Bllod and Gold Page 13

  But now I took stock of them from my point of view not as Marius the rich man who can have whatever he wishes, but as Marius the monster painter who had rendered Pandora twenty-one times on the four walls of Akasha's shrine.

  I saw suddenly how inferior were these paintings, how rigid and pallid the goddesses and nymphs who peopled this world of my study, and quickly I woke my day slaves and told them that they must have everything covered over with fresh paint the following day. Also an entire supply of the best paints must be purchased and brought to the house. Never mind how the walls were to be redecorated. Leave that to me. Cover up all that was there.

  They were used to my eccentricities, and after making certain that they understood me, they went back to their sleep.

  I didn't know what I meant to do, except I felt driven to make

  pictures, and I felt if I can cling to that, if I can do that, then I can go on.

  My misery deepened.

  I laid out vellum for an entry in my erstwhile journal and began to describe the experience of discovering my beloved everywhere around me, and how it seemed to contain an element of sorcery when

  suddenly I heard an unmistakable sound.

  Avicus was at my gate. Indeed he was asking me with a strong current of the Mind Gift whether or not he might corne over the wall and in to visit me.

  He was leery of the mortals in my banquet room and in my garden. But might he come in?

  At once I gave my silent answer that he could.

  It had been years since I had so much as glimpsed him in the back streets, and I was not entirely surprised to see him dressed as a Roman soldier, and to see that he had taken to carrying a dagger and a sword.

  He glanced fretfully at the door to the banquet room, but I gestured

  that he must pay the guests no attention at all.

  His rich curling dark hair was well groomed arid clean and he had about him an attitude of prosperity and well-being, except that his clothes were dreadfully stained with blood. It was not human blood. I would have srnelled human blood. He soon gave me to know by a

  simple facial expression that he was in dire distress.

  "What is it? What can I do for you?" I asked. I tried to cloak rny pure loneliness, my pure need to touch his hand.

  You are a creature like me, I wanted to say. We are monsters and we can put our arms around each other. What are they, my guests, but tender things? But I said nothing at all.

  It was Avicus who spoke.

  "Something dreadful has happened. I don't know how to correct it, or even if it can be corrected. I beg you to come."

  "Come where, tell me," I said sympathetically.

  "It's Mael. He's been grievously wounded and I don't know if the damage can be repaired."

  We went out at once.

  I followed him into a very crowded quarter of Rome where the newer buildings faced one another sometimes with no more than two

  feet in between. At last we came to a substantial new house on the outskirts, a rich dwelling, with a heavy gate, and he took me inside, through the entranceway and into the broad beautiful atrium or

  courtyard within the house.

  Let me note here that he was not using his full strength during this little journey, but I did not want to point this out to him, and so at his slow pace, I had followed his lead.

  Now, through the atrium, we passed into the main room of the house, the room where mortals would have dined, and there by the light of one lamp, I saw Mael lying in seeming helplessness on the tiled floor.

  The light was glinting in his eyes. I knelt beside him at once.

  His head was twisted awkwardly to one side, and one of his arms was turned as though the shoulder were out of joint. His entire body was hideously gaunt, and his skin had a dreadful pallor to it. Yet his eyes fixed on me with neither malice nor supplication.

  His clothes, very much like those of Avicus, hung loose on his starved frame, and were deeply soaked with blood. As for his long blond hair it was clotted with blood also, and his lips shivered as if he were trying to speak but could not.

  Avicus gestured to me helplessly with both hands. I bent closer to have a better look at Mael, while Avicus brought the oil lamp near and held it so that it cast a warm bright light.

  Mael made a low, harsh sound, and I saw gradually that there were horrid red wounds on his throat, and on his naked shoulder where the cloth of his tunic had been pushed out of the way. His arm was at the wrong angle to his body, most definitely, and his neck had been

  horribly twisted so that his head was not right.

  In a moment of exquisite horror, I realized that these parts of him— head and arm—had been shifted from their natural place.

  "How did this happen?" I asked. I looked up at Avicus. "Do you know?"

  "They cut off his head and his arm," said Avicus. "It was a band of soldiers, drunk and looking for trouble. We made to go around them, but they turned on us. We should have gone up over the roofs. We were too sure of ourselves. We thought ourselves so superior, so invincibly strong."

  "I see," I answered. I clasped the hand of Mael's good arm. At once,he pressed my hand in return. In truth I was deeply shocked. But I could not let either of them see this, for it would only have made them more afraid.

  I had often wondered if we could be destroyed by dismemberment, and now the awful truth was plain to me. It was not sufficient alone to release our souls from this world.

