Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [221]
“When Santino showed attention and patience, she talked with him for several nights, telling him of her wanderings. He had no taste for the coven after that . . .
“. . . But it was the other woman who truly destroyed him.”
“And who was this?” I demanded. “You can’t speak fast enough for me.”
“The other woman was of the world, dressing in high style, and traveling by coach in the company of a dark-skinned Asian.”
I was dumbstruck, and maddened that he said nothing more.
“What happened with this other woman?” I finally asked, though a thousand other words flooded my mind.
“Santino wanted her love most desperately. Of course the Asian threatened him with pure destruction if he didn’t give up this course, but it was the woman’s condemnations that ruined him.”
“What condemnations, what did she say and why?” I demanded.
“I’m not certain. Santino spoke to her of his old piety and his fervor in directing the coven. She condemned him. She said time would punish him for what he’d done to his own kind. She turned away from him in disgust with him.”
I smiled, a bitter smile.
“Do you understand these things?” he asked. “Are they what you wanted?”
“Oh, yes, I understand them,” I said.
I turned and went to the window. I unfastened the wooden shutter, and stood looking down into the street.
I saw nothing, but I couldn’t reason.
“What became of the woman and her Asian companion?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I have seen them in Rome since. Maybe it was fifty years ago. They are easy to recognize, for she is very pale and her companion has a creamy brown skin and while she dresses always as the great lady, he tends toward the exotic.”
I took a deep easy breath.
“And Santino? Where did he go?” I demanded.
“That I can’t tell you, except that he had no spirit for anything when I talked to him. He wanted her love, and nothing else. He said the ancient ones had ruined him for immortality and frightened him as to death. He had nothing.”
I took another deep breath. Then I turned around and fixed this vampire in my gaze with all his considerable details.
“Listen to me,” I said. “If you ever see this creature again, the great lady who travels by coach, you must tell her one thing for me and one thing alone.”
“Very well.”
“That Marius lives and Marius is searching for her.”
“Marius!” he said with a gasp. He looked at me respectfully, though his eyes measured me from head to foot, and then hesitantly he said, “But Santino believes you to be dead. I think that this is what he told to the woman, that he had sent the coven members North to hurt you.”
“I think it’s what he told her too. Now you remember that you saw me alive and that I search for her.”
“But where can she find you?”
“I can’t entrust that knowledge to you,” I said. “I would be foolish to do it. But remember what I have said. If you see her speak to her.”
“Very well,” he answered. “I hope that you find her.”
With no further words, I left him.
I went out then into the night and for a long time I roamed the streets of Rome, taking stock of how it had changed with the centuries and how so much had remained the same.
I marveled at the relics from my time which were still standing. I treasured the few hours I had to make my way through the ruins of the Colosseum and the Forum. I climbed the hill where I had once lived. I found some blocks still from old walls of my house. I wandered in a daze, staring at things because my brain was in a fever.
In truth I could hardly contain my excitement on account of what I had heard, and yet I was miserable that Santino had escaped me.
But oh, what a rich irony it was that he had fallen in love with her! That she had denied him! And to think he had confessed to her his murderous deeds, how loathsome. Had he been boasting when he spoke with her?
Finally my heart was under my control. I could endure with what I had learnt from the young vampire. I would soon come upon Pandora, I knew it.
As for the other ancient one, she who had walked through the fire, I could not then imagine who it was though