by Rice, Anne
“The veil proves nothing,” I said. “Whatever is on the veil means nothing! Anyone who can make illusions like that can make a veil! It proves neither truth nor lies, neither trickery nor witchery nor theophany.”
“When you were in Hell,” she asked, so kindly, so gently, her white face shining in the warmth of the lamp, “did you tell Roger you had the veil?”
“No, Memnoch wouldn’t let me. And I only saw him for a minute, you see, one second it was one way, and then it was another. But he’s going up, I know he is, he’s going because he’s clever and he’s figured it out, and Terry will go with him! They will be in the arms of God unless God is a cheap magician and all of this was a lie, but a lie for what? For what purpose?”
“You don’t believe what Memnoch asked of you?” asked Armand.
Only at this moment did I realize how shaken he was, how like the boy he must have been when made a vampire, how young and full of earthly grace. He wanted it to be true!
“Oh, yes, I do!” I said. “I believed him, but it could all be a lie, don’t you see?”
“Didn’t you feel it was true,” asked Armand, “that he needed you?”
“What?” I demanded. “Are we back to that, arguing whether or not when we serve Satan we serve God? You and Louis arguing about that in the Theater of the Vampires, if we are children of Satan, are we children of God?”
“Yes!” said Armand. “Did you believe him?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know!” I shouted it. “I hate God as much as I ever did. I resent them both, damn them!”
“And Christ?” Dora asked, her eyes filled with tears. “Was He sorry for us?”
“Yes, in His own way. Yes. Perhaps. Maybe. Who knows! But He didn’t go through the Passion as a man alone, as Memnoch had begged Him to do, He carried His cross as God Incarnate. I tell you their rules are not our rules! We have conceived of better rules! We are in the hands of mad things!”
She broke into soft, sorrowful cries.
“Why are we never, never to know?” she cried.
“I don’t know!” I declared. “I know they were there, that they appeared to me, that they let me see them. And still I don’t know!”
David was scowling, scowling rather like Memnoch could scowl, deep in thought. Then he asked:
“And if it was all a series of images and tricks, things drawn from your heart and your mind, what was the purpose? If it was not a straight proposition that you become his lieutenant or prince, then what could have been the motive?”
“What do you think?” I asked. “They have my eye! I tell you not a word of it is a lie from me. They’ve got my bloody eye, damn it. I don’t know what it was all about, unless it was true, absolutely true to the last syllable.”
“We know you believe it’s true,” said Armand. “Yes, you believe it completely. You bore witness. I believe it’s true. All of my long wandering through the valley of death, I’ve believed it was true!”
“Don’t be a common fool,” I said bitterly.
But I could see the flame in Armand’s face; I could see the ecstasy and the sorrow in his eyes. I could see the entire galvanization of his form with belief, with conversion.
“The clothes,” said David thoughtfully, calmly, “in the other room. You’ve gathered them all up, and the evidence will tell some scientific tale.”
“Stop thinking like a scholar. These are Beings who play at a game only they can understand. What is it to them to make pine needles and dirt cling to my clothes, but yes, I saved those relics, yes, I’ve saved everything but my goddamned eye, which I left on the steps of Hell so I could get out. I, too, want to analyze the evidence on those clothes. I, too, want to know what forest it was where I walked and listened to him!”
“They let you get out,” said David.
“If you could have seen his face when he saw that eye on the step,” I said.
“What was it in his face?” Dora asked.
“Horror, horror that such a thing had happened. You see, when he reached for me, I think that his two fingers, like this, went into the eye socket, overshooting the mark. He had merely meant to grab me by the hair. But when his fingers plunged into the socket, he tried in horror to draw them out, and out came the eye, spilling down my face, and he was horror-stricken!”
“You love him,” said Armand in a hushed voice.
“I love him. Yes, I think he’s right about everything. But I don’t believe in anything!”
“Why didn’t you accept?” asked Armand. “Why didn’t you give him your soul?”
