The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [102]
I heard the harp inside, I heard singing. The voice was that of one of my uncles, one so young he might have been my brother. His name was Borys, and he had since early childhood been good with singing, memorizing easily the old dumys, or sagas, of the knights and heroes, and it was one of them, very rhythmical and tragic, which he was singing now. The harp was small and old, my Father’s harp, and Borys strummed the strings in time with his phrases as he all but spoke the story of a lusty and fatal battle for ancient and great Kiev.
I heard the familiar cadences that had been passed down by our people from singer to singer for hundreds of years. I put my fingers up and broke loose a bit of mortar. I saw through the tiny opening the Ikon corner—directly opposite the family gathering around the shimmering fire in the open stove.
Ah, what a spectacle! Amid dozens of little candle stubs and earthen lamps full of burning fat, there stood propped some twenty or more ikons, some very old and darkened in their gold frames, and some radiant, as though only yesterday they’d come alive through the power of God. There were painted eggs stuffed amongst the pictures, eggs beautifully decorated and colored with patterns I could well recall, though even with my vampire eyes I was too far away to see them now. Many times I had watched the women decorating these sacred eggs for Easter, applying the hot melting wax to them with their wooden pens to mark the ribbons or the stars or the crosses or the lines which meant the ram’s horns, or the symbol which meant the butterfly or the stork. Once the wax had been applied, the egg would be dipped in cold dye of amazingly deep color. It had seemed there was an endless variety, and endless possibility for meaning, in these simple patterns and signs.
These fragile and beautiful eggs were kept for curing the sick, or for protection against the storm. I had hidden such eggs in an orchard for good luck with the coming harvest. I had placed one once over the door of the house in which my sister went to live as a young bride.
There was a beautiful story about these decorated eggs, that as long as the custom was followed, as long as such eggs existed, then the world would be safe from the monster of Evil who wanted always to come and devour all that was.
It was sweet to see these eggs placed there in the proud corner of the Ikons, as always, among the Holy Faces. That I had forgotten this custom seemed a shame and a warning of tragedy to come.
But the Holy Faces caught me suddenly and I forgot all else. I saw the Face of Christ blazing in the firelight, my brilliant scowling Christ, as I had so often painted Him. I had done so many of these pictures, and yet how like the one lost that day in the high grasses of the wild lands was this very one!
But that was impossible. How could anyone have recovered the ikon I had dropped when the raiders took me prisoner? No, it must surely be another, for as I said, I had done so many before my parents had ever gotten up the courage to take me to the monks. Why, all through this town were my ikons. My Father had even brought them to Prince Michael as proud gifts, and it was the Prince who had said that the monks must see my skill.
How stern Our Lord looked now compared to the recollection of the tender musing Christs of Fra Angelico or the noble sorrowful Lord of Bellini. And yet He was warm with my love! He was the Christ in our style, the old style, loving in severe lines, loving in somber color, loving in the manner of my land. And He was warm with the love that I believed He gave to me!
A sickness rose up in me. I felt my Master’s hands on my shoulders. He didn’t pull me back as I feared. He merely held me and put his cheek