Blood Canticle

by Rice, Anne

  Oh yes, and what has this to do with pure love, Lestat? What is the luster of pure love? What is the luster of that most uncommon one who lies there waiting?

  I don't know how long I stood there, apart from her. My rosy dreams of palaces, of wanderings, of bowers and realms of love were vaporous and great and small and vanishing.

  And she was there, patient, wise-condemned by her own lips, wasn't she?

  A sadness came to me, as pure as pure love, and then a pain, a pain as true as the pain I'd heard in her unhurried voice, her deep and total commitment.

  At last I turned and I made my way back to her.

  I lay beside her. Her arms were waiting for me. Her lips were waiting.

  "And you believe this can happen?" I asked, speaking slowly. "You believe you can walk away from everyone who looks to you for a future they couldn't envisage without you?"

  She said nothing. Then, "Let me fall into eternity," she sighed. "I am tired."

  Oh, I understand, I do, and you have done so much!

  I waited, then I spoke with careful words.

  "You believe the ongoing world will know what to make of Lorkyn and Oberon and Miravelle without your wisdom and your insight?" I asked. "You believe that ego-driven science can truly take custody of something so delicate, so explosive, so fine?"

  No answer.

  "You believe the Medical Center will reach its full perfection without your guidance?" I asked. I spoke the words as lovingly as I could. "There are plans yet in your heart, magnificent plans, and bold visions yet uncommitted to record. Who will pick up the scepter? Who has the courage? Who has the Mayfair billions coupled with the discrete power? Who passes from the operating table to the laboratory to the swarm of the architects and the scientists with the fierceness of a Gamma Knife? Who? Who can go beyond the daring already accomplished in the Medical Center? Who can double its size? Perhaps even triple it? And you have those years to give it. You know it. I know it. You have them chaste and pure and driven by compulsive virtue. Are you ready to turn your back on that?"

  No response. I waited. I held her close, as if someone were going to steal her from me. As if the night was full of menace. As if the menace didn't come from me.

  "And Michael," I said. "Yes, he has to be released, but is this the time to do it? Will he survive your coming to me? He's still snared in horrors. His heart's been broken by Mona's fate. Can you really slip away on Michael? Can you write the cryptic note? Can you say the dark farewell?"

  For the longest time she didn't answer. I felt I could say no more. My heart ached as much as it had ever ached. We lay so near to one another, so bound in one another's limbs, so warm and belonging to each other that the night had gone quiet of all its random sounds for us.

  At last she stirred ever so faintly, ever so tenderly.

  "I know," she whispered. "I know." And then again, "I know."

  "This can't happen," I said. "Never have I wanted anything so much, but it can't happen. You know that it can't."

  "You don't really mean that," she said. "Surely you don't. You can't refuse me! You think I'd come to you like this if I didn't know how you really feel?"

  "Know how I feel?" I said, holding her against me, clasping her tight to me. "Yes, you know how much I love you. Yes, you know how much I want you, and to slip away with you, away from anyone who could divide us, yes, you know. What are mortal lives to me after all? But don't you see, Rowan, you've made your mortal life magnificent. You turned your soul inside out to do it. And that simply cannot be ignored."

  Her arms continued to hold me. She pressed her face against mine. I stroked her hair.

  "Yes," she said. "I tried. It was my dream."

  "It is your dream," I said. "Even now."

  "Yes," she said.

  I felt such hurt in me I couldn't speak for a little while.

  Again, I let myself imagine we were in a dark bed, she and I together, and that nothing could part us, and in each other we had found sublime meaning, and all the cosmic troubles were gone from us like so many veils torn away.

  But that was fantasy, and weak as it was beautiful.

  She broke the silence.

  "And so I make another sacrifice," she said, "or you make it for me, a sacrifice so great I hardly grasp it!

  Good God-."

  "No," I answered. "You make the sacrifice, Rowan. You've come to the brink but you move back from it.

  You've got to go back, you, yourself."

  Her fingers moved against my back, as though trying to find some human softness in it. Her head nestled

  against me. Her breath came choked as if in sobs.

  "Rowan," I said. "It's not the time."

  She looked up at me.

  "The time will come," I said. "I'll wait and I'll be there."

  "You mean this?" she asked.

  "I mean it," I said. "You haven't lost what I have to give, Rowan. It's just not the time."

  A soft mauve light had come into the sky; the leaves were burning in my eyes. I hated it.

  Lifting her gently with me, I sat up and helped her to sit beside me. Bits of grass clung to her, and her hair

  was prettily disheveled and her eyes glistened in the growing light.

