by Anne Rice
My father did not sit down. He stood staring off, and then he cocked his head, as though listening. He turned and snapped his fingers, drawing to attention the two guards slumbering at the ends of the hall.
"Go through the house, see to everything," he said in a soft voice. "I think I hear birds which have entered the house. It's the warm air, and there are many open windows."
These two went off, and immediately two other soldiers appeared to take their place. That in itself was not usual, for it meant that there were many men on duty.
The Captain came back alone, and once more bowed.
"My Lord, he will not come into the light, he says, but that you must come out to him, and he has little time to wait on you."
This was the first time I had ever seen my father really angry. Even when he whipped me or a peasant boy, he was rather lazy about it. Now the fine lineaments of his face, so given to reassurance by their very proportions, became absolutely wrathful.
"How dare he?" he whispered.
Yet he strode around the table, came in front of it and marched off with the Captain of the Guard hastening behind him.
I was out of my chair at once and after him. I heard my mother cry out softly, "Vittorio, come back."
But I stole down the stairs after my father, and into the courtyard, and only when he himself turned around and pressed my chest hard with his hand did I halt.
"Stay there, my son," he said with his old kindly warmth. "I shall see to it."
I had a good vantage point, right at the door of the tower, and there across the courtyard, at the gates in the full light of the torches, I saw this strange Signore who would not come into the light of the hall, for he did not seem to mind this outdoor illumination.
The huge gates of the arched entrance were locked and bolted for the night. Only the small man-sized gate was opened, and it was there that he stood, with the blazing crackling fire on either side of him, glorying in it, it seemed to me, in his splendid raiment of dark, wine-red velvet.
From head to toe he was dressed in this rich color, hardly the current style, but every detail of him, from his bejeweled doublet and blown-up sleeves of satin and velvet stripes, was this same hue, as though carefully dyed in the best fullers in Florence.
Even the gems sewn into his collar and hanging about his neck on a heavy golden chain were wine red—most likely rubies or even sapphires.
His hair was thick and black, hanging sleekly onto his shoulders, but I couldn't see his face, no, not at all, for the velvet hat he wore overshadowed it, and I caught but a glimpse of very white skin, the line of his jaw and a bit of his neck, for nothing else was visible. He wore a broadsword of immense size, with an antique scabbard, and casually over one shoulder was a cloak of the same wine-dark velvet trimmed in what seemed to my distant eyes to be ornate gilt symbols.
I strained, trying to make them out, this border of signs, and I thought I could see a star and crescent moon worked into his fancy adornments, but I was really too far away.
The man's height was impressive.
My father stopped quite far short of him, yet when he spoke his voice was soft and I couldn't hear it, and out of the mysterious man, who still revealed nothing now of his face but his smiling mouth and white teeth, there came a silky utterance that seemed both surly and charming.
"Get away from my house in the name of God and Our Holy Redeemer!" my father cried out suddenly. And with a quick gesture, he stepped forward and powerfully thrust this splendid figure right out of the gate.
I was amazed.
But from the hollow mouth of darkness beyond the opening there came only a low satin laughter, a mocking laughter, and this it seemed was echoed by others, and I heard a powerful thundering of hooves, as though several horsemen had commenced at once to ride off.
My father himself slammed the gate. And turned and made the Sign of the Cross, and pressed his hands together in prayer.
"Dear Lord God, how dare they!" he said, looking up.
It was only now, as he stormed back towards me and towards the tower itself, that I realized the Captain of the Guard was paralyzed with seeming terror.
My father's eye caught mine as soon as he came into the light from the stairs, and I gestured to the Captain. My father spun round.
"Batten down my house," my father called out. "Search it from top to bottom and batten it down and call out the soldiery and fill the night with torches, do you hear? I will have men in every tower and on the walls. Do it at once. It will give peace and calm to my people!"
We had not yet reached the supper room when an old priest living with us then, a learned Dominican named Fra Diamonte, came down with his white hair all mussed, and his cassock half unbuttoned, and his prayer book in his hand.
"What is it, my Lord?" he asked. "What in the name of God has happened?"
"Father, trust in God and come and pray with me in the chapel," said my father to him. He then pointed to another guard who was fast approaching. "Light up the chapel, all its candles, for I want to pray. Do it now, and have the boys come down and play for me some sacred music."
He then took my hand and that of the priest. "It's nothing, really, you must both of you know that. It's all superstitious foolishness, but any excuse which makes a worldly man like me turn to his God is a good one. Come on, Vittorio, you and Fra Diamonte and I will pray, but for your mother put on a good face."
I was much calmer, but the prospect of being up all night in the lighted chapel was both welcome and alarming.
