Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [114]
I brought up the Fire Gift inside of me, feeling it grow powerful and I quelled it ever so carefully and I sent it down towards him, and willed it to kindle only the edge of his black monkish robes.
At once the cloth around his feet began to smoke and he stepped back in horror.
I stopped the power.
He turned round and round in panic and tore the scorched robes off himself, standing there in a long white tunic staring at the smoking cloth that lay on the ground.
Once again he looked at me, fearless as before, but enraged in his helplessness.
“Know what I could do to you,” I said, “and never come near to me again.”
And then I turned my back on him. And off I went.
I shivered even to think of him and his followers. I shivered to think that I should have to use the Fire Gift again after all these years. I shivered remembering the slaughter of Eudoxia’s slaves.
It wasn’t even midnight.
I wanted the bright new world of Italy. I wanted the clever scholars and artists of these times. I wanted the huge palazzi of the Cardinals and the other powerful inhabitants of the Eternal City which had risen after all the long miserable years.
Putting the creature named Santino out of my mind I went near to one of the new palazzi in which there was a feast in progress, a masquerade with much dancing and tables laden with food.
It was no problem to me to gain entry. I had equipped myself with the fine velvet clothes of this period, and once inside among the guests, I was welcomed as was everyone else.
I had no mask, only my white face which seemed like one, and my customary red velvet hooded cloak which set me apart from the guests and yet made me one of them at the same time.
The music was intoxicating. The walls were ablaze with fine paintings, though none as magical as what I had seen in the Sistine Chapel, and the crowd was huge and sumptuously dressed.
Quickly, I fell into conversation with the young scholars, the ones who were talking hotly of painting as well as poetry and I asked my dumb question: Who had done the magnificent frescoes in the Sistine Chapel which I had just beheld?
“You’ve seen these paintings?” said one of the crowd to me. “I don’t believe it. We haven’t been allowed in to see them. Describe to me again what you saw.”
I laid out everything, very simply as though I were a schoolboy.
“The figures are supremely delicate,” I said, “with sensitive faces, and each being, though rendered with great naturalness, is ever so slightly too long.”
The company around me laughed good naturedly.
“Ever so slightly too long,” repeated one of the elders.
“Who did the paintings?” I said, imploringly. “I must meet this man.”
“You’ll have to go to Florence to meet him,” said the elder scholar. “You’re talking about Botticelli, and he’s already gone home.”
“Botticelli,” I whispered. It was a strange almost ridiculous name. In Italian it translates to “little tub.” But to me it meant magnificence.
“You’re certain it was Botticelli,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” said the elder scholar. The others with us were also nodding. “Everyone’s marveling at what he can do. That’s why the Pope sent for him. He was here two years working on the Sistine Chapel. Everyone knows Botticelli. And now he’s no doubt as busy in Florence as he was here.”
“I only want to see him with my own eyes,” I said.
“Who are you?” asked one of the scholars.
“No one,” I whispered. “No one at all.”
There was general laughter. It seemed to blend rather bewitchingly with the music around us, and the glare of so many candles.
I felt drunk on the smell of mortals, and with dreams of Botticelli.
“I have to find Botticelli,” I whispered. And bidding them all farewell I went out into the night.
But what was I going to do when I found Botticelli, that was the question. What was driving me? What did I want?
To see all of his works, yes, that much was certain, but what more did my soul require?
My loneliness seemed as great as my age and it frightened me.
I returned to the Sistine Chapel.
I spent the remainder of the night