by Rice, Anne
“They are all gone,” I said, “those who tormented Bianca. You come with me. Let’s leave this gory scene. I would walk with you, before the sun rises, near the sea.”
He followed me as a child might, the tears staining his face as they ran still from his eyes.
“Wipe your tears,” I said firmly. “We’re going out into the piazza. It’s almost dawn.”
He slipped his hand into mine as we went down the stone stairs.
I put my arm around him, sheltering him from the sharp wind.
“Master,” he pleaded, “they were evil men, weren’t they? You were certain of it. You knew it.”
“All of them,” I answered. “But sometimes men and women are both good and evil,” I continued, “and who am I to choose for my vicious appetite, yet I do. Is Bianca not both good and evil?”
“Master,” he asked, “if I drink the blood of those who are evil, will I become like you?”
We stood before the closed doors of San Marco. The wind came mercilessly off the sea. I drew my cloak about him all the more tightly, and he rested his head against my chest.
“No, child,” I said, “there’s infinitely more magic in it than that.”
“You must give me your blood, isn’t that so, Master?” he asked as he looked up at me, the tears clear and glistening in the cold air, his hair mussed.
I didn’t answer.
“Master,” he said, as I held him close to me, “long years ago, or so they seem to me, in some far-away place, where I lived before I came to you, I was what they called a Fool for God. I don’t remember it clearly and never will as both of us well know.
“But a Fool for God was a man who gave himself over to God completely and did not care what happened, whether it was mockery, or starvation, or endless laughter, or dreadful cold. That much I remember, that I was a Fool for God in those times.”
“But you painted pictures, Amadeo, you painted beautiful ikons—.”
“But listen to me, Master,” he said firmly, forcing me to silence, “whatever I did, I was a Fool for God, and now I would be a Fool for you.” He paused, snuggling close to me as the wind grew stronger. The mists moved in over the stones. There came noises from the ships.
I started to speak but he reached to stop me. How obdurate and strong he seemed, how seductive, how completely mine.
“Master,” he went on. “Do it when you will. You have my secrecy. You have my patience. Do it when and how you will.”
I thought on what he’d said.
“Go home, Amadeo,” I answered him. “You know the sun is coming, and I must leave you with the arrival of the sun.”
He nodded, puzzling over it, as though for the very first time it mattered to him, though how he couldn’t have thought of it before I didn’t know.
“Go home, and study with the others, talk with them, and shepherd the little ones at their play. If you can do that—go from the bloody banquet room to the laughter of children—then when I come tonight, I shall do it. I shall bring you over to myself.”
I watched him walk away from me in the mist. He went towards the canal where he would find the gondola to take him back to our door.
“A Fool for God,” I whispered aloud so that my mind might hear it, “yes, a Fool for God, and in some miserable monastery you painted the sacred pictures, convinced your life would mean nothing unless it was a life of sacrifice and pain. And now, in my magic you see some similar burning purity. And you turn away from all the riches of life in Venice for that burning purity; you turn away from all that a human may have.”
But was it so? Did he know enough to make such a decision? Could he forsake the sun forever?
I had no answer. It was not his decision that mattered now. For I had made mine.
As for my radiant Bianca, her thoughts were forever after closed to me, as though she knew the knack of it like a wily witch. As for her devotion, her love, her friendship, that was something else.
21
Now, where I slept in the daylight hours in Venice, was in a beautiful granite sarcophagus in a hidden chamber just above the level of the water in an uninhabited palazzo which belonged to me.
The room itself was lined with gold, a quite marvelous little cell, replete with torches, and a stairway led up from this chamber to a door which only I could force back.
On coming out of the palazzo one had to walk down a flight of steps to the canal—that is, if one were walking at all, which I, of course, was not.
Some long months ago I had arranged for the creation of another sarcophagus of the same beauty and weight, so that two blood drinkers could have lain down together in this chamber, and it was from this gilded resting place that I arose the following night.
