09: WICKLOW ONE

Upon its arrival, the door to the small room opened, and St Croix stood looking at his hosts. They were shocked by his pallor; he did not look like the younger, virile man from a week ago. But that shock was far surpassed as Evelyn's frail figure stepped to stand beside him.

As they began to inquire about how she could stand alone, let alone still be alive, St Croix raised one hand to silence them and, with the other, handed them another packet of 5-pound notes.

“A yearly stipend shall find its way to this address for any number of years, with the proviso of silence of this week’s event.”   

 Barely able to walk, Evelyn shuffled toward Charlotte, reaching out and talking her hand and said to the woman, “A great blessing upon the name Stoker, and may it always be remembered.”

Abraham looked at St Croix and asked one word, “How?”

Jonathan said, “Recall when you asked me how I could assist the Crown and help you in your endeavours, and I stated, ‘It is because I am not as I appear.’ I will now add two things to that. You shall not hear from me again other than the anonymous stipend. And as you are a man of good standing in the Church of Ireland, I will only say reread and reflect upon the words of the Lord as expressed in the Book of Psalms, 34:7.

Stoker did not need to use his Bible to reference the verse. He knew it well. “The angel of the LORD encamps all around those who fear Him, and He delivers them.”

“My wife and I must depart, blessings upon this home.” Boarding the carriage, they left the house on Marino Cresent, leaving Dublin and travelling south to Wicklow. 

Wicklow was a small town on the coast with a history stretching back to before Christ and the first primitive tribes of Ireland.

“Driver, take us toward that church.”  The church was Saint Patrick's Catholic, on Saint Patrick's Road.” As they approached it, St Croix told the driver to travel down Fitzwilliam Road, and they pulled up to a home about a dozen buildings further, a house built as a rowhouse behind an ivy-covered wall.

He unloaded the carriage of all the belongings and packets, paid the driver, and asked again for confidence.

After several raps on the door, the door opens, and a woman appearing in her mid-forties inquired with a curt, “Yes.”

In an unemotional reply that matched the woman’s curtness, St Croix said, “I am here to see Collette, the authentic Collette.” 

“There is no Collette here, Sir.”

“Then is she on the Ile de Paris, dressed in red by the blue Seine?”

The woman barked into the house, ordering two younger men to come to the door, help Jonathan and Evelyn, and bring in their belongings.

“Sir, I am Abigail O’Leary; welcome to my current home.”

“I am Jonathan St Croix, and this is my wife Evelyn, and it is to tend to her needs that I have come here.”

Before Jonathan had finished speaking, the two men had taken Evelyn to a second-floor room and laid her on a bed, and another woman began to tend to her needs and comfort her.   

With brevity always being the best course of action, Jonathan explained how he had met Evelyn, why he was in Ireland, and the last few days' events.

Abigail sat silently before saying, “This is both good and bad, and at the same time, neither. What does your wife know of you and us?”

“I am afraid nothing, as I had hoped to defer the issue for a few more years.”

“That is nonsense and would not have been wise, and your marriage to her may not have been wise either, and your recent actions may have been foolish.”

Jonathan sat in silence, listening to the woman question him, reprimand him, and even rebuke him to the point of shame.

“Love is unalterable, and love once found is tantamount. And I, for the first time, have felt love.”

“Love? Love could get us all killed. Love is the invitation to wanton disregard and a bedfellow of disaster.”

“Have you, Abigail, ever been in love?”

“Yes, and that is why I am weary and disdain it. You, Jonathan St Croix, have to tell her now. And you must also find a way to deal with the story of her injuries in Dublin and her miraculous recovery. As her father is a member of Parliament, he must have the resources to investigate the matter. His involvement with the Orbis Terrarum Imperium Sub Deo may help us.

Now, tend to your wife. Tell her what you did. Pray that she has the strength to understand and the will not to break. You, St Croix, have certainly added brine to the wine.”

