Blood and Gold tvc-8

by Anne Rice

And into it he slipped using his immense blood drinker's skill to play the shadows and confuse those who might have seen him as he cleaved to the mud walls.

  I was near to him always but it was not my place to interfere or instruct. Indeed, I was gripped with horror, for the place seemed infinitely worse than I had ever guessed from the probing of his fevered mind.

  With quiet misery, he saw the room in which he'd made ikons with its tables and pots of paints.

  He saw the long mud corridors through which he'd walked once as a young monk, giving food and drink to those half buried alive.

  At last he came out of it, shivering, and he clung to me.

  "I would have perished in a mud cell," he whispered, looking at me, begging me to understand the import of it. His face was twisted with pain.

  Then turning away swiftly, he went down towards the half-frozen river, searching for the house in which he'd been born.

  With no difficulty he found it, and he entered it—the splendid Venetian, dazzling and confusing the family gathered there.

  Once again I kept my distance, settling for the silence and the wind, and the voices I could hear with preternatural ears. Within moments he had left them with a fortune in gold coin and come out again into the falling snow.

  I reached out to take his arm and comfort him. But he turned away. He wouldn't look at me. Something obsessed him,

  "My mother was there," he whispered, as he looked down once more towards the river. "She didn't know me. So be it. I gave them what I had to give."

  Again I tried to embrace him, but he shook me off.

  "What's wrong then?" I asked. "Why do you stare? Why do you look that way towards the river? What would you do? "

  How I wished I could read his mind! His mind, and his alone, was shut to me! And how angry and determined he looked.

  "My father wasn't killed in the grasslands," he said, his voice quavering, the wind whipping his auburn hair. "My father is alive. He's in the tavern down there."

  "You want to see him?"

  "I have to see him. I have to tell him that I didn't die! Didn't you listen to them talking in my house to me?"

  "No," I said- "I gave you your time with them. Was I wrong?"

  "They said he'd become the drunkard because he had failed to save his son." He glared at me as if I had done him some dreadful wrong. "My father, Ivan, the brave one, the hunter. Ivan, the warrior, the singer of songs whom everyone loved—Ivan is the drunkard now because he failed to save his son!"

  "Be calm. We'll go to the tavern. You can tell him in your own way—."

  He waved me off as though I were annoying him, and he set off down the street with a mortal tread.

  Together we entered the tavern. It was dark and full of the scent of burning oil. Fishermen, traders, killers, drank here together. Everyone took notice of us for a moment and then ignored us, but Arnadeo at once spied a man lying on a bench to the back of the rectangular room which made up the place.

  Again, I wanted to leave him to what he meant to do, but I feared for him and I listened as he sat down now close to this sleeping man.

  It was the man of memory and the man of visions, that I knew, as soon as I studied him. I recognized him by his red hair and red mustache and beard. Amadeo's father, the hunter who had taken him out of the monastery that day for a dangerous mission, to ride out in search of a fort which the Mongols had already destroyed.

  I shrank back into the shadows. I watched as the luminous child removed his left glove and laid his chill supernatural hand upon the forehead of the sleeping father. I saw die bearded man wake. I heard them speak.

  In rambling drunken confession, the father gave forth his guilt in abundance as though it belonged to anyone who roused him.

  He had shot arrow after arrow. He had gone after the fierce Tatars with his sword. Every other man in the party had died. And his son, my Amadeo, stolen, and he was now Ivan the Drunkard, yes, he confessed it. He could scarcely hunt enough to buy his drink. He was a warrior no more. Patiently, slowly, Amadeo spoke to him, pulling him out of his ramblings, revealing the truth with carefully chosen words.

  "I am your son, sir. I did not die that day. Yes, they took me. But I am alive."

  Never had I seen Amadeo so obsessed with either love or misery, with either happiness or grief. But the man was stubborn, the man was drunk, and the man wanted one thing from this strange person prodding him and that was more wine.

