Blood and Gold (39 page)

“Good, I think,” he said, “though what sort of magic he meant to sell, I don’t know. Yes, good, I would say so, very good, though why I say it I can’t tell. He had a kindness to him. And he liked the paintings. He praised them. He was most polite and rather serious for one so young. Rather studious.”

“It’s quite enough,” I said. And indeed it was.

I did not find the man though I searched the city. And I had no fear.

Then two months later, I met, in the most auspicious circumstances, with the man himself.

It was at a luxurious banquet and I was seated at the table, among a great number of drunken Venetians watching the young people before us in their measured and leisurely dance.

The music was poignant, and the lamps were just brilliant enough to give the vast room the most enchanting glow.

There had been several fine spectacles before with acrobats and singers, and I think I was faintly dazed.

I know I was thinking again that this was my Perfect Time. I meant to write it in my diary when I returned home.

As I sat at the table, I leant on my right elbow, my left hand playing idly with the rim of a cup from which I now and then pretended to drink.

And then and there appeared this Englishman, this scholar, at my left side.

“Marius,” he said softly, and in full command of classical Latin: “Count me a friend and not a meddler, I beg you. I have watched you for a long time from afar.”

I felt a deep shiver. I was startled in the purest sense of the word. I turned to look at him, and saw his sharp clear eyes fixed fearlessly on me.

Again there came that message, mentally, without words, from his mind quite confidently to my own:

We offer shelter. We offer understanding. We are scholars. We watch and we are always here.

Once again a deep shiver stole over me. All the company round was blind to me, but this one saw. This one knew.

Now he passed to me a round gold coin. On it was stamped one word:

Talamasca

I looked it over, concealing my complex shock, and then I asked politely in the same classical Latin:

“What does it mean?”

“We are an Order,” he said, his Latin effortless and charming. “That is our name. We are the Talamasca. We are so old we don’t know our origins and why we are so called.” He spoke calmly. “But our purpose in every generation is clear. We have our rules and our traditions. We watch those whom others despise and persecute. We know secrets that even the most superstitious of men refuse to believe.”

His voice and his manners were very elegant, but the power of the mind behind his words was quite strong. His self-possession was stunning. He could not have been more than twenty.

“How did you find me?” I demanded.

“We watch at all times,” he said gently, “and we saw you when you lifted your red cloak, as it were, and stepped into the light of torches and the light of rooms such as this.”

“Ah, so, it began for you then in Venice,” I said. “I have blundered.”

“Yes, here in Venice,” he said. “One of us saw you and wrote a letter to our Motherhouse in England, and I was dispatched to make certain of who and what you were. Once I glimpsed you in your own house I knew it to be true.”

I sat back and took his measure. He had put on handsome velvet of a fawn color, and wore a cloak lined with miniver, and there were simple silver rings on his hands. His pale ashen hair was long and combed plainly. His eyes were as gray as his hair. His forehead was high and bare of lines. He seemed to be shining clean.

“And what truth is this that you speak of?” I asked as gently as I could. “What is it that you know to be true of me?”

“You are a vampire, a blood drinker,” he said without flinching, his voice as polite as ever, his manner composed. “You’ve lived for centuries. I can’t know your age. I don’t presume to know. I wish that you would tell me. You have not blundered. It is I who have come to greet you.”

It was charming to be speaking in the old Latin. And his eyes, reflecting the light of the lamps, were full of an honest excitement tempered only by his dignity.

“I have come into your house when it was open,” he said. “I have accepted your hospitality. Oh, what I would give to know how long you’ve lived, and what you have seen.”

“And what would you do with that intelligence?” I asked him, “if I did tell you such things?”

“Commit it to our libraries. Increase the knowledge. Let it be known that what some say is legend is in fact truth.” He paused and then he said: “Magnificent truth.”

“Ah, but you have something to record even now, don’t you?” I asked. “You can record that you have seen me here.”

