The Vampyre by Tom Holland Page B

neck.
    â€˜â€œWhen did he die?” I asked.
    â€˜â€œToday,” whispered Athanasius.
    â€˜â€œSo he is the second man to die here this week?”
    â€˜Athanasius nodded. He looked around, then whispered in my ear. “My Lord, the monks are saying there is a devil loose.”
    â€˜I stared at him in disbelief. “I thought devils were only for Turks and peasants, Athanasius.”
    â€˜â€œYes, My Lord.” Athanasius swallowed. “Even so, My Lord” - he pointed at the dead man - “they are saying that this is the work of a vardoulacha . See how white he is, drained of his blood. I think, My Lord, please - we should go.” He was almost on his knees now. “Please, My Lord.” He held the door open. “Please.”
    â€˜Hobhouse and I smiled at each other. We shrugged, and followed our guide back out to the jetty. There was a second boat moored next to ours that I had failed to notice on our landing, but recognised now at once. A black-swathed creature sat in the prow, his idiot’s face as dead and bleached as before. I watched him growing smaller as we slipped across the lake. Athanasius was watching the creature too.
    â€˜â€œThe Pasha’s ferryman,” I said.
    â€˜â€œYes,” he agreed, and crossed himself.
    â€˜I smiled. I had only mentioned the Pasha to watch our guide shake.’
    Lord Byron paused. ‘Of course, I should not have been cruel. But Athanasius had saddened me. A scholar - intelligent, well read - if freedom for the Greeks was to come from anywhere, then it was from men like him. So his cowardice, although we laughed at it, also filled us with something like despair.’ Lord Byron rested his chin on his fingertips, and smiled with faint self-mockery. ‘He parted for good after our return from the monastery. We called on him before we left the next day, but he wasn’t at home. Sad.’ Lord Byron nodded his head gently. ‘Yes, very sad.’
    He lapsed into silence. ‘So you went on to Tapaleen?’ asked Rebecca eventually.
    Lord Byron nodded. ‘For our audience with the great and notorious Ali Pasha.’
    â€˜I remember reading your letter,’ Rebecca said. ‘The one you wrote to your mother.’
    He looked up at her. ‘Do you?’ he asked softly.
    â€˜Yes. About the Albanians in their gold and crimson, and the two hundred horses, and the black slaves, and the couriers, and the kettle drums, and the boys calling the hour from the minaret of the mosque.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, seeing how he stared at her. ‘But I always thought it was a wonderful letter - a wonderful description.’
    â€˜Yes.’ Lord Byron suddenly smiled. ‘No doubt because it was a lie.’
    â€˜A lie?’
    â€˜A sin of omission, rather. I neglected to mention the stakes. Three of them, just outside the main gates. The sight of them, the smell - they rather polluted my memories of arrival in Tapaleen. But I had to be careful with my mother - she never could bear too much reality.’
    Rebecca ran a hand through her hair. ‘Oh. I see.’
    â€˜No, you don’t, you can’t possibly. Two of the men were dead - shredded hunks of carrion. But as we rode beneath the stakes, we saw from the third a faint stirring. We looked up; a thing - it was no longer a man - was twitching on its stake, even as the movement drove the wood higher into its guts, so that it screamed, a terrible, inhuman, degraded sound. The poor wretch saw me staring at him; he tried to speak, and then I saw the caked black filth around his mouth, and understood that he had no tongue. There was nothing I could do - I rode on through the gates. But I felt horror, knowing that I shared clay with the creatures that could do such things, and suffer them as well, without meaning, without hope. I saw that I was nothing, that I must die, a thing which would come as much