by Anne Rice
I was speechless. Had we ever observed such a formality before? I found myself taking her hand and leading her out into the middle of the floor, with one quick glance up at that blinding image of myself on the shield. Then I pressed my hand against her small waist, and we were moving fast in circles as the orchestra filled the room with the spirited strains of a dark and original waltz threaded through and through with mystery, with enchantment.
How perfectly lovely she was, her delicate feet moving effortlessly with the steps, and her hair such a radiant halo for her face, for her exquisite eyes. Well, if they are disappointed in me, I thought, they will look at her and they cannot find her anything but gorgeous.
Then it came to me. I had seen her like this, yes, very like this so many long years ago in this very house: I had seen her in this very gown in a small lacquered portrait of her with my father, a painting that hung on her bedroom wall and was surely gone now forever.
She was laughing as I turned her round and round, going faster and faster. The music goaded us to fantastical speed and I had the distinct feeling we were rising into the Heavens in the dance, just the two of us, turning in circles, and all the sparkling light surrounding us was starlight. But I could feel the floor beneath my feet, I could hear the click of her heels, such an erotic sound, the click of a woman’s heels, and then I saw Gregory, Gregory in his splendid robe taking her hand from me, and offering the hand of his magnificent Chrysanthe.
“Yes, my dear,” I said to Chrysanthe, “and what a pleasure.” All around us others were dancing, many partnered as we were, and the younger blood drinkers alone, swaying with their hands raised and their eyes closed, and some of the males dancing as Greek men dance in tavernas, that wonderful dance in which side by side they move one way and then the other, their hands on one another’s shoulders. The waltz had broken into a form entirely new with the deep beat of drums and the clash of cymbals and the chant of the boy sopranos, and preternatural dancers everywhere made their own patterns, their own little circles or larger groupings, describing arabesques on the dance floor.
I danced with Zenobia, and with Pandora and with Rose, my precious little Rose, and with the regal Mariana of Sicily.
“Prince, you do realize, don’t you, that there has never been such a Court as this,” she said, her face white and cold as that of Marius.
“I had that distinct feeling, madam,” I said. “But I wasn’t sure of it. Now I am, if you say so.”
Suddenly she smiled and the mask dissolved into a warm, ingratiating vital expression. “Never have such things been done before, Prince, as you and your friends have done,” she said. “And you are simple and straightforward and your smile is quick and open.”
I couldn’t think of what to say, and I think she knew it, but it didn’t concern her, and in a moment I was given over to the Great Sevraine as she, Mariana of Sicily, moved on to Teskhamen in a soutane of silver and gold.
The dancing swept me up again, wordless and wonderful, and I pondered what this great spectacle might look like to mortal eyes, or even to the eyes of my young Alain, so mortal still, but I couldn’t imagine it, and quite suddenly the strangest thought came to me, that I didn’t care what it looked like to mortal eyes. I couldn’t imagine any speculation to be more irrelevant. I almost laughed aloud. Sevraine assured me in a hushed voice that she and Gregory and the others had things “under watch” but that all was as it looked, gay and friendly.
“Yes, it is that way, isn’t it?” I said.
Sevraine fell into the arms of Marius, and I retreated to the throne, and sat back to watch the dance, to study each and every individual I could pick from the crowd, and I saw, saw perfectly, how distinctive each being was, and also I saw something else—something I’d never noticed before in the ballroom. I saw how completely at ease they were. Slowly, as my eyes moved from figure to figure, I saw how dress and dance were the full expression of the wishes of each individual; I saw how completely at peace these dancers were, talking animatedly to one another or lost in the rhythm, or just rocking on the balls of their feet, gazing about themselves as if in a swoon. I saw what I’d never seen before, that for all of them, even those who’d been at Court for the last year or more, that this was a wholly new experience. Nothing like this had ever been attempted, not in size or scope or generosity.
And there was an extraordinary atmosphere uniting us, of comfort in being amongst our own with no thought given to the mortal world whatsoever.
It was not the imitation of mortal life I’d once achieved with Louis and Claudia in our little bourgeois townhouse in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was a different kind of life, our life, defined by how we wanted to dress, to dance, to speak, to be together. And mortal life had nothing to do with it.
A thought occurred to me. I stood and moved out among the dancers. I looked for Louis, and I found him almost at once. He was dancing with Rose. They were dancing in the conventional way that men and women dance, and then breaking into other simple variations, turns, new embraces, making it up as were so many others. The music was beautiful now, or so it seemed to me, liking melodic music as I do, not taxing one to become ecstatic or crazed. I watched patiently as they danced until Viktor appeared and reached for Rose’s hand. Of course Louis released Rose and then he bowed just as if he were at a ball in old New Orleans after the opera. I came up beside him and took his hand.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Dancing with you,” I said. I turned him easily this way and that to the music. I could see he found this immediately awkward, to be dancing with me as a woman might dance with a man, and then something playful and vibrant came into his eyes. He gave himself up to it. I turned us around fast twice and then three times, and we broke the pattern and then my arm slipped around his waist and I danced beside him, in step with him, like the Greek men do it. “Do you like this better?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. He appeared brimming with happiness. But I was the one truly brimming with happiness. The music seemed to move us as if we were powerless, borne along exquisitely, and then we faced each other again and we were simply dancing in a loose, comfortable embrace, intimate, making one body and then two bodies, and one body again. All around us were dancers, dancers pressing in so that at last we were dancing without really moving our feet. But what did it matter? One can dance that way. One can dance a thousand ways. Ah, if only I could reach back over the centuries and bring the light of this ballroom into the world I had once shared with someone else. . . .
