Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [170]
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