  From the proprietor I bought a bottle of sack for this man who wouldn't listen, who wouldn't look at this exquisite young one who sought to claim his attention now.

  I gave the bottle of sack to Amadeo.

  Then I moved along the wall so that I might better see Amadeo's face, and all I saw there was obsession. He must make this man understand.

  Patiently, he spoke until his words had penetrated the drunken haze from which the man stared at him.

  "Father, I've come to tell you. They took me to a far-away place, to the city of Venice, and I fell into the hands of one who made me rich, Father, rich, and gave me learning. I'm alive, sir. I'm as you see me now.

  Oh, how strange was this speech coming from one infused with the Blood. Alive? How so, alive, Amadeo?

  But my thoughts were my own in the darkness. I had no role in this reunion.

  At last, the man, sitting up to face his son, began to understand.

  Amadeo was trembling, his eyes fixed on those of his father.

  "Forget me now, please, Father," he begged. "But remember this, for the love of God. I shall never be buried in the muddy caves of the monastery. No. Other things may happen to me, but that,

  I won't suffer. Because of you, that you wouldn't have it, that you came that day and demanded I ride out with you, that I be your son!"

  What on earth was Amadeo saying? What did these words mean?

  He was on the verge of crying the terrible blood tears which we can never really hide. But as he rose from the bench where his father sat, the elder caught him tightly by his hand.

  He knew his son! Andrei, he called him. Fie had recognized him for who he was.

  "Father, I must go," said Amadeo, "but you must never forget that you saw me. You must never forget what I said, that you saved me from those dark and muddy caves. Father, you gave me life, not death. Don't be the drunkard anymore, Father. Be the hunter again. Bring the Prince meat for his table. Be the singer of songs. Remember that I came to tell you this myself."

  "I want you, my son, stay with me," said the man. His drunken languor had left him, and he held tight to Amadeo's hand. "Who will ever believe that I saw you?"

  Amadeo's tears had risen. Could the man see the blood?

  At last Amadeo pulled back, and removing his glove, he pulled off his rings, and he placed these in his father's hands.

  "Remember me by these," he said, "and tell my mother that I was the man who came to see her tonight. She didn't know me. Tell her the gold is good gold."

  "Stay with me, Andrei," said the father. "This is your home. Who is it that takes you away now? " It was more than Amadeo could bear.

  "I live in the city of Venice, Father," he said. "It's what I know now I have to go."

  He was out of the tavern so quickly his father could not see it, and I, once seeing what he meant to do, had preceded him, and we stood in the snow-covered muddy street together.

  "It's time for us to leave this place, Master," he said to me. His gloves were gone, and the cold was fierce. "Oh, but that I had never come here and never seen him and never known that he suffered that I had been lost."

  "But look," I said, "your mother comes. I'm sure of it. She knew you and there, she cornes," I pointed at the small figure approaching who held a bundle in her arms.

  "Andrei," she said as she drew closer. "It's the last one you ever painted. Andrei, I knew it was you. Who else would have come? Andrei, this is the ikon your father brought back on the day you were lost."

  Why didn't he take it from her hands?

&nb
sp; "You must keep it, Mother," he said of this ikon which he had once linked to his destiny. He was weeping. "Keep it for the little ones. I won't take it, no."

  Patiently, she accepted this.

  And then another small present she entrusted to him, a painted egg—one of those treasures of Kiev which mean so much to the people who decorate them with intricate designs.

  Quickly, gently, he took it from her, and then he embraced her, and in a fervent whisper assured her that he had done nothing wicked to acquire his wealth and that he might some night be able to come again. Oh, what lovely lies.

  But I could see that this woman, though he loved her, did not matter to him. Yes, he would give her gold, for that meant nothing. But it was the man who had mattered. The man mattered as the monks had mattered. It was the man who had wrung the strong emotions from him. The man had brought from him bold words.

  I was stunned by all. But wasn't Amadeo stunned by it himself? He had thought the man dead, and so had I.

