The Blood of Kings

by John Michael Curlovich

  * * *

  A few days later there was still no sign of him. I lived in my own little apartment and stared at his place across the street, feeling the way Moses must have when he saw the Promised Land, knowing he’d never live to reach it.

  I found myself revisiting places we had been together, the park, even the Z, alone. The cold didn’t bother me much.

  I went to the museum. A prominently posted notice announced that Professor Semenkaru’s classes had been canceled due to his unexplained disappearance. The exhibits all seemed strange to me, though I’d seen them a hundred times. Mummies, sculptures, papyri… Danilo had touched them all.

  There were other students walking about, making notes for their classes. I needed to be alone. Impulsively I went down to the sub-basements. The floor where Danilo and I had worked that first day was quite empty.. The walls were cold.

  Then at the fourth sub-level I felt warmth, just a bit. Traces of Danilo still in the air? I decided to stay there a while and followed the corridor to the place where it widened. My footsteps echoed loudly on the flagstones. Nothing there could hurt me now.

  It dawned on me, belatedly, that the lights were already on. When I reached the end of the corridor, Feld was sitting there on the stone floor, in a corner, hands covering his face. He looked up at me. The place was otherwise empty. There were no corpses.

  “Where are they?”

  I waved my hand in a little mock salute. “Professor Feld.”

  “They were here. I gave photos to the police.”

  I put on the least sincere grin I could manage. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Semenkaru. He was the villain. I always knew it. Are you so stupid you didn’t?”

  “Professor Semenkaru. Let’s show a little respect.”

  “He was an evil thing. He would have seduced you into it too, sooner or later.”

  I crossed the open space to him and stood at his feet. “Yes, he would have taught me a great deal, if you hadn’t interfered. He’d still be here.”

  “You knew what he was?” He looked up at me.

  “He was warm and handsome.”

  “He was filthy with sin.”

  I had had enough of this. “And now the police suspect you of his crimes. What did you do to Peter Borzage?” I decided to tease him.

  “Nothing, I—”

  “He was your assistant.”

  “I—”

  “If I had planned it, I couldn’t have imagined a nicer repayment.”

  This seemed to strike him unexpectedly. “You mean you were—”

  Slowly, I nodded. My smile became even wider. “You drove away the man I loved.”

  For the first time he began to look a bit concerned. His eyes widened. He tried to get to his feet. “I knew he was like that. I thought you might be.” I kicked him firmly and he got down again. “But I never thought you were actually… There are rules about that.”

  “We broke them. Shattered them.”

  “Then you—”

  Something like genuine fear was creeping into his face. I confess it gave me a little buzz. “Yes.” I mimicked him. “Then I—”

  He tried to get up again, and again I kicked him. He stumbled and fell into a corner. I crossed to him and kicked him still again, as hard as I could. He cried out. Slowly, softly, the sound of the Chopin C Minor nocturne began to fill the air. He looked around frantically, trying to see where it was coming from.

  I squatted down beside him. “What’s wrong, Professor? Don’t you like classical?”

  “Let me out of here.”

  “You were a lot more interesting when you used to try and give me orders. Begging doesn’t become you.”

  “Wh-what are you going to do to me?”

  I kicked him again, in the side of his head. “Goddamned self-righteous interfering bastard! You drove away the man I love. You meddled in my relationship instead of staying out of it. You tell me—what should I do to you?”

  “The police…”

  “The police suspect you, now. Even in Danilo’s disappearance. The news this morning said so.”

  “I know.” He was whimpering. “I thought he might be down here.”

  “He’s gone.”

  He seemed to brace himself for another kick. But I took a few steps back away from him. He looked around anxiously, gauging the chance he might get away. But there was no way that could happen.

  “Do you know the history of this building, Professor?”

  “What?” My question couldn’t have been more unexpected. “I—I—”

  “Did you know it used to be part of the Underground Railroad?”

  He seemed to go numb. At any rate he didn’t answer me.

  “There are all kinds of nooks and recesses and hidey-holes.”

  Nothing, no response. Did he know what was coming?

  I let out a loud shout, like the one Danilo had shouted just before he left. From their places of concealment came the dead-alive. Feld’s face was, to my enormous pleasure, filled with the most pathetic fear. They fell on him and began tearing. And eating. In a few minutes there was nothing left but his bones. In a few minutes more even they were gone.

  Epilogue

  It has been more than three and a half months since Danilo left.

  I look for him constantly and everywhere. Everything that might be him, a shadow, the rush of a bird’s wing, makes me stop and remember what I had, or rather what we had. He is nowhere.

  I wonder again and again where he might be. Could those police bullets have hurt him? Is he wounded and desperate somewhere? Could I heal him as he healed me?

  There is no answer.

  None.

  The dead-alive men are still concealed in the museum basement. They keep me alive.

  The police and the district attorney have decided that Greg Wilton committed Justin’s murder, but that Feld was responsible for the other killings and the disappearances. No one had any idea why. His own disappearance, just after his assistant vanished, was taken as evidence of his guilt, for some reason. The university cut off his widow’s pension. Case closed, at least until Greg’s trial.

