Please note, this column contains spoilers for all Baltimore stories to date.
Baltimore awoke afterwards in the rain, surrounded by corpses. He had been shot in the leg, but was otherwise uninjured. Then he saw shapes in the sky like black kites. They drifted lower, settling on the battlefield, on the corpses of men Baltimore had fought side by side with. These creatures were like bats, but far larger, and as Baltimore watched, they began to consume the dead.
The creature roared in agony, and when it fixed its gaze upon him once once more with its lone remaining eye, Baltimore saw a spark of something. He did not understand it at the time, but he had awoken the intelligence that had been sleeping. Now at last it was truly awake. The creature grabbed Baltimore’s leg and breathed its foul breath on the wound. Baltimore began to lose consciousness as more of the creatures converged on him. Then, the clouds above began to break. The creatures sensed the coming dawn and quickly took flight, leaving Captain Baltimore, the sole survivor of that night, alone on the battlefield to watch the sun rise before slipping again into unconsciousness.
Baltimore remained unconscious for most of the next few days. He was brought to a church that had been converted into a hospital where he was put in the care of Doctor Lemuel Rose. Dr Rose found Baltimore’s wound highly unusual. Though it was still fresh, gangrene had already begun to set in, so he was forced to take the leg.
Shortly after, Baltimore awoke during the night to a chill and a sensation like maggots crawling all over his body. Standing over him was a man, gaunt and grey with a red slash running down the right side of his face from brow, over the hollow of an empty socket, to chin. Baltimore knew at once this was the same creature he had seen on the battlefield and had tainted him with its breath. It leant over him and whispered to him…
Afterwards, as he recovered in that hospital, Baltimore saw men with grey skin, and soulless eyes like a shark’s, and he knew there was more to their wounds than what had happened to them in battle. They had been touched by the devil. They were the first of the plague dead.
After a long recovery, Lord Baltimore finally began his journey home in the Summer of 1915. The other soldiers avoided Baltimore. He had a strange light in his eyes that set them ill at ease, and at night he insisted on watching the skies. On the boat home, he met Captain Demetrius Aischros. The Captain was not unsettled by Baltimore as others were, and on the journey they became friends. On their third day at sea, he asked Aischros for assistance in seeing him home. It was not easy to get about alone as a one-legged man. But Aischros saw through this excuse. Baltimore was afraid.
Five weeks after his return to England, Baltimore finally arrived home to Trevelyan Island on the Cornish coast. He was eager to see his parents, sister, and wife again, and eager to settle into a life at home, to start his own family.
Months passed. Doctors were called, but they could only say that it would take time. There were moments when Elowen was nearby that Baltimore would emerge from his hallucinations for brief moments of clarity, but they always passed. Then one Autumn evening, Baltimore’s fever broke. He was informed by a maid that Elowen was downstairs talking to a doctor with a long scar down his face. Baltimore knew immediately who it was, and rushed downstairs as fast as he could, but he was too late.
The sight of Elowen stopped his heart and turned it as cold as iron. A funeral was held for her, and for the next three days afterwards, Lord Baltimore spent much of his time lingering in the graveyard. He had surrendered, waiting for death. Then on the third night, Elowen rose again as a revenant vampire. She called to Baltimore to be with her, but they were interrupted by a monk. He raised an iron crucifix and revealed to Baltimore the creature’s true nature. At the monk’s urging, Baltimore killed his wife’s revenant.
At this Baltimore was furious. He cried out, “If God has brought all this upon me, has made me to suffer as no man should ever have to suffer, then He is no less devil than the Devil himself. God can go to Hell!”
The monk replied, “God has honed you with hammer and anvil, a blacksmith at the forge. He has made you suffer as He did Job, so that the world might be spared far worse.” Then the monk shared with Baltimore the vision that had brought him to Trevelyan Island…
When he heard this, Baltimore promised he would not rest until he had scoured the taint of that evil from the world.
Continued belowFour months after his initial departure, Aischros returned to Trevelyan Island, but there was no Elowen or Lord Baltimore there. He was told what had happened, and went to the cemetery. There he too met the mysterious monk, and the monk told Aischros everything that had transpired. But Aischros was not satisfied with the monk’s answers. He questioned why it was Baltimore and not the monk himself that was not God’s chosen soldier. The monk explained he had another task before him. He was to be a messenger, to warn any that would listen of what was to come. He told Aischros that in a town not far from Trevelyan Island, his message would turn the people against him, that they would stone him and hang him from a tree.
