by Rice, Anne
“So do it!” I said. My eyes were feasting fiendishly on his glistering beauty, on the red silk cloak that was clasped just below the bit of tunic that showed above his armor, at the solemn smoothness of his cheeks. “But come with me to the mountains and kill them,” I implored him.
“Why don’t you go yourself and do it?”
“Do you think I can?” I demanded.
His face went serene. His lower lip gave the smallest most thoughtful pout. His jaw and neck were powerful, more powerful by far than the anatomy of Ramiel or Setheus, who seemed more youths, and this their splendid elder brother.
“You are not the Fallen One, are you?” I asked.
“How dare you!” he whispered, waking from his slumber. A terrible frown broke over him.
“Mastema, then, that’s who you are. They said your name. Mastema.”
He nodded and sneered. “They would, of course, say my name.”
“Which means what, great angel? That I can call on you, that I have the power to command you?” I turned and reached for the book of St. Augustine.
“Put down that book!” he said impatiently yet coolly. “There is an angel standing before you, boy; look at me when I speak to you!”
“Ah, you speak like Florian, the demon in that far castle. You have the same control, the same modulation. What do you want of me, angel? Why did you come?”
He was silent, as if he couldn’t produce an answer. Then, quietly, he put a question to me. “Why do you think?”
“Because I prayed?”
“Yes,” he said coldly. “Yes! And because they have come to me on your account.”
My eyes widened. I felt light fill them up. But the light didn’t hurt them. A soft cluster of sweet noises filled my ears.
On either side of him there appeared Ramiel and Setheus, their milder, gentler faces focused on me.
Mastema raised his eyebrows again as he looked down at me.
“Fra Filippo Lippi is drunk,” he said. “When he wakes up, he’ll get drunk again until the pain stops.”
“Fools to rack a great painter,” I said, “but then you know my thoughts on that.”
“Ah, and the thoughts of all the women in Florence,” said Mastema. “And the thoughts of the great ones who pay for his paintings, if their minds were not on war.”
“Yes,” said Ramiel, glancing imploringly to Mastema. They were of the same height, but Mastema didn’t turn, and Ramiel came forward some, as if to catch his eye. “If they weren’t all so carried away with war.”
“War is the world,” said Mastema. “I asked you before, Vittorio di Raniari, do you know who I am?”
I was shaken, not by the question, but that the three had now come together, and that I stood before them, the only mortal being, and all the mortal world around us seemed to sleep.
Why had no monk come down the passage to see who whispered in the library? Why had no Watchman of the night come to see why the candles floated along the passage? Why the boy murmured and raved?
Was I mad?
It seemed to me quite suddenly and ludicrously that if I answered Mastema correctly, I would not be mad.
This thought brought from him a small laugh, neither harsh nor sweet.
Setheus stared at me with his obvious sympathy. Ramiel said nothing but looked again to Mastema.
“You are the angel,” I said, “whom the Lord gives permission to wield that sword.” There came no response from him. I went on. “You are the angel who slew the firstborn of Egypt,” I said. No response. “You are the angel, the angel who can avenge.”
He nodded, but only really with his eyes. They closed and then opened.
Setheus drew close to him, lips to his ears.
“Help him, Mastema, let us all go help him. Filippo cannot use our counsel now.”
“And why?” demanded Mastema of the angel beside him. He looked at me.
“God has given me no leave to punish these demons of yours. Never has God said to me, ‘Mastema, slay the vampires, the lemures, the larvae, the blood drinkers.’ Never has God spoken to me and said, ‘Lift your mighty sword to cleanse the world of these.’ ”
“I beg you,” I said. “I, a mortal boy, beg you. Kill these, wipe out this nest with your sword.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Mastema, you can!” declared Setheus.
Ramiel spoke up. “If he says he cannot, he cannot! Why do you never listen to him?”
“Because I know that he can be moved,” said Setheus without hesitation to his compatriot. “I know that he can, as God can be moved.”
Setheus stepped boldly in front of Mastema.
“Pick up the book, Vittorio,” he said. He stepped forward. At once the large vellum pages, heavy as they were, began to flutter. He put it in my hand, and marked the place with his pale finger, barely touching the thick black crowded writing.
I read aloud:
And therefore God who made the visible marvels of Heaven and Earth does not disdain to work visible miracles in Heaven and Earth, by which He arouses the soul, hitherto preoccupied with visible things, to the worship of Himself.
His finger moved, and my eyes moved with it. I read of God:
To Him, there is no difference between seeing us about to pray and listening to our prayers, for even when His angels listen, it is He Himself who listens in them.
I stopped, my eyes full of tears. He took the book from me to guard it from my tears.
A noise had penetrated our small circle. Monks had come. I heard them whispering in the corridor, and then the door swung open. Into the library they came.
I cried, and when I looked up I saw them staring at me, two monks whom I didn’t know or didn’t remember, had never known.
“What is it, young man? Why are you here alone crying?” the first spoke.
“Here, let us take you back to bed. We’ll bring you something to eat.”
