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She led me into Hadley’s apartment and shut the door behind us. I didn’t think even the excellent ears of the vampires below us could hear our conversation now. That had been her goal, because the first thing she said was, “You will not tell anyone what I am about to tell you.”

I shook my head, mute with apprehension.

“I began my life in what became northern France, about . . . one thousand, one hundred years ago.”

I gulped.

“I didn’t know where I was, of course, but I think it was Lotharingia. In the last century I tried to find the place I spent my first twelve years, but I couldn’t, even if my life depended on it.” She gave a barking laugh at the turn of phrase. “My mother was the wife of the wealthiest man in the town, which meant he had two more pigs than anyone else. My name then was Judith.”

I tried hard not to look shocked, to just look interested, but it was a struggle.

“When I was about ten or twelve, I think, a peddler came to us from down the road. We hadn’t seen a new face in six months. We were excited.” But she didn’t smile or look as if she remembered the feeling of that excitement, only the fact of it. Her shoulders rose and fell, once. “He carried an illness that had never come to us before. I think now that it was some form of influenza. Within two weeks of his stay in our town, everyone in it was dead, excepting me and a boy somewhat older.”

There was a moment of silence while we thought about that. At least I did, and I suppose the queen was remembering. Andre might have been thinking about the price of bananas in Guatemala.

“Clovis did not like me,” the queen said. “I’ve forgotten why. Our fathers . . . I don’t remember. Things might have gone differently if he had cared for me. As it was, he raped me and then he took me to the next town, where he began offering me about. For money, of course, or food. Though the influenza traveled across our region, we never got sick.”

I tried to look anywhere but at her.

“Why will you not meet my eyes?” she demanded. Her phrasing and her accent had changed as she spoke, as if she’d just learned English.

“I feel so bad for you,” I said.

She made a sound that involved putting her top teeth on her lower lip and making the extra effort to intake some air so she could blow it out. It sounded like “fffft!” “Don’t bother,” the queen said. “Because what happened next was, we were camped in the woods, and a vampire got him.” She looked pleased at the recollection. What a trip down memory lane. “The vampire was very hungry and started on Clovis first, because he was bigger, but when he was through with Clovis, he could take a minute to look at me and think it might be nice to have a companion. His name was Alain. For three years or more I traveled with Alain. Vampires were secret then, of course. Their existence was only in stories told by old women by the fire. And Alain was good at keeping it that way. Alain had been a priest, and he was very fond of surprising priests in their beds.” She smiled reminiscently.

I found my sympathy diminishing.

“Alain promised and promised to bring me over, because of course I wanted to be as he was. I wanted the strength.” Her eyes flicked over to me.

I nodded heartily. I could understand that.

“But when he needed money, for clothes and food for me, he would do the same thing with me that Clovis had, sell me for money. He knew the men would notice if I was cold, and he knew I would bite them if he brought me over. I grew tired of his failing in his promise.”

I nodded to show her I was paying attention. And I was, but in the back of my mind I was wondering where the hell this monologue was heading and why I was the recipient of such a fascinating and depressing story.

“Then one night we came into a village where the head-man knew Alain for what he was. Stupid Alain had forgotten he had passed through before and drained the headman’s wife! So the villagers bound him with a silver chain, which was amazing to find in a small village, I can tell you . . . and they threw him into a hut, planning to keep