Blood and Gold

20

HOW LONG I WAS with Those Who Must Be Kept, I don't know. A week, perhaps more. I came into the shrine, confessing my astonishment that I had confided the mere phrase "Those Who Must Be Kept" to a mortal boy. I confided again that I wanted him, I wanted him to share my loneliness.

I wanted him to share all that I could teach and give.

Oh, the pain of it! All that I could teach and give!

What was this to the Immortal Parents? Nothing. And as I trimmed the wicks of the lamps, as I filled them with oil, as I let the light grow bright around the eternally silent Egyptian figures, I knew the same penance I had always known.

Twice with a gust of the Fire Gift, I lighted the long bank of one hundred tall candles. Twice I let it burn down.

But as I prayed, as I dreamt, one clear conclusion did come to me. I wanted this mortal companion precisely because I had put myself into the mortal world.

Had I never stepped into Botticelli's workshop this mad loneliness would not have come over me. It was mixed up with my love of all the arts, but most particularly painting, and my desire to be close to those mortals who nourished themselves gracefully upon the creations of this period as I fed upon blood.

I also confessed that my education of Amadeo was almost complete.

On waking I listened with the powerful Mind Gift to the movements and thoughts of Amadeo who was no more than a few hundred miles away. He was obedient to my instructions. In the night hours he kept to his books, and did not go to Bianca. Indeed he kept to my bedchamber, for he no longer knew simple camaraderie with the other boys.

What could I give this child that would prompt him to leave me?

What could I give him to more purely train him to be the companion I wanted with all my soul?

Both questions tormented me.

At last a plan came to me—one last trial must be passed by him, and should he fail it, I would commit him with irresistible wealth and position to the mortal world. How that might be done, I did not know, but it did not strike me as a difficult thing.

I meant to reveal to him the manner in which I fed.

Of course this was a lie, this question of a trial; for once he had beheld me in the act of feeding, in the act of murder, how then could he pass unscathed into a productive mortality, no matter how great his education, his refinements and his wealth?

No sooner had I put that question to myself than I remembered my exquisite Bianca, who remained quite steadily at the helm of her ship in spite of the poisonous cups she had passed.

All this, evil and cunning, made up the substance of my prayers. Was I asking permission of Akasha and Enkil to make this child a blood drinker? Was I asking permission to admit Amadeo to the secrets of this ancient and unchangeable shrine?

If I did ask, there came no answer.

Akasha gave me only her effortless serenity, and Enkil his majesty. The only sound came from my movements as I rose from my knees, as I laid my kisses at the feet of Akasha, as I withdrew and closed behind me the immense door, and bolted it shut.

There was wind and snow in the mountains on that evening. It was bitter and white and pure.

I was glad to be home in Venice within minutes, though my beloved city was also cold.

No sooner did I reach my bedchamber than Amadeo came into my arms.

I covered his head with kisses and then his warm mouth, taking the breath from him, and then with the smallest bite, giving him the Blood.

"Would you be what I am, Amadeo?" I asked. "Would you be changeless forever? Would you live a secret for eternity?"

"Yes, Master," he said with a feverish abandon. He laid both his warm hands on the sides of my face. "Give it to me, Master. Do you think I've not brooded upon it? I know that you fathom our minds. Master, I want it. Master, how is it done? Master, I'm yours."

"Find the heaviest cloak to protect you against the winter," I said, "And then come up to me on the roof."

It seemed scarcely a moment before he joined me. I looked out towards the sea. The wind was strong. I wondered if it hurt him and I did fathom his mind, and I measured his passion.

And looking into his brown eyes I knew that he had left the mortal world behind him more effortlessly perhaps than any other mortal I might have plucked from my garden, for those memories still festered within him, though he was disposed completely to believe in me.

I wrapped him in my arms and, covering his face, I carried him with me down into a wretched district of Venice, in which thieves and beggars slept where they could. The canals reeked of refuse and dead fish.

There I found a mortal victim within minutes, and to Amadeo's amazement caught the miserable fellow with preternatural speed as he sought to stab me, and brought him up to my lips.

I let Amadeo see the cunning teeth with which I pierced the throat of the wretch, and then my eyes closed and I became Marius, the blood drinker, Marius, the slayer of the Evil Doer, and the blood flowed into me, and it did not matter to me that Amadeo was witness, that Amadeo was there.

When it was finished, I dropped the body silently into the filthy water of the canal.

I turned, feeling the blood in my face and in my chest and then slowly moving into my hands. My vision was dim, and I knew that I was smiling—not a vicious smile, you understand, but something secretive and beyond anything the child had ever beheld.

When at last I looked at him, I saw only amazement.

"Have you no tears for the man, Amadeo?" I asked. "Have you no questions as to the disposition of his soul? Without Sacred Rites, he died. He died only for me."