“No, I can’t eat it,” I said.
“No, he can’t eat it,” said the first monk to the other. “It still makes him sick. But he can rest.” He looked at me.
I turned. The three radiant angels stood silently staring at the monks who could not see them, who had no clue that the angels were there!
“Dear God in Heaven, please tell me,” I said. “Have I gone mad? Have the demons won out, have they so polluted me with their blood and their potions that I see things which are delusions, or am I come like Mary to the tomb to see an angel there?”
“Come to bed,” said the monks.
“No,” said Mastema, quietly addressing the monk who didn’t even see him or hear him. “Let him stay. Let him read to quiet his mind. He is a boy of education.”
“No, no,” said the monk, shaking his head. He glanced to the other. “We should let him stay. He’s a boy of education. He can read quietly. Cosimo said that he must have anything he desired.”
“Go on, leave him now,” said Setheus softly.
“Hush,” said Ramiel. “Let Mastema tell them.”
I was too flooded with sorrow and happiness to respond. I covered my face, and when I did so I thought of my poor Ursula, forever with her demon Court, and how she had wept for me. “How could that be?” I whispered into my own fingers.
“Because she was human once, and has a human heart,” said Mastema to me in the silence.
The two monks were hurrying out. For one moment the collection of angels was as sheer as light, and I saw through them to the two retreating figures of the monks who closed up the doors as they left.
Mastema looked at me with his still, powerful gaze.
“One could read anything into your face,” I said.
“So it is with almost all angels all of the time,” he answered.
“I beg you,” I said. “Come with me. Help me. Guide me. Do what you just did with those monks! That you can do, can’t you?”
He nodded.
“But we can’t do more than that, you see,” said Setheus.
“Let Ma
stema say,” said Ramiel.
“Go back to Heaven!” said Setheus.
“Please, the both of you, be quiet,” said Mastema. “Vittorio, I cannot slay them. I have no leave. That you can do, and with your own sword.”
“But you’ll come.”
“I’ll take you,” he said. “When the sun rises, when they sleep under their stones. But you must slay them, you must open them to the light, and you must set free those awful wretched prisoners, and you must stand before the townsmen, or let loose that crippled flock and flee.”
“I understand.”
“We can move the stones away from their sleeping places, can’t we?” asked Setheus. He put up his hand to hush Ramiel before Ramiel could protest. “We’ll have to do it.”
“We can do that,” said Mastema. “As we can stop a beam from falling on Filippo’s head. We can do that. But we cannot slay them. And you, Vittorio, we cannot make you go through with it, either, if your nerve or your will fails.”
“You don’t think the miracle of my having seen you will uphold me?”
“Will it?” Mastema asked.
“You speak of her, don’t you?”
“Do I?” he asked.
“I will go through with it, but you must tell me …”
“What must I tell you?” Mastema asked.
“Her soul, will it go to Hell?”
“That I cannot tell you,” said Mastema.
“You have to.”
“No, I have to do nothing but what the Lord God has created me to do, and that I do, but to solve the mysteries over which Augustine pondered for a lifetime, no, that is not what I have to do or should do or will do.”
Mastema picked up the book.
Once again the pages moved with his will. I felt the breeze rising from them.
He read:
There is something to be gained from the inspired discourses of Scripture.
“Don’t read those words to me; they don’t help me!” I said. “Can she be saved? Can she save her soul? Does she possess it still? Is she as powerful as you are? Can you Fall? Can the Devil come back to God?”
He put down the book with a swift, airy movement that I could scarcely follow.
“Are you ready for this battle?” he asked.
“They’ll lie helpless in the light of day,” said Setheus to me. “Including her. She too will lie helpless. You must open the stones that cover them, and you know what you must do.”
Mastema shook his head. He turned and gestured for them to get out of his way.
“No, please, I beg you!” said Ramiel. “Do it for him. Do it, please. Filippo is beyond our help for days.”
“You know no such thing,” said Mastema.
“Can my angels go to him?” I asked. “Have I none that can be sent?”
I had no sooner spoken these words than I realized that two more entities had taken form directly beside me, one on either side, and when I looked from left to right I saw them, only they were pale and remote from me, and they hadn’t the flame of Filippo’s guardians, only a quiet and quasi-visible and undeniable presence and will.
I looked at one for a long time and then the other, and could draw no descriptive words from my mind from them. Their faces seemed blank and patient and quiet. They were winged beings, tall, yes, I can say that much, but what more could I say, because I couldn’t endow them with color or splendor or individuality, and they had no garments or motion to them or anything that I could love.
“What is it? Why won’t they speak to me? Why do they look at me that way?”
“They know you,” said Ramiel.
“You’re full of vengeance, and desire,” said Setheus. “They know it; they have been at your side. They have measured your pain and your anger.”
“Good God, these demons killed my family!” I declared. “Do you know the future of my soul, any of you?”
“Of course not,” said Mastema. “Why would we be here if we did? Why would any of us be here if it were ordained?”
“Don’t they know that I faced death rather than take the demon blood? Would not a vendetta have required of me that I drink it and then destroy my enemies when I had powers such as theirs?”