Aischros asked the monk why he would go to such a town if he knew what awaited him, to which the monk replied it was the task God had chosen him for. And he had a task for Aischros too, and he would come to know it in time.
After this encounter, Aischros never returned to Trevelyan Island.
Since his encounter with the monk, Baltimore had travelled to the mainland, hunting the vampire revenants that had escaped Trevelyan Island. He had learnt how to hunt vampires by killing the very people he had grown up with. During his time on the mainland, he had discovered the true nature of the plague, that it was turning people into revenants, and had returned home to free his parents and sister from this fate. He had hunted them and burned them all in the family home.
So this is the part where there’s a bit of a hole in the middle of the Baltimore novel. Essentially, Lord Baltimore spent several years hunting vampires, and it is during this period that the Baltimore comics kick off. There are a few short stories featuring Baltimore hunting the vampires in 1916, but the first story of real consequence is The Plague Ships.
The witch’s granddaughter, Vanessa Kalderas, was very interested in Baltimore. She saw in him as a way to get out of Villefranche, and used information she had about Haigus to convince Baltimore to take her along with him. But her grandmother warned her that Baltimore was cursed, that death would come for all those that ally themselves with him. Vanessa wouldn’t be swayed, but Baltimore refused to take her with him.
Continued belowOh, and then he was captured by the locals because they thought he was a devil.
Baltimore was to be imprisoned for a fortnight while awaiting the arrival of Judge Duvic of the New Inquisition. The Judge would determine whether or not Lord Baltimore truly was in league with devils or not. There Baltimore would have remained but for the intervention of Vanessa.
During their journey by ship to Livorno, Vanessa and Baltimore were caught in a storm and washed up on Furiani Island which had been a port for the Huns’ underwater fleet. Among ruined submarines there were ships from Villefranche too, ships that had been laden with plague dead and sent out to sea to be burnt… although one at least had escaped this fate.
When they investigated the shipwreck, they found revenants hiding in the dark. They were struck with the grim realisation that come nightfall, the island would be overrun with undead creatures. That night, Vanessa waited inside a wreck of a submarine, while outside Baltimore fought alone until the sun rose and killed the rest.
In Baltimore: A Passing Stranger, Baltimore came to Tülingart, Germany. There were no longer vampires in this place, and with their passing other monsters had awoken. All of the old, terrible things were waking up along with the vampires, and horrors were hiding in every shadow.
In mid October, a year after the plague had brought the Great War to an end, Baltimore was in Lucerne, Switzerland, kicking off Baltimore: The Curse Bells, one of the more disturbing Baltimore arcs. Baltimore was closer to finding Haigus than he had been in months with the aid of a helpful couple. It was a trap though, first an onslaught of vampires, followed by an attack by “baum dämonen” (tree demons). Haigus had underestimated his pursuer though and the “helpful” couple soon ran into Lord Baltimore again…
Their new information led Baltimore to Bludeschtag, Austria. There he met Simon Hodge, an American journalist, formerly of The Boston Globe, but fired after his reporting on the Great War began to include vampires. Simon considered himself one of the foremost authorities on vampires, but in many towns, including Bludeschtag, he was regarded as insane. After almost two years of plague in Europe, there were still many places that had not had direct contact with vampires and doubted their existence.
Simon was able to share a little information of his own regarding Haigus. The local convent had suffered many deaths from the plague, but there had been whispers that some of the nuns had risen again. A man matching Haigus’s description had come to the town asking about the convent, and had gone up to investigate. He wasn’t the only one though. Some time before that, a Bavarian soldier had gone to the convent promising to find a cure for the plague and vampirism.
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Baltimore’s first priority had always been Haigus, but here he set aside his hunt in favour of helping the captive woman being forced to birth a monster. As he explained to Simon, if he left her to that fate, he’d be a monster himself. However, an army of revenant nuns stood between them and the woman, and despite their best efforts the ritual could not be stopped. Madame Blavatsky was reborn.
After their capture, Baltimore and Simon were imprisoned until the tolling of the bells would make them slaves. On the other side of the wall in his own prison, Haigus taunted Baltimore. Never before had Baltimore been so close to achieving his revenge, but in order to take it he would have to forsake saving the inhabitants Bludeschtag and condemn them to the curse of the abbey’s bells. Even after he freed himself, he wrestled with what he knew he must do next. It was one of the revenant nuns that was finally able to talk him out of his selfishness, and in thanks he helped her in a final communion, which burned her and saved her soul.
