The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (53 page)

And I? What am I? Do I live? Or am I walking always in death, forever in love with time?

I stood still with my candles. How my eyes loved the moonlighted splendor. How I craved to stand here forever, dreaming, near to things of the mind, and things of the soul, and far away in memory from the wretched enchained town on its cursed mountain and the castle nearby, which at this very moment probably gave forth its ghastly, ugly light.

Could I discern the order of this wealth of books?

The very cataloger of this library, the very monk who had done the work here, the very scholar, was now the Pope of all Christendom, Nicholas V.

I moved along the shelves to my right, holding high my candles. Would it be alphabetical? I thought of Aquinas, for I knew him more freely, but it was St. Augustine whom I found. And I had always loved Augustine, loved his colorful style and his eccentricities, and the dramatic manner in which he wrote.

“Oh, you wrote more about demons, you are better!” I said.

The City of God!
I saw it, copy after copy. There were a score of codices of this very masterpiece, not to mention all of the other work of this great saint, his
Confessions
, which had gripped me as much as a Roman drama, and so much more. Some of these books were ancient, made of big sloppy parchment, others were extravagantly bound, some almost simple and very new.

In charity and consideration, I must take the most sturdy of these, even though there might be errors, and God only knew how hard monks worked
to avoid errors. I knew which volume I wanted. I knew the volume on demons, because I had thought it so very fascinating and funny and so much poppycock. Oh, what a fool I’d been.

I took down the hefty fat volume, number nine of the text, slipping it into the crook of my arm, moved to the first desk and then carefully placed the candelabra in front of me, where it would light me but throw no shadows under my fingers, and I opened the book.

“It’s all here!” I whispered. “Tell me, St. Augustine, what were they so that I may convince Ramiel and Setheus that they must help me, or give me the means to convince these modern Florentines, who care about nothing right now but making war with paid soldiers on the Serene Republic of Venice up north. Help me, Saint. I’m telling you.”

Ah, Chapter Ten, of Volume Nine, I knew this …

Augustine was quoting Plotinus, or explaining him:

“Ah, yes!” I said. “And this is what Florian offered me, bragging that they did not age or decay
and were not subject to disease, that I could have lived there with them forever. Evil, evil. Well, this is proof, and I have it here, and I can show it to the monks!”

I read on, skimming to find the kernels that would make my case grow. Down to Chapter Eleven:

“Yes, lemures. I know this word. Lemures or larvae, and Ursula, she said to me that she had been young, young as me; they were all human and now they are lemures.”

I was overcome with excitement. I needed parchment and pens. I had to note the place. I had to mark down what I had discovered and go on. For the next point was obviously to convince Ramiel and Setheus that they had gotten into the biggest—.

My thoughts were brought to an abrupt halt.

Behind me, a personage had come into the library. I heard a heavy footfall, but there was a muffled quality to it, and a great darkening occurred behind me, as though all the slim, sly beams of the moon that fell through the passage beyond had been cut off.

I turned slowly and looked over my shoulder.

“And why do you choose the left?” asked this personage.

He rose up before me, immense and winged, peering down at me, his face luminous in the flicker of the candles, his eyebrows gently raised but straight so that there was no arch to them to make them anything but severe. He had the riotous golden hair of Fra Filippo’s brush, curling beneath a huge red battle helmet, and behind him his wings were heavily sheathed in gold.

He wore a suit of armor, with the breast-plates decorated and the shoulders covered with immense buckles, and around his waist was a blue sash of silk. His sword was sheathed, and on one lax arm he wore his shield, with its red cross.

I had never seen his like.

“I need you!” I declared. I stood up, knocking the bench back. I reached out so that it would not clatter to the floor. I faced him.

“You need me!” he said in muted outrage. “You do! You who would lead off Ramiel and Setheus from Fra Filippo Lippi. You need me? Do you know who I am?”

It was a gorgeous voice, rich, silken, violent and piercing though deep.

“You have a sword,” I said.

“Oh, and for what?”

“Killing them, all of them!” I said. “Going there with me by day to their castle. Do you know what I am speaking of?”

He nodded. “I know what you dreamt and what you babbled and what Ramiel and Setheus have
gleaned from your feverish mind. Of course I know. You need me, you say, and Fra Filippo Lippi lies in bed with a whore who licks his aching joints, and one in particular that aches for her!”

“Such talk from an angel,” I said.

“Don’t mock me, I’ll slap you,” he said. His wings rose and fell as if he were sighing with them, or gasping rather, at me in umbrage.

“So do it!” I said. My eyes were feasting fiendishly on his glistering beauty, on the red silk cloak that was clasped just below the bit of tunic that showed above his armor, at the solemn smoothness of his cheeks. “But come with me to the mountains and kill them,” I implored him.

“Why don’t you go yourself and do it?”

“Do you think I can?” I demanded.

His face went serene. His lower lip gave the smallest most thoughtful pout. His jaw and neck were powerful, more powerful by far than the anatomy of Ramiel or Setheus, who seemed more youths, and this their splendid elder brother.

“You are not the Fallen One, are you?” I asked.

“How dare you!” he whispered, waking from his slumber. A terrible frown broke over him.

“Mastema, then, that’s who you are. They said your name. Mastema.”

He nodded and sneered. “They would, of course, say my name.”

“Which means what, great angel? That I can call on you, that I have the power to command you?” I turned and reached for the book of St. Augustine.

“Put down that book!” he said impatiently yet
coolly. “There is an angel standing before you, boy; look at me when I speak to you!”

“Ah, you speak like Florian, the demon in that far castle. You have the same control, the same modulation. What do you want of me, angel? Why did you come?”

