Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [106]
Only a blood drinker could have painted the walls with the old Greco-Roman gods and goddesses. Only a blood drinker could have made the throne of granite with such skill and in such time.
Only a blood drinker could have carried the Mother and Father one by one up the mountain and into the finished resting place. Only a blood drinker could have set them side by side on their granite throne.
And when it was finished, who else would have lain down in the coldness to weep again out of some habitual loneliness? Who else could have lain for some two weeks in quietude and exhaustion, refusing to move?
It was no wonder that in those first few months I tried to prompt some vitality from Those Who Must Be Kept by bringing to them sacrifices, like unto Eudoxia, but for these poor wretched mortals—Evil Doers, I quite assure you—Akasha refused to move her all-powerful right arm. And so I must finish with these miserable victims and carry their remains high into the mountains where I flung them on jagged peaks as so many offerings to cruel gods.
In the following centuries, I did hunt the nearby towns most carefully, drinking a little from many so as never to rouse a local population, and sometimes I did travel a great distance to discover how things were in the cities I’d once known.
I visited Pavia, Marseilles, and Lyons. There I visited the taverns as had always been my custom, daring to draw mortals into conversation, plying them with wine to tell me all that went on in the world. Now and then I explored the very battlefields where the Islamic warriors achieved their victories. Or followed the Franks into battle, easily using the darkness as my shield. And during this period—for the first time in my immortal existence—I made close mortal friends.
That is, I would choose a mortal, a soldier for instance, and meet with him often in his local tavern to talk about his view of the world, about his life. Never were these friendships very long or very deep, for I wouldn’t allow them to be so, and if ever the temptation came over me to make a blood drinker, I would swiftly move on.
But I came to know many mortals in this way, even monks in their monasteries, for I had no shyness about accosting them on the road, especially when they passed through dangerous territory, and accompanying them for some time while asking them polite questions about how it went with the Pope and the church and even the small communities in which they lived.
There are stories I could tell of these mortals, for sometimes I couldn’t guard my heart so very well. But there is no time now for that. Let me only confess that I made the friendships, and when I look back on it, I pray to some god who might be willing to answer me, that I gave as good a consolation from this as I received.
When I was most courageous of heart, I went down into Italy as far as Ravenna to see the marvelous churches which possessed the same magnificent mosaics as I had seen in Constantinople. But never did I dare to go further into my native land. I was too afraid to see the destruction of all that had once been there.
As for the news of the world which I learnt from those I befriended, in the main it broke my heart.
Constantinople had abandoned Italy, and only the Pope of Rome stood firm against its invaders. Islamic Arabs conquered all the world it seemed, including Gaul. Then Constantinople became involved in a terrible crisis over the validity of Holy Pictures, condemning them out of hand, which meant the wholesale destruction of mosaics in churches as well as ikons—a horrid war against art which scorched my soul.
The Pope of Rome would have no part of it, thank Heaven, and turning his back officially on