Blood and Gold tvc-8

by Anne Rice

  I let Akasha know how much I revered her and how dangerous it had been for me to come. Only out of caution had I remained away. I would never on my own have left the shrine deserted. Indeed, I should have been here, using my vampiric skill to create paintings for the walls or to make for them mosaics— for though I never thought of myself as having possessed any skill in this regard— I had used my powers to make passable decorations for the shrine in Antioch, indeed very good ones, whiling away the lonely hours of the night.

  But here the walls were simply whitewashed and the abundant flowers I'd brought seemed welcome color indeed.

  "My Queen, help me," I prayed. And then as I meant to explain how miserable I was over the nearness of these two fellow blood drinkers, a dreadful and obvious thought came to my mind. I could never have Avicus for a companion. I could never have anyone. For any blood drinker of even passable skill could learn from my mind the secret of Those Who Must Be Kept.

  It had been vain and foolish for me to offer clothing and lodging to Avicus and Mael. I was doomed to be alone. I felt sickened and cold in my misery. I looked up to the Queen and I could form no prayers with words.

  Then quite helplessly I begged: "Bring Pandora back to me. If ever you brought her to me in the first place, bring her back, I beg you, I'll never quarrel with her again. I'll never abuse her again.

  This is unendurable, this loneliness. I need to hear the sound of her voice. I need to see her."

  On and on I went in this manner, until suddenly I became alarmed that Avicus and Mael might be near to me, and I rose to my feet, straightened out my garments and made to take my leave.

  "I'll return," I told the Mother and Father. "I'll make this shrine beautiful like the one in Antioch. Only let us wait until they've gone." I was about to go out when abruptly the thought occurred to me—I needed more of Akasha's powerful blood. I needed it to be stronger than my foes. I needed it to endure what I had to endure. Now understand, never since the first night that I had drunk from Akasha, had I taken more of her blood. That first night had been in Egypt when she told me with the Mind Gift to take her out of the land. Then and only then had I experienced the blood. Even when Pandora was made a blood drinker, and she drank from Akasha, I had not dared to approach the Mother. In fact, I knew well how the Mother might strike down those who came by force to steal the Sacred Blood from her, for I'd witnessed such an aborted crime.

  Now as I stood before the small dais with its seated royalty, the idea obsessed me. I must again take the Mother's blood. In silence I begged permission. I waited for a sign. When Pandora had been made, Akasha had lifted her arm to beckon. I had seen it and marveled at it. I wanted such a thing to happen now.

  No such sign came to me, however, and yet the obsession raged within me, until I moved forward, quite determined to drink the Divine Blood or die. I found myself suddenly embracing my cold and lovely Akasha with one arm behind her and the other lifted so that my hand held her head.

  Closer and closer I came to her neck.

  At last my lips were pressed against her cool unresponsive flesh and she had made no move to destroy me. I felt no fatal clasp on the back of my head. Silent as ever she remained in my arms. Finally my teeth broke the surface of her skin and the thick blood, blood like that of no other among us, came into my mouth. At once I found myself dreamy and cast adrift in an impossible paradise of sunshine and green grass and flowering trees. What a comfort it was, what a balm. It seemed a garden of old Roman myth, one somehow familiar to me, protected forever from winter, and full of the most blessed blooms.

  Yes, familiar and forever safe, this verdant place.

  The blood ravaged me, and I could feel it hardening me, as it had the very first time it had come into my veins. The sun of the familiar garden grew brighter and brighter until the flowering trees began to disappear in the light. Part of me, some very small and weak part of me was afraid of it, this sun, but the larger part relished it, relished the warmth that was passing into me, and the comfort of what I beheld, and then all at once, as quickly as it had begun, this dream was ended.

  I lay on the cold hard floor of the shrine, several yards away from the foot of the dais. I was on my back. For a moment I was uncertain of what had happened. Was I injured? Was there to be some terrible justice in store? But within seconds, I realized I was as sound of limb as ever, and that the blood had greatly invigorated me just as I'd supposed. I rose to my knees, and made certain with quick eyes that the Royal Pair remained as before. Why had I been thrown away from Akasha with such violence? Nothing was changed.

  Then for a long time I gave my silent thanks for what had taken Place. Only when I was certain that nothing further was to happen, I rose to my feet, and declaring that I would be back soon to begin my decorations of the shrine, I left. I was enormously excited as I returned to my house. My increased agility, and keenness of mind were more than welcome. I determined to test myself, and taking my dagger, I plunged it all the way through my left hand, and then withdrew it, watching the wound as it immediately healed.

  At once I spread out a scroll of the finest parchment and I began to write in my personal code which no other could read, of what had taken place. I didn't know why, after taking the Sacred Blood, I had found myself on the floor of the chapel.

  "The Queen has allowed me to drink again from her, and if this is to happen often, if I can take nourishment from our mysterious majesty, I can attain enormous strength. Even the blood drinker Avicus will be no match for me, though this might have been the case before this night."

  Indeed, as it turned out I was precisely right about the implications of this incident, and during all the centuries to come, I approached Akasha again and again.

