The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [534]
David didn’t answer. He pointed to the boy. “It’s the boy I want you to observe,” he said. “He’s not the real subject of your investigation, merely a very important link.”
Subject? Link.… She was too engrossed in the picture. “And look, bones in the corner, human bones covered with dust, as if someone had merely swept them out of the way. But what on earth does it all mean?”
“Yes,” David murmured. “When you see the word ‘temptation, usually there are devils surrounding a saint.”
“Exactly,” she answered. “And the craft is exceptional.” The more she stared at the picture, the more disturbed she became. “Where did you get this?”
“The order acquired it centuries ago,” David answered. “Our emissary in Venice retrieved it from a burnt-out villa on the Grand Canal. These vampires are endlessly associated with fires, by the way. It is the one weapon they can use effectively against one another. There are always fires. In Interview with the Vampire, there were several fires, if you recall. Louis set fire to a town house in New Orleans when he was trying to destroy his maker and mentor, Lestat. And later, Louis burned the Theater of the Vampires in Paris after Claudia’s death.”
Claudia’s death. It sent a shiver through Jesse, startling her slightly.
“But look at this boy carefully,” David said. “It’s the boy we’re discussing now.”
Amadeo. It meant “one who loves God.” He was a handsome creature, all right. Sixteen, maybe seventeen, with a square, strongly proportioned face and a curiously imploring expression.
David had put something in her hand. Reluctantly she took her eyes off the painting. She found herself staring at a tintype, a late-nineteenth-century photograph. After a moment, she whispered: “This is the same boy!”
“Yes. And something of an experiment,” David said. “It was most likely taken just after sunset in impossible lighting conditions which might not have worked with another subject. Notice not much is really visible but his face.”
True, yet she could see the style of the hair was of the period.
“You might look at this as well,” David said. And this time he gave her an old magazine, a nineteenth-century journal, the kind with narrow columns of tiny print and ink illustrations. There was the same boy again alighting from a barouche—a hasty sketch, though the boy was smiling.
“The article’s about him, and about his Theater of the Vampires. Here’s an English journal from 1789. That’s a full eighty years earlier, I believe. But you will find another very thorough description of the establishment and the same young man.”
“The Theater of the Vampires …” She stared up at the auburn-haired boy kneeling in the painting. “Why, this is Armand, the character in the novel!”
“Precisely. He seems to like that name. It may have been Amadeo when he was in Italy, but it became Armand by the eighteenth century and he’s used Armand ever since.”
“Slow down, please,” Jesse said. “You’re telling me that the Theater of the Vampires has been documented? By our people?”
“Thoroughly. The file’s enormous. Countless memoirs describe the theater. We have the deeds to the property as well. And here we come to another link with our files and this little novel, Interview with the Vampire. The name of the owner of the theater was Lestat de Lioncourt, who purchased it in 1789. And the property in modern Paris is in the hands of a man by the same name even now.” “This is verified?” Jesse said.
“It’s all in the file,” David said, “photostats of the old records and the recent ones. You can study the signature of Lestat if you like. Lestat does everything in a big way—covers half the page with his magnificent lettering. We have photostats of several examples. We want you to take those photostats to New Orleans with you. There’s a newspaper account of the fire which destroyed the theater exactly as Louis described it. The date is consistent with the facts of the story. You must go over everything, of course. And the