Oh, how innocent he sounded, how it came from his heart, ancient and childlike, a heart so preternaturally strong that it had taken hundreds of years to render it safe to beat in the company of mortal hearts.
Little Devil, Armand!
“Why didn’t you accept!” he implored.
“They let you escape, and they had a purpose,” said David. “It was like the vision I saw in the café.”
“Yes, and they had a purpose,” I said. “But did I defeat their purpose?” I looked to him for the answer, he the wise one, the old one in human years. “David, did I defeat them when I took you out of life? Did I defeat them somehow some other way? Oh, if only I could remember, their voices in the beginning. Vengeance. Someone said that it wasn’t simple vengeance. But it was those fragments. I can’t remember now What’s happened! Will they come back for me?”
I fell to crying again. Stupid. I fell to describing Memnoch again, in all his forms, even the Ordinary Man, who had been so extraordinary in his proportions, the haunting footsteps, the wings, the smoke, the glory of Heaven, the singing of angels … “Sapphiric …” I whispered. “Those surfaces, all the things the prophets saw and sprinkled throughout their books with words like topaz and beryl and fire and gold and ice and snow, and it was all there … and He said, ‘Drink my Blood!’ I did it!”
They drew close to me. I’d scared them. I’d been too loud, too crazed, too possessed. They stood around me, their arms against me, her fiery white human arms, the warmest, the sweetest of all, and David’s dark brow pushed against my face.
“If you let me,” said Armand, his fingers slipping up to my collar, “if you let me drink, then I’ll know.…”
“No, all you’ll know is that I believe what I saw, that’s all!” I said.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll know the blood of Christ if I taste it.”
I shook my head. “Back away from me. I don’t even know what the veil will look like. Will it look like something with which I wiped my blood sweat in my sleep as I dreamt? Back away.”
They obeyed. They were a loose triangle. I had my back to the inner wall so that I could see the snow on my left side, though I had to turn my head to the left now to do it. I looked at them. My right hand fumbled inside my vest, it drew out the thick wad, and I felt something, something tiny and strange which I could not explain to them, or put into words even for myself, I felt the weave, that weave of cloth, that ancient weave!
I drew out the veil, not looking myself, and held it up as if I were Veronica showing it to the crowd.
A silence gripped the room. A motionlessness.
Then I saw Armand go down on his knees. And Dora let out her long, keening cry.
“Dear God,” said David.
Shivering, I lowered the veil, still held wide open with both hands, and turned it so I could see the reflection of the veil in the dark glass against the snow, as if it was the Gorgon and was going to kill me.
His Face! His Face blasted into the veil. I looked down. God Incarnate staring at me from the most minute detail, burnt into the cloth, not painted or stained, or sewn or drawn, but blasted into the very fibers, His Face, the Face of God in that instant, dripping with blood from His Crown of Thorns.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, yes.” I fell on my knees. “Oh, yes, so very complete, down to the last detail.”
I felt her take the veil. I would have snatched it back if e
ither of them had tried. But into her small hand, I entrusted it, and she held it up now turning round and round, so that all of us could see His dark eyes shining from the cloth!
“It’s God!” she screamed. “It’s Veronica’s Veil!” Her cry grew triumphant and then filled with joy. “Father, you’ve done it! You have given me the Veil!”
And she began to laugh, as one who had seen all the visions one can endure to see, dancing round and round, with the veil held high, singing one syllable over and over again.
Armand was shattered, broken, on his knees, the blood tears running straight down his cheeks, horrid streaks on the white flesh.
Humbled and confounded, David merely watched. Keenly, he studied the veil as it moved through the air, her hands still stretching it wide. Keenly, he studied my face. He studied the slumped, broken, sobbing figure of Armand, the lost child in his exquisite velvet and lace now stained with his tears.
“Lestat,” Dora cried, tears gushing, “you have brought me the Face of my God! You have brought it to all of us. Don’t you see? Memnoch lost! Memnoch was defeated. God won! God used Memnoch for his own ends, he led Memnoch into the labyrinth of Memnoch’s own design. God has triumphed!”
