by Anne Rice
I saw the garden. I saw the garden I had painted after I had fallen in love with Botticelli, and it was filled with his orange trees and with his flowers and yet it was my garden, the garden of my father's house outside Rome long long ago. How could I ever forget my own garden? How could I ever forget the garden where I had first played as a child?
In memory I went back to those days in Rome when I had been mortal, and there was my garden, the garden of the villa of my father, and I was walking in the soft grass and listening to the sound of the fountain, and then it seemed that all through time, the garden changed but never changed, and it was always there for me.
I lay down on the grass, and the branches of the trees moved above me. I heard a voice speaking to me, rapidly and sweetly, but I didn't know what it was saying, and then I knew that Amadeo was hurt, that he was in the hands of those who would bring pain and evil to him, and that I could not go to him now, I would only stumble into their snares if I did, and that I must stay here.
I was the Keeper of the King and the Queen as I had told Bianca, yes, the Keeper of the King and the Queen, and I must let Amadeo go in Time, and perhaps were I to do as I should, perhaps Pandora would be returned to me, Pandora who traveled the northern cities of Europe now, Pandora who had been seen.
The garden was verdant and fragrant and I saw Pandora clearly. I saw her in her soft white dress, her hair loose as I had described it to Bianca. Pandora smiled. She walked towards me. She spoke to me. The Queen wants us to be together, she said. Her eyes were large and wondering and I knew she was very close to me, very close, so close that I could almost touch her hand.
I can't be imagining this, no, I cannot, I thought. And there came back to me again vividly the sound of Pandora's voice, as she quarreled with me on our first night as bride and groom: Even as this new blood races through me still, eats at me and transforms me, I cling to neither reason nor superstition for my safety. I can walk through a myth and out of it! You fear me, because you don't know what I am. I look like a woman, I sound like a man, and your reason tells you the sum total is impossible.
I was looking into Pandora's eyes. She sat on the garden bench, pulling the flower petals out of her brown hair, a girl again in the Blood, a woman-girl forever, as Bianca would be a young woman forever.
I reached out on either side of me and felt the grass beneath my hands.
Suddenly I fell backwards, out of the dream garden, out of the illusion and found myself lying quite still on the floor of the chapel, between the high bank of perfect candles, and the steps of the dais where the enthroned couple kept their ancient place.
Nothing seemed changed about me. Even Bianca's crying came as before.
"Be quiet now, darling," I said to her. But my eyes were fastened to the face of Akasha above me, and to her breasts beneath the golden silk of her Egyptian dress.
It seemed that Pandora had been with me, that she had been in the very chapel. And the beauty of Pandora seemed bound up with the beauty and presence of Akasha in some intimate way which I could not understand.
"What are these portents?" I whispered. I sat up and then rose to my knees. "Tell me, my beloved Queen. What are these portents? Did you once bring Pandora to me because you wanted us to be together? Do you remember when Pandora spoke those words to me? "
I fell silent. But my mind spoke to Akasha. My mind pleaded with her. Where is Pandora? Will you bring Pandora to me again?
A long interval passed and then I rose to my feet.
I went round the bank of candles and found my precious companion quite distraught over the simple wonder she had beheld of me drinking from the immobile Queen.
"And then you fell back, as though you were lifeless," she recounted. "And I didn't dare to go to you, as you'd said that I mustn't move."
I comforted her.
"And then finally you waked, and you spoke of Pandora, and I saw that you were so ... so much healed."
This was true. I was more robust all over, my arms and legs thicker, heavier, and my face had more of its natural contour. Indeed, I was still badly burnt, but a man of some stature and seeming strength now, and indeed I could feel more of the old strength in my limbs.
But it was now only two hours from dawn, and being quite unable to open the door, and not in any mood to pray that Akasha work common miracles for anyone, I knew I had to give my blood to Bianca, and so this is what I did.
Would it offend the Queen, that I, having just drunk from her would offer this powerful blood to a child? There was nothing to do but find out.
I didn't frighten Bianca with any warnings or doubts on the matter. I beckoned to her that she should come to me and lie in my arms.
I cut my wrist for her and told her to drink. I heard her gasp with the shock of the powerful blood and her delicate fingers stiffened to make her two hands into claws.
At last of her own volition she drew back and sat up slowly beside me, her eyes vague and full of reflected light.
I kissed her forehead.
"What did you see in the Blood, my beauty?" I asked.
She shook her head as though she had no words for it, and then she laid her head on my chest.
There was only serenity and peace in the chapel, and as we lay down to sleep together, the lamps slowly burnt out.
At last the candles were down to a few, and I could feel the dawn coming, and the chapel was warm as I had promised, and glittering with its riches, but above all with its solemn King and Queen.
Bianca had lost consciousness. I had perhaps three quarters of an hour before the day's slumber would come for me as well.
I looked up at Akasha, delighting in the last shimmer of the dying candles in her eyes.
"You know what a liar I am, don't you?" I asked her. "You know how wicked I have been. And you play my game with me, don't you, my Sovereign?"
Did I hear laughter?