He was silent, as if he couldn’t produce an answer. Then, quietly, he put a question to me. “Why do you think?”

“Because I prayed?”

“Yes,” he said coldly. “Yes! And because they have come to me on your account.”

My eyes widened. I felt light fill them up. But the light didn’t hurt them. A soft cluster of sweet noises filled my ears.

On either side of him there appeared Ramiel and Setheus, their milder, gentler faces focused on me.

Mastema raised his eyebrows again as he looked down at me.

“Fra Filippo Lippi is drunk,” he said. “When he wakes up, he’ll get drunk again until the pain stops.”

“Fools to rack a great painter,” I said, “but then you know my thoughts on that.”

“Ah, and the thoughts of all the women in Florence,” said Mastema. “And the thoughts of the great ones who pay for his paintings, if their minds were not on war.”

“Yes,” said Ramiel, glancing imploringly to Mastema. They were of the same height, but Mastema didn’t turn, and Ramiel came forward some, as if to catch his eye. “If they weren’t all so carried away with war.”

“War is the world,” said Mastema. “I asked you before, Vittorio di Raniari, do you know who I am?”

I was shaken, not by the question, but that the three had now come together, and that I stood before them, the only mortal being, and all the mortal world around us seemed to sleep.

Why had no monk come down the passage to see who whispered in the library? Why had no Watchman of the night come to see why the candles floated along the passage? Why the boy murmured and raved?

Was I mad?

It seemed to me quite suddenly and ludicrously that if I answered Mastema correctly, I would not be mad.

This thought brought from him a small laugh, neither harsh nor sweet.

Setheus stared at me with his obvious sympathy. Ramiel said nothing but looked again to Mastema.

“You are the angel,” I said, “whom the Lord gives permission to wield that sword.” There came no response from him. I went on. “You are the angel who slew the firstborn of Egypt,” I said. No response. “You are the angel, the angel who can avenge.”

He nodded, but only really with his eyes. They closed and then opened.

Setheus drew close to him, lips to his ears.

“Help him, Mastema, let us all go help him. Filippo cannot use our counsel now.”

“And why?” demanded Mastema of the angel beside him. He looked at me.

“God has given me no leave to punish these demons of yours. Never has God said to me, ‘Mastema, slay the vampires, the lemures, the larvae, the blood drinkers.’ Never has God spoken to me and said, ‘Lift your mighty sword to cleanse the world of these.’ ”

“I beg you,” I said. “I, a mortal boy, beg you. Kill these, wipe out this nest with your sword.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Mastema, you can!” declared Setheus.

Ramiel spoke up. “If he says he cannot, he cannot! Why do you never listen to him?”

“Because I know that he can be moved,” said Setheus without hesitation to his compatriot. “I know that he can, as God can be moved.”

Setheus stepped boldly in front of Mastema.

“Pick up the book, Vittorio,” he said. He stepped forward. At once the large vellum pages, heavy as they were, began to flutter. He put it in my hand, and marked the place with his pale finger, barely touching the thick black crowded writing.

I read aloud:

His finger moved, and my eyes moved with it. I read of God:

I stopped, my eyes full of tears. He took the book from me to guard it from my tears.

A noise had penetrated our small circle. Monks had come. I heard them whispering in the corridor, and then the door swung open. Into the library they came.

I cried, and when I looked up I saw them staring at me, two monks whom I didn’t know or didn’t remember, had never known.

“What is it, young man? Why are you here alone crying?” the first spoke.

“Here, let us take you back to bed. We’ll bring you something to eat.”

“No, I can’t eat it,” I said.

“No, he can’t eat it,” said the first monk to the other. “It still makes him sick. But he can rest.” He looked at me.

I turned. The three radiant angels stood silently staring at the monks who could not see them, who had no clue that the angels were there!

“Dear God in Heaven, please tell me,” I said. “Have I gone mad? Have the demons won out, have they so polluted me with their blood and their potions that I see things which are delusions, or am I come like Mary to the tomb to see an angel there?”

“Come to bed,” said the monks.

“No,” said Mastema, quietly addressing the monk
who didn’t even see him or hear him. “Let him stay. Let him read to quiet his mind. He is a boy of education.”

“No, no,” said the monk, shaking his head. He glanced to the other. “We should let him stay. He’s a boy of education. He can read quietly. Cosimo said that he must have anything he desired.”

“Go on, leave him now,” said Setheus softly.

“Hush,” said Ramiel. “Let Mastema tell them.”

I was too flooded with sorrow and happiness to respond. I covered my face, and when I did so I thought of my poor Ursula, forever with her demon Court, and how she had wept for me. “How could that be?” I whispered into my own fingers.

“Because she was human once, and has a human heart,” said Mastema to me in the silence.

The two monks were hurrying out. For one moment the collection of angels was as sheer as light, and I saw through them to the two retreating figures of the monks who closed up the doors as they left.

Mastema looked at me with his still, powerful gaze.

“One could read anything into your face,” I said.

“So it is with almost all angels all of the time,” he answered.

“I beg you,” I said. “Come with me. Help me. Guide me. Do what you just did with those monks! That you can do, can’t you?”

He nodded.

“But we can’t do more than that, you see,” said Setheus.

“Let Mastema say,” said Ramiel.

“Go back to Heaven!” said Setheus.

“Please, the both of you, be quiet,” said Mastema. “Vittorio, I cannot slay them. I have no leave. That you can do, and with your own sword.”

“But you’ll come.”

“I’ll take you,” he said. “When the sun rises, when they sleep under their stones. But you must slay them, you must open them to the light, and you must set free those awful wretched prisoners, and you must stand before the townsmen, or let loose that crippled flock and flee.”

“I understand.”