by Anne Rice
"Do you think so?" came the whisper. "Lay a caution on your thoughts, young one, for there are those who can pick your mind barren of all its thoughts. There may be no Hell for you, child, but there will be suffering eternal. Your nights of luxury and lasciviousness are over.
The truth awaits you now."
Once again, I retreated into my deepest mental hiding place. I had no body anymore. I lay in the Monastery, in the earth, unfeeling of my body. I put my mind at work on the tone of the voices near me, such sweet and pitiable voices. I picked out the boys by name and slowly made a count of them. Over half our little company, our splendid cherubic company, was in this abominable prison.
I did not hear Riccardo. But then, when our captors had finished their abuse for a while, I did hear Riccardo.
He intoned a litany in Latin, in a raw and desperate whisper.
"Blessed be God." The others were quick to answer. "Blessed be His Holy Name." And so on it went, the prayers, the voice gradually becoming weak in the silence until Riccardo alone prayed.
I did not give the responses.
Yet on he went, now that his charges mercifully slept, praying to comfort himself, or perhaps merely for the glory of God. He moved from the litany into the Pater Noster, and from then into the comforting age- old words of the Ave which he said over and over, as if making a rosary, all alone, as he lay imprisoned in the bottom of the ship.
I spoke no words to him. I did not even let him know that I was there. I couldn't save him. I couldn't comfort him. I couldn't even explain this terrible fate which had befallen us. I couldn't above all reveal what I had seen: the Master perishing, the great one gone into the simple and eternal agony of fire.
I had slipped into a shock near to despair. I let my mind recover the sight of Marius burning, Marius a living torch, turning and twisting in the fire, his fine fingers reaching heavenward like spiders in the orange flame. Marius was dead; Marius was burned. There had been too many of them for Marius. I knew what he would have said if he had come to me a comforting specter. "There were simply too many of them, Amadeo, too many. I couldn't stop them, though I tried."
I slipped into tormented dreams. The ship bore on through the night, carrying me away from Venice, away from the ruin of all that I believed in, all that I held dear.
I awoke to the sounds of singing and to the smell of the earth, but it was not Russian earth.
We were no longer at sea. We were imprisoned on land.
Still bound in the net, I listened to hollow preternatural voices chanting with a villainous gusto the awful hymn, Dies Irae, or Day of Wrath.
A low drum carried on the zesty rhythm as if it were a song for dancing rather than a terrible lament of the Final Days. On and on went the Latin words speaking of the day when all the world would be turned to ashes, when the great trumpets of the Lord would blast to signal the opening of all graves. Death itself and nature would both shudder. All souls would be brought together, no soul able anymore to hide anything from the Lord. Out of His book, every sin would be read aloud. Vengeance would fall upon everyone. Who was there to defend us, but the Judge Himself, Our Majestic Lord? Our only hope was the pity of Our God, the God who had suffered the Cross for us, who would not let His sacrifice be in vain.
Yes, beautiful old words, but they issued from an evil mouth, the mouth of one who did not even know their meaning, who tapped at his eager drum as if ready for a feast.
A night had passed. We were entombed and now being released from our prison, as the dreaded little voice sang on to its spirited little drum.
I heard the whispers of the older boys, seeking to give the young ones comfort, and the steady voice of Riccardo assuring all of them that surely they would soon discover what these creatures wanted, and perhaps be allowed to go free.
Only I heard the rustling, impish laughter everywhere. Only I knew how many preternatural monsters lurked about us, as we were brought into a light of a monstrous fire.
The net was torn from me. I rolled over, clutching at the grass. I looked up and saw that we were in a great clearing beneath high and indifferent bright stars. It was the summery air, and great towering green trees surrounded us. But the blast of the raging bonfire distorted everything. The boys, chained together, their clothes torn, their faces scratched and streaked with blood, cried out frantically when they saw me, yet I was snatched away from them and held, a bevy of little hooded demons fastened to both my hands.
"I can't help you!" I cried. It was selfish and terrible. It came from my pride. It made only panic among them.
