Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [99]
I couldn’t speak! I was so miserable and so excited that I couldn’t answer her. It was Pandora! And this was the first that I had heard of her in three hundred years.
“Don’t weep over this,” she said gently. “It happened in ages past. Surely time can take away such love. What a curse if it can’t.”
“It can’t.” I said. My voice was thick. The tears were in my eyes. “What more did she say? Tell me, please, the tiniest things you might remember.” My heart was knocking in my chest. Indeed it seemed as if I’d forgotten that I had a heart and must now find out.
“What more. There is no more. Only that the woman was powerful and no easy enemy. You know Eudoxia always spoke of such things. The woman could not be destroyed, nor would she tell the origin of her great strength. To Eudoxia it was a mystery—until you came to Constantinople, and she saw you, Marius, the Roman, in your brilliant red robes, moving through the square at evening, pale as marble, yet with all the conviction of a mortal man.”
She paused. She put her hand up to touch the side of my face.
“Don’t cry. Those were her words: “with all the conviction of a mortal man.’ “
“How then did you learn of the Mother and the Father?” I asked, “and what do such words mean to you?”
“She spoke of them in amazement,” she said. “She said you were rash if not mad. But you see, she would go one way and then the other, that was always in her nature. She cursed you that the Mother and the Father were in this very city, and yet she wanted to bring you here to her house. On account of this, I had to be hidden. Yet she kept the boys for whom she cared so little. And I was put away.”
“And the Mother and the Father?” I asked. “Do you know what they are?”
She shook her head. “Only that you have them, or had them when she spoke of it. Are they the First of us?”
I didn’t answer her. But I believed her, that this was all she knew, extreme as it was.
And now I did penetrate her mind, calling on my power to know her past and present, to know her most secret and casual thoughts.
She looked at me with clear unquestioning eyes, as if she felt what I was doing to her, or trying to do, and it seemed that she would not hold anything back.
But what did I learn? Only that she had told me the truth. I know no more of your beautiful blood drinker. She was patient with me, and then there came a wave of true grief. I loved Eudoxia. You destroyed her. And now you cannot leave me alone.
I stood up and went again to walking about the room. Its sumptuous Byzantine furnishings stifled me. The thick patterned hangings seemed to fill the air with dust. And nowhere could I glimpse the night sky from this chamber, for we were too far from the inner garden court.
But what did I want just now? Only to be free of this creature, no, free of the whole knowledge of her, of the whole awareness of her, free of ever having seen her, and that was quite impossible, was it not?
Suddenly a sound interrupted me and I realized that at last Avicus and Mael had come.
They found their way through the many rooms to the bedchamber, and as both of them entered, they were astonished to see the gorgeous young woman seated on the side of the immense heavily draped bed.
I stood silent while the two of them absorbed the shock. Immedi-ately Avicus was drawn to Zenobia, as drawn to her as he had been to Eudoxia, and this creature had yet to speak a single word.
In Mael I saw suspicion and a bit of concern. He looked to me searchingly. He was not spellbound by the young woman’s beauty. His feelings were under his command.
Avicus drew near to Zenobia, and as I watched him, as I watched his eyes fire with a passion for her, I saw my way out. I saw it plainly, and when I did, I felt a terrible regret. I felt my solemn vow to be alone weigh heavily upon me, as if I had taken it in the name of a god, and perhaps I had. I had taken it in the name of Those Who Must Be Kept. But there must be no more thoughts of them now, not