I knew at once that my true house was in an uproar. I could hear the distant wailing of the little boys, and the frantic prayers of Bianca. Some carnage had taken place beneath my roof.
Of course I thought it had to do with the Florentines I had slaughtered, and as I rushed to my palazzo, I cursed myself that I had not taken greater care with this spectacular deed.
But nothing could have been further from the truth.
No one had to tell me, as I rushed down the stairs from the roof, that a drunken violent English lord had come rampaging into my house in search of Amadeo for whom he harbored a forbidden passion, which had been somewhat fed by Amadeo’s dalliance on random nights when I had been away.
And with the same knowledge, I quickly imbibed the horror that Lord Harlech, this Englishman, had cruelly, wantonly slain children no older than seven before he met in combat Amadeo himself.
Of course Amadeo knew how to use both sword and dagger and had swiftly fought this evil man with both in hand. Indeed, he had slain Lord Harlech but not before Lord Harlech had slashed his face and arms with a poisoned blade.
I came into the bedchamber to find Amadeo in a fatal fever, his senses having left him, the priests in attendance, and Bianca bathing him with a cool cloth.
Everywhere there were candles. Amadeo lay in his clothes of last night with the sleeve cut away where Lord Harlech had wounded his arm.
Riccardo was weeping. The teachers were weeping. The priests had given Amadeo the Last Rites. There was nothing more to be done.
At once Bianca turned to greet me. Her lovely dress was stained with blood. She came to me, her face pale, her hands gripping my sleeves.
“For hours, he’s struggled,” she told me. “He’s spoken of visions. He has crossed a great sea and seen a wondrous celestial city. He has seen that all things are made of love. All things! Do you understand?”
“I do,” I said.
“He has seen a city of glass as he described it,” she said, “made of love as are all growing things. He has seen priests from his homeland, and these priests have told him that it is not his time to reach the city. They have sent him back.”
She appealed to me.
“They are right, are they not,” she asked, “these priests he’s seen? It is not his time to die.”
I didn’t answer her.
She went to his side again and I stood behind her. I watched as she bathed his forehead again.
“Amadeo,” she said, her voice calm and strong, “breathe for me, breathe for your Master. Amadeo, breathe for me.”
I could see that he tried to obey her command.
His eyes were closed and then opened, but they saw nothing. His skin was the color of old ivory. His hair was swept back from his face. How cruel was the cut in his face made by Lord Harlech’s blade.
“Leave me with him now,” I said gently to the entire company.
No one protested. I heard the doors close.
I bent down and, cutting my tongue as I had so often done, I let the blood drip on the evil cut on his face. I marveled silently as the flesh healed.
Once again his eyes opened. He saw me and then he spoke.
“It’s Marius,” he said softly. He had never once in all our time together called me by name. “Marius has come,” he
said. “Why didn’t the priests tell me? They told me only that it wasn’t my time to die.”
I lifted his right hand. There too the blade of Lord Harlech had made a cut and now I kissed it with the healing blood and watched the miracle once again.
Amadeo shuddered. It was painful for him and his lips drew back for a moment and then he settled as if into deeper sleep. The poison was eating inside him. I could see the cruel evidence of it.
He was dying, no matter what his visions had told him, and no slight tender kiss of blood could save him now.
“Did you believe what they said?” I asked him. “That it was not your time to die?”
Reluctantly, painfully, his eyes opened.
“Master, they returned me to you,” he answered. “Oh, if only I could remember all they told me, but they warned me that I would forget. Why was I ever brought here, Master?” He struggled, but he would not be quieted. He went on talking.
“Why was I taken out of some distant land and brought to you? I remember riding through the grasslands. I remember my father. And in my arms, as I rode, I held an ikon that I had painted, and my father was a great horseman and a great fighter, and there came down on us the evil ones, the Tatars, and they took me, and Master—the ikon, it fell into the tall grass. Master I know now. I think they killed my father when they took me away.”
