Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [145]
I saw that there was dust all over him. He was looking about the room, at its fancy painted ceiling with its ring of cherubs and its gold leaf. He stared at the unfinished mural. I wondered if he knew it was my work.
“Mael, always the astonished one,” I said, moving him gently out of the light of the candles. I laughed softly. “You look like a tramp.”
“Would you offer me clothes again?” he asked. “I cannot really, you know, master such things. I am in need, I suppose. And you live so splendidly here as you always did. Is nothing ever a mystery to you, Marius?”
“Everything is a mystery, Mael,” I responded. “But fine clothes I always have. If the world comes to an end, I shall be well dressed for it, whether it is by the light of day or in the dark of night.”
I took his arm and guided him through the various immense rooms that lay between me and my bedchamber. He was suitably awed by the paintings everywhere and let me lead him along.
“I want you to stay here, away from my mortal company,” I said. “You’ll only confuse them.”
“Ah, but you’ve worked it all so well,” he said. “It was easier for you in old Rome, wasn’t it? But what a palace you have here. There are kings who would envy you, Marius.”
“Yes, it seems so,” I answered offhandedly.
I went to the adjacent closets, which were small rooms actually, and pulled out clothes for him, and leather shoes. He seemed quite incapable of dressing himself but I refused to do it for him, and after I had put out everything, on the velvet bed in the correct order, as if for a child or an idiot, he began to examine various articles as if he might manage alone.
“Who told you I was here, Mael?” I asked him.
He glanced at me, and his face was cold for a moment, the old hawk nose as disagreeable as ever, the deep-set eyes rather more brilliant than I’d remembered and the mouth far better shaped than I’d recalled. Maybe time had softened the set of his lips. I’m not certain that such things can happen. But he did seem an interesting-looking immortal male.
“You told me you had heard that I was here,” I said, prompting him. “Who told you?”
“Oh, it was a fool of a blood drinker,” he said with a shudder. “A maniacal Satan worshiper. His name was Santino. Will they never die out? It was in Rome. He urged me to join him, can you imagine?”
“Why didn’t you destroy him?” I asked dejectedly. How grim was all this, how distant from the boys at their supper, from the teachers speaking of the day’s lessons, from the light and music to which I longed to return. “In the old times when you encountered them, you always destroyed them. What stopped you now?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “What do I care what happens in Rome? I didn’t stay one night in Rome.”
I shook my head. “How did this creature discover I was in Venice? I’ve never heard a whisper of our kind here.”
“I’m here,” he answered sharply, “and you didn’t hear me, did you? You’re not infallible, Marius. You have about you many worldly distractions. Perhaps you don’t listen as you should.”
“Yes, you’re right, but I wonder. How did he know?”
“Mortals come to your house. Mortals speak of you. Possibly those mortals go on to Rome. Don’t all roads lead to Rome?” He was mocking me naturally. But he was being rather gentle, almost friendly. “He wants your secret, Marius, that Roman blood drinker. How he begged me to explain the mystery of Those Who Must Be Kept.”
“And you didn’t reveal it, did you, Mael?” I demanded. I began to hate him again, hotly, as I had in nights past.
“No, I didn’t reveal it,” he said calmly, “but I did laugh at him, and I didn’t deny it. Perhaps I should have, but the older I get the harder it is to lie on any account.”
“That I understand rather well,” I said.
“Do you? With all these beautiful mortal children around you? You must lie with every breath you take, Marius. And as for your paintings, how dare you display your works amongst mortals who have but brief lifetimes with which to challenge you? It seems a terrible lie, that, if you ask me.”
I sighed.