  "They surrounded him before I knew what to do," said Avicus. "I fought off those who tried to harm me, but look what they have done to him."

  "And you brought him back here," I said, "and you tried to replace both head and arm."

  "He was still living!" said Avicus. "They had run off, drunken, stumbling miscreants. And I saw at once that he was still alive. There in the street, though the blood poured out of him, he was looking at me! Why, he was reaching with his good arm for his own head."

  He looked at me as though begging me to understand him, or perhaps forgive him.

  "He was alive," he repeated. "The blood poured out of his neck, and it poured out of his head. In the street, I put the head on the neck. It was here that I joined the arm to the shoulder. And look what I have done."

  Mael's fingers tightened on my hand.

  "Can you answer me?" I said to Mael. "Make only a sound if you cannot."

  There came that harsh noise again but this time I fancied I heard the syllable Yes.

  "Do you want to live? " I asked.

  "Oh, don't ask him such a thing," Avicus begged.. "He may lack courage just now. Only help me if you know what to do." He knelt down beside Mael and he bent over, carefully holding the lamp to one side, and he pressed his lips to Mael's forehead. From Mael there had come that same answer again: Yes. "Bring me more light," I said to Avicus, "but understand before you do. I possess no extraordinary magic in this matter. I think I know what has happened and I know how to undo it. But that is all."

  At once Avicus gathered up from about the house a number of oil lamps and lighted them and set them down in an oval around Mael. It looked strangely like the work of a sorcerer marking off a place for magic, but I didn't let my thoughts become distracted by that annoying

  fact, and when I could finally see with the very best advantage I knelt down and looked at all the wounds, and I looked at the sunken, bloodless and skeletal figure of Mael.

  Finally I sat back on my heels. I looked at Avicus who sat opposite me on the other side of his friend.

  "Tell me precisely how you accomplished this," I said. "I fixed the head to the neck as best I could do it, but I was wrong, you see, I did it wrong. How can we know how to do it right?" he demanded. "Do you know?"

  "And the arm," I said, "it's badly joined as well." "What shall we do?" "Did you force the joining?" I asked.

  He reflected before answering me. And then he said, "Yes, I think I did. I see your meaning. I did it with force. I meant these parts to adhere once more. I used too much fo
rce."

  "Ah, well, we have one chance to repair this, I think, but understand again I possess no secret knowledge. I take my lead from the fact that he is still living. I think we must pull off both head and arm and see if these parts, when placed in correct proximity to the body, will not join at the right angles as they should."

  His face brightened only as he slowly understood what I had said. "Yes," he said. "Perhaps they will join as they are meant to join! If they can join so poorly, they can join in a way that is perfect and right." "Yes," I said, "but you must do this act. You are the one he trusts." He looked down at his friend and I could see that this task would be no easy tiling. Then slowly he looked up at me.

  "We must give him our blood first to strengthen him," he said. "No, after it's done," I said, "he'll need it for healing. That's when we'll give it." I disliked that I had given my word in this, but I realized quite abruptly that I didn't want to see Mael die. Indeed, so much did I not want to see it that I thought perhaps I ought to take over the entire operation myself.

  But I could not step in. It was up to Avicus how the matter went forward.

  Quite abruptly, he placed his left hand firmly on Mael's shoulder and pulled Mael's badly joined arm with all his strength. At once the arm was free of the body with bloody ligaments trembling from it rather like the roots of a tree.

  "Now, place it close to him, there, yes, and see if it does not seek its own place."

  He obeyed me, but my hand was out to guide the arm quickly, not letting it get too close, but waiting for jt to begin to move on its own. Abruptly I felt the spasm in the arm and then let go of it, and saw it quickly joined to the shoulder, the flying ligaments moving as so many little serpents into the body until the rupture was no more.

  Alas, I had been right in my suspicions. The body followed its own supernatural rules.

  At once, I cut my wrist with my teeth and I let my blood pour down on the wound. I saw it heal before my eyes.

  Avicus seemed rather amazed by this simple trick, though surely he must have known it, for this limited curative property of our blood is almost universally known among our kind.

  In a moment, I had given all that I wanted to give and the wound had all but disappeared.

  I sat back to see Mael's eyes fixed on me as before. His head looked pathetic and grotesque at its incorrect angle. And his expression was hideously empty.

  I felt his hand again, and the pressure was returned.

  "Are you prepared to do it?" I asked Avicus.

  "Hold him well by the shoulders," Avicus answered. "For the love of Heaven, use all your strength."

  I put my hands up, and caught Mael as firmly as I could. I would have rested my knees on his chest but he was far too weakened for such a weight and so I kept to one side.