“Did you see him, child?” I asked, “when you dreamt these things?”
“No, Master. But then again, I don’t remember.” He began to cough suddenly and then the coughing stopped and he breathed deeply as if it were the only thing he had the strength to do.
“I know I painted the ikon, and we were sent out in the grasslands to place the ikon in a tree. It was a sacred thing to do. The grasslands were dangerous, Master, but my father always hunted there. Nothing frightened my father, and I could ride as well as he. Master, I know now the story of all my life, I know it yet I can’t quite tell you—.”
His voice dried up suddenly, and his whole body shuddered once more.
“This is death, Master,” he whispered, “and yet they said it was not my time.”
I knew his life was being measured now in moments. Had I ever loved anyone more than I loved him? Had I ever revealed more of my soul to anyone than I had revealed to him? If my tears spilled now, he would see them. If I trembled now, he would know.
Long ago, I’d been taken prisoner, just as he had! Was that not why I had chosen him?—that thieves had taken him from his life as I’d been taken from mine?
And so I’d thought that I would give him this great gift which was eternity! Was he not worthy in all things? Yes, he was young, but how would it harm him to be forever beautiful with the countenance of a young man?
He was not Botticelli. He was not a man of immense talent and fame.
He was a boy dying here whom few would remember except for me.
“How could they have said it?” he whispered, “that it was not my time?”
“They sent you back to me!” I gasped. I couldn’t bear this. “Amadeo, did you believe these priests whom you saw? Did you believe in the glass city, tell me.”
He smiled. And it was never innocent, no matter how beautiful, his smile.
“Don’t weep for me, Master,” he answered. He struggled to rise a little from the pillow, his eyes very wide. “When the ikon fell, my fate was made, Master.”
“No, Amadeo, I don’t believe it,” I said.
But there was no more time.
“Go to them, child, call to them!” I said. “Tell them to take you now.”
“No, Master. They may be insubstantial things,” he said. “They may be dreams of the feverish mind. They may be phantoms wrapped in the garments of memory. But I know what you are, Master. I want the Blood. I’ve tasted it, Master. I want to stay with you. And if you refuse me, then let me die with Bianca! Send back my mortal nurse to me, Master, for she comforts me far better than you in your coldness. I would die with her alone.”
He fell back exhausted on the pillow.
Desperately, I cut my tongue and filled my mouth with blood. I gave it to him. But the poison was moving too fast.
He smiled as the blood warmed him and a film of tears covered his eyes.
“Beautiful Marius,” he said, as if he were far older than I would ever be. “Beautiful Marius who gave me Venice. Beautiful Marius, give me the Blood.”
We had no more time. I was weeping miserably.
“Would you truly have the Blood, Amadeo?” I asked. “Say it to me, that you forsake the light of the sun forever, and forever you will thrive on the blood of the Evil Doer as I thrive.”
“I vow it, I will it,” he answered.
“You’ll live forever, unchanging?” I asked, “feeding upon mortals who can be your brothers and sisters no more?”
“Yes, forever unchanging,” he answered, “among them, though they are my brothers and sisters no more.”
Once again, I gave him the Blood Kiss. And then I lifted him and carried him to the bath.
I stripped off his thick and soiled velvet clothes. And into the warm water I placed him, and there with the blood from my mouth I sealed all the cuts in the flesh made by Lord Harlech. I shaved off for all time any beard that he might have.
Now he was ready for the magic as one who had been prepared for sacrifice. And his heart beat slowly and his eyes were too heavy to open anymore.
And in a simple long silk shirt I clothed him and carried him out of the room.
The others were waiting anxiously. What lies I told them I do not know. How mad I was in these moments. To Bianca I gave some solemn charge that she must comfort and thank the others, and that Amadeo’s life was safe in my hands.