  So far, I have not sacrificed anyone else. But I look in the mirror and know that I will have to, and soon.

  I went to the private bank in downtown Pittsburgh and opened Danilo’s vault.

  Gold, it was filled with gold. My own Fort Knox. I would not have to rely on my trust fund anymore.

  There was a thick leather portfolio. In it I found drawings signed by Leonardo and Michelangelo, bold sketches of the young men they loved. There was a small gold statue, a foot and a half tall, of a male angel; I thought it must be by Cellini. Manuscripts signed by Chopin and Schubert; a longhand copy of Moby Dick in Melville’s own hand. A lost keyboard sonata by Handel. And great deal more. I have not begun to catalog it all.

  At the spring recital, and despite some misgivings on Roland’s part, I played the Chopin second.

  Perfectly.

  I was a minor celebrity on campus, so the auditorium was full; people were standing at the sides and back. A young woman played Beethoven; a piano trio played Tchaikovsky. Then it was my turn.

  Don’t get me wrong, I knew enough about human nature to know why they were there. They wanted me to make a mistake, at least the other students and the faculty did. Who did this boy, this swimmer, this jock, think he was, tackling such a challenging piece? They were waiting. Jamie would blow that this time as he did before.

  From the wings I could see people checking their programs. “Frederic Chopin (1810-49). Sonata No. 2, Op. 35, in B-Flat Minor.” There was a bit of buzz, at least among people who had heard me play it that first time. Then I walked on stage, and there were gasps. I was wearing leather, a black leather suit and a floor-length trench coat. Unheard of. I heard someone ask, in hushed tones, “What would Chopin think?”

  Trying not to smile at that, I sat down at the keyboard. There was scattered, uncertain applause. No
one seemed to know what to expect. I paused, to let a bit of suspense build.

  Then I began the solemn first movement. And a hush fell over the audience. I swear, there wasn’t even a cough. I had them.

  Second movement, the scherzo. I was master of the music, I played it perfectly and with brilliant feeling. Again, the audience was mine. From the corner of my eye I looked to see what they were doing. And they were listening, quite in my grip. No one was thumbing through the program or checking the time or doing any of the hundred things people in an audience do. They were listening. They were mine.

  Third movement: the funeral march. I played it for Danilo, for my lost love. I played it for Tim and for Justin. And even, just a bit, for Greg who could hardly understand the richness and terror of my life or the awful depth of my loss or the sweet things I had gained. The audience still was mine. I looked, more than once. They were perfectly still. They might have been wax, or marble.

  At the end of the movement I waited. Let them think I was unsure. Then I attacked the finale like a passionate lover.

  Perfectly, I played it perfectly, not missing a note, not having the least trouble with the manic fingering. And I poured even more feeling into it than I had into the funeral march.

  Almost literally at the moment I struck the last chord, the audience rose to their feet, cheering. I might have been a rock star, not a classical pianist. Students flocked to the stage; the faculty was more reserved. I saw Roland standing at the side of the hall, looking troubled.

  The cheering went on and on. I stood and I bowed, again and again. People climbed onto the stage. They tried to kiss me. The boys I allowed. There was one in particular who I found so attractive. I told him I’d meet him later.

  In that moment the blood of a thousand generations of kings, artists, philosophers surged in my veins. Even though Danilo was gone, he was there with me.

  And I was only beginning to try my wings.

  Author’s Note

  As must be obvious, I’ve taken considerable liberties with Akhenaten’s religion. There is some evidence that a Set cult survived for many centuries in ancient Egypt, more or less underground, but very little is known about it, and connecting it with Akhenaten and his sons is pure invention.

  On the other hand, the images of the so-called Kissing Kings are quite real. And there’s also the tantalizing fact that Akhenaten bestowed names on Smenkhare that he had formerly given to his wife. Images of two pharaohs kissing, a father and son… Just try and imagine two of our own leaders allowing themselves to be shown that way. The Bushes, for instance?

  The dual tombs of the priests of Set, which I place at Amarna, are based on a pair of real tombs in the necropolis at Sakkara, just outside Cairo. The owners were Ni-ankh-Khnum and Khnum-hotep. Their names are joined in the tomb inscriptions, in exactly the way I describe. Lovers, together for all time.

  These facts tend to put a lot of traditional-minded Egyptologists on edge. There were 30 dynasties of pharaohs, scores of rulers over some 3,000 years of history. It’s fairly well known that they routinely married their sisters, and at times even their daughters. Smenkhare married his sister Meritaten, for instance. But institutionalized incest is one thing. Don’t dare hint that even one of the pharaohs might have been gay, good heavens, no!

  Egyptologists are hardly alone in their nervousness, of course. The last decade has seen studies of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, T.E. Lawrence, Chopin, Schubert, Emily Dickinson, Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn(!) and scores of others—all of which evidence either ignore their subjects were queer, deny that such evidence even exists or try to bluff it out of existence. Thanks to writers like Louis Crompton, John Boswell and a great many specialists in specific periods, these attempts to bleach queerness out of the historical record are looking more and more desperate.