But Baltimore was too late to save Bludeschtag…
The Bavarian soldier rang the bells, and the people of the city below were brought into his service, trapped in their minds, watching the horrors he would command of them. Hodge, had managed to save himself, stuffing his ears with molten candle wax and covering his ears with cotton and straw. Baltimore, though he had heard the ringing of the bells, was unaffected by the curse. Once again, he is shown to be something beyond human.
With his slave army now at his command, the Bavarian soldier carved into his palm the symbol that would be his banner. He planned to throw down the old gods and take their place.
But the nuns that had served him until then had served in hope for redemption, for a cure of the plague that turned them into monsters. Even in this state, they had prayed though it had burned them to do so. They had not suffered to raise up a man as a god, and so they turned on Hitler.
Meanwhile Blavatsky was drawn to Haigus’s cell. She had been created by his blood, and like the vampires he had made, she was subject to him. Baltimore arrived later only to find Haigus has once again escaped. Deepening his dispair, Blavastsky noted that Haigus did not have to run forever, he just needed to outlast Baltimore, a mortal who would eventually die. In the meantime, Baltimore was but a plaything of his. Blavatsky did not interfere with Baltimore’s pursuit anymore than Haigus’s power commanded of her though. It would have pleased Blavatsky to have Haigus die and his power over her to be lifted.
With the information he gained, he came to the abbey of Bludeschtag. A local from one of the nearby towns could not say where Baltimore had gone afterwards, but he did know of a journalist that had come through his town warning them of the danger of vampires…
But he was not yet deaf to the concerns of others. In Dr. Leskovar’s Remedy a madman was experimenting on the locals to try and cure vampirism, taking away the strongest among them. Only the elderly and children remained. Baltimore stayed in the small fishing camp overnight, just long enough to get to know some of the children, and though he wanted to deafen himself to their plight, he found he could not. There was a spark of humanity in him that he could not ignore, no matter how much he may have wanted to.
In The Inquisitor, a year after the events of The Curse Bells, Judge Duvic finally captured Simon Hodge. By this time Simon’s book had already grown quite sizeable, but his writings served only to convince Duvic further that he was tainted and seeking out devils. Duvic asserted that Simon should rejoice that he was found so that he may be purified. He tried to impress upon Simon his virtue, that as a part of the New Inquisition he was able to withstand the taint of evil that lesser people could not. Instead all he demonstrated to Simon was utter arrogance and a dangerous rage lying just below the surface.
Simon was very lucky that day. The interrogation and purification was interrupted before it could even begin due to the arrival of Vanessa Kalderas. She attempted to kill Judge Duvic in retribution for the torture and murder of her grandmother, but instead she was slain by her own knife. Duvic could have disarmed her, but instead he had taken her life. Her blood was on his hands.
Then the corpse of Vanessa rose again, and with a blood-soaked hand, she grasped Duvic’s arm, staining his skin and cursing him. Simon took this opportunity to escape, but not before telling Duvic where he could find Baltimore. Judge Duvic was a problem that could no longer be ignored. He was a monster, and Lord Baltimore knew well how to deal with monsters.
Which brings us to The Infernal Train and to Budapest, a city where the people believed they could be safe from the plague behind the wall being constructed around it. Here Baltimore waited for Duvic, but there were stirrings he could not ignore. The people celebrated in their haven city, but in the late hours the revenants walked the streets. These revenants had no interest in the citizens of Budapest though. Like zombies they walked until they came to an engine furnace, the same kind Lord Baltimore had seen a year earlier in France. Willingly the revenants climbed inside and were incinerated, but there was no smoke issued from the engine. The fire that burned within was an unnatural flame.
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Baltimore raided the city armoury and returned to his hotel room to prepare himself for battle, but at last Duvic had arrived, looking haggard and barely standing. The two fought, but soon the hotel was swarmed with revenants sent by Fulcanelli, and Baltimore was captured and dragged away. Judge Duvic had no intention of losing Baltimore though. As Lord Baltimore was about to be dragged on board Fulcanelli’s departing train, the Judge attacked. Now free, Baltimore climbed aboard the train, so that he could destroy the ancient ones and their infernal engine, and Duvic followed after him.