Quite deliberately I looked away from him and towards the dancers before us. Then I looked back at him to see that he had followed, obediently, the direction of my gaze.

He watched Bianca as she made her circle in the carefully modulated dance, her hand clasped by that of Amadeo who smiled at her, the light glimmering on his cheek. She seemed the girl again when the music played so very sweetly, and when Amadeo gazed on her with such approving eyes.

“And what else do you see here?” I asked, “my fine scholar of the Talamasca?”

“Another,” he answered, his eyes returning to me without fear. “A beautiful boyish one, who was human when I first laid eyes on him, and now he dances with a young woman who may soon be transformed as well.”

My heart beat furiously as I heard this. My heart beat in my throat and in my ears.

But he laid no judgment down upon me. On the contrary, he was without all judgment and for a moment I could do nothing but search his young mind to make certain this was true.

He shook his head gently.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I have never been close to one such as you.” He was flushed suddenly. “I have never spoken to one such as you. I pray I shall have time to commit to parchment what I’ve seen tonight, though I swear to you on my honor and on the honor of the Order that if you let me go from here alive I will write nothing until I reach England, and the words will never do you harm.”

I shut the soft seductive music out of my hearing. I thought only of his mind, and I searched it and found there nothing but what he had just said to me, and behind it, an Order of scholars as he had described it, a seeming wonder of men and women who wanted only to know, and not to destroy.

Indeed a dozen marvels presented themselves of shelter given to those who could genuinely read minds, and others who from the cards could somehow with uncanny accuracy predict fortunes, and some who might have been burnt as witches, and behind it libraries in which time-honored books of magic were stored.

It seemed quite impossible that in this Christian era, such a secular force could exist.

I reached down and picked up the gold coin with the engraved word, Talamasca. I put it in one of my pockets, and then I took his hand.

He was fiercely afraid now.

“Do you think I mean to kill you?” I asked gently.

“No, I don’t think you will do it,” he said. “But you see, I have studied you so long and with such love, I can’t know.”

“Love, is it?” I asked. “How long has your Order known of creatures like us?” I asked. I held his hand firmly.

His high clear forehead was suddenly creased by a small expressive frown.

“Always, and I told you we are very old.”

I thought on it for a long moment, holding on to his hand. I searched his mind again, and found no lie in it. I looked out at the young dancers moving decorously, and I let the music fill me once more as though this strange disturbance had never come about.

Then I released his hand slowly.

“Go then,” I said, “leave Venice. I give you a day and a night to do it. For I would not have you here with me.”

“I understand,” he said gratefully.

“You have watched me too long,” I said reprovingly. But the reproof was really for myself. “I know that you have already written letters to your Motherhouse describing me. I know because I would have done so if I were you.”

“Yes,” he said again. “I have studied you. But I have done it only for those who would know more of the world and all its creatures. We persecute no one. And our secrets are well kept from those who would use them for harm.”

“Write what you will,” I said, “but go, and never suffer your members to come to this city again.”

He was about to rise from the table when I asked him his name. As so often happened with me, I had not been able to take it from his mind.

“Raymond Gallant,” he responded softly. “Should you ever want to reach me—.”

“Never,” I said sharply under my breath.

He nodded, but then refusing to go with that admonition he stood his ground and said: “Write to the castle, the name of which is engraved on the other side of the coin.”

I watched him leave the ballroom. He wasn’t a figure to attract attention, and indeed one could picture him working with quiet dedication in some library where everything was splattered with ink.

But he did have a marvelously appealing face.

I sat brooding at the table, only talking now and then to others when I had to, wondering on it, that this mortal had come so close to me.

Was I too careless now? Too absolutely in love with Amadeo and Bianca to be paying attention to the simplest things that should have sounded an alarm? Had the splendid paintings of Botticelli separated me too much from my immortality?

I didn’t know, but in truth what Raymond Gallant had done could be explained fairly well.

I was in a room full of mortals and he was but one of them, and perhaps he had a way of disciplining his mind so that his thoughts did not go out before him. And there was no menace to him in gesture or face.