  But it’s a slow, uphill fight. Homosexuality may not frighten the horses anymore, but it makes a lot of academics really skittish.

  -—Pittsburgh, March 2004

  Preview from Blood Prophet

  The Second Book in

  The Blood of Kings Series

  To Be Published

  Halloween 2020

  Prologue

  Death followed by triumph. Chopin understood that; it is there in the music, in the sonata my fingers brought to life. Danilo understood, too, and he tried to show me. No—show me he did.

  I loved Danilo, and Danilo loved me, and his blood was in me, and mine was in him, and in his blood, I knew. I saw.

  Alexander embraced the world in one arm and his lover Hephaestion in the other. And I was there.

  Hadrian made his beloved boy Antinous a god, and the whole world mourned his death and worshipped. And I was there.

  Richard Lionheart, lover of men, reigned and rode into legend. I was there.

  In one marvelous year James I ruled England, Louis XIII was on the throne of France, and Boris II held the Holy Roman Empire. All of Western Europe was under the direct sway of men who loved men. And I was there.

  Then Danilo was gone. Vanished. And I knew the other things he had known.

  Edward II saw his lover Gaveston impaled and beheaded. Edward died himself with a red-hot poker forced into his rectum. I saw.

  The Knights Templar were tortured, dismembered, burned alive for loving one another. I was there. I witnessed.

  In the heart of Rome, the popes burned men and boys alive for loving other men. Boys as young as ten, charred their lives ended. And I was there. I heard their screams and smelled the stench from their pyres.

  Danilo was gone, and even though I could not die, I knew what death was. I searched everywhere and often, anxiously hoping for the least hint of him. In my idle time I studied Egyptology, learned hieroglyphics, so I could read his papers and his memoir. I wanted to find a clue why he had left me so abruptly and, it seemed, so finally. He had given me life; and he had given me the first and deepest love I’d ever known, or ever will. But he was nowhere.

  I had to find him. I knew I’d never be happy again until I did. But how? There were no clues, there was nothing to go on.

  Without Danilo, even though I could not die, death was all I wanted.

  I was twenty-one.

  * * *

  I was always careful; Danilo had taught me well. The young men, old men, men in the middle, whose sacrificed blood I thrived on were from other places. Weekends, when I was not searching for Danilo, I traveled to other cities and found men whose blood kept me alive and vibrant. Not too far, Johnstown, Altoona, Youngstown, Akron, East Liverpool… Close enough to be accessible, distant enough for there to be no obvious links, small enough for the local authorities to be out of touch.

  Not boys; I never took boys. Not that the temptation wasn’t there. Young, firm bodies, sweet blood… But they had not had time to discover themselves yet. Some of them would embrace their divine blood and what it meant; some of them would be my brothers. Others… well, they would be men soon enough, and then I could…

  When I came home from my little excursions, my cat Bubastis always made it clear how happy she was to see me. And I felt the same way, not only because she was such a sweet companion. Danilo had worked his magic on her. She was the one living link I still had to him, and I loved her.

  Sometimes I went to New York, to see Danilo’s face in the ancient stones in the museums there. Sometimes I fed there, too…

  One young man, an assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum, noticed me from time to time, always looking at the same relief, the one of Danilo and his father. He smiled, a bit timidly I thought; making conversation with the visitors was not quite the proper thing. Déclassé, I imagine. I smiled back.

  “You really like that one, don’t you?”

  “Yes. It means a lot to me.”

  “There’s something even better in the storeroom back here. It’s not in the best shape, so it’s not on display, but… ”

  Again, I smiled. Was there another image of my lover, one I hadn’t seen? “I
’d like to see it, please.”

  He led me behind a large canvas drop cloth and into a side room. Fragments of statues and reliefs were scattered on a large worktable, a foot, a muscular arm, a head; more were propped against the walls. He moved a few and found the one he wanted, a slab of basalt. “Here.”

  On the smooth black stone was still another image of the Kissing Kings, one I hadn’t seen before. Danilo, the young pharaoh, and his father Akhenaten, embracing, their lips touching, their passion showing more clearly and more intensely than in anything I had seen before. They were naked. This piece had been carved for them privately; it was nothing like their public images.

  I looked at my companion, and I knew he understood what I was feeling, or part of it. “It’s not the kind of thing we can put on public display.”

  Then without even thinking, I pressed my fingers against it, as if touching Danilo’s face in stone might be a substitute for touching him.

  The assistant curator laughed at me. “With me it’s one of the guys in a Rembrandt upstairs. Dead ringer for my ex-boyfriend. I can never look at it without feeling all kinds of things.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Choreographing an off-Broadway musical. Can you believe it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Nobody does off-Broadway musicals anymore. Nobody with any sense. They all close in the red.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m Rick, by the way.”

  He noticed Danilo’s wedding ring, which I always wore. “That’s good. It’s a reproduction, from our museum shop, right?”

  “No, it’s real.”

  He smirked at me. I was liking him less and less. He would do.

  I told him my name, and we shook. He was blond, thin, athletic; his clothes were a bit too trendy to be quite in good taste, but this was New York.