Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [61]
A most interesting character proved to be Julian, lately known as the Apostate, who tried to restore paganism and completely failed. Whatever his religious illusions, he proved an able soldier and died on a campaign against the irrepressible Persians many miles from home.
The Empire continued to be invaded by the Goths, the Visigoths, the Germans and the Persians on all sides. Its rich and beautiful cities, with their gymnasiums, theaters, porticoes and temples were overrun by tribes of people who cared nothing for philosophy or manners, poetry, or the old values of the genteel life.
Even Antioch, my old home with Pandora, had been sacked by barbarians—quite an unimaginable spectacle to me, which I could not ignore.
Only the city of Rome itself seemed impervious to such a horror, and indeed, I think the old families, even as houses crumbled around them, believed that the Eternal City could never suffer such a fate.
As for me, I went on with my banquets for the disreputable and despised, and I wrote by the hour in my diaries, and I painted my walls.
When my regular guests inevitably died, I suffered it rather dreadfully. And so I saw to it that the company was always very large.
On I went with the pots of paint no matter who drank or vomited in the garden, and so the house seemed mad with all its lamps and the master filling walls with his illusions, and the guests laughing at him and raising their cups to him, and the music strumming on unto the dawn.
At first I thought it would be a distraction to have Avicus spying upon me, but I grew used to hearing him slip over the wall and come into the garden. I grew used to the nearness of someone who shared these moments as only he could.
I continued to paint my goddesses—Venus, Ariadne, Hera—and gradually I grew resigned that the figment of Pandora would dominate everything I did in that particular, but I worked on the gods as well. Apollo, above all, fascinated me. But then I had time to paint other figures of myth, such as Theseus, Aeneas, and Hercules, and sometimes I turned to reading Ovid or Homer or Lucretius directly for inspiration. Other times, I made up my own themes.
But always the painted gardens were my comfort for I felt I was living in them in my heart.
Over and over again I covered all the rooms of my house, and as it was built as a villa, not an enclosed house with an atrium, Avicus could wander the garden all around it, seeing all that I did, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my work was changed by what he saw.
What moved me more than anything perhaps was that he lingered so faithfully. And that he was silent with so much respect. Seldom did a week pass that he did not come and stay almost the entire night. Often he was there for four or five nights in a row. And sometimes even longer than that.
Of course we never spoke to each other. There was an elegance in our silence. And though my slaves once took notice of him and annoyed me with their alarm, I soon put a stop to that.
On the nights when I went out to Those Who Must Be Kept Avicus didn’t follow me. And I must confess that I did feel a sort of freedom when I painted alone in the shrine. But melancholy was also coming down upon me, harder than ever in the past.
Finding a spot behind the dais and the Precious Pair, I often sat dejected in the corner, and then slept the day and even the next night without going out. My mind was empty. Consolation was unimaginable. Thoughts of the Empire and what might happen to it were unspeakable.
And then, I would remember Avicus, and I would rise, shaking off my languor and go back into the city and begin painting the walls of my rooms again.
How many years passed in this way, I can’t calculate.
It is far more important to note that a band of Satanic blood drinkers again took up their abode in an abandoned catacomb and began to feast upon the innocent which was their custom, being desperately careless so as to scare humans and to cause tales of terror to spread.
I had hoped that Mael and