“What’s the matter?” he said to me suddenly.
“What?”
“I saw something, something in your eyes.”
“Just thought of a boy I once loved a long time ago.”
“Nicolas,” he said.
“Yes, Nicolas,” I answered. “Seemed all the little victories of life and life after death were so hard for him, happiness was so hard for him . . . joy was an agony I think, but I don’t want to think of it now.”
“Some of us are infinitely better at being miserable than happy,” he said gently. “We’re good at it, and proud of it, and we get better and better at it, and we simply don’t know what it means to be happy.”
I nodded. My thoughts were as thick and confused as the dancers, the music. But the dancers and the music were beautiful. My thoughts were not.
I could not recall ever having spoken of Nicolas to Louis, never ever even mentioning Nicolas’s name. But then I do not remember everything, as I once thought I did. There is something in us, even us, that will not allow for that, something that pushes the memory of suffering that is unbearable slowly away.
“I have no gift for being miserable,” I said.
“I know,” he said. He laughed. Such a human face. Such a lovely face.
There must surely have been twice as many blood drinkers now in this ballroom as there had ever been, and I s
ensed that I had ought to stop having such a marvelous time and return to greeting newcomers as the Prince should. But not before holding Louis for a moment, and then kissing him and telling him low in French that I loved him and always had.
It was a struggle just to make our way back to my golden throne.
I took my seat, and Louis moved off to my left in the shadows, and I watched the spectacle of the dancers, as I might the beauty of a storm.
An ancient one entered the ballroom.
I heard the heartbeat. Then I sensed the effect of the heartbeat on the crowd, the subtle awareness taking hold of the others—the awareness registering with our ancient ones. This was a creature as old as Gregory or Santh. The dancers were making way for him, stepping aside to make a path for him as he came towards me.
Slowly he approached—this tall white creature, a male with deep-set black eyes and flowing black hair, who offered me a subtle smile long before he reached me. He was a gaunt figure, taller than me, with broad shoulders and enormous bony hands, his body clothed in a simple cassock of black velvet.
I saw Gregory following him and then Seth. I felt Cyril press in close. Thorne was beside me as well.
The newcomer bowed before me.
“Prince,” said the newcomer. “Centuries ago I knew members of your Court in Egypt. But they might not remember now; I was a servant to the Queens Blood but not a soldier.”
Gregory stepped up to take the figure in his arms.
“Jabare,” he whispered. “Of course I remember you. There are no servants or soldiers here. Welcome.”
“Old friend,” said the newcomer. “Let me kiss the Prince’s ring.” I felt myself blush as he did so. I was glad suddenly that I hadn’t fed in many nights, that I was starved actually, as there wouldn’t be so much blood to flood my cheeks when someone of this venerable age paid homage to me.
“Why so shy?” Jabare asked, and there was that miracle again when the masklike face, washed clean of all expression, suddenly reflected the feelings of the heart with unmistakable warmth and sincerity.
“He doesn’t know what he has done, Jabare,” said Gregory. “That is one of Lestat’s many charms, that for all his mischief and ready wit, he is self-effacing. He doesn’t quite understand what is happening around him.”
But I do understand, I wanted to say, and suddenly there came that quickening, that deep threat of an insight so powerful it would carry me to recesses of my heart I’d never explored before, and most certainly take me out of this moment.
And I didn’t want to be taken out of it. But then I realized something. As I watched Jabare talking to Gregory, as I saw them clasp hands, as I saw them kiss, as everywhere I looked I saw contented and trusting faces, as everywhere I saw animation and discovery and heard all about me the ring of friendly voices and the ring of sweet laughter, that what I feared in that quickening was embodied by this moment, this radiant and immense moment.
I almost caught it, the full thought that had been stalking me night after night since the moment when, having brought Rhoshamandes’s headless body to this very ballroom, I’d heard those raucous cheers rising, seen those pumping fists, and thought of the rock concert stage, the old rock singer moment when mortals had been screaming my name, and raising their fists in that same manner and I’d felt so visible, so wholly known, so recognized.
Mon Dieu! It was almost there, that moment of inward turning which would redirect everything inside me.
Suddenly the music stopped. My mother came off the dance floor and stood behind me on my left, and Marius took his place on my right gesturing for all to be silent.
He introduced himself simply as Marius, known to some as Marius de Romanus, Born to Darkness in a Druid shrine some two thousand years ago.
“I promised my young friend here,” he continued, “that he wouldn’t have to speak to this assembly. I told him that I would speak and it’s my pleasure to do so. After weeks of ridiculous work, I’ve reduced our voluminous constitution to a few simple rules which I want to share with you. But I think you all know what they are, and how vital they are to all of us.”