Yes, it was all simple, and when I was home in my bedchamber I felt much more at ease about it, even enough to write several pages about it in my diary as Amadeo slept like a Fallen Angel on my red taffeta bed.

Should I fear this young man who knew where I dwelt? I thought not. I sensed no danger whatsoever. I believed the things that he said.

Quite suddenly, a couple of hours before dawn a tragic thought crossed my mind.

I must see Raymond Gallant once more! I must speak to him! What a fool I had been.

I went out into the night, leaving the sleeping Amadeo behind.

And throughout Venice I searched for this English scholar sweeping this and that palazzo with the power of my mind.

At last I came upon him in modest lodgings very far from the huge palaces of the Grand Canal. I came down the stairway from the roof, and tapped on his door.

“Open to me, Raymond Gallant,” I said, “It’s Marius, and I don’t mean you any harm.”

No answer. But I knew that I had given him a terrible start.

“Raymond Gallant, I can break the door but I have no right to do such a thing. I beg you to answer. Open your door to me.”

Finally he did unfasten the door, and I came inside, finding it to be a little chamber with remarkably damp walls in which he had a mean writing table, and a packing case and a heap of clothes. There stood against the wall a small painting which I had done many months ago and which I had, admittedly, cast aside.

The place was overcrowded with candles, however, which meant that he had a rather good look at me.

He drew back from me like a frightened boy.

“Raymond Gallant, you must tell me something,” I said at once, both to satisfy myself and to put him at his ease.

“I will do my best to do this, Marius,” he answered, his voice tremulous. “What can you possibly want to know of me?”

“Oh, surely it’s not so hard to imagine,” I responded. I looked about. There was no place to sit. So be it. “You told me you have always known of our kind.”

“Yes,” he answered. He was shaking violently. “I was . . . I was preparing to leave Venice,” he volunteered quickly. “As you advised.”

“I see that, and I thank you. But this is my question.” I spoke very slowly to him as I went on.

“In all of your study, did you ever hear tell of a woman blood drinker, a woman vampire as you call it—a woman with long rippling brown hair . . . rather tall and beautifully formed, a woman made in the full bloom of life rather than in the budding flower of youth . . . a woman with quick eyes, a woman who walks the night streets alone.”

All this quite impressed him and for a moment he looked away from me, registering the words, and then he looked back.

“Pandora,” he said.

I winced. I couldn’t prevent it. I couldn’t play the dignified man with him. I felt it like a blow to the chest.

I was so overcome that I walked a few paces away from him, and turned my back on him so that he could not see the expression on my face.

He knew her very name!

Finally I turned around. “What do you know of her?” I said. I searched his mind as he spoke for the truth of every word.

“In ancient Antioch, carved in stone,” he said, “the words, “Pandora and Marius, drinkers of the blood, once dwelt together in happiness in this house.’ “

I could not answer him. But this was only the past, the bitter sad past in which I’d deserted her. And she, full of hurt, must have inscribed the words in the stone.

That he and his scholars had found such a remnant left me humbled and respecting of what they were.

“But now,” I declared, “do you know of her now? When did you learn of her? You must tell me all.”

“In the North of Europe now,” he said, “there are those who say they have seen her.” His voice was growing stronger, but he was still quite afraid. “And once a young vampire, a young blood drinker, came to us, one of those who cannot bear the transformation. . . .”

“Yes, go on,” I said. “I know. You say nothing that is offensive to me. Continue, please.”

“The young one came, hoping we held some magic by which he might reverse the Blood and give him back his mortal life and his immortal soul. . . .”

“Yes, and he spoke of her? That’s what you mean to say?”

“Precisely. He knew all about her. He told us her name. He counted her a goddess among vampires. It was not she who made him. Rather coming upon him, she had pity on him, and often listened to his ravings. But he described her as you did. And he told us of the ruins in Antioch where we would find the words she’d written in the stone.