"No, Master," he answered, and then a smile played on his lips as though it were a flame which had sprung from mine. "It's marvelous what I saw, Master. What do I care for his body or his soul?"

I was too angry to respond. There had been no lesson in it! He was too young, the night too dark, the man too wretched, and all that I had foreseen had come to nought.

Once again, I wrapped him in my cloak, covering his face so that he could see nothing as I traveled through the air silently, moving over the rooftops and then breaking deftly and silently through an upper window that had been shuttered against the night air.

Through the rear chambers of the house, I moved from this breach till we stood together in the shadowy and sumptuous bedroom of Bianca, and through the salons before us, I saw her turn from her guests. I saw her coming to us.

"Why are we here, Master?" asked Anmdeo. He looked towards the front rooms fearfully.

"You would see it again to understand it," I said angrily. "You would see it among those whom we claim to love."

"But how, Master?" Amadeo demanded. "What are you saying? What do you mean to do?"

'T hunt the Evil Doer, child," I said to him. "And you shall see that there is evil here as rich as there was in that poorling whom I committed to the dark water, unconfessed and unmourned."

Bianca stood before us, asking us as gently as she could, How had we come to be in her private rooms? Her pale eyes looked at me searchingly.

Quickly I accused her.

"Tell him, rny beloved beauty," I said, my voice muted so that the company should take no notice, "tell him what awful deeds lie behind your gentle composure. Tell him what poison guests have drunk beneath your roof."

How calm she was as she answered me.

"You anger me, Marius. You come improperly. You accuse me without authority. Leave me and come again in the gentle manner in which you have come so many times before."

Amadeo was trembling. "Please, Master, let us leave here. We have nothing but love for Bianca." "Oh, but I would have more of her, rather than love of her," I said to hjm. "I would have her blood."

"No, Master," Amadeo whispered. "Master, I beg you." "Yes, for it's evil blood," I said, "and it's all the more savoiy to rne. I would drink the stuff of murderers. Tell him, Bianca, of wine laced with potions, and lives forfeit for those who have made you the instrument of their most wicked plans."

"Leave me now," she said again without the slightest fear of me. Her eyes blazed. "Marius de Romanus, you cannot judge me. Not you with your magician's powers, not you with your boys. I will say nothing except that you must leave my house."

I moved to take her in my arms. I did not know when I would stop but only that I would reveal the horror of it to him, that he must see it, he must see the suffering, he must see the pain.

"Master," he whispered, struggling to come between us, "I will give up my petitions to you forever, if only you do not harm her. Do you understand? Master, I will beg nothing further. Let her go."

I held her, looking down at her, smelling the sweetest perfume of her youth, her hair, her blood. "Take her and I die with her, Master," said Amadeo.

It was enough. It was more than enough.

I moved away from her. I felt a strange confusion. The music in the rooms became a noise. I think I sat upon her bed. The blood thirst in me was terrible. I might have slain them all, I thought, looking toward the crowd beyond, and then I believe I said:

"We are murderers together, you and I, Bianca."

I saw that Amadeo was weeping. He stood with his back to the company. His face was glistening with tears.

And she, she the fragrant beauty with her braided blond hair came to sit beside me, so boldly, and to take my hand, my very hand.

"We are murderers together, my lord," she said, "yes, I can speak for myself as you demanded. But understand that I am given the commissions by those who would as easily send me to Hell in the same way. It is they who mix the potions for the fatal wine. It is they who mark those who would receive it. And I know not the reasons. I know only that if I do not obey, I shall die."

"Then tell me who they are, my exquisite darling," I said. "I am hungry for them. So hungry you can't dream."

"They are my kinsmen, sir," she said. "Such has been my heritage. Such has been my family. Such have been my guardians here."

She had begun to weep but she clung to me, as though rny strength were the only truth for her suddenly and indeed I realized it was.

My threats of moments ago had only bound her to me all the more firmly, and Amadeo drew close, urging me to kill all those who kept her under their power, all those who made her wretched, whatever the ties of blood.

I held her as she bowed her head. From her mind, so often confusing to me, I read the names as though they were written in plain script.

I knew the men, all Florentines who had come often to call on her. Tonight they held a feast in a neighboring house. They were moneylenders, some might have called them bankers, but those they murdered were those from whom they had borrowed and did not wish to repay.

"You shall be rid of them, my beauty," I said to her. I touched her lightly with my lips.

She turned to me, and gave me countless and violent small kisses.

"And what shall I owe for this? " she asked, even as she kissed me, even as her hands reached to stroke my hair.

"Only that you say nothing of what you saw in me tonight."

She gazed at me with her tranquil oval eyes, and her mind closed up, as though she would never reveal to me her thoughts again.

