ellen conducted Lydia two doors down the street to the bank, and a clerk escorted them as far as the stairs. Her veils over her face, the rustle of her black silk skirts like the scraping of silver files in the stillness of the underground hallway, Lydia made her way by the bright electric glare to the vault door marked 12. The clerk had explained the procedure for opening it, and she guessed she would be very politely searched by a female bank employee the moment she emerged. She was aware of her heart pounding: he would be furious, she knew, when he learned that she had violated the secrecy with which he surrounded himself.

It might lose her his friendship: that queer, shining shadow that shouldn’t exist but did. If he heard her – felt her – through his dreams, he would be cursing her now.

But he might be in danger.

When last they had spoken, she had seen the fear in his eyes.

As the application said, there was only one thing in the vault: a huge tan leather travel-trunk with brass corners, easily large enough to hold the body of a man. He’s keeping his clothing and books somewhere else . . .

It was like him, she thought as the door shut behind her, to rent a bank vault next door to their hotel.

From her handbag she took her silvery spectacle-case, lifted her veils aside and donned her glasses.

The trunk was closed. She knew it could be locked from the inside. The outer locks were just for show. It was daylight outside, though not a ray of it penetrated to this room. He would be asleep. With the door closed the silence was like a weight, pressing in on her eardrums. She’d asked him once how much vampires were aware of, during their daytime sleep, and he had only said, ‘The dreams of vampires are not like the dreams of men.’

Forgive me . . .

She took a deep breath, put her hands on the trunk’s lid, and pushed.

It opened with soundless ease.

The trunk was empty.

SIXTEEN

The ruined chapel, Ysidro had said, near the old French cemetery.

The rickshaw-puller knew the place. Asher left the man by the steps of the new Cathedral, with instructions (and an extra fifteen cents) to wait for him there. The district had been hammered mercilessly by Boxer cannon, so many of the buildings hereabouts were new and built in the Western style. The chapel ruins looked as if they’d been shuttered up for years.

The moon was dwindling, and at this hour few lamps remained in any of the shops along Shun Chih Men Street. Once dark fell on Peking, the blackness in the huntongs had to be experienced to be believed. The feeble glimmer of his tin dark-lantern barely showed Asher the other side of the alleyways as he made his way on foot toward the chapel. He understood that he was taking his life in his hands, but his life had been, in a sense, a mosquito sitting on the arm of Fate ever since he’d come to China.

On the chapel steps, he paused and put around his neck the silver crucifix he’d purchased early in his association with vampires. He had quickly learned that the holy symbol was only as good as its silver content, at least as far as protection was concerned, but under his collar and scarf he wore the silver chains that never left him. On this occasion the crucifix served another purpose.

He took also from his pocket the little tin box that Karlebach had given him on their arrival in China: crushed, slightly gummy herbs, the bitterness of which was accompanied by a quickening of his heartbeat and a heightened clarity of mind. Vampires hunted by sleepiness and inattention. Even a half-second could make a difference.

Inside, the building was littered with debris. Everything wooden had long since been carried off by the neighbors for fuel. Fury at Western missionaries had left only a single statue of the Virgin still standing, in a niche to the east of the main altar. Raising his lantern Asher saw that her face had been blackened, her nose chipped off, her eyes gouged out. Someone had recently repaired them with new plaster, carefully painted. Her lips still smiled.

He took a candle from his pocket and lit it at the lantern’s flame. This he set on the altar; then he knelt, hands folded. ‘In nomine patrii, et filii, et spiritu sanctii, amen. Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum . . .’

His father would be turning in his grave.

But then the old man would be used to the exercise by that time.

And if Father Orsino Espiritu was listening, the Latin prayer – and the unspoken lie that the supplicant was Catholic – might just save his life.

A Jesuit, Ysidro had said.

When the Order came to China in the sixteenth century every country in Europe had been broken on the rack of religious war. To accomplish their conversions in the East, the Jesuits had clothed Catholicism in the trappings of Buddhism, learned the language – almost the only Westerners to do so – and dressed themselves in the robes of Buddhist monks. Later, when the greed of Western merchants had sought to tap China’s riches, they – and the men and women they had converted – were seen as traitors, lackeys of the West.

He has been hiding for most of the past three centuries . . . Ysidro had said of Father Orsino. ‘I hear their voices speaking in my mind . . .’

Asher whispered the Latin of every prayer he could remember, aware that any vampire entering the ruins would be able to hear the pounding of his heart.

Of course the vampires of Peking would watch a Jesuit. So what would they make of the appearance of a second Spanish vampire, save that they were in league? Was that why Ysidro had not been in contact with him since he’d taken refuge in the Chinese City, a week ago now? What would they make of a living man, in the Chinese garb that the Jesuits assumed, whispering Latin prayers in the darkness?

‘At te levavi animam meam: Deus meus, in te confido . . .’ In you I will place my trust . . .

Gray sleepiness crushed down on his mind, stealthy and overwhelming. He thrust himself away from the altar rail in the instant before a clawed hand seized his throat. The hand jerked back, and he heard a curse in antique Spanish; ducked, turned his body as a blow brushed his face. ‘Padre Orsino!’

In the candle’s light he glimpsed the thin white face, the reflective glimmer of eyes. A hand seized his arm and hurled him out on to the stone floor of the nave with an impact that knocked the breath from his body. The