The Vampire Armand tvc-6

by Anne Rice

  "Master, what will become of our shades if our bodies are destroyed?"

  "God only knows, Amadeo. I despair of knowing. I have lived too long to think of destroying myself. My fate is perhaps the same fate of the whole physical world. That we could have come from nothing and return to nothing, this is entirely possible. But let us enjoy our illusions of immortality, as mortals enjoy theirs."

  Good enough.

  My Master was absent from the palazzo twice, when he went on those mysterious journeys which he wouldn't explain to me any more now than he had before.

  I hated these absences, but I knew that they were tests of my new powers. I had to rule within the house gently and unobtrusively, and I had to hunt on my own and make some account, upon Marius's return, of what I had done with my leisure time.

  After the second journey, he came home weary and uncommonly sad. He said, as he had said once before, that "Those Who Must Be Kept" seemed to be at peace.

  "I hate it what these creatures are!" I said.

  "No, never say such a thing to me, Amadeo!" he burst out. In a flash I'd seen him more angry and uncomposed than ever in our lives. I'm not sure I'd ever seen him really angry in our lives.

  He approached me and I shrank back, actually afraid. But by the time he struck me, hard across the face, he'd recovered himself, and it was just the usual brain-jarring blow.

  I accepted it, and then threw him one exasperated searing glance. "You act like a child," I said, "a child playing Master, and so I must master my feelings and put up with this."

  Of course it took all my reserves to say this, especially when my head was swimming, and I made my face such an obdurate mask of contempt that suddenly he burst out laughing.

  I started to laugh too.

  "But really, Marius," I said, feeling very cheeky, "what are these creatures you speak of?" I made my wisdom nice and reverent. My question was, after all, sincere. "You come home miserable, Sir. You know you do. So what are they, and why must they be kept?"

  "Amadeo, don't ask me anymore. Sometimes just before morning, when my fears are at their worst, I imagine that we have enemies among the blood drinkers, and they're close."

  "Others? As strong as you?"

  "No, those who have come in past years are never as strong as me, and that is why they're gone."

  I was enthralled. He had hinted at this before, that he kept our territory clean of others, but he wouldn't elaborate, and now he seemed softened up with unhappiness and willing to talk.

  "But I imagine that there are others, and that they'll come to disturb our peace. They won't have a good reason. They never do. They'll want to hunt the Veneto, or they will have formed some willful little battalion, and they'll try to destroy us out of sheer sport. I imagine ... but the point is, my child-and you are my child, smart one!-I don't tell you any more about the ancient mysteries than you need to know.

  That way, no one can pick your apprentice mind for its deepest secrets, either with your cooperation or without your knowledge, or against your will."

  "If we have a history worth knowing, Sir, then you should tell me. What ancient mysteries? You wall me up with books on human history. You've made me learn Greek, and even this miserable Egyptian script which no one else knows, and you question me all the time on the fate of ancient Rome and ancient Athens, and the battles of every Crusade ever sent from our shores to the Holy Land. But what of us?"

  "Always here," he said, "I told you. Ancient as mankind itself.

  Always here, and always a few, and always warring and best when alone and needing the love only of one other or two at most. That's the history, plain and simple. I will expect you to write it out for me in all five languages you now know."

  He sat down on the bed, disgruntled, letting his muddy boot dig into the satin. He fell back on the pillows. He was really raw and strange and seemingly young.

  "Marius, come on now," I coaxed. I was at the desk. "What ancient mysteries? What are Those Who Must Be Kept?"

  "Go dig into our dungeons, child," he said, lacing his voice with sarcasm. "Find the statues there I have from so-called pagan days.

  You'll find things as useful as Those Who Must Be Kept. Leave me alone.

  I'll tell you some night, but for now, I give you what counts. In my absence you were supposed to study. Tell me now what you learnt."

  He had in fact demanded that I learn all of Aristotle, not from the manuscripts which were common currency in the piazza, but from an old text of his own which he said was purer Greek. I'd read it all.