“No, Dora, no! You can’t believe that,” I shouted. “What if it isn’t the truth? What if it was all a pack of tricks. Dora!”
She shot past me down the corridor and out the door. We three stood stunned. We could hear the elevator descending. She had the veil!
“David, what is she going to do? David, help me.”
“Who can help us now?” asked David, but it was without conviction or bitterness, only that pondering, that endless pondering. “Armand, take hold of yourself. You cannot surrender to this,” he said. His voice was sad.
But Armand was lost.
“Why?” Armand asked. He was just a child now on his knees. “Why?”
This is how he must have looked centuries ago when Marius had come to free him from his Venetian captors, a boy kept for lust, a boy brought into the palace of the Undead.
“Why can’t I believe it? Oh, my God, I do believe it. It is the face of Christ!”
He climbed to his feet, drunkenly, and then he moved slowly, doggedly, step by step, after her.
By the time we reached the street, she stood screaming before the doors of the cathedral.
“Open the doors! Open the church. I have the veil.” She kicked the bronze doors with her right foot. All around her gathered mortals, murmuring.
“The Veil, the Veil!” They stared at it, as she stopped to turn and show it once more. Then all pounded on the doors.
The sky above grew light with the coming sun, far, far off in the maw of the winter, but nevertheless rising in its inevitable path, to bring its fatal white light down on us if we didn’t seek shelter.
“Open the doors!” she screamed.
From all directions, humans came, gasping, falling on their knees when they saw the Veil.
“Go,” said Armand, “seek shelter now, before it’s too late. David, take him, go.”
“And you, what will you do?” I demanded.
“I will bear witness. I will stand here with my arms outstretched,” he cried, “and when the sun rises, my death shall confirm the miracle.”
The mighty doors were being opened at last. The dark-clad figures drew back in astonishment. The first gleam of silver light illuminated the Veil, and then came the warmer, yellow electric lights from within, the lights of candles, the rush of the heated air.
“The Face of Christ!” she screamed.
The priest fell down on his knees. The older man in black, brother, priest, whatever he was, stood openmouthed looking up at it.
“Dear God, dear God,” he said, making the Sign of the Cross. “That in my lifetime, God … it’s the Veronica!”
Humans rushed past us, stumbling and jostling to follow her into the church. I heard their steps echoing up the giant nave.
“We have no time,” David said in my ear. He had lifted me off my feet, strong as Memnoch, only there was no whirlwind, only the risen winter dawn, and the falling snow, and more and more shouts and howls and cries as men and women flooded towards the church, and the bells above in the steeples began to ring.
“Hurry, Lestat, with me!”
We ran together, already blinded by the light, and behind me I heard Armand’s voice ring out over the crowd.
“Bear witness, this sinner dies for Him!” The scent of fire came in a fierce explosion! I saw it blaze against the glass walls of the towers as we fled. I heard the screams.
“Armand!” I cried out. David pulled me along, down metal steps, echoing and chiming like the bells pealing from the cathedral above.
I went dizzy; I surrendered to him. I gave up my will to him. In my grief, crying, “Armand, Armand.”
Slowly I made out David’s figure in the dark. We were in a damp icy place, a cellar beneath a cellar, beneath the high shrieking hollow of an empty wind-torn building. He was digging through the broken earth.
“Help me,” he cried, “I’m losing all feeling, the light’s coming, the sun is risen, they’ll find us.”
“No, they won’t.”
I kicked and dug out the grave, carrying him with me deeper and deeper, and closing the soft clods of earth behind us. Not even the sounds of the city above could penetrate this darkness. Not even the bells of the church.
Had the Tunnel opened for Armand? Had his soul gone up? Or was he wandering through the Gates of Hell?
“Armand,” I whispered. And as I closed my eyes, I saw Memnoch’s stricken face: Lestat, help me!