  I did this not only when severely injured—a tale I mean to tell you—but I did it at times when the fancy caught hold of me as if she had put it in my mind. But never, never, as I have confessed with bitterness, did she ever press her teeth to my throat and take from me my own blood. No, that distinction was left for the blood drinker Lestat, as I have said.

  In the following months, this new blood served me well. I found that the Mind Gift was stronger in me. I could well detect the presence of Mael and Avicus when they were quite far away, and though such spying opens a mental passage as it were by which they could see me as their observer, I was able, after seeing them, to quickly close myself off.

  I was also able to tell quite easily when they were searching for my presence, and of course I heard, positively heard, their footsteps when they were in the precincts of my house. I also opened my house to humans!

  The decision came to me one evening as I lay on the grass in my own garden dreaming. I would have regular banquets. I would invite the notorious and the slandered. I would have music and dim lamps.

  I considered the matter from every perspective! I knew that I could arrange it. I knew that I could fool mortals as to my nature; and how their company would soothe my lonely heart! I did not go to my daily rest in my house, but in a hiding place far from it, so what danger could there be in this new decision? None whatsoever!

  It could easily be done.

  Naturally, I would never feed upon these guests. They would enjoy complete safety and hospitality under my roof, always. I would hunt in far precincts and under cover of darkness. But my house, my house would be full of warmth and music and life.

  Well, I went about it, and it proved far simpler than I had ever dreamt.

  Having my sweet and good-natured old slaves lay out tables rich with food and drink, I brought in the disreputable philosophers to talk away the night to me, and I listened to them in their rambling, as I did to the old and neglected soldiers who had tales of war to tell which their own children did not want to hear.

  Oh, this was a miracle, the admission of mortals to my very rooms, mortals who thought me to be alive as I nodded and coaxed them in their wine-fed stories. I was warmed by it, and I wished that Pandora were here with me to enjoy it for it was precisely t
he sort of thing which she would have wanted us to do.

  Soon my house was never empty, and I made the amazing discovery that should I become bored in the midst of this heated and drunken company it was a simple matter for me to get up and go into my library and begin writing, for all the drunken guests simply went on with each other, hardly noticing what I did and only rousing themselves to greet me when I returned.

  Understand, I did not become a friend to any of these dishonorable or disgraced creatures. I was only a warm-hearted host and spectator who listened without criticism and never—until dawn— turned anyone away.

  But it was a far cry from my former solitude, and without the strengthening blood of Akasha, and perhaps without my quarrel with Avicus and Mael, I would never have taken this step.

  And so my house became crowded and noisy, and wine sellers sought me out to offer their new vintages, and young men came to me, begging me to listen to their songs.

  Even a few fashionable philosophers appeared at my door from time to time, and once in a while a great teacher, and these I enjoyed immensely, making very certain that the lamps were very dim and that the rooms were most shadowy, so frightened was I that the sharp-minded might discover that I was not what I pretended to be.

  As for my trips to the shrine and Those Who Must Be Kept, I knew A traveled in total secrecy for my mind was more securely cloaked.

  And on certain nights—when the banquet in my house could well do without me—and I held myself to be entirely safe from all intrusion, I went to the shrine and did the work which I supposed would comfort my poor Akasha and Enkil.

  During these years, rather than undertake mosaics which had proved very difficult for me in Antioch, though I had succeeded, I made murals on the walls of the common kind seen in so many Roman houses, of frolicking gods and goddesses in gardens of eternal springtime and bounteous flowers and fruit.

  I was hard at work one evening, singing to myself, happy among all the pots of paint when I suddenly realized that the garden I was faithfully rendering was in fact the garden I had seen when I drank Akasha's blood.

  I stopped, sat still on the floor of the shrine, as if I were a child, with crossed legs, and looked up at the venerable Parents. Was it meant to be?

  I had no idea. The garden looked vaguely familiar. Had I seen such a garden long before I had drunk Akasha's blood? I couldn't remember. And I, Marius, prided myself upon my memory. I went on with my work. I covered over a wall and started all over again to render it more nearly perfect. I made better trees and shrubbery. I painted the sunlight and the effects of it upon green leaves.

  When inspiration left me, I would use my blood drinker delicacy to creep into some fashionable villa outside the walls of the enormous and ever expanding city, and by the faintest light peruse the inevitably lush murals for new figures, new dances, new attitudes and smiles.

  Of course I could do this easily without waking anyone in the house, and sometimes I need have no worry of waking anyone, for no one was there.

  Rome was immense, busy as ever, but with all the wars, with all the shifting politics and scheming plotters and passing Emperors, people were being banished and recalled regularly, and great houses were often empty for me to quietly wander and enjoy.

  Meanwhile, in my house, my banquets had become so famous that my rooms were always full. And no matter what my goal for any night, I commenced it among the warm company of drunkards who'd begun their feasting and quarreling before I ever arrived.

  "Ah, Marius, welcome!" they would cry out as I came into the room.

  How I smiled at them all, my treasured company. Never did anyone suspect me of anything, and I did grow to love some of these delightful creatures, but always I remembered that I was a predator of men, and could not therefore be loved by them, and so I kept my heart covered as it were.