  "Aristotle," I said. "And St. Thomas Aquinas. Ah, well, great systems give comfort, and when we feel ourselves slipping into despair, we should devise great schemes of the nothing around us, and then we will not slip but hang on a scaffold of our making, as meaningless as nothing, but too detailed to be so easily dismissed."

  "Well done," he said with an eloquent sigh. "Maybe some night in the far distant future, you'll take a more hopeful approach, but as you seem as animated and fall of happiness as you can be, why should I complain?"

  "We must come from somewhere," I said, pushing the other point.

  He was too crestfallen to answer.

  Finally, he rallied, climbing up off the pillows and coming towards me. "Let's go out. Let's find Bianca, and dress her up as a man for a while. Bring your finest. She needs to be freed of those rooms for a spell."

  "Sir, this may come as a rude shock to you, but Bianca, like many women, already has that habit. In the guise of a boy, she slips out all the time to make the rounds of the city."

  "Yes, but not in our company," he said. "We shall show her the worst places!" He made a dramatic comical face. "Come on."

  I was excited.

  As soon as we told the little plan to her, she was excited too.

  We came bursting in with an armful of fine clothes, and she immediately slipped away with us to get dressed.

  "What have you brought me? Oh, I'm to be Amadeo tonight, splendid," she said. She shut the doors on her company, who as usual carried on without her, several men singing around the Virginal and others arguing heatedly over their dice.

  She stripped off her clothes and stepped out of them, naked as Venus from the sea. We both dressed her in blue leggings and tunic and doublet. I pulled her belt tight, and Marius caught her hair up in a soft velvet hat.

  "You're the prettiest boy in the Veneto," he said stepping back. "Something tells me I'll have to protect you with our life."

  "Are you really going to take me to the worst haunts? I want to see dangerous places!" She threw up her arms. "Give me my stiletto. You don't expect me to go unarmed."

  "I have all the proper weapons for you," Marius said. He had brought a sword with a beautiful diamond-studded diagonal belt which he clasped at her hip. "Try to draw this. It's no dancing rapier. It's a war sword. Come on."

  She took the handle with both hands and brought it forth in a wide sure sweep. "I wish I had an enemy," she cried out, "who was ready to die."

  I looked at Marius. He looked at me. No, she couldn't be one of us.

  "That would be too selfish," he whispered in my ear.

  I couldn't help but wonder, if I had not been dying after my fight with the Englishman, if the sweating sickness had not taken me over, would he have ever made me a vampire?

  The three of us hurried down the stone steps to the quay. There was our canopied gondola waiting. Marius gave the address.

  "Are you sure you want to go there, Master?" asked the gondolier, shocked because he knew the district where the worst of the foreign seamen congregated and drank and fought.

  "Most sure of it," he said.

  As we moved off in the black waters, I put my arm around tender Bianca. Leaning back on the cushions, I felt invulnerable, immortal, certain that nothing would ever defeat me or Marius, and in our care Bianca would always be safe.

  How very wrong I was.

  Nine months perhaps we had together after our trip to Kiev. Nine or maybe ten
, I cannot mark the climax by any exterior event. Let me say only, before I proceed to bloody disaster, that Bianca was always with us in those last months. When we were not spying upon the carousers, we were in our house, where Marius painted her portraits, devising her as this or that goddess, as the Biblical Judith with the head of the Florentine for her Holofernes, or as the Virgin Mary staring rapt at a tiny Christ child, as perfectly rendered by Marius as any image he ever made.

  Those pictures-perhaps some of them endure to this very day.

  One night, when all slept except for the three of us, Bianca, about to give up on a couch as Marius painted, sighed and said, "I like your company too much. I don't ever want to go home."

  Would that she had loved us less. Would that she had not been there on the fatal evening in 1499, just before the turn of the century, when the High Renaissance was in its glory, ever to be celebrated by artists and historians, would that she had been safe when our world went up in flames.

