by Anne Rice
It was Sevraine who broke the silence. Sevraine was a dazzling blood drinker; her face had the perfection of a statue, and her hair, like Pandora’s hair, often resembled a veil. As she spoke now, she stared before her, her voice low and steady.
“I know Rhoshamandes,” she said. “I’ve always known him. I knew him when he was a mortal man. I know him now. If he were a younger blood drinker, say, with only five hundred years in the Blood or even a millennium, this would be a different matter. He abhors conflict, and is, in a very real sense, a coward.
“But you’ve provoked him, Prince, and what maddens him even more is that Benedict, his lover, is drawn to you.” She looked at me. “Benedict is in the ballroom now waiting for the music to begin. Benedict was here last night also. And as Rhoshamandes loses his hold on Benedict, he grows ever more irritated and restless and angry. And his powers are too great for his mind, especially now that he has tested them and knows just what destructive forces he can command.”
I nodded.
“He is a thoughtless, shallow being,” Sevraine added. “Were he to retreat, to seek some part of the world where he might live in peace and never hear of you or the Court, it would be different. But he hovers, clawing at his own wounds.”
“All right,” I said. “I understand what you’re saying, all of you. But I can’t simply reverse my decision. I am going to go to Louisiana now, to bring to Court an old fledgling of Pandora, and when I return, I will make the decision, I promise you.”
I stopped. I was painfully aware that Benedict could no doubt hear every word uttered in this room, that Rhoshamandes could hear if he had a mind to want to hear.
“For now,” I said, as if addressing Rhoshamandes himself, “the being is safe. He has not broken the peace. And he still enjoys our protection.”
I rose to my feet and gestured for Thorne and Cyril to follow me.
As I reached for the handle of the door, I reflected on how very simple it would be for them to do what they wanted without my assent, and why they insisted that I give the order. But that is how it was and they weren’t going to take the burden of this decision from me.
On my way to the north tower, I passed through the ballroom. I saw Benedict and I embraced him. He was shaken, miserable, obviously, but he embraced me in return.
“How goes it with Rhoshamandes?” I asked.
“He’s getting used to things, Lestat. Truly he is,” Benedict said in a pleading voice. “I’ve urged him to come to Court, to see all of this for himself. He will in time, I know he will.” He kissed me. It was sudden, a full kiss on the lips. I saw fear in his eyes. I saw pain. His face was boyish, as was Amel’s, and he had the same tousled hair, only of a different color, and a voice that was youthful.
“I want for all of us to prosper,” I said.
I had reached the battlements before I thought of Pandora. I had not even asked her whether she wanted Fontayne to come to Court. But I had seen her face in my last minutes at the council table, and it seemed to me there was an agreeable smile on her lips. Surely she knew where I’d been and where I was going now.
Suddenly as I stepped out into the cold wind, I heard her right behind me.
“Yes, bring him to me, Lestat,” she said. The wind was filled with the green scent of the forest. Snow was coming, and I welcomed the beauty of it. Her garments were whipped and pulled by the wind.
“I took an immediate liking to him, Pandora,” I said.
“That’s your gift,” she said. “You love everyone.”
“Love,” the overused word; “love,” the most popular word of the twenty-first century. We must love one another or die.
I wanted to talk further, to tell her of all my recent reflections, that we had to love one another, respect one another, stop using our own loathsome nature as blood drinkers to justify the cruel treatment of one another, that I was in love with the world just now, and, yes, as Marius had told me, not allowing for our true nature perhaps, having to ignore it. And I wondered what Cyril and Thorne thought of all this, traveling with me every night, being at my side, rarely speaking except in the most practical way.
But I merely kissed her, and was thankful with all my soul that she wasn’t suffering over the loss of Arjun.
Off we went, Thorne, Cyril, and I—traveling west into the night as the sun set over the distant coast of North America.
Chapter 7
I t was early evening as we approached Fontayne’s magnificent house in the bayou country. I wanted to enter the estate in the proper way and paused outside the gates to ring the bell, which I heard echoing within the house. Once again, I admired the high iron fencing. And the entire look of the great Greek Revival house with its high columns and flowering vines enchanted me. At the same time, I sensed something. I heard something.
