Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [198]
I was so dejected that I sat down on a nearby bench though I’d been given no invitation to do it.
“What are you?” asked the old monk. He laid down his quill pen. He stared at me in the most thoughtful manner.
“It’s no matter,” I said wearily. “Do you think there’s no chance that a letter from here could reach a castle called Lorwich in East Anglia?”
“I don’t know,” said the monk. “It might well happen. For there are some who oppose King Henry VIII and others who do not. But in general he has destroyed the monasteries of England. And so any letter you write from me cannot go to one of them, only directly to the castle. And how is that to happen? We have to think on it. I can always attempt it.”
“Yes, please, let us attempt it.”
“But first, tell me what you are,” he asked again. “I won’t write the letter for you unless you do so. Also I want to know why you stole all the good candles in the chapel and left the bad ones.”
“You know I did this?” I asked. I was becoming extremely agitated. I thought I had been silent as a mouse.
“I’m not an ordinary man,” he said. “I hear things and see things that people don’t. I know you’re not human. What are you?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said. “Tell me what you think I am. Tell me if you can find any true evil in my heart. Tell me what you see in me.”
He gazed at me for a long time. His eyes were deeply gray, and as I looked at his elderly face I could easily reconstruct the young man he had been, rather resolute, though his personal strength of character was far greater now even though he suffered human infirmity.
At last he turned away and looked at his candle as though he had completed his examination of me.
“I am a reader of strange books,” he said in a hushed but clear voice. “I have studied some of those texts which have come out of Italy pertaining to magic and astrology and things which are often called forbidden.”
My pulse quickened. This seemed extraordinary good fortune. I did not interrupt.
“I have a belief that there are angels cast out of Heaven,” he said, “and that they do not know what they are any longer. They wander in a state of confusion. You seem one of those creatures, though if I am right, you will not be able to confirm it.”
I was so struck by the curiosity of this concept that I could say nothing. At last I had to answer.
“No, I’m not such. I know it for certain. But I wish that I were. Let me confide in you one terrible secret.”
“Very well,” he said. “You may go to Confession to me if you like, for I am an ordained priest, not simply a monk, but I doubt I shall be able to give you Absolution.”
“This is my secret. I have existed since the time when Christ walked the Earth though I never knew of him.”
He considered this calmly for a long time, looking into my eyes and then away to his candle, as if this were a little ritual with him. Then he spoke:
“I don’t really believe you,” he said. “But you are a mystifying being, with your black skin and blue eyes, with your blond hair, and with your gold which you so generously put before me. I’ll take it, of course. We need it.”
I smiled. I loved him. Of course I wouldn’t tell him such a thing. What would it mean to him?
“All right,” he said, “I’ll write your letter for you.”
“I can write it myself,” I said, “if only you give me the parchment and the pen. I need for you to send it, and establish this place for the receipt of an answer to it. It’s the answer which is so important.”
He obeyed me at once, and I turned to the task, gladly accepting the quill from him. I knew he was watching me as I wrote but it didn’t matter.
Raymond Gallant,
I have suffered a dreadful catastrophe, following upon the very night which I met with you and talked to you. My palazzo in Venice was destroyed by fire, and I myself injured beyond my own imagining. Please be assured that this was not the work of mortal hands, and some night should we meet I shall most willingly