  15

  IF YOU'VE READ The Vampire Lestat you know what happened, for I showed it all to Lestat in visions two hundred years ago. Lestat set down in writing the images I made known to him, the pain I shared with him. And though I now propose to relive these horrors, to flesh out the tale in my own words, there are points where I cannot improve on his words, and may from time to time freely call them up.

  It began suddenly. I awoke to find that Marius had lifted back the gilded cover of the sarcophagus. A torch blazed behind him on the wall.

  "Hurry, Amadeo, they're here. They mean to burn our house."

  "Who, Master? And why?"

  He snatched me from the shining coffin box, and I rushed after him up the decaying stairs to the first floor of the ruined dwelling.

  He wore his red cape and hood, and he moved so fast it took all my power to keep up with him.

  "Is it Those Who Must Be Kept?" I asked. He slung his arm around me, and off we went to the rooftop of our own palazzo.

  "No, child, it's a pack of foolish blood drinkers, bent on destroying all the work I've done. Bianca is there, at their mercy, and the boys too."

  We entered by the roof doors and went down the marble steps. Smoke rose from the lower floors.

  "Master, the boys, they're screaming!" I shouted.

  Bianca came running to the foot of the stairs far below.

  "Marius! Marius, they are demons. Use your magic!" she cried out, her hair streaming from the couch, her garments undone. "Marius!" Her wail echoed up the three floors of the palazzo.

  "Dear God, the rooms are everywhere on fire!" I cried out. "We must have water to put this out. Master, the paintings!"

  Marius dropped down over the railing and appeared, suddenly below, at her side. As I ran to join him, I saw a crowd of black-robed figures close in on him, and to my horror, try to set his clothes afire with the torches they brandished, as they gave forth horrid shrieks and hissed curses from beneath their hoods.

  From everywhere these demons came. The cries of the mortal apprentices were terrible.

  Marius knocked his assailants away, turning his arm in a great arc, the torches rolling on the marble floor. He closed his cloak about Bianca.

  "They mean to kill us!" she screamed. "They mean to burn us, Marius, they've slaughtered the boys, and others they've taken prisoner!"

  Suddenly more of the black figures came running before the first attackers could climb to their feet. I saw what they were. All had the same white faces and hands as we had; all possessed the magic blood.

  They were creatures such as we!

  Again, Marius was attacked, only to fling off all of them. The tapestries of the great hall were ignited. Dark odoriferous smoke belched forth from the adjacent rooms. Smoke filled the stairwell above. An infernal flickering light suddenly made the place as bright as day.

  I pitched myself into battle with the demons, finding them amazingly weak. And picking up one of their torches I rushed at them, driving them back, away from me, just as the Master did.

  "Blasphemer, heretic!" came a hiss from one. "Demon idolater, pagan!" cursed another. They came on, and I fought them again, setting their robes afire so that they screamed and fled to the safety of the waters of the canal.

  But there were too many of them. More poured into the hall even as we fought.

  Suddenly, to my horror, Marius shoved Bianca away from him towards the open front doors of the palazzo.

  "Run, darling, run. Get clear of the house."

  Savagely he fought those who would follow her, running after her, to bring them down one by one as they tried to stop her, until I saw her vanish through the open doors.

  There was no time to make certain she had reached safety. More of them had closed in on me. The flaming tapestries fell from their rods. Statues were overturned and smashed on the marble. I was nearly dragged down by two of the little demons who clutched at my left arm, until I drove my torch into the face of one, and set the other completely alight.

  "To the roof, Amadeo, come!" Marius shouted.

  "Master, the paintings, the paintings in the storage rooms!" I cried.

  "Forget the paintings. It's too late. Boys, run from here, get out now, save yourselves from the fire."

  Knocking the attackers back, he shot up the stairwell and called down to me from the uppermost railing. "Come, Amadeo, fight them off, believe in your strength, child, fight."

  Reaching the second floor, I was everywhere surrounded, and no sooner did I set one ablaze than another was on me, and not seeking to burn me they grabbed my arms and my legs. All my limbs were caught by them, until finally the torch was wrenched from my hand.

