oceans of time

 

I have sent word to Budaphest (so strange to call it thus) for an agent who speaks English.  I would take myself away from the petty concerns of this backwater country.  I long to rule over a living kingdom again.  The man, I do not remember his name, was in Istanbul not long before, and brings word of many business opportunities in this New Rome.  

 

London, the seat of kings.  Of great minds and great culture.  She thrives on the meat of mankind, it is said, a hive of industry.  The age of reason has come forth into the light, and as always, the darkness follows behind, staining the hem of her gowns with filth and blood.  It is glorious and I would see it with my own eyes.

 

The wealth of my treasury is easily converted to currency.  I send word under seal, and they will come slathering to my door like the starved wolves they are. 

 

I will learn their tongue, and I will walk among them, and they will know the fear and majesty of the Prince who defied God.

 

 

 

The language comes easily to me.  I remember the text Abel brought me from Varna.  I believe it was Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the works of John Donne, the poet.  There were others as well, and I find the language has not changed so much.   Yet, I must practice with its native speakers.  My mother's tongue is still heavy on my lips, and colors all that pass them.

 

The Englishman took his time setting up my accounts, and his mind strays to ways to further profit from my inexperience with Western financial instruments.  It does not matter to me.  There remains such wealth in my coffers, he could squander half of it and I would still have enough to see my plans through to completion.

 

Ten manor houses, houses befitting royalty, in and around the heartbeat of this New Rome.  London, my new home, my new love, you are my next conquest, by blood and by fire if necessary.  Fifty boxes of earth are only the beginning.  I shall take the mountain with me, one handful at a time, if that is what the hunger requires.  I shall spread it across the whole of the world until there is no dark place I cannot come to rest.  My children will go forth, beautiful and terrible, and I will see them rise to the highest places in society.

 

Kings and queens will beg to become part of my court.  I shall rule as never before.  I shall rule in the Light! And the Englishman, with his greedy thoughts, shall be duly rewarded for his ardor, and shall feast upon pestilence until the end of his days, always within reach of everlasting life, but eternally denied the gift.  He shall rot in a cell, his mind turned only to thoughts of hunger, of mindless, gnawing ravenous need for life, in all its forms.

 

 

 

 

Ah Renfield, my black-hearted scribe.  I can feel him, and feel that his pathetic mind has shattered, but the blood bond remains.  I can hear him calling, across the leagues that separate us.  Ravenous for life, for the secrets of the blood eternal.  He will never see it from my hand, but he will serve me in other ways, yet.  I have no need to dispose of him, harmless vile thing that he has become.

 

They sent another in his place, one Jonathan Harker.  With him comes a miracle I could never have foreseen.  He carries with him a graven image of my beloved.  No, she is not my beloved, but a woman, with the given name Wilhelmina.  Mina, as he calls her.  His betrothed.  It is fascinating to look upon, not a painting, but a feat of science, captured with light and chymicals.  But she is the very image of my Elizaveta.  She wears her face, her eyes, even the soft hint of a smile on her lips.  It is impossible, but how can it be anything less than destiny.  I look upon this portrait, this photograph, and I see my beloved looking back at me.  She has come for me.  She walks the earth again, a world away in my city, in my London.  She waits for me.

 

I shall keep him here, for a month or more, until I make the passage.  My beloved will not be kept from me by time or distance.  I shall keep him here, a prisoner, and I shall return in his place.  He wears the barest sense of her in his skin, and I have tasted perhaps a hint of her in his blood.  That they are betrothed surely matters not.  She will look upon me and she will know me for who I am.  Her Prince, returned from the battlefield, returned to her whole and alive.  I will forgive her the lie that took her from me.  It will be as if she never fell.  I will have her in my arms again.  I will take her to my breast and make her my Princess, my eternal love.  I swear, He will be powerless to keep her from me.  His treachery is at an end.  My love walks the earth again and she will be mine.

 

This I swear, by blood and by my oath.