The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [66]
I had mixed feelings on this score. But these were all children, and the teacher an unarmed man, a helpless scholar. The older boys had all gone out, as was the custom in the morning. Or so I thought.
“Come on, we have to get them all to a decent place,” I said. “Don’t touch the weapons.” I signaled for the little ones to come. “We’ll carry him to the best bedchamber, come on. And the boys as well.”
As the little ones struggled to obey, some of them began to cry.
“You, give us a hand!” I said to the teacher. “Watch out for the poisoned weapons.” He stared at me wildly. “I mean it. It’s poison.”
“Amadeo, you’re bleeding all over!” he cried shrilly in a panic. “What poisoned weapons? Dear God save us all!”
“Oh, stop it!” I said. But I could stand this situation no longer, and as Riccardo took charge of the moving of the bodies, I rushed into my Master’s bedroom to attend to my wounds.
I dumped the whole pitcherful of water into the basin in my haste, and grabbed up a napkin with which to catch the blood that was flowing down my neck and into my shirt. Sticky, sticky mess, I cursed. My head swam, and I almost fell. Grabbing the edge of the table, I told myself not to be Lord Harlech’s fool. Riccardo had been right. Lord Harlech had made up that lie about the poison! Poison the blade, indeed!
But as I told myself this story, I looked down and saw for the first time a scratch, apparently made by his rapier on the back of my right hand. My hand was swelling as if this were an insect’s venomous work.
I felt my arm and my face. The wounds there were swelling, great welts forming behind the cuts. Again, there came the dizziness. The sweat dripped off me right into the basin, which was now full of red water that looked like wine.
“Oh, my God, the Devil’s done this to me,” I said. I turned and the entire room began to tilt and then to float. I rocked on my feet.
Someone caught me. I didn’t even see who it was. I tried to say Riccardo’s name, but my tongue was thick in my mouth.
Sounds and colors mingled in a hot, pulsing blur. Then with astonishing clarity I saw the embroidered baldaquin of the Master’s bed, over my head. Riccardo stood over me.
He spoke to me rapidly and somewhat desperately, but I couldn’t make out what he said. Indeed, it seemed he spoke a foreign tongue, a pretty one, very melodious and sweet, but I couldn’t understand a word of it.
“I’m hot,” I said. “I’m burning, I’m so hot that I can’t bear it. I have to have water. Put me in the Master’s bath.”
He didn’t seem to have heard me at all. On and on he went with his obvious pleading. I felt his hand on my forehead and it burned me, positively burned me. I begged him not to touch me, but this he didn’t hear, and neither did I! I wasn’t even speaking. I wanted to speak, but my tongue was too heavy and too big. You’ll get the poison, I wanted to cry. I could not.
I closed my eyes. Mercifully I drifted. I saw a great sparkling sea, the waters off the island of the Lido, crenelated and beautiful beneath the noonday sun. I floated on this sea, perhaps in a small bark, or maybe just on my back. I couldn’t feel the water itself, but there seemed nothing between me and its gentle tossing waves that were big and slow and easy and carried me up and then down. Far off, a great city gleamed on the shore. At first I thought it was Torcello, or even Venice, and that I had been turned around somehow and was floating towards the land. Then I saw it was much bigger than Venice, with great piercing reflective towers, as if it had been made entirely of brilliant glass. Oh, it was so lovely.
“Am I going there?” I asked.
The waves seemed then to fold over me, not with a suffocating wetness, but merely a quiet blanket of heavy light. I opened my eyes. I saw the red of the taffeta baldaquin above. I saw the golden fringe sewn on the velvet bed curtains, and then I saw Bianca Solderini there above me. She had a cloth in her hand.
“There wasn’t enough