I went off to get my prayer books, my Mass books and books of other devotions, fine vellum books from Florence, with gilt print and beautifully edged illustrations.
I was just coming out of my room when I saw my father there with my mother, saying to her, "And do not leave the children alone for a moment, and you, you in this state, I will not tolerate this distress."
She touched her belly.
I realized she was with child again. And I realized, too, that my father was really alarmed about something. What could it mean, "Do not leave the children alone for a moment"? What could this mean?
The chapel was comfortable enough. My father had long ago provided some decent wooden and velvet-padded prie-dieux, though on feast days everyone stood. Pews didn't exist in those times.
But he also spent some of the night showing me the vault beneath the church, which opened by means of a ring handle on a trapdoor, faced in stone, the ring itself fitted down flat beneath what appeared to be only one of many marble inlaid ornaments in the floor tiles.
I knew of these crypts but had been whipped for sneaking into them when I was a child, and my father had told me back then how disappointed in me he'd been that I couldn't keep a family secret.
That admonition had hurt far more than the whipping. And I'd never asked to go with him into the crypts, which I knew he had done over the years now and then. I thought treasure was down there, and secrets of the pagans.
Well, I saw now there was a cavernous room, carved high and deep out of the earth, and faced with stone, and that it was full of varied treasure. There were old chests and even old books in heaps. And two bolted doorways.
"Those lead to old burial places that you don't need to go to," he said, "but you need to know of this place now. And remember it."
When we came back up into the chapel, he put the trapdoor right, laid down the ring, relaid the marble tile, and the whole was quite invisible.
Fra Diamonte pretended not to have seen. My mother was asleep and so were the children.
We all fell asleep before dawn in the chapel.
My father walked out in the courtyard at sunup, when the cocks were crowing all over the villages inside the walls, and he stretched and looked up at the sky and then shrugged his shoulders.
Two of my uncles ran at him, demanding to know what Signore from where dared to propose a siege against us and when we were supposed to have this battle.
"No, no, no, you've got it all wrong," m
y father said. "We're not going to war. You go back to bed."
But he had no sooner spoken these words than a ripping scream brought us all around, and through the opening courtyard gates there came one of the village girls, one of our near and dear girls, shrieking the terrible words: "He's gone, the baby's gone, they've taken him."
The rest of the day was a relentless search for this missing child. But no one could find him. And it was soon discovered that one other child had also vanished without a trace. He had been a half-wit, rather beloved because he caused no harm, but so addle-brained he couldn't even much walk. And everyone was ashamed to say that they did not even know how long that half-wit had been missing.
By dusk, I thought I would go mad if I didn't get to see my father alone, if I couldn't push my way into the locked chambers where he sat with his uncles and the priests arguing and fighting. Finally, I hammered so loudly on the door and kicked so much that he let me in.
The meeting was about to break up and he drew me down by himself, and he said with wild eyes: "Do you see what they've done? They took the very tribute they demanded of me. They took it! I refused it and they took it."
"But what tribute? You mean the children?"
He was wild-eyed. He rubbed his unshaven face, and he crashed his fist down on his desk, and then he pushed over all his writing things.
"Who do they think they are that they come to me by night and demand that I tender to them those infants unwanted by anyone?"
"Father, what is this? You must tell me."
"Vittorio, you will tomorrow be off to Florence, at the first light, and with the letters I mean to write tonight. I need more than country priests to fight this. Now get ready for the journey."
He looked up quite suddenly. He appeared to listen, and then to look about. I could see the light was gone from the windows. We ourselves were just dim figures, and he had thrown the candelabra down. I picked it up.
I watched him sidelong as I took one of the candles and lighted it by the torch at the door and brought it back, and then lighted the other candles.
He listened, still and alert, and then without making a sound he rose to his feet, his fists on the desk, seemingly uncaring of the light that the candles threw on his shocked and wary face.
"What do you hear, my Lord?" I said, using the formal address for him without so much as realizing it.
"Evil," he whispered. "Malignant things such as God only suffers to live because of our sins. Arm yourself well. Bring your mother, your brother and your sister to the chapel, and hurry. The soldiers have their orders."
"Shall I have some supper brought there as well, just bread and beer, perhaps?" I asked.
He nodded as though that were scarcely a concern.
Within less than an hour we were all gathered inside the chapel, the entire family, which included then five uncles and four aunts, and with us were two nurses and Fra Diamonte.
The little altar was decked out as if for Mass, with the finest embroidered altar cloth and the thickest golden candlesticks with blazing candles. The Image of Our Crucified Christ shone in the light, an ancient colorless and thin wooden carving that had hung on the wall there since the time of St. Francis, when the great saint was supposed to have stopped at our castle two centuries ago.