  And so with this mortal comfort, the years passed, whilst I kept myself busy with the energy of a madman, either writing in my journals and subsequently burning them, or painting on the walls of the shrine.

  Meantime, the wretched serpent worshiping blood drinkers came again, attempting to establish their absurd temple within one of the neglected catacombs where mortal Christians no longer gathered, and once again, Avicus and Mael drove them away.

  I observed all this, immensely relieved that I had not been called upon to do anything, and painfully remembering when I had slaughtered such a band in Antioch and subsequently fallen into the piteous madness that had cost me the love of Pandora apparently for all time. But no, not for all time; surely she would come to me, I thought. I wrote about it in my journals.

  I put down my pen; I closed my eyes. I longed for her. I prayed that she would come to me. I envisioned her with her rippling brown hair and melancholy oval face. I tried to remember with exactitude the shape and the fine color of her dark eyes.

  How she had argued with me. How she had known the poets and philosophers. How she had been able to reason. And I, I had mocked her all too much. I cannot tell you how many years passed in this fashion.

  I was aware that even though we did not speak to one another, or even face each other in the street, Avicus and Mael had become companions to me by their very presence. And as for their keeping Rome clean of other blood drinkers, I was in their debt. Now, I didn't pay much attention to what was happening with the government of the Empire as I think you can ascertain from all I've said.

  But in truth I cared passionately about the fate of the Empire. For the Empire to me was the civilized world. And though I was a secret hunter by night, a filthy killer of humans, nevertheless I was a Roman, and I lived in all other ways a civilized life.

  I suppose that I assumed, much like many an old Senator of the time, that sooner or later the endless battles of the Emperors would sort themselves out. A great man, with the strength of Octavian, would rise to unite the entire world once again. Meantime the armies would patrol the borders, endlessly driving back the barbarian menace, and if the responsibility fell, over and over again to the armies to choose an Emperor, so be it, as long as the Empire remained intact.

  As for the Christians who existed everywhere, I did not know what to make of them at all. It was a great mystery to me that this little cult, which had begun in Jerusalem of all places, could have grown to such tremendous size.

  Before I'd left Antioch, I'd been amazed by the success of Christianity, of how it was becoming organized, and how it seemed to thrive on division and dissent.

  But Antioch was the East as I have said. That Rome was capitulating to the Christians was beyond my wildest dreams. Slaves had everywhere gone over to the new religion, but so had men and women of high position. And persecutions had no effect at all. Before I continue, however, allow me to point out what other historians have also pointed out, that before Christianity, the entire ancient world lived in a kind of religious harmony. No one persecuted anyone else for religion. Even the Jews who would associate with no one else were easily infolded by Greeks and Romans and allowed to practice their extremely anti-social beliefs. It was they who rebelled against Rome, not Rome which sought to enslave them. And so this harmony was worldwide.

  Of course all of this led me to believe, when I first heard Christians preaching, that there was no chance of this religion gaining ground. It placed far too much responsibility upon the new members to avoid all contact with the revered gods of Greece and Rome, and so I thought the sect would soon die out.

  Also there was the constant strife among the Christians as to what they really believed. Surely they would destroy one another, I thought, and the whole body of ideas, or whatever it could be called, would dissolve.

  But no such thing happened, and the Rome in which I lived in the three hundreds was thronged with Christians, as I've said. For their apparently magical ceremonies, they met in the catacombs and also in private homes.

  Now as I went along, watching all this, and yet ignoring it, there me a couple of events which stunned me out of my dreams. Let me ex
plain.

  As I have said, the Emperors of Rome were constantly at war. No sooner had the old Roman Senate ratified the appointment of one than he was murdered by another. And troops were always marching across the far-flung provinces of the Empire to establish a new Caesar where another had been put to rout.

  In the year of 305, there were two of these sovereigns known as Augusti, and two known as Caesars, and I myself did not know precisely what these titles meant. Or shall I say, I had too much contempt for all involved to know what they meant.

  Indeed these so-called "Emperors" more often than I liked were invading Italy and one by the name of Severus in the year 307 had come all the way to the gates of Rome.

  Now I, with little more than the greatness of Rome to keep me company, did not want to see my native city sacked!

  It soon became clear to me when I started to pay attention that all of Italy as well as Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and North Africa were all under the rule of the "Emperor" Maxentius, and it was he who had -repelled Severus and was now repelling yet another invader, Galerius, whom he chased away in defeat.

  This Maxentius who lived only six miles from the city walls was himself a beast. At one extremely unhappy event, he allowed the praetorians, that is, his personal guards, to massacre the people of Rome. And he was very against the Christians whom he persecuted needlessly and cruelly; and the gossip had it that he debauched the wives of outstanding citizens, thereby giving the greater offense. In fact, the Senators suffered a great deal of abuse at his hands, while he let his soldiers run riot in Rome.

  None of this meant much to me, however, until I heard that one of me other Emperors— Constantine—was marching on Rome. This was the third threat in recent years to my beloved city; and I was much relieved when Maxentius went out to fight the important battle a great distance from the walls. Of course he did this because he knew the Romans would not support him.