Maybe I was going mad. There had been enough pain for it and enough magic; there had been enough hunger, and enough blood.
I looked down at Bianca who rested so trustingly on my arm.
"I have planted in her mind the image of Pandora, haven't I?" I whispered, "so that wherever she goes with me she will search. And from her angel mind, Pandora cannot fail to pluck my image. And so we may find each other, Pandora and I, through her. She doesn't dream of what I've done. She thinks only to comfort me with her listening, and I, though loving her, take her North with me, into the lands where Raymond Gallant has told me that Pandora was last seen.
"Oh, very wicked, but what does it take to sustain life when life is bruised and burnt as badly as my life has been? For me it is this extravagant and slender ambition, and for it I abandon Amadeo whom I should rescue as soon as my strength is restored."
There was a sound in the chapel. What was it? The sound of the wax of the last candle?
It seemed a voice was speaking to me soundlessly.
You cannot rescue Amadeo. You are the keeper of the Mother and the Father.
"Yes, I grow sleepy," I whispered. I closed my eyes. "I know such things, I have always known them."
You go on, you seek Raymond Gallant, you must remember. Look at his face again.
"Yes, the Talamasca," I said. "And the castle called Lorwich in East Anglia. The place he called the Motherhouse. Yes. I remember both sides of the golden coin."
I thought dreamily of that supper when he had come upon me so stealthily and stared at me with such innocent and inquisitive eyes.
I thought of the music and the way Amadeo smiled at Bianca as they danced together. I thought of everything.
And then in my hand I saw the golden coin and the engraved image of the castle, and I thought, Am I not dreaming? But it seemed that Raymond Gallant was talking to me, talking very distinctly: "Listen to me, Marius, remember me, Marius. We know of her, Marius. We watch and we are always here."
"Yes, go North," I whispered.
And it seemed that the Queen of Silence said without a word that she was content.
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AS I LOOK BACK NOW,! have no doubt that Akasha turned me away from the rescue of Amadeo, and as I consider all that I have revealed here I have no doubt of her intervention in my life at other periods.
Had I attempted to go South to Rome, I would have fallen into Santino's hands and met with destruction. And what better lure was there than the promise that I might soon meet with Pandora?
Of course my encounter with Raymond Gallant was quite real, and the details of this were vivid within my mind, and Akasha no doubt subtracted these details by virtue of her immense power.
The description of Pandora which I had confided to Bianca was also quite real, and this too might have been known to the Queen had she opened her ears to listen to my distant prayers from Venice.
Whatever the case, from the night we arrived at the shrine I was set upon a course of recovery and of a search for Pandora.
If anyone had told me that both would take some two hundred years, I might have met with despair, but I did not know this. I knew only that I was safe within the shrine, and I had Akasha to protect me, and Bianca to content me.
For well over a year I drank from the fount of the Mother. And for six months of this time, I fed my powerful blood to Bianca.
During those nights, when I could not open the stone door, I saw myself grow more robust in appearance with each divine feast, and I spent the long hours talking in respectful whispers with Bianca.
We took to conserving the oil for the lamps, and the fine candles which I had stored behind the Divine Parents, for we had no inkling of how long it would be before I could open the door and take us to hunting in the distant Alpine towns or cities.
At last there came a night when it occurred to me most strongly to venture out, and I was clever enough to know that this thought had not come to me at random. It had been suggested to me by a series of images. I could open the door now. I could go out. And I could take Bianca with me.
As for my appearance to the mortal world, my skin was coal black, and heavily scarred in places as though from the stroking of a hot poker. But the face I saw in Bianca's mirror was fully formed, with the serene expression that has always been so familiar to me. And my body was strong once more, and my hands of which I am so vain were a scholar's hands with long deft fingers.
For another year, I could not dare to send to Raymond Gallant a letter.
Carrying Bianca with me to far-flung towns, I searched hastily and clumsily for the Evil Doer. As such creatures often run in packs, we would enjoy a gluttonous feast; and then I would take such clothes and gold as needed from the dead; and off we would go to the shrine well before daylight.
I think when I look back on it that ten years at least went by in this fashion. But time is so strange with us, how can I be certain?
What I remember was that a powerful bond existed between me and Bianca that seemed absolutely unshakable. As the years passed, she was as much my companion in silence as she had ever been in conversation.
We moved as one, without argument or consultation.
She was a proud and merciless hunter, dedicated to the majesty of Those Who Must Be Kept, and always drank from more than one human victim whenever possible. Indeed, there seemed no limit to the blood she could imbibe. She wanted strength, both from me and the Evil Doer whom she took with righteous coldness.
Riding the winds in my arms, she turned her eyes to the stars fearlessly. And often she spoke to me softly and easily of her mortal life in Florence, telling me the stories of her youth, and of how she had loved her brothers who had so admired Lorenzo the Magnificent. Yes, she had seen my beloved Botticelli many a time and told me in detail of paintings which I had not seen. She sang songs to me now and then which she composed herself. She spoke in sadness of the death of her brothers and how she had fallen into the power of her evil kinsmen.
I loved listening to her as much as I loved talking to her. Indeed, it was so fluid between us that I still wonder at it.