I saw Riccardo, as badly beaten as the rest, turn from right to left, trying to quiet them, his hands bound before him, his doublet almost torn off his back.
He turned his glance to me, and then together we looked around us at the great wreath of dark-dressed figures that enclosed us. Could he see the whiteness of their faces and hands? Did he, on an instinctive level, know what they were?
"Be quick if you mean to kill us!" he called out. "We've done nothing. We don't know who you are or why you've taken us. We are innocent, to a one."
I was touched by his bravery, and I pulled my thoughts together. I must stop shrinking in horror from my last memory of the Master, but imagine him living, and think what he would tell me to do.
We were outnumbered, that was obvious, and I could now detect smiles on the faces of the hooded figures, who though they draped their eyes in shadow, revealed their long twisted mouths.
"Where is the leader here?" I demanded, raising my voice above the level of human power. "Surely you see these boys are nothing but mortals! Your argument must be with me!"
The long string of surrounding black-robed figures caved in to whispering and murmuring amongst themselves at this. Those clustered about the band of enchained boys tightened their ranks. And as others whom I could scarce see threw more and more wood and pitch onto the great fire, it seemed the enemy prepared for action.
Two couples placed themselves before the apprentices who seemed not in their wailing and crying to realize what this meant.
I realized it at once.
"No, you must speak with me, reason with me!" I shouted, straining against those who held me. To my horror, they only laughed.
Suddenly drums began again, some one-hundredfold louder than before, as if an entire circle of drummers surrounded us and the hissing, spitting fire.
They took up that steady beat of the Dies Irae hymn, and suddenly the wreath of figures all to a one straightened and locked hands. They began to sing the words in Latin of the terrible day of woe. Each figure began to rock playfully, lifting knees in playful march as a hundred voices spit out the words to the obvious rhythm of a dance. It made an ugly mockery of the piteous words.
The drums were joined by the shrill squeal of pipes, and the repeated slam of tambourines, and suddenly the entire wreath of dancers, still hand in hand, was moving, bodies swaying side to side from the waist up, heads bobbing, mouths grinning. "Dee-eees- - -a- - -ray, dee-ees- -eee- - -raw!" they sang.
I panicked. But I couldn't shake loose of my captors. I screamed.
The first pair of robed beings before the boys had broken out the first of them who was to suffer and tossed his struggling body high in the air. The second pair of figures caught it, and, with great preternatural thrusts, hurled the helpless child in an arc into the great fire.
With piteous shrieks, the boy fell into the flames and vanished, and the other apprentices, now certain of their fate, went wild with crying and sobbing and screaming, but to no avail.
One after another, boys were disentangled from the others and hurled into the flames.
I thrashed back and forth, kicking at the ground and at my opponents. Once I broke one arm loose only to have it imprisoned by three other figures with hard pinching fingers. I sobbed:
"Don't do this, they're innocent. Don't kill them. Don't."
No matter how loud I cried out I could hear the dying cries of the boys who burned, Amadeo
, save us, whether there were words to the final terror or no. Finally all the living took up this chant. "Amadeo, save us!" but their band was not halved and soon only a fourth remained, squirming and struggling, as they were finally heaved up to the unspeakable death.
The drums played on, with the mocking chink, chink, chink of the tambourines and the whining melody of the horns. The voices made a fearful chorus, each syllable sharpened with venom as the hymn was sung out.
"So much for your cohorts!" hissed the figure nearest me. "So you sob for them, do you? When you should have made a meal of them each and every one for the love of God!"
"The love of God!" I cried. "How dare you speak of the love of God! You slaughter children!" I managed to turn and kick at him, wounding him far worse than he expected, but as ever, three more guards took his place.
Finally in the lurid blast of the fire, only three white-faced children were left, the very youngest of our household, and none of them made a sound. It was eerie their silence, their little faces wet and quivering, as they were given up, their eyes dull and unbelieving, into the flames.