“Someone with him,” whispered Thorne. “Let us go ahead of you.”
“No, we’re not leaving him,” said Cyril.
I felt his powerful arm slip around my back and his right hand come down on my shoulder. No one knew how old Cyril was, not even Cyril, and to the simplest questions on the matter he gave absurd or foolish answers. Illiterate, and cynical by nature, he kept no history of himself in his heart and had none to share with anyone else. But I had no doubt of his power.
I sent out the message to Fontayne that we had come and were approaching the door. But nothing came back to me.
Nevertheless I moved down the wide path between the rows of oaks, climbed the marble steps, crossed the porch, and lifted the brass knocker. Three times I knocked and Fontayne opened the door.
He stepped back for me to enter, but his face was cold and hard, and with his eyes, he sought to give me a signal. He flashed his gaze to the right, once and then again. Someone was here. Someone was behind him.
As I walked into the room, I saw no one.
“So glad you’ve come as you promised,” said Fontayne, and those eyes of his gave me the signal again, though his mind was obviously desperately locked. “I’ve had a visitor,” he said.
“Rhoshamandes?” I asked.
A violent roar filled the air, like the roar of a beast, and Fontayne was thrown suddenly right up against me. I felt an appalling heat press me against the closed door, and smelled the flames before they engulfed me. I was blinded by the fire, then felt myself rising in the air.
“Go, go for the sake of your life,” Fontayne cried. The fire was everywhere. The walls were opening as if torn by a hurricane.
Thorne had both of us in his arms as we broke through the ceiling above and then the outside wall, splintering and crashing through burning wood, and suddenly we were high above the burning house, and then the house was gone, and the clouds were swallowing us as we sped east at a velocity I had never dared to travel.
I clung to Fontayne, and Thorne carried me. I pushed Fontayne’s face against my chest, and covered his right hand with mine, and the wind was so fierce it seemed to be ripping my hair from me.
It was now impossible to think or speak or send even the sharpest telepathic message. But I knew we were headed back across the Atlantic, and I prayed that Cyril was safe right beside us.
I lost consciousness before we reached the Château. It was the speed, the cold, the violence of it, and the exhaustion from having just made the journey in the other direction. And I woke, numb and disoriented, in a large room at the top of the northeast tower.
It was one of those rooms seldom sought or used by anyone. I found myself sitting on the floor, in the soft pile of a thick Oriental rug, and I saw the fire lighted and the candles of the sconces lighted as if by sorcery and the windows shut up against the night.
Fontayne lay on his back, apparently lifeless. His clothes were burnt black and I could see a dreadful burn on the side of his face.
As for me, I too had been burnt, and the heavy fragments of my damaged coat fell off me o
nto the carpet. I ran my fingers through my hair. I felt no burns on my skin.
Thorne was towering over me.
“Where is Cyril?” I said.
“Never mind,” said Thorne. “Cyril can take care of himself and he’ll get that bastard. Shall I give this one blood?”
I nodded. He sat down, and cradled Fontayne in his arms, making a bizarre Pietà as he bit into his wrist and pressed the wound to Fontayne’s lips. Fontayne looked so fragile.
Pandora was in the room, and Marius with her, and Bianca, and Gregory.
Gregory helped me to my feet. My assistant Barbara was there, and she had a fresh coat for me and helped me into it.
Pandora fell to her knees and gestured for Thorne to give Fontayne over to her. She rose to her feet holding him in her arms. She opened a wound in her neck and put his mouth against it.
She turned away from us and walked off into the shadows carrying her man-child with her, and retired into a darkened corner.
Barbara was brushing my hair, and Gregory was looking me over for burns.
“Who was it?” Gregory demanded.
“It was not Rhoshamandes,” said Thorne. “It was another, another named Baudwin.”
“Baudwin!” repeated Gregory in a shocked whisper. He was in his usual business attire, and gave off the scent of an expensive man’s cologne, his face immediately troubled at this news. “I thought Baudwin was long gone,” he said.