“Leave us now, my beauty,” I said to her. Even as I held him, I kissed her. “Trust in me, and I shall see that you never come to harm.”
I could see that she believed in me. All fear was gone from her.
Within moments Amadeo and I were alone.
Then into my grandest painted salon I took him. It was the room into which I’d copied Gozzoli’s magnificent painting The Procession of the Magi, stolen from the original in Florence as a test of my memory and skill.
Into this intense color and variation, I plunged him, setting him down on his feet on the cold marble, and then giving him through the Blood Kiss, the greatest draught of blood which I had given so far.
With the Fire Gift I lighted the candelabra up one side of the chamber and down the other. The painting was bathed in light.
“You can stand now, my blessed pupil,” I told him. “My blood runs through you after the poison. We have begun.”
He trembled, fearing to let go of me, his head hanging heavily, his luxuriant hair soft against my hands.
“Amadeo,” I said, kissing him once again as the blood flowed over my lips and into his mouth, “what was your name in that lost land?” Again I filled my mouth with blood and I gave it to him. “Reach back for the past, child, and make it part of the future.”
His eyes opened wide.
I stepped away from him. I left him standing. I let loose my red velvet cloak and pushed it away from me.
“Come to me,” I said. I held out my arms.
He took the first steps, unsure of himself, so full of my blood that surely the light itself must have amazed him, but his eyes were moving over the multitude of figures painted on the wall. Then he looked directly at me.
How knowing, how clever was his expression! How full of triumph he seemed suddenly in his silence and patience. How utterly damned.
“Come, Amadeo, come and take it from me,” I said, my eyes full of tears. “You are the victor. Take what I have to give.”
He was in my arms instantly, and I held him warmly, whispering close to his ear.
“Don’t be afraid, child, not even for a moment. You’ll die now to live forever, as I take your blood and give it back to you. I won’t let you slip away.”
I sank my teeth into his throat and
tasted the poison in his blood as soon as it flowed into me, my body destroying the poison, my body consuming his blood effortlessly, as it might have consumed a dozen such young ones, and into my mind there came the visions of his childhood—of the Russian monastery where he had painted his flawless ikons, of the cold chambers in which he’d lived.
I saw monks half walled up alive as they fasted, eating only what would sustain them. I smelled the earth. I smelled decay. Oh, how ghastly was this passage to salvation. And he had been part of it, half in love with the sacrificial cells and their starving inhabitants, save for his gift: that he could paint.
Then for one instant I saw nothing but his paintings, one image tumbling upon another, rapt faces of Christ, the Virgin—I saw the halos studded with costly jewels. Ah, such riches in the dark, cheerless monastery. And then came the rich bawdy laughter of his father, wanting him to leave the monastery, to ride out with him into the grasslands where the Tatars rode.
Prince Michael, their ruler, wanted to send Amadeo’s father into the grasslands. It was a foolish mission. The monks railed against it, that Amadeo’s father would take him into such danger. The monks wrapped the ikon and gave it to Amadeo. Out of the darkness and bitter earth of the monastery, Amadeo came into the light.
I stopped; I drew back from the blood and the visions. I knew him. I knew the relentless and hopeless darkness inside of him. I knew the life that had been forecast in hunger and bitter discipline.
I cut the flesh of my throat and I held his head near me. “Drink,” I said. I pushed his head forward. “Put your mouth to the wound. Drink.”
At last, he obeyed me, and suddenly with all his force he drew on the blood. Had he not tasted it enough to crave it? And now it came without measure, and he was passionate for it, and I closed my eyes, and felt an exquisite sweetness that I had not known since the long ago night when I had given my blood to my blessed Zenobia to make her all the more strong.
“Be my child, Amadeo,” I whispered in this sweetness. “Be my child forever,” I said. “Have I ever loved anyone more than you?”
I drew him back away from the wound, and as he cried out I sank my teeth into his throat again. This time it was my blood mingled with his that flowed into me. The poison was no more.