  "Of course a thousand things may happen," I said. "We both know it. But I'll be watching. I'll be

  watching, and waiting. And when the time comes, when you can really draw back from all of it, then I'll

  come."

  She looked down, and then up at me again. Her face was pensive and soft. "And will I lose all sight of

  you now?" she asked. "Will you go away beyond my reach?"

  "From time to time, perhaps," I answered. "But never for very long. I'll be guarding you, Rowan. You can

  count on it. And the night will come when we'll share the Blood. I promise you. The Dark Gift will be

  yours."

  I rose to my feet. I took her hand and helped her to stand.

  "I have to go now, beloved. The light's my mortal enemy. I wish I could watch the sunrise with you. But I can't."

  I clasped her to me suddenly, violently, kissing her as hungrily as I ever had. "I love you, Rowan Mayfair," I said. "I belong to you. I'll always belong to you. I'll never never be far away."

  "Good-bye, my love," she whispered. A faint smile appeared on her face. "You really do love me, don't you?" she whispered.

  "Oh, yes, with my whole heart," I said.

  She turned from me quickly, as though that was the only way to do it, and she walked up the rise of the lawn and to the front drive. I heard the motor of her car, and then I went slowly back around to the rear door of the house, and into my room.

  I was so utterly unhappy that I hardly knew what I was doing. And at one point it struck me that what I'd just done was mad. Then it hit me that it just couldn't have happened. A selfish fiend like me just would not have let her go!

  Who said all those noble words!

  She'd given me the moment, perhaps the only moment. And I'd tried to be Saint Lestat! I'd tried to be heroic. Dear God, what had I done! Now her wisdom and her strength would carry her far away from me. Age would only enlarge her soul and dwindle for her the glow of my enchantment. I had forfeited her forever. Oh, Lestat, how I do hate thee!

  There was plenty enough time for the nightshirt ritual, and as I finished with it, torn with thirst and torn with grief for what I'd just refused and might lose forever, I realized I wasn't alone.

  Ghosts again, I thought. Mon Dieu. I looked quite deliberately at the small table.

  What a sight.

  It was a grown woman, perhaps twenty, twenty-five. Glossy black hair in marcel waves. Flapper dress of layered silk, long string of pearls. Legs crossed, fancy heels.

  Stella!

  It seemed monstrous, like the little girl I knew stretched and pulled and blown up; cigarette in a holder, poised in her left hand.

  "Ducky, don't be so silly!" she said. "Of course it's me! Oncle Julien's so frightened of
you now, he won't come near you. But he just had to send the message: 'That was superb!' "

  She vanished before I could throw one of my boots at her. But I wouldn't have done that anyway.

  What did it matter? Let them come and go. After all, this was Blackwood Farm, wasn't it, and Blackwood Farm has always opened its portals to ghosts.

  And now I lay me down to sleep, and the book comes to a close.

  Against the deep down pillow, I realized something. Even in grief and loss, I possessed Rowan. She was a presence within me forever. My loneliness would never again be as bitter. Over the years she might drift away from me, she might come to condemn the point of passion that had brought her to my arms. She might be lost to me in some other mundane fashion that would wring tears from me all my nights.

  But I'd never really lose her. Because I wouldn't lose the lesson of love I'd learned through her. And this she had given me as I had tried to give it to her.

  And so the morning dew covered the grass on that day at Blackwood Farm like any other, and I dreamt before the sun rose that:

  I wanna be a saint, I wanna save souls by the millions, I wanna look like an angel, but I don't wanna talk like a gangster, I don't want to do bad things even to bad guys, I wanna be Saint Juan Diego. . . .

  . . . But you know me, and come sunset, maybe it will be time to hunt the back roads, and those little out-of-the-way beer joints, sure enough, smell the malt and the sawdust, and yeah, right on, dance to the Dixie Chicks on the jukebox, and maybe crush a couple of heavy-duty Evil Doers, guys who are just waiting for me, and when I'm flush with blood, and sick of the smack and roll of the pool balls and that warm light on the green felt, who knows, yeah, who knows just how glorious the firmament with all its breaking clouds and lost little stars will appear as I rise above this Earth and spread out my arms as though there was no want in me for anything warm or good.

  Be gone from me, oh mortals who are pure of heart. Be gone from my thoughts, oh souls that dream great dreams. Be gone from me, all hymns of glory. I am the magnet for the damned. At least for a little while. And then my heart cries out, my heart will not be still, my heart will not give up, my heart will not give in-

  -the blood that teaches life will not teach lies, and love becomes again my reprimand, my goad, my song.

  THE END

  Anne Rice October 5, 2002

  New Orleans