I called their names. At the top of my lungs, I called out: "In Heaven, my brothers, in Heaven, you go into the arms of God!"
But how could their mortal ears hear over the deafening song of the chanters.
Suddenly, I realized Riccardo had not been among them. Riccardo had either escaped or been spared, or been saved for something worse. I knotted my brows in a tight frown to help me lock these thoughts in my mind, lest these preternatural beasts remember Riccardo.
But I was yanked from my thoughts and dragged towards the pyre.
"Now you, brave one, little Ganymede of the blasphemers, you, you willful, brazen cherub."
"No!" I dug in my heels. It was unthinkable. I couldn't die like this; I couldn't go into the flames. Frantically I reasoned with myself, "But you have just seen your brothers die, why not you?" and yet I couldn't accept this as possible, no, not me, I was immortal, no!
"Yes, you, and fire will make a roast of you as it has of them. Do you smell their flesh roasting? Do you smell their burnt bones?"
I was thrown high in the air, high enough by their powerful hands to feel the very breeze catch hold of my hair, and then to peer down into the fire, as its annihilating blast struck my face, my chest, my outstretched arms.
Down, down, down into the heat I went, sprawled out, in the thunder of crackling wood and dancing orange flames. So I die! I thought if I thought anything, but I think that all I knew was panic, and surrender, surrender to what would be unspeakable pain.
Hands clutched me, burning wood tumbled and roared beneath me. I was being dragged off the fire. I was being dragged across the ground. Feet stomped on my burning clothes. My burning tunic was ripped off me. I gasped for air. I felt pain all over my body, the dread pain of burnt flesh, and I deliberately rolled my eyes up into my head to seek oblivion. Come, Master, come if there is a paradise for us, come to me.
I pictured him, burnt, a black skeleton, but he put out his arms to receive me.
A figure stood over me. I lay on the moist Mother Earth, thank God, the smoke still rising from my scorched hands and face and my hair. The figure was big-shouldered, tall, black-haired.
He lifted two strong thick-knuckled white hands and drew his hood back off his head, revealing a huge mass of shining black hair. His eyes were large with pearly whites and pupils of jet, and his eyebrows, though very thick, were beautifully arched and curved over his eyes. He was a vampire, as were the others, but he was one of unique beauty and immense presence, looking down at me as though he were more interested in me than himself, though he expected to be the center of all eyes.
A tiny shiver of thanks passed through me, that he seemed by virtue of these eyes and his smooth Cupid's bow mouth to be possessed of the semblance of human reason.
"Will you serve God?" he asked. His voice was cultured and gentle, and his eyes held no mockery. "Answer me, Will you serve God, for if you will not, you will be thrown back into the fire."
I felt pain in all my frame. No thought came to me except that the words he spoke were impossible, they made no sense, and I could therefore make no response.
At once, his vicious helpers lifted me again, laughing, and chanting in time with the loud singing of the hymn which had never ceased, "Into the fire, into the fire!"
"No!" the leader cried out. "I see in him the pure love of our Savior." He lifted his hand. The others released their grip, though they held me suspended, my legs and arms spread out, in the air.
"You are good?" I whispered desperately to the figure. "How can this be?" I wept.
He drew nearer. He leant over me. What beauty he possessed! His thick mouth was the perfect Cupid's bow, as I have said, but only now did I see its rich dark color, natural to it, and the even shadow of beard, shaven away for the last time in mortal life no doubt, that covered all his lower face, giving it the strong mask of a man. His high broad forehead seemed made of pure white bone only by comparison, with full rounded temples and a peaked hairline, from which his dark curls fell back gracefully to make a striking frame for his face.
But it was the eyes, yes, as always with me, the eyes that held me, the large oval and shimmering eyes.
"Child," he whispered. "Would I suffer such horrors if it were not for God?"
I wept all the more.
I was no longer afraid. I didn't care that I was in pain. The pain was red and golden as the flames had been and ran through me as if it were fluid, but though I felt it, it didn't hurt me, and I didn't care.