My angels drew closer to me.
“Oh, where were you when I was about to die!” I declared.
“Don’t taunt them. You have never really believed in them.” It was Ramiel’s voice. “You loved us when you saw our images, and when the demon blood was full inside you, you saw what you could love. That is the danger now. Can you kill what you love?”
“I will destroy all of them,” I said. “One way or another, I swear it on my soul.” I looked at my pale unyielding yet unjudging guardians, and then to the others who burnt so brightly against the shadows of the vast library, against the dark colors of the shelves and the crowded books.
“I will destroy them all,” I vowed. I closed my eyes. I imagined her, lying helpless by day, and I saw myself bend and kiss her cold white forehead. My sobs were muffled and my body shook. I nodded again and again that I would do it, yes, I would do it, I would do it.
“At dawn,” said Mastema, “the monks will have fresh clothes laid out for you, a suit of red velvet, and your weapons freshly polished, and your boots cleaned. All will be finished by then. Don’t try to eat. It’s too soon, and the demon blood is still churning in you. Prepare yourself, and we will take you north to do what has to be done in the light of day.”
11
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
—THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN 1:5
Monasteries wake early, if they ever sleep at all.
My eyes opened quite suddenly, and only then, as I saw the morning light cover the fresco, as if the veil of darkness had been drawn from it, only then did I know how deeply I had slept.
Monks moved in my cell. They had brought in the red velvet tunic, the clothes as Mastema described, and were just laying them out. I had fine red wool hose to wear with them, and a shirt of gold silk, and to go over that, another of white silk, and then a thick new belt for the tunic. My weapons were polished, as I had been told they would be—my heavy jeweled sword gleaming as though my father himself had been toying with it all of a peaceful evening long by the fire. My daggers were ready.
I climbed out of the bed and dropped down to my knees in prayer. I made the Sign of the Cross. “God, give me the strength to send in your hands those who feed on death.”
It was a whisper in Latin.
One of the monks touched me on the shoulder and smiled. Had the Great Silence not yet ended? I had no idea. He pointed to a table where there was food laid out for me—bread and milk. The milk had foam on the top of it.
I nodded and smiled at him, and then he and his companion made me a little bow and went out.
I turned around and around.
“All of you are here, I know it,” I said, but I gave no more time to it. If they didn’t come, then I had recovered my wits, but no such thing was true, any more than it was true that my father was alive.
On the table, not far from the food, and held in place beneath the weight of the candelabra, was a series of documents, freshly written and signed in ornate script.
I read them hastily.
They were receipts for all my money and jewels, those things which had been with me in my saddlebags when I came in. All these documents bore the seal of the Medici.
There was a purse of money there, to be tied to my belt. All my rings were there, cleaned and polished, so that the cabochon rubies were brilliant and the emeralds had a flawless depth. The gold gleamed as it had not in months perhaps, for my own negligence.
I brushed out my hair, annoyed at its thickness and length, but having no time to ask for a barber to cut it shorter than my shoulders. At least it was long enough, and had been for a while, to stay back over my shoulders and off my forehead. It was luxurious to have it so clean.
I dressed quickly. My boots
were a little snug because they had been dried by a fire after the rain. But they felt good over the thin hose. I made right all my fastenings and positioned my sword.
The red velvet tunic was plaited along the edges with gold and silver thread, and the front of it was richly decorated with the silver fleurs-de-lys, which is the most ancient symbol of Florence. Once my belt was tightly fastened, the tunic didn’t come to halfway down my thigh. That was for handsome legs.
The whole raiment was more than fancy for battle, but what battle was this? It was a massacre. I put on the short flaring cloak they had given me, fastening its gold buckles, though it would be warm for the city. It was lined in soft thin dark-brown squirrel fur.
I ignored the hat. I tied on the purse. I put on my rings one by one until my hands were weapons on account of their weight. I put on the soft fur-lined gloves. I found a dark-amber-beaded rosary that I had not noticed before. It had a gold crucifix, which I kissed, and this I put in my pocket under my tunic.
I realized that I was staring at the floor, and that I was surrounded by pairs of bare feet. Slowly I lifted my gaze.
My angels stood before me, my very own guardians, in long flowing robes of dark blue, which appeared to be made of something lighter yet more opaque than silk. Their faces were ivory white and shimmering faintly, and their eyes were large and like opals. They had dark hair, or hair that seemed to shift as if it were made of shadows.
They stood facing me, their heads together, so that their heads touched. It was as though they were communing silently with one another.
They overwhelmed me. It seemed a terrifying intimacy that I should see them so vividly and so close to me, and know them as the two who had been with me always, or so I was to believe. They were slightly larger than human beings, as were the other angels I had seen, and they were not tempered by the sweet faces I had seen on the others, but had altogether smoother and broader countenances and larger though exquisitely shaped mouths.
“And you don’t believe in us now?” one of them asked in a whisper.
“Will you tell me your names?” I asked.
Both shook their heads in a simple negation at once.