"You have my pledge, my lord," she whispered. "And so my soul grows ever more heavy."

"No, I shall take the weight from it," I said, as we made to go.

How sad seemed her sudden tears. I kissed her, tasting them,wishing they were blood and forever forswearing the blood within her.

"Don't weep for those who have used you," I whispered. "Go back to the gaiety and the music. Leave the dark commissions to me."

We found the Florentines drunk at their banquet, paying us no heed as we entered without introduction or explanation and took our places at the overladen table. A noisy band of musicians played. The floor was slippery witj spilt wine.

Amadeo was eager for it, filled with excitement, attentive to my slow and methodical seduction of each one of them, as I drank the blood lustily, and let the bodies tip forward upon the groaning board. The musicians fled.

Within an hour I had skin them all, these kinsmen of Bianca, and only for the very last of them, he who had talked the longest with me, quite unawares of what was happening all about him—only for him did Amadeo beg and weep. Was I to show this one mercy when his heart was as guilty as all the rest?

We sat alone in the ruined supper room, the dead bodies around us, the food cold upon its silver and gold plates and platters, the wine running from overturned goblets, and for the first time, as Amadeo cried and cried, I saw dread in his eyes.

I looked at my hands. I had drunk so much blood that they looked human and I knew that were I to look into a mirror, I would see a florid human face.

The heat in me was delicious and unendurable, and I wanted nothing more than to take Amadeo, bring him over to me now, and yet there he sat before me, the tears streaming down his face.

"They are all gone," I said, "those who tormented Bianca. You come with me. Let's leave this gory scene. I would walk with you, before the sun rises, near the sea."

He followed me as a child might, the tears staining his face as they ran still from his eyes.

"Wipe your tears," I said firmly. "We're going out into the piazza. It's almost dawn."

He slipped his hand into mine as we went down the stone stairs.

I put my arm around him, sheltering him from the sharp wind.

"Master," he pleaded, "they were evil men, weren't they? You were certain of it. You knew it." "All of them," I answered. "But sometimes men and women are both good and evil," I continued, "and who am I to choose for my vicious appetite, yet I do. Is Bianca not both good arid evil?" "Master," he asked, "if I drink the blood of those who are evil, will I become like you?"

We stood before the closed doors of San Marco. The wind came mercilessly off the sea. I drew my cloak about him all the more tightly, and he rested his head against my chest.

"No, child," I said, "there's infinitely more magic in it than that."

"You must give me your blood, isn't that so, Master?" he asked as he looked up at me, the tears clear and glistening in the cold air, his hair mussed.

I didn't answer.

"Master," he said, as I held him close to me, "long years ago, or so they seern to me, in some faraway place, where I lived before I came to you, I was what they called a Fool for God. I don't remember it clearly and never will as both of us well know.

"But a Fool for God was a man who gave himself over to God completely and did not care what happened, whether it was mockery, or starvation, or endless laughter, or dreadful cold. That much I remember, that I was a Fool for God in those times."

"But you painted pictures, Amadeo, you painted beautiful ikons—."

"But listen to me, Master," he said firmly, forcing me to silence, "whatever I did, I was a Fool for God, and now I would be a Fool for you." He paused, snuggling close to me as the wind grew stronger. The mists moved in over the stones. There came noises from the ships.

I started to speak but he reached to stop me. How obdurate and strong he seemed, how seductive, how completely mine.

"Master," he went on. "Do it when you will. You have my secrecy. You have niy patience. Do it when and how you wilL"

I thought on what he'd said.

"Go home, Amadeo," I answered him. "You know the sun is coming, and I must leave you with the arrival of the sun."

He nodded, puzzling over it, as though for the very first time it mattered to him, though how he couldn't have thought of it before I didn't know.

"Go home, and study with the others, talk with them, and shepherd the little ones at their play. If you can do that—go from the bloody banquet room to the laughter of children—then when 1 come tonight, I shall do it. I shall bring you over to myself."

I watched him walk away from me in the mist. He went towards the canal where he would find the gondola to take him back to our door.

"A Fool for God," I whispered aloud so that my mind might hear it, "yes, a Fool for God, and in some miserable monastery you painted the sacred pictures, convinced your life would mean nothing unless it was a life of sacrifice and pain. And now, in my magic you see some similar burning purity. And you turn away from all the riches of life in Venice for that burning purity; you turn away from all that a human may have."

But was it so? Did he know enough to make such a decision? Could he forsake the sun forever?

I had no answer. It was not his decision that mattered now. For I had made mine.

As for my radiant Biarica, her thoughts were forever after closed to me, as though she knew the knack of it like a wily witch. As for her devotion, her love, her friendship, that was something else.