Part 4-9: Julian and Charles Darwin

PART FOUR: Julian and Charles Darwin.

This is a short story that takes Julian, the principal of the vampire council, and a main character in my vampire novel “Fire and Ice”, back to 1828, and the irony of Darwin’s theory of “natural selection”.

Previous Part:
When Charles finally made it home to England, meeting, and marrying his beloved Emma, and settling in Down house, where he would ultimately father ten children, Julian made London his home, and passed the decades a bare fifteen miles from Charles. Julian observed the growing family walking in the village, and lamented his own lost opportunity of a lineage.
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Julian had been a married man of three years when vampirism had tilted his world on its axis. He had not cared at the time, when he thought he was dying. In fact, he had been out seeking his own death, although he had been hoping to first bring death down upon the cut-throat thief that had left his wife bleeding in the gutter outside his home. He had hidden the memory away. It is easier that way. But sometimes the images rattled at the locked door and escaped.

Preparing to go for an evening walk had been their last moments together. Eva waited outside on the sidewalk, and Julian, still intoxicated by a stolen kiss from Eva’s lips, stood in the hall donning his hat and gloves.

When Eva’s agonized groan cut through the air as a heavy weight barreled into her body, forcing the breath from her lungs, an electric jolt of terror raced up Julian’s spine. The hat dropped from his senseless fingertips and without thought he was moving fast.

All that registered to his frantic gaze as he jumped the flight of steps and landed heavily on the sidewalk beside her, was not the running man, but the shower of pearls, his anniversary gift to her, as they unraveled from the tidy row that had hugged Eva’s throat. Cascading onto the ground, they ricocheted in lunatic disarray over the uneven flagstones, with their luster enhanced to obscene beauty in the early evening light.

Stepping in close, and grabbing Eva’s arm, he pulled her weight into his as her knees crumpled, subsiding beneath her and cushioning her fall until she lay against him like a broken doll. His eyes locked onto the hungry, red stain devouring the delicate pink of her muslin dress, as he bellowed, “No!”

With horrified fascination, he spread his palm over the blood-sodden fabric, molding his fingers desperately to her soft flesh as he pressed hard.

The biting pain of a knife blade was a myth; it was more like the bruising blow of a fist that had driven the breath from her body. It was only when the sudden release of blood exploded as sparks behind her eyes as her blood pressure plummeted that realization dawned, and Eva’s gaze locked onto his, wide with puzzled shock.

Julian pressed his palm harder to the burgeoning blossom of red that leeched her face to white, and whispered, “Eva, please, stay with me.”

His whisper became a howl when he knew she had gone.

Julian had not noticed the stench of decaying vegetables that hung over London in summertime before that day. But kneeling there in the gutter, trying not to gag at the smell of her blood, he did.

He had no reason to live, and had gone looking for death....and instead, I found immortality. The irony of that, and of his close association with Charles Darwin, the earnest young man obsessed with nature’s laws of natural selection, was not lost on him. Julian had tasted loneliness, and the decades weighed heavier with their passing.

Condemned to looking in on Charles’ life from afar, watching Charles’ intellect grow, and seeing his skin sag with age was hard for Julian. If I had turned him, he would have several lifetimes to hone his genius, and just think how mankind could have benefited from that. On good days Julian faced the truth. Charles’ face lit up when his Emma smiled at him, and his pleasure as his children scampered around his coattails was a beacon of joy. He would have had an eternity, but not the heart to do anything with it. On those days, watching from the shadows buried a knife in Julian’s chest as envy and peace fought for pride of place.

While the Darwin family slept, Julian often whisked through Charles’ laboratory embracing the hours of darkness as he filled the hours inspecting Charles’ greenhouse complex, and wondered at the man’s mind. Charles used everything as an experiment. He even grew plants up a trellis to prove that, if allowed to choose their own path, the stems would always wrap around the wood in a clockwise direction. The small building blocks from which Charles was able to construct a picture of the world that eluded the rest of us. His studies into “natural selection” centred there, in that house and gardens. They were Charles’ laboratory, and his family were organic extensions of his thought process.

Julian almost broke cover, twenty five years after he and Charles had said goodbye. He was haunting the corridors of Christ’s College at Cambridge University in the autumn of 1858, and, thinking he had seen Charles crossing the courtyard, he had thoughtlessly rushed forward into the damp afternoon air.

Mindlessly closing in on the black-robed student, he had stopped short as the young man had whisked around, abruptly changing direction, and Julian came face to face with William Darwin, Charles’ eldest boy.

William barreled into Julian’s solid chest and exclaimed in pain as Julian’s fingers bruised his arm as he steadied the youngster’s tumbling gait.

“Sorry,” said Julian. His eyes raking the young face, gathering crumbs of comfort from the sandy-haired familial resemblance.

“I know you...” William’s features folded into a puzzled frown, and then, as his transparent face registered confused alarm, he muttered, “No, it can’t be...my apologies.”

Not missed a beat, Julian said, “You must be Charles boy, you look like him.” He smiled reassuringly, “I am told I am the spit of my own father, Julian Wouldham. Perhaps Charles has spoken of him?” Julian listened to the young man’s cantering heartbeat recover a steady rhythm.

The youth held out a hand, belatedly recovering his manners, “How do you do? My name is William.”

Julian shuffled through a list of fictional names inside his head. “George,” he said, carefully molding his hand to William’s in the briefest of handshakes. “And how is your father? And the rest of the family?”

William’s breathing raced, catching Julian off guard as venom flooded his mouth. Sweat erupted on the young man’s skin as a tide of emotion fought for expression. Julian clamped his jaw shut and waited, fighting a battle of his own as he was suddenly ravenous.

“Father is not doing so well. Charles Junior, my brother, died suddenly...it has been hard on us all.”

Julian ran through the ten Darwin children. When Anne, the apple of Charles eye had died at age ten, even from a distance, Julian had sensed the change in Charles. Doubts had draped across his shoulders as a heavy mantle, and he had stopped attending church. “So...young Charles would have been what? Not yet two years old?”

William looked surprised, and said quietly, “Yes.”

As William’s eyes narrowed, Julian knew that he was sailing close to the wind, and before the questions came, he bid William a hasty farewell, sending his condolences to the family. As he strode with a careful human-like pace through the cloisters, he came to a decision. I have stayed away too long, and it is about time Charles fulfilled his destiny.

Julian arrived in Kent three hours later, in the dead of night, and slipped inside Charles’ house. His soundless progress faltered as he stood in the hallway and absorbed the melancholy that pervaded the brickwork around him. Julian frowned, and listened to the whispered breaths of the sleeping family. He could hear Charles muttering in his sleep and William’s words, “Father is not doing so well,” drove him along the hallway and into Charles’ chamber.

How did I not know? Because you were shutting him out. Censure hit him in the gut. Of course, the vampire council had been busy in recent years, and, seeing Charles’ face, he always battled with regret, wishing he’d been a more selfish vampire and turned Charles against his will...of course, their friendship would have died anyway, even then.

To be continued...