Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [204]
“We can find a safe place,” she said. “You know we can. We must. We cannot remain as we are forever. It is not our nature. If I have learnt nothing from your stories I have learnt that much, that you have wandered the Earth in search of beauty as well as in your search for blood.”
I did not like her seriousness.
“We are only two,” she went on, “and should these devils come again with their fiery brands, it will be a simple thing for you to remove me to some lofty height where they can’t harm me.”
“If I am there, my love, if I am there,” I said, “and what if I am not? All these years, since we have left our lovely Venice behind, you have lived within these walls where they can’t harm you. Now, should we go to some other place, and lodge there, I shall have to be on guard always. Is that natural?”
This felt dreadful to me, this talk. I had never known anything so difficult with her. I didn’t like the inscrutable expression on her face, nor the way her hand trembled.
“Perhaps it is too soon,” she said. “But I must tell you a most important thing, and I cannot keep it from you.”
I hesitated before I answered.
“What is it, Bianca?” I asked. I was fast becoming miserable. Utterly miserable.
“I think you have made a grievous error,” she said.
I was quietly stunned. She said nothing more. I waited. Still there came this silence commingled with her sitting back against the wall, her eyes fixed upwards on the Divine Parents.
“Will you tell me what this error is?” I asked. “By all means, you must tell me! I love you. I must hear this.”
She said nothing. She looked at the King and Queen. She did not appear to be praying.
I picked up the parchment pages of the letter. I moved through them and then looked at her again.
Her tears had dried, and her mouth was soft, but her eyes were filled with some strange look that I could not explain to myself.
“Is it the Talamasca that causes you fear?” I asked. “I shall explain all this to you. But see here that I wrote to them from a distant monastery. I left few footprints there, my beauty. I traveled the winds while you were sleeping here.”
There followed nothing but her silence. It seemed not dark or cold but merely reserved and thoughtful. But when she moved her eyes to me, the change in her face was slow and ominous.
With quiet words I hastened to explain to her my strange meeting with Raymond Gallant on my last night of true happiness in Venice. I explained in the simplest manner how he had sought knowledge of us, and how I had learnt from him that Pandora had been seen in northern Europe.
I talked of all the things contained in the letter. I talked of Amadeo once more. I spoke of my hatred of Santino, that he had robbed me of all I loved save her, and how on that account she was, of all things, most precious to me.
At last I was willing to say no more. I was growing angry. I felt wronged and I couldn’t understand her. Her silence hurt me more and more, and I knew that she could see this in my face.
Finally, I saw some change in her. She sharpened her gaze and then she spoke:
“Don’t you see the grievous error you’ve made?” she asked. “Don’t you hear it in the lessons you’ve made known to me? Centuries ago, the young Satan worshipers came to you for what you could give when you lived with Pandora. You denied them your precious knowledge. You should have revealed to them the mystery of the Mother and the Father!”
“Good Lord, how could you believe such a thing?”
“And when Santino asked you in Rome, you should have brought him to this very shrine! You should have shown to him the mysteries you revealed to me. Had you done it, Marius, he would never have been your enemy.”
I was enraged as I stared at her. Was this my brilliant Bianca?
“Don’t you see!” she went on. “Over and over, these unstoppable fools have made a cult of nothing! You could have shown them something!” She gestured towards me dismissively as though I disgusted her. “How many decades have we been here? How strong am I? Oh, you needn’t answer. I know my own endurance. I know my own