  But finding him alive, Amadeo had revealed the obsession—the man had fought the monks for Amadeo's very soul.

  And as we made our journey back to Venice, I knew that Amadeo's love for his father was far greater than any love he had ever felt for me.

  We did not speak of it, you understand, but I knew that it was the figure of his father who reigned in Amadeo's heart. It was the figure of that powerful bearded man who had so vigorously fought for life rather than death within the monastery who held supremacy over all conflicts that Amadeo was ever to know.

  I had seen it with my own eyes, this obsession. I had seen it in a matter of moments in a riverfront tavern, but I had known it for what it was.

  Always before this journey to Russia I had thought the split in Amadeo's mind was between the rich and varied art of Venice and the strict and stylized art of old Russia.

  But now I knew that was not so.

  The split in him was between die monastery with its ikons and its penance on the one hand, and his father, the robust hunter who had dragged him away from the monastery on that fateful day.

  Never again did Amadeo speak of his fadier and mother. Never agajn did he speak of Kiev. The beautiful painted egg he placed within his sarcophagus without ever explaining its significance to me.

  And on certain nights when I painted in my studio, working fiercely on this or that canvas, he would come to keep me company, and it seemed he perused my work with new eyes.

  When would he finally pick up the brushes and paint? I didn't know, but such a question didn't matter anymore. He was mine and mine forever. He could do what he pleased.

  Yet silently in my secret soul, I suspected that Arnadeo held me in contempt. All I taught of art, of history, of beauty, of civilization—all this was meaningless to him.

  When the Tatars captured him, when the ikon fell from his arms into the grass, it was not his fate that was sealed; it was his mind.

  Yes, I could dress him in finery and teach him different languages, and he could love Bianca, and dance with her exquisitely to slow and rhythmic music, and he could learn to talk philosophy, and write poetry as well.

  But his soul held nothing sacred but that old art and that man who lay drinking out his nights and days by the Dnieper in Kiev. And I, with all my power, and all my blandishments, could not replace Amadeo's father in Amadeo's mind.

  Why was I so jealous? Wliy did this knowledge sting me so much?

  I loved Amadeo as I had loved Pandora. I loved him as I had loved Botticelli. Amadeo was among these, the great loves of my long life.

  I tried to forget my jealousy or ignore it. After all, what was to be done about it? Should I remind him of this journey and torment him with questions? I could not do such a thing.

  But I sensed that these concerns were dangerous to me as an immortal, and that never before had anything of this nature so tortured me or made me weak. I had expected Amadeo, the blood drinker, to look upon his family with detachment and no such thing had taken place!

  I had to admit that my love for Amadeo was all caught up with my involvement with mortals, that I had plunged myself into their company, and he himself was still so very hopelessly close to them that it would take him centuries to gain the distance from mortals which I had experienced on die very night when I was first given the Blood.

  There had been no Druid grove for Amadeo. There had been no treacherous journey to Egypt; there had been no rescue of the King and Queen.

  Indeed, as I mulled this over quickly I resolved I would not entrust him with the mystery of Those Who Must Be Kept even though the words had once or twice passed my lips.

  Perhaps before the making of him, I had thought idly that I would take him to the shrine at once. I would beg Akasha to receive him, as she had once received Pandora.

  But now I thought otherwise. Let him be more advanced; let him be more nearly perfected. Let him become more wise.

  And was he not company and consolation for me now more than I ever dreamt? Even if a bad mood overtook him he remained with me. Even if his eyes were dull as though the dazzling colors of my paintings did not matter to him, was he not near at hand?

  Yes, he was quiet for a time after the journey to Russia. But I knew his frame of mind would pass. And indeed it did.

  Within a few short months, he was no longer aloof and moody but had come back to be my companion, and was once again visiting the various feasts and balls of the great citizens which I attended regularly, and writing short poems for Bianca, and arguing with her about various paintings which I had done.