“So did I,” said Thorne. “But not so, and Fontayne warned us of him when we first came to him.”
I was pretty much restored to myself, and I sat down now beside the hearth in a modern armchair, which was thankfully soft and made of yielding leather. Still half frozen from the journey, I extended my hands to the fire.
“Baudwin,” I said, “and he sought to destroy both of us, me and Fontayne.”
“Cyril sent the fire right back at him,” said Thorne.
Others came into the room—Marius and Seth.
“It’s all over now,” I said, looking up. “No need for alarm, but we lost a magnificent house to this utterly ridiculous assault.” It struck me as ironic that none of us possessed the telepathic power to stop a blaze that we or others had started. And we had no telepathic gift to heal our own wounds, did we?
Pandora brought Fontayne to the fire, and seated him opposite me. His hair was loose and disheveled, and in his thin white shirt and dungarees he was shivering. Pandora knelt beside him and removed his black boots and tossed them to the side. She rubbed his sock feet with both her hands soothingly.
I was for letting him alone, for letting him warm up, for letting Pandora do her work, but the questions began immediately. Gregory with his arm on the back of the chair wanted to know what had happened.
Seth wanted Thorne to take him back to the place where the assault had occurred.
“Give Cyril time,” said Thorne. “Cyril can handle that fiend. Cyril will be here soon.”
Everyone was then talking at once, including Fontayne, and then all fell silent to listen to Fontayne and he told the story.
“He arrived last night. He told me that he would destroy me if I did not cooperate with him. My powers were no match for his. There was nothing I could do to drive him out of my house. I was powerless under my own roof. The next night he knew you were coming.”
“What does this fiend look like?” asked Gregory. “How old is he?”
“He came out of the British Isles,” said Thorne, “made before me, and he always claimed descent from a legendary blood drinker, and no one believed him.” His red hair and red beard were covered in ice still, but he seemed impervious to the cold, merely standing there in his heavy black leather jacket.
“And who was that legend?” I asked.
“Gundesanth,” said Fontayne. “His maker was Gundesanth.”
Gregory and Seth laughed out loud. I heard the laughter of Sevraine. She stepped into the light of the fire and kneeling beside Fontayne’s chair she began to massage his hands as Pandora continued with Fontayne’s feet. Both Pandora and Sevraine were in long dark shimmering gowns and flat slippers and had a rather angelic look to them. Only such beautiful blood drinkers revealed their bare shoulders, arms, and bosoms as these two did now in these low-cut and clinging garments, and I found it distracting.
Two hundred and fifty years in the Blood and I still respond electrically to the erotic charms of vampire men and women.
Barbara stood behind the chair brushing out Fontayne’s hair, and I could see that all of this tender care was positively astonishing to him. He looked helplessly from one to the other of these seemingly gentle creatures. Barbara had a meekness about her and a plainness to her in her high-necked sweater and long wool skirt, but seemed quite indifferent to anything except restoring Fontayne.
“All right, who is Gundesanth?” I said looking up at Seth. “Are you great ones going to explain or go on chuckling and laughing with one another?”
“He was a monster by all reports,” said Seth. “I never laid eyes on him. But I knew even in the early years after I was made that every maverick who had fled the blood priesthood of my mother claimed to be made by Gundesanth.”
“I knew him well,” said Gregory. “I knew him before he defected from the Queens Blood—before you were made,” he said to Seth. “But I’ve never heard tell of him in the last two thousand years in this world, never even a mention of him.”
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to learn first—more about Baudwin, or more about Gundesanth.
“Well, it was his claim, this Baudwin,” said Fontayne. He seemed much restored. His cheeks were ruddy and he had stopped trembling. “He hinted to me that his master himself would soon rise from his slumber to destroy the Court. He claimed this was inevitable.”
“And if that was the case,” Thorne said in a low, harsh voice, “why the Hell didn’t this Baudwin wait for his master?”
Laughter all around. Except for Fontayne.
