by Rice, Anne
“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 black-eyed 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.”
I laughed again, but as respectfully as I could. “There are so many of you,” I said. I turned my head. The numerous candles blinded me, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was as if a different species of flame danced on the wicks, than the species that had consumed my brothers.
“Were they your brothers, these spoilt and pampered mortals?” he asked. His voice was unwavering.
“Do you believe all the rot you’re talking to me?” I asked, imitating his tone.
He laughed now, and it was a decently churchly laugh as though we were whispering together about the absurdity of a sermon. But the Blessed Sacrament was not here as it would be in a consecrated church, so why whisper?
“Dear one,” he said. “It would be so simple to torture you, to turn your arrogant little mind inside out, and make you nothing but an instrument for raucous screams. It would be nothing to wall you up so that your screams would not be too loud for us, but merely a pleasing accompaniment to our nightly meditation. But I have no taste for such things. That is why I serve the Devil so well; I have never come to like cruelty or evil. I despise them, and would that I could look upon a Crucifix, I would do so and weep as I did when I was a mortal man.”
I let my eyes close, forsaking all the dancing flames that besprinkled the gloom. I sent my strongest most stealthy power into his mind, but came upon a locked door.
“Yes, that is my image for shutting you out. Painfully literal for such an educated infidel. But then your dedication to Christ the Lord was nourished among the literal and the naive, was it not? But here, someone comes with a gift for you which wi
ll greatly hasten our agreement.”
“Agreement, Sir, and what agreement will that be?” I asked.
I too heard the other. A strong and terrible odor penetrated my nostrils. I did not move or open my eyes. I heard the other one laughing in that low rumbling fashion so perfected by the others who had sung the Dies Irae with such lewd polish. The smell was noxious, the smell was that of human flesh burnt or something thereof. I hated it. I began to turn my head and tried to stop myself. Sound and pain I could endure, but not this terrible, terrible odor.
“A gift for you, Amadeo,” said the other.
I looked up. I stared into the eyes of a vampire formed like a young man with whitish-blond hair and the long lean frame of a Norseman. He held up a great urn with both hands. And then he turned it.
“Ah, no, stop!” I threw up my hands. I knew what it was. But it was too late.
The ashes came down in a torrent on me. I choked and cried, and turned over. I couldn’t get them out of my eyes and my mouth.
“The ashes of your brothers, Amadeo,” said the Norse vampire. He gave way to a wild peal of laughter.
Helpless, lying on my face, my hands up to the sides of my face, I shook myself all over, feeling the hot weight of the ashes. At last I turned over and over, and then sprang up to my knees, and to my feet. I backed into the wall. A great iron rack of candles went over, the little flames arcing in my blurred vision, the tapers themselves thudding in the mud. I heard the clatter of bones. I flung my arms up in front of my face.
“What’s happened to our pretty composure?” asked the Norse vampire. “We are a weeping cherub, aren’t we? That is what your Master called you, cherub, no? Here!” He pulled at my arm, and with the other hand tried to smear the ashes on me.
“You damnable fiend!” I cried. I went mad with fury and indignation. I grabbed his head with both my hands, and using all my strength turned it around on his neck, snapping all the bones, and then I kicked him hard with my right foot. He sank down on his knees, moaning, living still with his broken neck, but not in one piece would he live, I vowed, and kicking at him with the full weight of my right foot, I tore his head from him, the skin ripping and snapping, and the blood pouring out of the gaping trunk, I yanked the head free.
“Ah, look at you now, Sir!” I said, staring down into his frantic eyes. The pupils still danced. “Oh, die, will you, for your own sake.” I buried my left fingers tight in his hair, and turning this way and that, I found a candle with my right hand, ripped it from the iron nail that held it and jammed it into his eye sockets one after the other, until he saw no more.
“Ah, then it can be done this way as well,” I said looking up and blinking in the dazzle of the candles.
Slowly, I made out his figure. His thick curly black hair was free and tangled, and he sat at an angle, black robes flowing down around his stool, facing slightly away from me, but regarding me so that I could trace the lineaments of his face easily in the light. A noble and beautiful face, with the curling lips as strong as the huge eyes.
“I never liked him,” he said softly, raising his eyebrows, “though I must say, you do impress me, and I did not expect to see him gone so soon.”
I shuddered. A horrible coldness seized me, a soulless ugly anger, routing sorrow, routing madness, routing hope.
I hated the head I held and wanted to drop it, but the thing still lived. The bleeding sockets quivered, and the tongue darted from side to side out of the mouth. “Oh, this is a revolting thing!” I cried.
“He always said such unusual things,” said the black-haired one. “He was a pagan, you see. That you never were. I mean he believed in the gods of the north forest, and in Thor ever circling the world with his hammer …”
“Are you going to talk forever?” I asked. “I must burn this thing even after this, mustn’t I?” I asked.
He threw me the most charming innocent smile.
“You are a fool to be in this place,” I whispered. My hands shook uncontrollably.
Not waiting for a response, I turned and snatched up another candle, having so thoroughly snuffed the other, and set fire to the dead being’s hair. The stench sickened me. I made a sound like a boy crying.
