by Anne Rice
"The halos," I said. "You two, where are you? Your halos hover over your heads. I saw them. I saw them in the street and in the paintings. But you see in the painting by Fra Giovanni, the halo is flat and surrounds the painted face, a disk hard and golden right on the field of the painting The monks laughed. "To whom are you speaking, young Signore Vittorio di Raniari?" one of them asked me.
"Be quiet, child," said the big monk, his booming bass voice pushing against me through his barrel of a chest. "You're in our tender care. And you must hush now, see, there, that's the library, you see our monks at work?"
They were proud of it, weren't they? Even in our progress when I might have vomited all over the immaculate floor, the monk turned to let me see through the open door the long room crowded with books and monks at work, but what I saw too was Michelozzo's vaulted ceiling, again, not soaring to leave us, but bending gently over the heads of the monks and letting a volume of light and air rise above them.
It seemed I saw visions. I saw multiple and triple figures where there should only be one, and even in a flash a misty confusion of angelic wings, and oval faces turned, peering at me through the veil of supernatural secrecy.
"Do you see?" was all I could say. I had to get to that library, I had to find texts in it that defined the demons. Yes, I had not given up! Oh, no, I was no babbling idiot. I had God's very own angels at my assistance. I'd take Ramiel and Setheus in there and show them the texts.
We know, Vittorio, wipe the pictures from your mind, for we see them.
"Where are you?" I cried out.
"Quiet," said the monks.
"But will you help me go back there and kill them?"
"You're babbling," said the monks.
Cosimo was the guardian patron of that library. When old Niccolo de' Niccoli died, a marvelous collector of books with whom I had many times spoken at Vaspasiano's bookshop, all of his religious books, and maybe more, had been donated by Cosimo to this monastery.
I would find them in there, in that library, and find proof in St. Augustine or Aquinas of the devils with which I'd fought.
No. I was not mad. I had not given up. I was no gibbering idiot. If only the sun coming in the high little windows of this airy place would stop baking my eyeballs and burning my hands.
"Quiet, quiet," said the big monk, smiling still. "You are making noises like an infant. Hhhhh. Burgle, gurgle. Hear? Now, look, the library's busy. It's open to the public today. Everybody is busy today."
He turned only a few steps past the library to take me into a cell. "Down there . . ." he went on, as if cajoling an unruly baby. "Only a few steps away is the Prior's cell, and guess who is there this very minute? It's the Archbishop."
"Antonino," I whispered.
"Yes, yes, you said it right. Once our own Antonino. Well, he's here, and guess why?"
I was too groggy to respond. The other monks surrounded me. They wiped me with cool cloths. They smoothed back my hair.
This was a clean large cell. Oh, if the sun would only stop. What had those demons done to me, made me into a half-demon? Dare I ask for a mirror?
Set down on a thick soft bed, in this warm, clean place, I lost all control of my limbs. I was sick again.
The monks attended me with a silver basin. The sunlight pierced brilliantly upon a fresco, but I couldn't bear to look at the gleaming figures, not in this hurtful illumination. It seemed the cell was filled with other figures. Were they angels? I saw transparent beings, drifting, stirring, but I could catch hold of no clear outline. Only the fresco burned into the wall in its colors seemed solid, valid, true.
"Have they done this to my eyes forever?" I asked. I thought I caught a glimpse of an angelic form in the doorway of the cell, but it was not the figure of either Setheus or Ramiel. Did it have webbed wings? Demon wings? I started in terror.
But it was gone. Rustling, whispering. We know.
"Where are my angels?" I asked. I cried. I told out the names of my father and his father, and of all the di Raniari whom I could remember.
"Shhhhh," said the young monk. "Cosimo has been told that you are here. But this is a terrible day. We remember your father. Now let us remove these filthy clothes."
My head swam. The room was gone.
Sodden sleep, a glimpse of her, my savior Ursula. She ran through the blowing meadow. Who was this pursuing her, driving her out of the nodding, weaving flowers? Purple irises surrounded her, were crushed under her feet. She turned. Don't, Ursula! Don't turn. Don't you see the flaming sword?
I woke in a warm bath. Was it the cursed baptismal fount? No. I saw the fresco, the holy figures, dimly, and more immediately the real live monks who surrounded me on their knees on the stone, their big sleeves rolled back as they washed me in the warm, sweet-scented water.
"Ah, that Francesco Sforza . . ." they spoke in Latin to one another. "To charge into Milan and take possession of the Dukedom! As if Cosimo did not have enough trouble, without Sforza having done such a thing/'
"He did it? He has taken Milan?" I asked.
"What did you say? Yes, son, he has. He broke the peace. And your family, all your poor family murdered by the freebooters; don't think they'll go unpunished, rampaging through that country, those damned Venetians ..."
"No, you mustn't, you must tell Cosimo. It was not an act of war, what happened to my family, not by human beings ..."