  "Master, leave me, get away!" I called. I turned, kicking and writhing, and looked up to see him high above, and again surrounded, and this time a hundred torches were plunged into his ballooning red cloak, a hundred fiery brands were beating against his golden hair and his furious white face. It was as a swarm of blazing insects, and so by such numbers and such tactics the swarm rendered him first motionless; and then, with a great loud gust, his entire body went up in flames.

  "Marius!" I screamed and screamed, unable to take my eyes off him, warring still with my captors, jerking loose my legs only to have them caught again by cold, hurting fingers, shoving with my arms, only to be pinioned once more. "Marius!" This cry came out of me with all my worst anguish and terror.

  It seemed that nothing I had ever feared could be so unspeakable, so unendurable as the sight of him, high above, at the stone banister, completely engulfed in flame. His long slender form became a black outline but for one second, and it seemed I saw his profile, head thrown back, as his hair exploded and his fingers were like black spiders clawing up out of the fire for air.

  "Marius!" I cried. All comfort, all goodness, all hope was burning in this black figure which my eyes would not let go, even as it dwindled, and lost all perceptible form.

  Marius! My will died.

  What remained was a remnant of it, and the remnant, as if commanded by a secondary soul made up of magic blood and power, fought mindlessly on.

  A net was thrown over me, a net of steel mesh so heavy and so fine that I could see nothing suddenly, only feel myself bound up in it, rolled over and over in it, by enemy hands. I was being carried out of the house. I could hear screams all around me. I could hear the running feet of those who carried me, and when the wind howled past us, I knew we had come to the shore.

  Down into the bowels of a ship I was carried, my ears still full of mortal wails. The apprentices had been taken prisoner with me. I was thrown down among them, their soft frantic bodies heaped on me and beside me, and I, tightly bound in the net, could not even speak to utter words of comfort, and had no words to give them besides.

  I felt the oars rise and fall, heard the inevitable splash in the water, and the great wooden galley shivered and moved out towards the open sea. It gained speed as if there were no night to fight its passage, and on and on plowed the oarsmen with a force and strength that
mortal men could not have commanded, driving the ship south.

  "Blasphemer," came a whisper near my ear.

  The boys sobbed and prayed.

  "Stop your impious prayers," said a cold preternatural voice, "you servants of the pagan Marius. You will die for your Master's sins, all of you."

  I heard a sinister laughter, rumbling like low thunder over the moist soft sounds of their anguish and suffering. I heard a long, dry cruel laugh.

  I closed my eyes, I went deep deep inside myself. I lay in the dirt of the Monastery of the Caves, a wraith of myself, tumbled back into safest and most terrible memories.

  "Dear God," I whispered without moving my lips, "save them, and I swear to You I shall bury myself alive among the monks forever, I shall give up all pleasures, I shall do nothing hour by hour but praise Your Holy Name. Lord, God, deliver me. Lord, God-." But as the madness of panic took over, as I lost all sense of time and place, I called out for Marius. "Marius, for the love of God, Marius!"

  Someone struck me. A leather-clad foot struck my head. Another struck my ribs, and yet another crushed my hand. All around me were these wicked feet, kicking me and bruising me. I went soft. I saw the shocks of the blows as so many colors, and I thought to myself bitterly, ah, what beautiful colors, yes, colors. Then came the increased wails of my brothers. They too must suffer this, and what mental refuge did they have, these fragile young students, each so well loved and so well taught and groomed for the great world, to find themselves now at the mercy of these demons whose purpose was unknown to me, whose purpose lay beyond anything of which I could conceive.

  "Why do this to us?" I whispered.

  "To punish you!" came a gentle whisper. "To punish you for all your vain and blasphemous deeds, for the worldly and Godless life you've lived. What is Hell to this, young one?"

  Ah, so the executioners of the mortal world said a thousand times when they led heretics to the stake. "What are the fires of Hell to this brief suffering?" Oh, such self-serving and arrogant lies.