With my last bit of feeling, I reached to make sure the Veil was there. But no, the Veil was gone. I’d given Dora the Veil. Dora had the Veil and Dora had taken it into the church.
You would never be my adversary!
TWENTY-FOUR
We sat together on the low wall, Fifth Avenue, edge of Central Park. Three nights had passed like this. We had watched.
For as far as we could see uptown the line formed, five and six deep, men and women and children, singing, stamping their feet to keep warm, nuns and priests hurrying back and forth offering hot chocolate and tea to those who were freezing. Fires burned in large drums at intervals of so many feet. As far as the eye could see.
And downtown, on and on it went, past the glittering displays of Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel, the furriers, the jewelers, the bookstores of midtown, until it wound its way into the cathedral.
David stood with folded arms, barely leaning on the wall, his ankles crossed. I was the one who sat like a kid, with my knee up, my ravaged one-eyed face upturned, my chin on my knuckled fist, resting my elbow on my knee, just listening to them.
Far ahead one could hear screams and shouts. Someone else had no doubt touched a clean napkin to the Veil, and once again the image had been transferred! And so it would be again sometime tomorrow night, and maybe once the night after and how many times nobody knew, except that the icon made the vera-icon out of the cloth touched to it, and the face blazed from cloth to cloth, like flame touched from wick to wick.
“Come on,” David said. “We’re getting cold here. Come, let’s walk.”
We walked.
“Why?” I asked. “Up there, to see the same thing we saw last night, and the night before? So that I can struggle to get to her again, knowing that any show of force, any preternatural gift only confirms the entire miracle! She won’t listen to me ever again. You know she won’t. And who is gathered on the steps now, who will immolate himself at dawn to confirm the miracle?”
“Mael is there.”
“Ah, yes, the Druid priest, once a priest, always a priest. And so this will be his morning to fall like Lucifer in a blaze.”
Last night it had been some ragged vagabond blood drinker, come from God knows where, unknown to us, but becoming a preternatural torch at dawn for the banks of video cameras and newspaper photographers. The papers were filled with the pictures of
the blaze. Filled with the pictures of the Veil itself.
“Here, wait,” I said. We had come to Central Park South. The crowd here was all singing in concert that old solemn, militant hymn:
Holy God, we praise thy Name
Lord of All, we bow before thee!
I stood staring at them, dazed. The pain in my left eye socket seemed worse but what could be changing there, except that with each passing hour I felt the depth.
“You’re fools, all of you!” I shouted. “Christianity is the bloodiest religion that ever existed in the world. I can bear witness!”
“Hush now, and do as I tell you,” David said, pulling me along, so that we vanished amongst the ever-shifting people on the icy sidewalks before anyone could have turned to look. Over and over he had restrained me this way. He was weary of it. I didn’t blame him.
Once, policemen had laid hands on me.
They had caught me and tried to pull me out of the cathedral as I was trying to talk to her, and then when they had me outside, slowly they had all backed away. They had sensed I wasn’t alive, the way mortals do. They had sensed, and they had muttered about the Veil and the miraculous, and there it had been, my impotence.
Policemen were all over. Policemen everywhere stood on guard to help, to give out the warm tea, to put their pale shivering hands out over the flames in the drums.
Nobody noticed us. Why should they? We were just two men, drab, part of the crowd, our gleaming skin was nothing much in this blinding whiteness of snow amid these ecstatic pilgrims, wandering from valley to valley of song.
The bookstore windows were piled with Bibles, books on Christology. There was a huge pyramid of a lavender-covered book called Veronica and Her Cloth by Ewa Kuryluk, and another stack of Holy Faces, Secret Places by Ian Wilson.
People sold pamphlets on the street, or even gave them away. I could hear accents from all parts of the country—from Texas, and Florida and Georgia and California.
Bibles, Bibles, Bibles, being sold and given away.
A group of nuns gave out holy pictures of St. Veronica. But the hottest items were the color photographs of the Veil itself, snapped in the church by photographers and then reprinted by the thousands.