There had been a time at the dawn of history, when the Red King had ruled the world, but as his worshipers diminished, so did his power, and he fell into sleep in his limbo realm, and his servants, the ancient vampires like Haigus, “the Old Ones,” likewise slept. They were woken later by the wars of humankind, but their minds were dim, and they feasted like carrion on the corpses of battle. It was Baltimore that finally woke their minds when he struck out at the eldest of them, Haigus, in the muddy battlefield in the Ardennes.
And like Baltimore had once woken Haigus, thoughts of Haigus woke Baltimore’s mind, and he drew himself from Fulcanelli’s control, and lobbed a grenade into her precious engine.
It seems the Old Ones on board were all killed, although I suppose it’s hardly impossible that some could have escaped. As for Fulcanelli herself, she was badly wounded and left to die by Baltimore, though not before learning that Haigus was in London.
Duvic too survived the crash, and attempted once more to kill Baltimore, and the two dealt each other fatal wounds. But Baltimore could not die. The world was not done with him yet.
Nor was it done with Duvic. When monks came to collect his body, the bloody mark on his arm left by Vanessa Kalderas began to drip blood. The corpse of Duvic awoke and transformed, killing all the monks before fleeing into the night.
And here’s where we depart the comic and return to the novel. In June of 1919, Lord Baltimore arrived in the village of Korzha in Romania. This village had been claimed by one of the Old Ones and it had taken up residence in the local church. This story was told through an incomplete journal of Lord Baltimore’s and a letter from a villager in Korzha, Iancu Vulpes, so it was a fragmented account. Vulpes’s letter said that Baltimore had learned something from the vampire he had killed that made him leave the village in great haste (presumably to head to London). Here too was revealed a way to cure those that had been made sick by the plague, by boiling the vampire’s heart in water and feeding the broth to the sick.
What Lord Baltimore learned from this vampire in Korzha that caused him to leave so suddenly is still unknown, as is why it took him two years to get to London after his encounter with Fulcanelli. Perhaps it was related in some way to his discovery that he was immortal during his confrontation with Judge Duvic?
On the 11th of November, 1919, Aischros received a letter from Lord Baltimore telling him to meet with two other men in London in The Ugly Muse at noon on November 30th. Aischros was late for the meeting, and arrived to find Thomas Childress Jr. and Dr. Lemuel Rose waiting for him. And “if fate willed it” Baltimore would be there too.
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While they waited, they exchanged stories, how they had each encountered Baltimore, and the strange encounters they had had with the supernatural that had led them to believe Baltimore’s claims.
Fulcanelli had said Haigus had been in London searching for a window. Is this what this chapel of bones was all about? Was the painting a way to stir the Red King, to show him the world he could not see in his limbo realm?
Haigus knew that Baltimore was coming for him, and this time there would be no escape, his only wish was to strike at him one last time by killing all his friends. A fight ensued in which Dr. Rose lost a couple of fingers, but no further injuries were sustained thanks to the arrival of Lord Baltimore.
In their final confrontation, Haigus revealed that years ago, when Baltimore had slashed his face in the Ardennes Forest, he had given him awareness. This awareness spread through the vampires like plague. The didn’t want it. I cannot help but wonder if they had been content until then, that they did not serve the Red King willingly, but rather they had no choice in the matter. The way Haigus spoke of the Red King, it was clear he did not want to live in a world ruled by him. Maybe this was his true revenge upon Baltimore. In his death before the window to the Red King’s limbo realm, he had allowed his master to see Baltimore for the first time. The painting had moved. It had stared right into Baltimore’s very eyes.
After the fight, Baltimore and his companions made their way downstairs to tend their wounds. Baltimore revealed to them the reason he had summoned them there. He had expected to die that night, and he wanted them to take his ashes back to Trevelyan Island and scatter his ashes over the water so that he could be with his wife and family once more. But now he truly knew what fate had made of him.
What does this mean for Baltimore now? The revenge and final peace he had been seeking all these years had turned out to be phantoms. Now, he has to fight the Red King, and if he fails, the world will fall. His quest is no longer a personal one, no longer self serving. A man that has tried to silence the part of himself that prompts him to help others will now have to rekindle that drive. He needs to to find a new source of strength to keep fighting.
Next week Baltimore: The Witch of Harju #1 comes out, the first arc in the next phase of Lord Baltimore’s tale. Be sure to pick it up. And now, I leave you with the epilogue from Chapel of Bones, a nice teaser for what is to come…
I just wanted to thank Christopher Golden for his help on this one. Thanks again!