  Ah, Bianca, how we loved her. And how often did I search her mind to make certain that she had no inkling even now that we were not human beings.

  Bianca was the only mortal I admitted to my studio, but naturally I could not work with my full speed and force when she was there. I had to lift a mortal arm to hold the paintbrush but it was rnore than worth it to hear her pleasant commentary with Amadeo who also perceived in rny works some grand design which was not there.

  All was going well when, one night as I came down upon the roof of the palazzo, quite alone, for I had left Amadeo in the company of Bianca, I sensed that a very young mortal was watching me from the roof of the palazzo across the canal.

  Now I had come down so swiftly that not even Amadeo could have seen it had he been watching, yet this distant mortal marked my presence and when I realized it, I realized quite a deal more as well.

  Here was a mortal spy who suspected me to be other than human. Here was a mortal spy who had been observing me for some time.

  Never in all my years had I known any such a threat to my secrecy. And naturally I was tempted to immediately conclude that my life in Venice had failed. Just when I thought I had fooled an entire city, I was to be caught for what I was.

  But this young mortal had nothing to do with the grand society in which I moved. I knew it die moment I penetrated his mind. He was no great Venetian, no painter, no cleric, no poet, no alchemist, and certainly no member of the Grand Council of Venice. On the contrary, he was a most strange sort of being, a scholar of the supernatural, a spy upon creatures such as me.

  What could this mean? What could this be?

  At this point, meaning to confront him and terrify him, I came to the very edge of the roof garden and peered across the canal at him, and there I made out his stealthy shape, and how he meant to cloak himself, and how fearful yet fascinated he was.

  Yes, he knew me to be a blood drinker. Indeed, he had some name for me: vampire. And he had been watching me for several years! He had in fact glimpsed me in grand salons and ballrooms, so I might indeed write this off to my carelessness. And on the night that I had first opened rny house to the citizens of Venice, he had come.

  All this his mind gave me rather easily without the young man realizing it, obviously, and then using the Mind Gift I sent a very direct message to him.

  This is folly. Interfere with me and you will surely die. I won't give you a second warning. Move away
from my household. Leave Venice. Is it worth your life to know what you want to know of me?

  I saw him visibly startled by the message. And then to my pure shock I received a distinct mind message from him:

  We mean you no harm. We are scholars. We offer understanding. We offer shelter. We watch and we are always here.

  Then he gave way to utter fear and fled the roof.

  With little difficulty I heard him make his way down the staircases through the palazzo and then I saw him come out into the canal arid hail a gondola which took him away. I had caught a good look at him as he stepped into the boat. He was a tall man, lean and fair of skin, an Englishman, and he was dressed in severe clothes of black. He was very frightened. He did not even look up as the boat took him away.

  I stood on the roof for a long time, feeling the blessed wind, and wondering in its silence, what I should do about this strange discovery. I thought over his distinct message and the power of mind with which he'd sent it to me.

  Scholars? What sort of scholars? And the other words. How very remarkable indeed.

  I cannot exaggerate how odd this was.

  It struck me with full force that there had been moments in my long life when I would have found his message irresistible, so great had been my loneliness, so great had been my longing to be understood.

  But now, with all of Venice receiving me into its finest company, I did not feel such a thing. I had Bianca when I wanted to ramble on about the work of Bellini or my beloved Botticelli. I had Amadeo with whom to share my golden tomb.

  Indeed, I was enjoying a Perfect Time. I wondered if for every immortal there was a Perfect Time. I wondered if it corresponded to the prime of life in mortals—those years when you are strongest and can see with the greatest clarity, those years when you can give your trust most truly to others, and seek to bring about a perfect happiness for yourself.

  Botticelli, Bianca, Amadeo—these were the loves of my Perfect Time.

  Nevertheless, it was a stunning promise, that which the young Englishman had made. "We offer understanding. We offer shelter. We watch and we are always here."

  I resolved to ignore this, to see what came of it, not to allow it to impede me in the slightest as I enjoyed my life.