  Finally with a loud moan, Avicus pulled on Mael's head with both his hands.

  The gush of blood was appalling, and I could swear that I heard the ripping of preternatural flesh. Avicus fell back with the gesture, and toppled to one side, holding the helpless head in his hands.

  "At once, place it near to the body!" I cried. I held the shoulders still, though the body had suddenly given a dreadful lurch. Indeed the arms flew up as if in search of the head.

  Avicus laid the head down in the gushing blood, pushing it ever closer to the gaping neck, until suddenly the head seemed to move of its own volition, the ligaments once more like so many little snakes as they made to meet with those of the trunk, and the whole body gave another lurch and the head was firmly fixed as it should have been.

  I saw Mael's eyes fluttering, and I saw his mouth open, and he cried out,

  "Avicus," with all his strength.

  Avicus bent over him, cutting his wrist with his teeth as I had done before, only this time it was to let the stream come down into Mael's mouth.

  Mael reached for the arm above him, and he brought it down to him, drinking fiercely as his back arched, and his thin miserable legs quivered and went straight.

  I drew away from the pair, out of the circle of light. I sat still for a long while in the shadows, my eyes fixed on them, and then when I could see that Avicus was exhausted, that his heart was tired from giving so much blood, I crept to join the two, and I asked if I might give Mael to drink from me as well.

  Oh, how my soul revolted against this gesture. Why ever did I feel compelled to do it? I can give no answer. I don't know any more now than I knew at the time.

  Mael was able to sit up. His figure was more robust, but the expression

  on his face was too dreadful to behold. The blood on the floor was dried and glittering as our blood always is. It would have to be scraped

  up and burnt.

  Ala el leant forward and put his arms around me in a terrible intimacy

  and kissed me on the neck. He didn't dare to sink his teeth.

  "Very well, do it," I said, though I was dreadfully hesitant, and I put in my mind images of Rome for him to see as he drank, images of beautiful new temples, Constantine's amazing triumphal arch, and all the wondrous churches which were now erected far and wide. I thought of Christians and their magical ceremonies. I thought of

  anything to disguise and obliterate all the secrets of my entire life.

  A miserable revulsion continued in me as I felt the pull of his hunger and his need. I refused to see anything of his soul with the Mind Gift, and I think my eyes met those of Avicus at one moment, and I was struck by the grave, complex expression on his face.

  Finally, it was all finished. I could give no more. It was almost dawn and I needed what strength I had to move quickly towards my hiding place. I rose to my feet.

  Avicus spoke up.

  "Can we not be friends now?" he asked. "We have been enemies for

  so many, many years."

  Mael was still wretchedly afflicted from what had befallen him, and in no state perhaps to declare on the matter one way or the other, but he looked up at me with his accusing eyes, and said:

  "In Egypt you saw the Great Mother, I saw her in your heart when I drank your blood."

  I went rigid with shock and fury.

  I thought I should kill him. He has been good only for learning— how to put together again blood drinkers who had been dismembered— and it was time now to finish what the drunkards only started earlier this night. But I said and did nothing.

  Oh, how cold was my heart.

  Avicus was dreadfully disappointed and disapproving.

  "Marius, I thank you," he said, sad and weary as he walked me to the gate. "What could I have done if you had refused to come to us? I owe you an immense debt."

  "There is no Good Mother," I told him. "I bid you farewell."

  As I hurried back over the rooftops of Rome, towards my own house, I resolved in my soul that I'd told them the truth.

  7

  I WAS VERY SURPRISED the next night to find the walls of my library completely painted over. I had forgotten that I'd given such a command to my slaves. As soon as I saw all the pots of fresh paint in any number of colors, I then remembered what I had

  told them to do.

  Indeed, I couldn't think of anything but Alael arid Avicus and must confess I was more than fascinated by the mixture of civilized manners and quiet dignity which I found in Avicus and not at all in Mael.

  Mael would always be for me a barbarian, unlettered, unrefined, and above all fanatical, for it was due to his fanatic belief in the Gods of the Grove that he had taken my life.

  And realizing that the only way I could escape my thoughts of the pair was to paint: the newly prepared walls, I set to work at once.

  I took no notice of my guests who were already dining of course, and of those going and coming through the garden and the open gate.

  Realize, if you will, that by this time I did not have to hunt for blood that often, and though I was still much too much the savage in this respect, I often left it till late in the evening or early in the morning,

  or did not hunt
at all.

  So to the painting, I went. I didn't stand back and take stock of what I meant to do. Rather I went at it fiercely, covering the wall in great glaring patches, making the usual garden which obsessed me, and the nymphs arid goddesses whose forms were so familiar to my