Without protest, I was carried, my eyes closed, into a passage, where the shuffling feet of those who carried me made a soft, crumbling echo against low ceiling and walls.
Let loose to roll over on the ground, I turned my face to it, sad that I lay on a nest of old rags because I couldn't feel the moist Mother Earth when I needed her, and then this too was of no import whatsoever, and I laid my cheek on the soiled linen and drifted, as if I had put there to sleep.
My scalded skin was a part from me, and not a part of me. And I let a long sigh come out of me, knowing, though I didn't form words in my mind, that all my poor boys were safely dead. The fire could not have tortured them for long, no. Its heat was too great, and surely their souls had fled Heavenward like nightingales that had drifted into the smoky blast.
My boys were of the Earth no more and no one could do them harm. All the fine things which Marius had done for them, the teachers, the skills they'd been taught, the lessons they'd learned, their dancing, their laughter, their singing, the works they had painted-all of this was gone, and the souls went Heavenward on soft white wings.
Would I have followed? Would God have received the soul of a blood drinker into his golden cloudy Heaven? Would I have left the awful sound of these demons chanting Latin for the realm of angels' song?
Why did those near me allow these thoughts in me, for surely they read them from my mind. I could feel the presence of the leader, the blackeyed one, the powerful one. Perhaps I was here with him alone. If he could make sense of this, if he could lend it meaning and thereby contain its monstrousness, then he would be some saint of God. I saw soiled and starving monks in caves.
I rolled over on my back, luxuriating in the splashy red and yellow pain that bathed me, and I opened my eyes.
15
A MELLOW and comforting voice spoke to me, directly to me: "Your Master's vain works are all burnt; nothing but ashes remain now of his paintings. God forgive him, that he used his sublime powers not in the service of God but in the service of the World, the Flesh and the Devil, yes, I say the Devil, though the Devil is our standard bearer, for the Evil One is proud of us and satisfied with our pain; but Marius served the Devil with no regard to the wishes of God, and the mercies granted us by God, that rather than burn in the flames of Hell, we rule in the shadows of the Earth."
"Ah," I whispered. "I see your twisted philosophy."
There came
no admonition.
Gradually, though I had rather hear only the voice, my eyes began to focus. There were human skulls, bleached and covered with dust, pressed in the domed earth over my head. Skulls pressed into the earth with mortar so that they formed the entire ceiling, like clean white shells from the sea. Shells for the brain, I thought, for what is left of them, as they protrude from the mortared soil behind them, but the dome that covers the brain and the round black holes where once the jellied eyes were poised, acute as dancers, ever vigilant to report the splendors of the world to the carapaced mind.
All skulls, a dome of skulls, and where the dome came down, to meet the walls, a lacing of thigh bones all around it, and below that the random bones of the mortal form, making no pattern, any more than random stones do when they are similarly pressed in mortar to make a wall.
All bones, this place, and lighted with candles. Yes, I smelled the candles, purest beeswax, as for the rich.
"No," said the voice, thoughtfully, "rather for the church, for this is God's church, though the Devil is our Superior General, the founding saint of our Order, so why not beeswax? Leave it to you, a vain and a worldly Venetian, to think it luxury, to confuse it with the wealth in which you wallowed rather like the pig in his slops."
I laughed softly. "Give me more of your generous and idiotic logic,"
I said. "Be the Aquinas of the Devil. Speak on."
"Don't mock me," he said imploringly and sincerely. "I saved you from the fire."
"I would be dead now if you had not."
"You want to burn?"
"No, not to suffer so, no, I can't bear the thought of it, that I or anyone should suffer so. But to die, yes."
"And what do you think will be your destination if you do die? Are the fires of Hell not fifty times as hot as the fires we lighted for you and your friends? You are Hell's child; you were from the first moment that the blasphemer Marius infused you with our blood. No one can reverse this judgment. You are kept alive by blood that is cursed and unnatural and pleasing to Satan, and pleasing to God only because He must have Satan to show forth His goodness, and to give mankind a choice to be good or bad."