I dropped the flaming head into the robed and headless body. I threw the candle down into the flames, so that the wax might feed it. Gathering up the other candles I had knocked down, I fed them to the fire and stepped back as a great heat rose from the dead one.
The head appeared to roll about in the flames, more than was likely, so I grabbed up the iron candelabra I had knocked over, and using this like a rake, I plunged it into the burning mass to flatten and crush what lay beneath the fire.
At the very last his outstretched hands curled, fingers digging into the palms. Ah, to have life in this state, I thought wearily, and with the rake I knocked the arms against the torso. The fire reeked of rags and human blood, blood he’d drunk no doubt, but there was no other human scent to it, and with despair I saw that I had made a fire of him right in the middle of the ashes of my friends.
Well, it seemed appropriate. “You are revenged in one of them,” I said with a defeated sigh. I threw down the crude candleholder rake. I left him there. The room was large. I walked dejectedly, my feet bare from the fire having burned off my felt slippers, to another broad place among iron candelabra, where the moist good earth was black and seemingly clean, and there I lay down again, as I had before, not caring that the black-haired one had a very good view of me there, as I was more in front of him than even before.
“Do you know that Northern worship?” he asked, as if nothing dreadful had happened. “Oh, that Thor is forever circling with his hammer, and the circle grows smaller and smaller, and beyond lies chaos, and we are here, doomed within the dwindling circle of warmth. Have you ever heard it? He was a pagan, made by renegade magicians who used him to murder their enemies. I am glad to be rid of him, but why do you cry?”
I didn’t answer. This was beyond all hope, this horrid domed chamber of skulls, the myriad candles illuminating only remnants of death, and this being, this beautiful powerfully built black-haired being ruling amid all this horror and feeling nothing on the death of one who had served him, who was now a pile of smoldering stinking bones.
I imagined I was home. I was safe within my Master’s bedchamber. We sat together. He read from a Latin text. It did not matter what the words were. All around us were the accouterments of civilization, sweet and pretty things, and the fabrics of the room had all been worked by human hands.
“Vain things,” said the black-haired one. “Vain and foolish, but you’ll come to see it. You are stronger than I reckoned. But then he was centuries old, your Maker, nobody even tells of a time when there wasn’t Marius, the lone wolf, who abides no one in his territory, Marius, the destroyer of the young.”
“I never knew him to destroy any but those who were evil,” I said in a whisper.
“We are evil, aren’t we? All of us are evil. So he destroyed us without compunction. He thought he was safe from us. He turned his back on us! He considered us not worthy of his attentions, and look, how he has lavished all his strength on a boy. But I must say you are a most beautiful boy.”
There was a noise, an evil rustling, not unfamiliar. I smelled rats.
“Oh, yes, my children, the rats,” he said. “They come to me. Do you want to see? Turn over and look up at me, if you will? Think no more on St. Francis, with his birds and squirrels and the wolf at his side. Think on Santino, with his rats.”
I did look. I drew in my breath. I sat up in the dirt and stared at him. A great gray rat sat on his shoulder, its tiny whiskered snout just kissing his ear, its tail curling behind his head. Another rat had come to sit sedately, as if spellbound, in his lap. There were others gathered at his feet.
Seeming loath to move lest they startle, he carefully dipped his right hand into a bowl of dried bread crumbs. I caught the scent only now, mingled with that of the rats. He offered a handful of
crumbs to the rat on his shoulder, who ate from it gratefully and with strange delicacy, and then he dropped some of the bread in his lap, where three rats came to feast at once.
“Do you think I love such things?” he said. He looked intently at me, his eyes widening with the emphasis on his words. His black hair was a dense tangled veil on his shoulders, his forehead very smooth and shining white in the candlelight.
“Do you think I love to live here in the bowels of the world,” he asked sadly, “under the great city of Rome, where the earth seeps waste from the foul throng above, and have these, the vermin, as my familiars? Do you think I was never flesh and blood, or that, having undergone this change for the sake of Almighty God and His Divine Plan, I don’t long for the life you lived with your greedy Master? Have I not eyes to see the brilliant colors which your Master spread over his canvases? Do I not like the sounds of ungodly music?” He gave a soft agonizing sigh.
“What has God made or ever suffered to be made that is distasteful in itself?” he continued. “Sin is not repulsive in itself; how absurd to think so. No one comes to love pain. We can only hope to endure it.”
“Why all this?” I asked. I was sick unto vomiting, but I held it back. I breathed as deeply as I could to let all the smells of this horror chamber flood my lungs and cease to torment me.
I sat back, crossing my legs so that I could study him. I wiped the ashes out of my eye. “Why? Your themes are entirely familiar, but what is this realm of vampires in black monkly robes?”
“We are the Defenders of Truth,” he said sincerely.
“Oh, who is not the defender of truth, for the love of Heaven,” I said bitterly. “Look, the blood of your brother in Christ is stuck all over my hands! And you sit, the freakish blood-stuffed replicant of a human being staring on all this as if it were so much chitchat among the candles!”
“Ah, but you have a fiery tongue for one with such a sweet face,” he said in cool wonder. “So pliant you seem with your soft brown eyes and dark autumnal red hair, but you are clever.”