Suddenly Benji cried out, pushing his way to the very front of the throng, “Slay the evildoer for one’s own peace of mind. And keep the secret always of our presence, our nature, and our powers!”
As Marius nodded smiling, fledglings on all sides were sharing in the approbation and laughter.
“Yes, yes, yes, forgive me, all of you young ones who have listened too long to me hold forth,” said Marius. “But truly, my brothers and sisters, those are the commandments on which our survival is built. And we welcome all of you, all of you blood drinkers of this world, to the Court, to believe in it, to honor it, and to be forever protected by it!”
Clapter, soft roars of agreement, and before me strung all through this glittering assembly I saw the pale forbidding faces of the ancients rapt and approving. I saw their nods, saw them looking to one another, saw even this one, this ancient Jabare, nodding.
“Hunters we are,” said Marius, “and from the human race we take what we must have to live and we do it without regret. But we are gathered here tonight to declare our loyalty to one another, our embrace of what we are, not just in ourselves but in all who share the Dark Blood with us, regardless of age or history.”
He paused, letting the applause come. Everywhere I looked I saw eyes fixed on him, faces waiting. And he went on now, raising his voice effortlessly without the slightest distortion.
“You know how we came together,” he said. “You’ve heard how, from the simple desire to help one another against a common enemy, we came out of the darkness which concealed us from our fellows. You know the story of how the common enemy proved to be Amel, that spirit who gave birth to us. You all know how that one was freed from his innumerable invisible chains without bringing harm to a single one of us.
“But what has brought us here tonight is the overwhelming need to celebrate events which have now changed our history forever.
“I don’t speak of the stories and films made by Lestat de Lioncourt that gave to each and every one of you the history you might never have learned in any other way; and I don’t speak of this young one’s great generosity in creating this great edifice that can contain every single blood drinker of our tribe. Those are good things and things that benefit all of us.
“But I speak now of Lestat’s battle with Rhoshamandes.”
I felt my face grow warm. I lowered my eyes. In a flash I saw it all, and didn’t care who read it from my mind, for it was truly next to nothing. And slowly I realized that Marius had paused and was looking at me.
“I speak,” Marius said, “of the simple fact that when it seemed a certainty that Rhoshamandes would destroy everything that had been constructed here—and the cynical ones among us were saying it was bound to happen, and if it were not Rhoshamandes, it would have been another—the Prince did something no blood drinker in the history of our tribe has ever done, and strangely enough he did not himself even take note of it.”
Silence. The room was so silent it was as if nothing living were in it. All faces were turned to Marius. I too was looking at him.
“The Prince, without a second thought,” said Marius, “offered his life for the Court. He offered to die so that the Court might continue.”
I was shocked by these words. I looked at him and I couldn’t conceal my perplexity.
“Oh, I know,” he said to me in a soft immediate voice that all could nevertheless hear. “I know that you meant full well to bring Rhoshamandes down, of course you did. But you had no way of knowing that you could. And no one would have predicted that you could. And with the willingness to die, you gave yourself over into his hands . . . and you disarmed him and destroyed him.”
Again, the silence. And I myself was speechless.
“No blood drinker in our dark history of six thousa
nd years has ever done such a thing,” he said, his eyes on me. “And with that gesture—and the destruction of a deadly enemy—the word went out around the world that all the lofty notions of this Court were rooted not in fancy and idle dreams but in our very blood, and of our blood, and that if you could do this for us, then we can come together to make this Court endure forever for one another.”
The silence broke.
It broke in murmurs and whispers, and a soft mingling of voices giving their assent and then other voices, and more voices cried out to declare it was true, and then came the applause and the applause grew stronger and stronger, and then came the stomping of feet, and the roar filled the room, and Marius stood still gazing at me.
“Stand up!” my mother whispered.
I climbed to my feet, and now as Marius stood back, I realized I had to say something, but what in the name of Heaven could I possibly say, because it had been so quick, so natural, so simple. But then the word, the word I’d just used in my deepest thoughts, the word “natural” came to me, and I knew I could never put into words what I was feeling, what I was coming to understand, that deep secret that I couldn’t share with others, though it was all about others, all about us as we were gathered here.
I raised my hand and then my voice.
“This is what I dream for us,” I cried. “That this Court live forever!” Cries came from all over the room once more. “May we never again be reduced to lone wanderers as suspicious of one another as we are of the mortals who despise us. May we never again drink the poison of self-loathing!” Louder and louder came the cries. “We must love one another if we are to stay together,” I said. “And it is loving one another, and nothing else, that will give us the strength to write our own history.”
The cries and applause overtook me. I had some more pathetic words inside me still, or so it seemed, but they were lost in the burst of shouting and cheers and applause. And I knew it didn’t matter now to say more. It was clear what was happening.
I saw Armand gazing at me, I saw a faint smile on his lips, and I saw Louis standing beside him, and I saw my beloved Alain with them, gazing at me in wonder, and at his side Fontayne and Barbara.
