Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [69]
We reversed this age-old wisdom, and by day, our ship was in port so that those who served us might enjoy what the local town had to offer, and our slaves and soldiers were made all the more happy by this, and all the more devoted, while the captain kept a firm grip by allowing only some to go ashore at certain times, and insisting that some remain and keep watch or sleep.
Always we woke and emerged from our cabin to find our servants in high good humor, musicians playing under the moon for the soldiers, and Clement, the captain, delightfully drunk. There was no suspicion among them that we were other than three extremely bizarre human beings of immense wealth. Indeed, sometimes I eavesdropped on their theories about us—that we were Magi from the Far East like unto the Three Kings who had come to lay gifts before the Christ Child, and I was most amused.
Our only real problem was an absurd one. We had to ask for meals to be brought to us, and then to dispense with the food through the windows of our cabin, directly into the sea.
It sent us into peals of laughter, yet I found it undignified.
We did periodically spend a night on shore so that we might feed. Our years had given us great skill in this matter. And we might even have starved for the entire journey, but this we chose not to do.
As for our camaraderie aboard the ship, it was most interesting to me.
I was living more closely with mortals than ever before. I talked with our captain and our soldiers by the hour. And I found I enjoyed it tremendously, and I was very much relieved that, in spite of my very pale skin, it was so easy to do.
I found myself passionately attracted to our Captain Clement. I enjoyed the tales of his youth spent on merchant ships throughout the Mediterranean, and he amused me with descriptions of the ports he’d visited, some of which I had known hundreds of years before, and some of which were wholly new.
My sadness was lifted as I listened to Clement. I saw the world through his eyes, and knew his hope. I looked forward to a lively household in Constantinople where he could call upon me as his friend.
Another great change had taken place. I was now definitely an intimate companion to both Avicus and Mael.
Many a night we spent alone in the cabin, with the full wine cups before us, talking about all that had occurred in Italy and other things as well.
Avicus was of a keen mind as I had always imagined him to be, eager for learning and reading, and had over the centuries taught himself both Latin and Greek. But there was much he didn’t understand about my world and its old piety.
He had with him histories by Tacitus, and Livy, and also the True Tales of Lucian, and the biographies written in Greek by Plutarch; but he was not able to understand this work.
I spent many happy hours reading aloud to him as he followed along with me, explaining to him how the text could be interpreted. And I saw in him a great absorption of information. He wanted to know the world.
Mael did not share this spirit; but he was no longer against it as he had been a very long time ago. He listened to all we discussed, and perhaps he profited somewhat from it. It was plain to me that the two—Avicus and Mael—survived as blood drinkers because of each other. But Mael no longer regarded me with fear.
As for me, I rather enjoyed the role of teacher, and it gave me new pleasure to argue with Plutarch as if he were in the room with me, and to comment on Tacitus as if he were there as well.
Both Avicus and Mael had grown paler and stronger with time. Each had, he confessed, at some moment or other felt the threat of despair.
“It was the sight of you, asleep in the shrine,” Mael said without enmity, “that kept me from going down into some cellar and resigning myself to the