"Hush, child."
Chaste hands sponged the water over my shoulders. I sat slumped against the warm metal back of the tub.
". . . di Raniari, always loyal," said one of them to me. 'And your brother was to come to study with us, your sweet brother, Matteo ..."
I let out a terrible cry A soft hand sealed my lips.
"Sforza himself will punish them. He'll clean out that country."
I cried and cried. No one could understand me. They wouldn't listen to me.
The monks lifted me to my feet. I was dressed in a long comfortable soft linen robe. It came to me that I was being dressed for execution, but the hour of such danger had passed.
"I am not mad!" I said clearly "No, not at all, only grief-stricken."
"You understand me!"
"You are tired."
"The bed is soft for you, brought specially for you, hush, don't rave anymore."
"Demons did it," I whispered. "They weren't soldiers."
"I know, son, I know. War is terrible. War is the Devil's work."
No, but it wasn't war. Will you listen to me?
Hush, this is Ramiel at your ear; didn't I tell you to sleep? Will you listen to us? We have heard your thoughts as well as your words!
I lay down on the bed flat on my chest. The monks brushed and dried my hair. My hair was so long now. Unkempt, country Lord hair. But this was an immense comfort to be bathed and gentlemanly clean.
"Those are candles?" I asked. "The sun has gone down?"
"Yes," said the monk beside me. "You have slept."
"May I have more candles?"
"Yes, I'll bring them to you."
I lay in the darkness. I blinked and tried to shape the words of the Ave.
Many lights appeared in the door, some six or seven in a cluster, each a sweet small perfectly shaped flame. Then they fluttered as the monk's feet came softly towards me. I saw him clearly as he knelt to place the candelabra beside my bed.
He was thin and tall, a sapling in hollow willowy robes. His hands were so clean. "You are in a special cell. Cosimo has sent men to bury your dead."
"Thanks be to God," I said.
"Yes."
So now I could speak!
"They are still talking down there, and it's late," said the monk. "Cosimo is troubled. He'll stay the night here. The whole city is filled with Venetian agitators stirring up the populace against Cosimo."
"Now hush," said another monk who appeared suddenly. He bent down and lifted my head to place another thick pillow beneath it.
What bliss this was. I thought of the damned ones impris
oned in the coop. "Oh, horrors! It's night, and they're waiting for the horrible Communion."
"Who, child? What Communion?"
Once again, I glimpsed figures moving, drifting, as it were, in the shadows. But they were too soon gone.
I had to vomit. I needed the basin. They held my hair for me. Did they see the blood in the candlelight? The pure streak of blood? It smelled so rotten.
"How can one survive such poison?" one monk whispered to the other in Latin. "Do we dare purge him?"
"You'll frighten him. Be quiet. He has no fever."
"Well, you're damned wrong if you think you took my wits," I declared suddenly. I shouted it to Florian and to Godric and to all of them.
The monks looked at me in urgent astonishment.
I laughed. "I only was talking to those who tried to hurt me," I said, again letting each word have a clear distinct shape.
The thin monk with the remarkably scrubbed hands knelt by me. He smoothed my forehead. 'And the beautiful sister, the sister who was to be married, is she too ... ?"
"Bartola! She was to be married? I didn't know. Well, he can have her head for a maidenhead." I wept. "The worms are at work in the dark. And the demons dance on the hill, and the town does nothing."
"What town?"
"You're raving again," said a monk who stood beyond the candles. How distinct he looked, though he was beyond the light, a round-shouldered individual with a hooked nose and thick somber heavy eyelids. "Don't rave anymore, poor child."
I wanted to protest, but I saw suddenly a giant soft wing, each feather tinged with gold, come down over me, enfolding me. I was tickled all over by the softness of the feathers. Ramiel said: What must we do to make you shut up? Filippo needs us now; will you give us some peace and quiet for Filippo, whom God sent us to guard? Don't answer me. Obey me.
The wing crushed out all vision, all woe.
Shadowy pale darkness. Even and complete. The candles were behind me, set up high.
I woke. I rose up on my elbows. My head was clear. A lovely even illumination gave just the smallest tremble as it filled the cell. From the high window came the moon. The shaft of the moon struck the fresco on the wall, the fresco obviously painted by Fra Giovanni.
My eyes could see it with amazing clarity. Was this my demonic blood?
A strange thought came to me. It rung in my consciousness with the clarity of a golden bell. I myself possessed no guardian angels! My angels had left me; they had departed, because my soul was damned.
I had no angels. I had seen Filippo's because of the power the demons had given me, and because of something else. Filippo's angels argued so much with each other! That's how I had seen them. Some words came to me.
They came back to me from Aquinas, or was it Augustine? I'd read so much of both to learn my Latin, and their endless excursuses had so delighted me. The demons are full of passion. But angels are not.