It was a naked Christ, common in those times, and a figure of tortured sacrifice, nothing as robust and sensual as those crucifixes made these days, and it stood out powerfully in contrast to the parade of freshly painted saints on the walls in their brilliant scarlet and gold finery.
We sat on plain brown benches brought in for us, nobody speaking a word, for Fra Diamonte had that morning said Mass and bestowed into the Tabernacle the Body and Blood of Our Lord in the form of the Sacred Host, and the chapel was now, as it were, put to its full purpose as the House of God.
We did eat the bread, and drink a little bit of the beer near the front doors, but we kept quiet.
Only my father repeatedly went out, walking boldly into the torch-lighted courtyard and calling up to his soldiers in the towers and on the walls, and even sometimes being gone to climb up and see for himself that all was well under his protection.
My uncles were all armed. My aunts said their rosaries fervently. Fra Diamonte was confused, and my mother seemed pale to death and sick, perhaps from the baby in her womb, and she clung to my sister and brother, who were by this time pretty frankly frightened.
It seemed we would pass the night without incident.
It couldn't have been two hours before dawn when I was awakened from a shallow slumber by a horrid scream.
At once my father was on his feet, and so were my uncles, drawing out their swords as best they could with their knotted old fingers.
Screams rose all around in the night, and there came the alarms from the soldiers and the loud riotous clanging of old bells from every tower.
My father grabbed me by the arm. "Vittorio, come/' he said, and at once, pulling up the handle of the trapdoor, he threw it back and thrust into my hand a great candle from the altar.
"Take your mother, your aunts, your sister and your brother down, now, and do not come out, no matter what you hear! Do not come out. Lock the trapdoor above you and stay there! Do as I tell you!"
At once I obeyed, snatching up Matteo and Bartola and forcing them down the stone steps in front of me.
My uncles had rushed through the doors into the courtyard, shouting their ancient war cries, and my aunts stumbled and fainted and clutched to the altar and would not be moved, and my mother clung to my father.
My father was in a very paroxysm. I reached out for my eldest aunt, but she was in a dead faint before the altar, and my father thundered back to me, forced me into the crypt and shut the door.
I had no choice but to latch the trapdoor as he had shown me how to do, and to turn with the flickering candle in my hand and face the terrified Bartola and Matteo.
"Go down all the way," I cried, "all the way."
They nearly fell, trying to move backward down the steep narrow steps that were by no means easy to descend, their faces turned towards me.
"What is it, Vittorio, why do they want to hurt us?" Bartola asked.
"I want to fight them," Matteo said, "Vittorio, give me your dagger. You have a sword. It's not fair."
"Shhh, be quiet, do as our father said. Do you think it pleases me that I can't be out there with the men? Quiet!"
I choked back my tears. My mother was up there! My aunts!
The air was cold and damp, but it felt good. I broke out in a sweat, and my arm ached from holding the big golden candlestick. Finally we sank down in a huddle, the three of us at the far end of the chamber, and it felt soothing to me to touch the cold stone.
But in the interval of our collective silence I could hear through the heavy floor howls from above, terrible cries of fear and panic, and rushing feet, and even the high chilling whinnies of the horses. It sounded as if horses had come crashing into the chapel itself over our heads, which was not at all impossible.
I rose to my feet and rushed to the two other doors of the crypt, those which led to the burial chambers or whatever they were, I didn't care! I moved the latch on one, and could see nothing but a low passage, not even tall enough for me, and barely wide enough for my shoulders.
I turned back, holding the only light, and saw the children rigid with fear, gazing up at the ceiling as the murderous cries continued.
"I smell fire," Bartola whispered suddenly, her face wet at once with tears. "Do you smell it, Vittorio? I hear it."
I did hear it and I did smell it.
"Both of you make the Sign of the Cross; pray now," I said, "and trust in me. We will get out of here."
But the clamor of the battle went on, the cries did not die out, and then suddenly, so suddenly it was as wondrous and frightful as the noise itself, there fell a silence.
A silence fell over all, and it was too complete to spell victory.
Bartola and Matteo c
lung to me, on either side.
Above, there was a clatter. The chapel doors were being thrown back, and then quite suddenly the trapdoor was yanked up and open, and in the glimmer of firelight beyond I saw a dark slender long-haired figure.
In the gust my candle went out.
Except for the infernal flicker above and beyond, we were committed unmercifully to total darkness.
Once again distinctly, I saw the outline of this figure, a tall, stately female with great long locks and a waist small enough for both my hands as she appeared to fly down the stairs soundlessly towards me.
How in the name of Heaven could this be, this woman?