His hair was now groomed and he sat back in the chair and looked at me directly. “This Baudwin is a big creature, rawboned, and with pale eyes. No facial hair, and the yellow hair of his head clipped short when he came to me. I could see on the second night that he was cutting it off when he waked and with little concern for how it appeared. He was almost in rags, what people today call rags, soiled clothes all mismatched, a shabby torn dress coat, and a workingman’s blue denim shirt and a muffler of knitted wool. He looked completely out of place in a furnished room. He paced back and forth demanding of me again and again how ‘this fledgling Lestat’ had the audacity to establish a monarchy among the Undead and why he hadn’t been destroyed for the effrontery. He said there was very little in the realm of the Undead that could rouse his beloved maker, Gundesanth, but this Court would undoubtedly do it. He demanded allegiance of me, but I wouldn’t give it. I expected to perish by his hands, but I couldn’t give it. I didn’t want to die, you understand, but I hadn’t the power to deceive him on the matter. I was trying to marshal my powers, follow the descriptions in your books, attempting to tap into gifts of which I’d never known before I read your books, and then he announced you were coming.
“ ‘You must meet Lestat and talk to him,’ I said. ‘You’ll be charmed by him. He means no insult to anyone.’ He laughed at me. Then I heard your approach.”
I nodded and murmured my thanks.
“So nothing, absolutely nothing, was said of Rhoshamandes?” asked Gregory. “You’re quite sure of this?”
“Yes, I am,” said Fontayne. “Nothing, absolutely nothing. But then this being guarded his thoughts from me, though I couldn’t keep mine from him. I rather hated him. And I hate him now for trying to destroy you.” He looked at me.
“And you too, my friend,” I said.
“It was all my worst fear,” said Fontayne, “why I’ve lived a life away from other blood drinkers, loo
king to mortals for affection, which I must say can destroy one’s soul over time.”
He looked up at Pandora, who was now standing beside him. He gazed at her as if she were a goddess, and so she seemed.
“And Arjun, madam?” he asked her in a soft polite voice. “Has he accepted my coming here?”
“Arjun is gone,” said Pandora. “You must never worry about him again, Mitka. I’ll take care of you now.” She looked at me with soft brown eyes, and a trace of a smile on her pink lips. “I’ll see to everything.”
“If only Cyril were back here!” I said. I saw troubled expressions on the faces of the others. And only then did I notice Louis, and my mother, in the far doorway.
How long they’d been there, I had no idea. My mother looked at me, and her simple expression said what it so often said. So you’re alive, unhurt. And then she disappeared. I gestured for Louis to come in, to meet Fontayne.
Thorne was saying that I needn’t worry about Cyril.
I had enough strength in me to introduce my two friends, Louis and Mitka, and then I had to be alone. I had to sleep. The journey back and forth had been too vigorous and too draining.
I excused myself, and said I was going to my own private apartment. And so I did. I fell down on the bed, for all the world like an exhausted mortal man, and slept, waking more than once with the sudden apprehension that I was on fire, consumed with fatal heat, only to realize I wasn’t and slip into sleep again.
Outside a light snow had begun to fall, and I dreamed of the warm nights of Louisiana and the tall knifelike banana trees swaying in the wind in the courtyard of my old house, and I dreamed of the oaks that led up the pathway to Fontayne’s house and I saw the house a hideous ruin in my dreams and I hated this Baudwin, whoever he was, and wanted to destroy him. He had done in one instant what Rhoshamandes had never done to any of us.
Through my sleep, I heard Barbara come into the room. I saw her bend to put a waxen taper to the logs in the fireplace. I heard her fasten the steel shutters over the blowing snow. I wanted to rouse myself, say, No, please let the soft snow drift into the room with its tiny flakes, its white flakes that melted as soon as they touched the carpet or the damask of the chair, or the velvet of the coverlet beneath me. If Cyril perished at the hands of this monster, Baudwin . . . I found myself dreaming, dreaming of Louis and Fontayne talking together, and then in my dream I knew that they were, that they were in the library adjacent to this very room, and that they were already loving one another, that Mitka spoke a language that Louis understood, and then I drifted off, deeper and deeper. I am in my home. I am in my father’s house which has risen from the ruins. And the snow is falling, and my kith and kin are around me, and we will endure, all of us, we will not let anyone destroy us.