But those two angels had such spirit. That's why they'd cut through the veil.
I pushed back the covers and set my bare feet on the stone floor. It was cool, and pleasing, because the room, having received the sun all day, was still warm.
No drafts swept the polished and immaculate floor.
I stood before the wall painting. I wasn't dizzy or sick, or like to fall. I was myself again.
What an innocent and untroubled soul Fra Giovanni must have been. All his figures were devoid of malice. I could see the figure of Christ seated before a mountain, round gold halo decorated with the red arms and top of a cross. Beside him stood ministering angels. One held bread for him, and the other, whose figure was cut off by the door that was cut into the wall, this other angel, whose wingtips were barely visible, carried wine and meat.
Above, on the mountain, I saw Christ also. It was a painting of different incidents, in sequence, and above, Christ was standing in His same smooth and multiwrinkled pink robes, but here He was agitated, as agitated as Fra Giovanni could make Him, and Christ had lifted His left hand, as if in wrath.
The figure who fled from Him was the Devil! It was a horrid creature with the webbed wings I thought Td glimpsed earlier, and it had hideous webbed feet. It had dewclaws on its webbed feet. Sour-faced and in a dirty gray robe, it fled from Christ, who stood firm in the Desert, refusing to be tempted, and, only after this confrontation, then had the ministering angels come, and had Christ taken His place with His hands clasped.
I sucked in my breath in terror as I beheld this image of the demon. But a great rush of comfort passed through me, causing my hair to tingle at its roots, causing my feet to tingle against the polished floor. I had routed the demons, I had refused their gift of immortality. I had refused it. Even faced with the cross!
I retched. The pain caught me as if I'd been kicked in the stomach. I turned. The basin was there, clean and polished, sitting on the floor. I dropped to my knees and heaved up more of their syrupy filth. Was there no water?
I looked around. There stood the pitcher and the cup. The cup was full and I spilt some of it as I put it to my lips, but it tasted thin and rancid and awful. I threw down the cup.
"You've poisoned me for natural things, you monsters. You will not win!"
My hands trembling, I picked up the cup, filled it once more and tried again to drink. But it tasted unnatural. To what can I compare it? It was not foul like urine; it was like water that is full of minerals and metal and will leave a chalk on you and choke you. It was bad!
I put it aside. Very well then. Time to study. Time to take up the candles, which I now did.
I went out of the cell. The hall was empty and glowing in the pale light that came from tiny windows over the low-ceilinged cells.
I turned to my right and approached the doors of the library. They were unlocked.
I entered with my candelabra. Once again, the tranquillity of Michelozzo's design brought a warmth to me, a faith in all things, a trust. Two rows of arches and Ionic columns moved down the center of the room to make a broad aisle to the far distant door, and on either side were the study tables, and all along the far walls were racks and racks of codices and scrolls.
Across the herringbone stones of the floor I walked barefoot, lifting the candle higher so that the light would fill up the vaulted ceiling, so happy to be here alone.
Windows on either side let in shafts of pale illumination through the overwhelming clutter of shelves, but how divine and restful were the high ceilings. How boldly he had done it, made a basilica of a library.
How could I have known, child that I was then, that this style would be imitated all over my beloved Italy? Oh, there were so many wondrous things then for the living and for all time.
And I? What am I? Do I live? Or am I walking always in death, forever in love with time?
I stood still with my candles. How my eyes loved the moonlighted splendor. How I craved to stand here forever, dreaming, near to things of the mind, and things of the soul, and far away in memory from the wretched enchained town on its cursed mountain and the castle nearby, which at this very moment probably gave forth its ghastly, ugly light.
Could I discern the order of this wealth of books?
The very cataloger of this library, the very monk who had done the work here, the very scholar, was now the Pope of all Christendom, Nicholas V I moved along the shelves to my right, holding high my candles. Would it be alphabetical? I thought of Aquinas, for I knew him more freely, but it was St. Augustine whom I found. And I had always loved Augustine, loved his colorful style and his eccentricities, and the dramatic manner in which he wrote.
"Oh, you wrote more about demons, you are better!" I said.
The City of God! I saw it, copy after copy. There were a score of codices of this very masterpiece, not to mention all of the other work of this great saint, his Confessions, which had gripped me as much as a Roman drama, and so much more. Some of these books were ancient, made of big sloppy parchment, others were extravagantly bound, some almost simple and very new.
/> In charity and consideration, I must take the most sturdy of these, even though there might be errors, and God only knew how hard monks worked to avoid errors. I knew which volume I wanted. I knew the volume on demons, because I had thought it so very fascinating and funny and so much poppycock. Oh, what a fool Td been.
I took down the hefty fat volume, number nine of the text, slipping it into the crook of my arm, moved to the first desk and then carefully placed the candelabra in front of me, where it would light me but throw no shadows under my fingers, and I opened the book.