And though on many a morn, she combed out her lovely hair and replaited it with her ropes of tiny pearls, she never complained of our lot, and wore the cast-off tunics and cloaks of the men we slew as I did.
Now and then, slipping discreetly behind the King and Queen, she took from her precious bundle a gorgeous gown of silk and clothed herself with care in it, this to sleep in my arms, after I had covered her with warm compliments and kisses.
Never had I known such peace with Pandora. Never had I known such warm simplicity.
Yet it was Pandora who filled my mind—Pandora traveling the cities of the North, Pandora with her Asian companion.
At last there came an evening when, after a furious hunt, in exhaustion and satiation, Bianca asked to be returned early to the shrine, and I found myself in possession of a priceless three hours before dawn.
I also found myself in possession of a new measure of strength which I had perhaps unwittingly concealed from her.
To a distant Alpine monastery I went, one which had suffered much due to the recent rise of what scholars call the Protestant Reformation. Here I knew I would find frightened monks who would take my gold and assist me in sending a letter to England.
Entering the empty chapel first, I gathered up every good beeswax candle in the place, these to replenish those of the shrine, and I put all of the candles into a sack which I had brought with me.
I then went to the scriptorium where I found an old monk who was writing very fast by his single candle.
He looked up as soon as he found me standing in his presence.
"Yes," I said at once, speaking his German dialect. "I am a strange man come to you in a strange way, but believe me when I say that I am not evil."
He was gray-haired, tonsured, and wore brown robes, and he was a bit cold in the empty scriptorium. He was utterly fearless as he gazed at me.
But I told myself that I had never looked more human. My skin was as black as that of a Moor and I wore the rather drab gray garments which I had taken from some doomed miscreant.
Now as he continued to stare, quite obviously not in any mood to sound a general alarm, I did my old trick of placing before him a purse of gold coins for the good of the monastery which needed it badly.
"I must write a letter," I said, "and see that it reaches a place in England."
"A Catholic place?" he asked as he looked at me, his gray eyebrows thick and arched as he raised them.
"I should think so," I said with a shrug. Of course I couldn't describe to him the secular nature of the Talamasca.
"Then think again," he said. "For England is no longer Catholic."
"What on earth do you mean?" I asked. "Surely the Reformation has not reached such a place as England."
He laughed. "No, not the Reformation precisely," he said. "Rather the vanity of a King who would divorce his Spanish Catholic wife, and who has denied the power of the Pope to rule against him."
I was so dejected that I sat down on a nearby bench though I'd been given no invitation to do it.
"What are you?" asked the old monk. He laid down his quill pen. He stared at me in the most thoughtful manner.
"It's no matter," I said wearily. "Do you think there's no chance that a letter from here could reach a castle called Lorwich in East Anglia? "
"I don't know," said the monk. "It might well happen. For there are some who oppose King Henry VIII and others who do not. But in general he has destroyed the monasteries of England. And so any letter you write from me cannot go to one of them, only directly to the castle. And how is that to happen? We have to think on it. I can always attempt it."
"Yes, please, let us attempt it."
"But first, tell me what you are," he asked again. "I won't write the letter for you unless you do so. Also I want to know why you stole all the good candles in the chapel and left the bad ones."
"You know I did this?" I asked. I was becoming extremely agitated. I thought I had been silent as a mouse.
"I'm not an ordinary m
an," he said. "I hear things and see things that people don't. I know you're not human. What are you?"
"I can't tell you," I said. "Tell me what you think I am. Tell me if you can find any true evil in my heart. Tell me what you see in me."
He gazed at me for a long time. His eyes were deeply gray, and as I looked at his elderly face I could easily reconstruct the young man he had been, rather resolute, though his personal strength of character was far greater now even though he suffered human infirmity.
At last he turned away and looked at his candle as though he had completed his examination of me.
"I am a reader of strange books," he said in a hushed but clear voice. "I have studied some of those texts which have come out of Italy pertaining to magic and astrology and things which are often called forbidden."
My pulse quickened. This seemed extraordinary good fortune. I did not interrupt.
"I have a belief that there are angels cast out of Heaven," he said, "and that they do not know what they are any longer. They wander in a state of confusion. You seem one of those creatures, though if I am right, you will not be able to confirm it."
I was so struck by the curiosity of this concept that I could say nothing. At last I had to answer.
"No, I'm not such. I know it for certain. But I wish that I were. Let me confide in you one terrible secret."
"Very well," he said. "You may go to Confession to me if you like, for I am an ordained priest, not simply a monk, but I doubt I shall be able to give you Absolution."
"This is my secret. I have existed since the time when Christ walked the Earth though I never knew of him."
He considered this calmly for a long time, looking into my eyes and then away to his candle, as if this were a little ritual with him. Then he spoke:
"I don't really believe you," he said. "But you are a mystifying being, with your black skin and blue eyes, with your blond hair, and with your gold which you so generously put before me. I'll take it, of course. We need it."
I smiled. I loved him. Of course I wouldn't tell him such a thing. What would it mean to him?
"All right," he said, "I'll write your letter for you."