Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“‘It must be almost dark outside,’ Helen muttered.

“‘I know,’ I said. ‘We’ve probably got ten minutes and then we shouldn’t be here, I’m sure of that.’ We went around the little room again, checking every inch. The air was chill, especially now that I wasn’t wearing my jacket, but sweat began to trail down my back. ‘Maybe the library is in another part of the church, or in the foundation.’

“‘It has to be completely hidden, probably underground,’ Helen whispered. ‘Otherwise someone would have known of it long ago. Also, if my father is in this grave -’ She didn’t finish, but it was the question that had tormented me even in the first moment of shock, seeing Rossi there: where was Dracula?

“‘Isn’t there anything unusual here?’ Helen was looking at the low, vaulted ceiling now, trying to reach it with her fingertips.

“‘I don’t see anything.’ Then a sudden thought made me snatch a candle from the stand and crouch down. Helen followed me swiftly.

“‘Yes,’ she breathed. I was touching the carved dragon on the vertical of the lowest step. I had stroked it with my finger during our first visit to the crypt; now I pushed it hard, put my weight into it. It was firm in the wall. But Helen’s sensitive hands were already feeling the stones around it, and she suddenly found a loose one; it simply came out in her hand, like a tooth, from where it was embedded next to the dragon carving. A small dark hole gaped where it had been; I put my hand in and waved it around, but encountered only space. Helen slipped hers in, however, and brought it back toward the dragon, behind the carving. ‘Paul!’ she cried softly.

“I followed her grasp into the dark. There was certainly a handle there, a large handle of cold iron, and when I pushed on it the dragon lifted easily out of its space under the step without disturbing any of the other stones around it or the step above it. It was a finely chiseled piece of work, we saw now, with an iron handle in the shape of a horned beast drilled into it, presumably so you could pull it shut behind you when you went down the narrow stone steps opening before us. Helen took a second candle and I grabbed the matches. We entered on hands and knees-I remembered suddenly Rossi’s bruised and scraped appearance, his torn clothes, and wondered if he’d been dragged more than once through this opening-but we were soon able to stand upright on the steps.

“The air that came up to meet us was cold and dank in the extreme, and I fought to control a trembling deep inside and to keep a firm hold on Helen, who was also trembling, during the steep descent. At the bottom of fifteen steps was a passage, infernally dark, although our candlelight showed iron sconces pinned high on the walls, as if it had once been illuminated. At the end of the passageway-again, it seemed to me about fifteen steps forward, and I was careful to count them-was a door of heavy and clearly very old wood, wearing into splinters near the bottom, and again that eerie door handle, a long-horned creature wrought in iron. I felt more than saw Helen raise her pistol. The door was wedged firm, but on examining it closely I found it bolted from the side we were on. I put all my weight under the heavy latch, and then I pulled the door open with a slow fear that nearly melted my bones.

“Inside, the light of our candles, feeble as it was, fell on a great chamber. There were tables near the door, long tables of an ancient solidity, and empty bookshelves. The air of the room was surprisingly dry after the chill of the passage, as if it had some secret ventilation or was dug into a protected depth of earth. We stood clinging to each other, and listened hard, but there was no sound in the room. I wished devoutly that we could see beyond the darkness. The next thing our light picked up was a branching candelabrum filled with half-burned candles, and this I lit all over. It illuminated high cabinets now, and I looked cautiously inside one of them. It was empty. ‘Is this the library?’ I said. ‘There’s nothing here.’

“We stood still again, listening, and Helen’s pistol glinted in the increased light. I thought that I should have offered to carry it, to use it if necessary, but I had never handled a gun, and she, I knew very well, was a crack shot. ‘Look, Paul.’ She pointed with her free hand, and I saw what had caught her gaze.

“‘Helen,’ I said, but she was moving forward. After a second my light reached a table that had not been illuminated before, a great stone table. It was not a table, I saw an instant later, but an altar-no, not an altar, but a sarcophagus. There was another nearby-had this been a continuation of the monastery’s crypt, a place where its abbots could rest in peace, away from Byzantine torches and Ottoman catapults? Then we saw beyond them the largest sarcophagus of all. Along the side ran one word, cut into the stone:DRACULA. Helen raised her gun, and I gripped my stake. She took a step forward and I kept close to her.

“At that moment we heard a commotion behind us, at a distance, and the crash of footsteps and scrambling bodies, which almost obscured the faint sound in the darkness beyond the tomb, a trickling of dry earth. We leaped forward like one being and looked in-the largest sarcophagus had no covering slab and it was empty, as were the other two. And that sound: somewhere in the darkness, some small creature was making its way up through the tree roots.

“Helen fired into the dark and there was a crashing of earth and pebbles; I ran forward with my light. The end of the library was a dead end, with a few roots hanging down from the vaulted ceiling. In the niche on the back wall where an icon might once have stood, I saw a trickle of black slime on the bare stones-blood? An infiltration of moisture from the earth?

“The door behind us burst open and we swung around, my hand on Helen’s free arm. Into our candlelight came a strong lantern, flashlights, hurrying forms, a shout. It was Ranov, and with him a tall figure whose shadow leaped forward to engulf us: Géza József, and at his heels a terrified Brother Ivan. He was followed by a wiry little bureaucrat in dark suit and hat, with a heavy dark mustache. There was another figure, too, one who moved haltingly, and whose slow progress, I realized now, must have hampered them at every step: Stoichev. His face was a strange mixture of fear, regret, and curiosity, and there was a bruise on his cheek. His old eyes met ours for a long sorrowful moment, and then he moved his lips, as if thanking his God to find us alive.

“Géza and Ranov were on us in a fraction of a second. Ranov had a gun trained on me and Géza on Helen, while the monk stood openmouthed and Stoichev waited, quiet and wary, behind them. The dark-suited bureaucrat stood just out of the light. ‘Drop your gun,’ Ranov told Helen, and she let it fall obediently to the floor. I put my arm around her, but slowly. In the gloomy candlelight their faces looked more than sinister, except for Stoichev’s. I saw that he would have hazarded a smile at us if he had not been so frightened.

“‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Helen said to Géza before I could stop her.

“‘What the hell are you doing here, my dear?’ was his only answer. He looked taller than ever, dressed in a pale shirt and pants and heavy walking boots. I hadn’t realized at the conference that I actually hated his guts.

“‘Where is he?’ Ranov growled. He looked from me to Helen.

“‘He’s dead,’ I said. ‘You came through the crypt. You must have seen him.’

“Ranov frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

“Something, some instinct I owed to Helen, perhaps, stopped me from saying more.

“‘Whom do you mean?’ Helen said coldly.

“Géza trained his gun a little more exactly on her. ‘You know what I mean, Elena Rossi. Where is Dracula?’