For most of the next two days, Evelyn slept, only waking to drink a small amount of water laced with brandy. Her rest was fitful, and her dressing gown and the bedding needed to be changed often as she was heavily perspiring.

On the third day, she awoke to Jonathan sitting on the bed next to her.

“Evelyn, my love, you have had a terrible accident last week in Dublin; what of it do you remember?”

“We had just left the mayor’s house, and I was getting into the carriage, and then the things I recall are dreams and half-visions of being in a strange room with you tending to me. I feel better, but this is another strange room.”

You hit your head when the horse bolted, and I tended you back to health at the Stokers.

Are you well enough to hear my story? I hope it does not scare you, as I did not mean to hurt you and would never wish to do that.”

“Hurt me; what did you do, Jonathan? What did you do to me?”

Jonathan reached for a pillow, placed it behind her, told her to sit up, and handed her a small glass of whiskey. “You will need this.”

He moved closer to her and started. “I am unsure where to start. I have never needed to say what I am about to say.”

“Jonathan, you are starting to scare me. I do not want…”

“No, my dear, what I must say, I must say.

You have expressed concern about certain aspects of myself since we first met. My habits, strange comings and goings, my lack of close social friends and my lack of interactions with others in my trade. Well, I am different, and I do not mean that in a harmful or dangerous way, but I mean wonderfully, a way that defies modern medicine and science. Things that the Royal Society does not know of and would not believe if they were to find things out about me and the others who are like me.”

“Whatever it is, Jonathan, I love you. I will always love you if you are on the run from the authorities, a French or Prussian spy, a highwayman, or a rogue.”

“I know that, my love, but allow me to proceed. I am not like other men; as you have noticed, when I injure myself, I heal quickly, almost as if by magic, sorcery or Divine intervention, but it is none of that. I and those like me, my kind, are different. We heal quickly; we hear and see better. We have a heightened sense of smell and taste. We are stronger and faster than those we call “the Standards.” We are exceptional, and we live longer, perhaps too long.”

“Now you are scaring me, Jonathan; who are you? What are you?”

Smiling, he continued. “We call ourselves the Devi. We are not legion in numbers; perhaps a few dozen or scores of us here in England and Ireland. More are in France, Prussia, the Levant, Asia Minor, India, China and Japan. We are even in the New World, America, the British colonies, and in the lands of the old Spanish Empire.

We stay hidden and quiet. We move about, often changing names and locations, and we learn new languages and trades. As we live a long time, neighbours and associates will notice that we do not change or age, and that will be unfortunate for us, as even in this enlightened time, we will be cast as witches. We will be hunted and killed.  

Your father, Sir Chester, asked me to assist Abraham Stoker in dealings with the Ottomans. I know Ottoman practices and thoughts, as I was in Constantinople many years ago. My first memories are from there.”

“You are a Turk? Are you not English or French as your name would indicate or mean? I thought, well, I don’t know about…”

“Dear Evelyn, allow me to continue. I do not know where I was born or when…”

“Surely not earlier than 1800 or 1805, as you are only 40 or 45 at most.”

“Evelyn, allow me to continue. When I was in Constantinople for the first time in 1453, the Ottomans had just captured the Byzantine capital, effectively ending the last vestiges of the Roman Empire. Columbus was still a babe in swaddling clothes. Henry VI was on the throne in England, and Charles VII was the King of France. The artist DaVinci was still a child.

I was a man; I now have no thoughts or memories before that time. Since then, I have travelled Europe and through the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate, from the sands of North Africa to the snow fields of the Swedish Empire, Mexico, the Indian Territories of America, and even New France.

For the last four hundred years, I have lived many lives. You suggested I was born near 1800; shortly after that, I stood with Napoleon as a Cartographer with his Grand Armee outside of Milan and at the Battle of Marengo. In the years before that, I was in Tripoli, Havana and Mexico. After those wars, I moved and bought a gold exchange in London, the one you visited.

“Darling, you jest; you want to make me laugh and feel better. No man can live to be four hundred unless you are a descendant of Methuselah.”