Blood and Gold (28 page)

“You’re very far from ever doing that, Sandro,” I said. “That’s my view of it—that your goddesses are glorious as are your gods. In Rome, your frescoes of Christ were filled with light and beauty. Why journey into the darkness as you have done here?”

I took out the purse and put it on the table. I would leave now, and he would never know what true evil had come close to him. He would never dream of what I was and what I had meant, perhaps, perhaps to do.

He came to me and picked up the purse and tried to give it back.

“No, you keep it,” I said. “You deserve it. You do what you believe you should do.”

“Marius, I have to do what is right,” he said simply. “Now look at this, I want to show you.” He took me to another part of the workshop away from the large paintings.

Here was a table and on it were several pages of parchment covered with tiny drawings.

“These are illustrations for Dante’s
Inferno
,” he told me. “Surely you’ve read it. I want to do an illustrated version of the entire book.”

My heart sank when I heard this, but what could I say? I looked down at the drawings of the twisted and suffering bodies! How could one defend such an enterprise on the part of the painter who had rendered Venus and the Virgin with miraculous skill?

Dante’s
Inferno.
How I had despised the work while recognizing its brilliance.

“Sandro, how can you want to do this?” I asked. I was shaking. I didn’t want him to see my face. “I find glory,” I said, “in those paintings that are filled with the light of paradise, whether it is Christian or pagan. I find no delight in the illustrations of those who suffer in Hell.”

He was plainly confused and perhaps he always would be. It was his fate. I had only stepped into it, and perhaps fed a fire that was already too weak to survive.

I had to go now. I had to leave him now forever. I knew it. I could not come again to this house. I could not trust myself with him. I had to get out of Florence or my resolve would break.

“I won’t be seeing you again, Sandro,” I said.

“But why?” he said. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you. Oh, it’s not because of the purse, believe me.”

“I know, but I must leave. Remember. I believe in your gods and goddesses. I always will.”

I went out of his house, and only as far as the church. I was so overcome with the desire for him, to bring him over to me, and visit upon him all the dark secrets of the Blood, that I could scarce catch my breath or see the street before me, or even feel the air in my lungs.

I wanted him. I wanted his talent. I dreamt dreams of the two of us—Sandro and me—together in a great palazzo, and from there would come paintings tinged with the magic of the Blood.

It would be a confirmation of the Blood.

After all, I thought, he is ruining his own talent, is he not, by turning to what is dark? How can one account for it that he would turn from his goddesses to a poem called the
Inferno
? Can I not turn him back to his celestial visions with the Blood?

But none of this must happen. I knew it even before I’d seen his cruel crucifixion. I had known it before I went into his house.

I must find a victim now; I must find many. And so I hunted cruelly, until I could take no more blood from the few doomed souls I found in the streets of Florence.

At last an hour or so before dawn, I found myself sitting against a church door in a small piazza, looking like a beggar perhaps if beggars fit themselves out with crimson cloaks.

Those two young vampires whom I had heard following me came with fearful steps towards me.

I was weary and impatient.

“Get away from me,” I said. “I’ll destroy you both if you don’t.”

A young male, a young female, each taken in youth and both trembling, they would not retreat. At last the male spoke for them, his courage tremulous but real.

“Don’t you harm Botticelli!” he declared. “Don’t you hurt him! Take the dregs, yes, you’re welcome, but not Botticelli, never Botticelli.”

Sadly I laughed. My head fell back and very softly I laughed and laughed.

“I won’t do it,” I said. “I love him as much as you do. Now get away from me. Or believe me, there will be no more nights for either one of you. Go.”

Returning to the vault in the mountains, I wept for Botticelli.

I closed my eyes, and I entered the garden where Flora dropped her tender roses to the carpet of grass and flowers. I reached out to touch the hair of one of the young Graces.

“Pandora,” I whispered. “Pandora, it’s our garden. They were all beautiful like you.”

17

I
n the weeks that followed, I filled the shrine in the Alps with many new riches. I bought new golden lamps, and censers. I bought fine carpets from the markets in Venice, and golden silks from China as well. From the seamstresses of Florence I commissioned new garments for my Immortal Parents, and then carefully dressed them, relieving them of rags which should have been burnt long ago.

All the while I spoke to them in a consoling voice of the miracles I had seen in the changing world.

I laid before them fine printed books as I explained the ingenious invention of the printing press. And I hung over the doors to the shrine a new Flemish tapestry, also bought in Florence which I described to them in detail, so they might choose to look with their seemingly blind eyes.

Then I went to the city of Florence and gathering up all the pigment and oil and other materials which my servant had procured for me, I brought it to the mountain shrine, and I proceeded to paint the walls in the new style.

I did not seek now to imitate Botticelli. But I did return to the old motif of the garden which I had so loved centuries ago, and I soon found myself rendering my Venus, my Graces, my Flora, and infusing into the work all the details of life which only a blood drinker can behold.

Where Botticelli had painted the dark grass rich with varied flowers, I revealed the small insectile creatures inevitably concealed there, and then the most flamboyant and beautiful of creatures, the butterflies and the varicolored moths. Indeed my style ran to frightening detail in every respect, and soon an intoxicating and magic forest surrounded the Mother and Father, the egg tempera lending a gleam to the whole which I had never achieved in the past.

When I studied it, I became ever so slightly dizzy, thinking of Botticelli’s garden, indeed, thinking even of the garden I had dreamt of in old Rome, of the garden I had painted—and soon I had to shake myself and collect myself because I did not know where I was.

The Royal Parents seemed more solid and remote than ever. All trace of the Great Burning was now gone from them in that their skin was purely white.

It had been so long since they had moved that I began to wonder if I had dreamt those things which had happened—if I had imagined the sacrifice of Eudoxia—but now my mind was very much intent upon escaping the shrine for long periods of time.

My last gift to the Divine Parents—after all my painting was done, and Akasha and Enkil were decked out with all new jewels—was a long bank of one hundred beeswax candles which I lighted for them all at once with the power of my mind.

Of course I saw no change in the eyes of the King and Queen. Nevertheless, it gave me great pleasure to offer this to them; and I spent my last hours with them, letting the candles burn down as I told them in a soft voice of all the wonders of the cities of Florence and Venice which I had come to love.

I vowed that every time I came to them I would light the one hundred candles. It would be a small proof of my undying love.

What caused me to do such a thing? I have no true idea. But after that I kept a great supply of candles always in the shrine; I stored them behind the two figures; and after the offering, I would replenish the bronze holder and take away all melted wax.

When all this had been done, I returned to Florence and to Venice, and to the rich high-walled little city of Siena, to study paintings of all sorts.

Indeed, I wandered through palaces and churches throughout Italy, quite drunken on what I beheld.

As I have described, a great fusion had taken place between Christian themes and ancient pagan style, which was developing everywhere. And though I still perceived Botticelli to be the Master, I was taken aback by the plasticity and wonder of much of what I saw.

The voices in the taverns and in the wine shops told me I ought to go North to see paintings as well.

Now this was news to me, for North had always meant the land of the less civilized, but so great was my hunger for the new styles that I did as I was told.

I found throughout all of northern Europe an intense and complex civilization which I had surely underestimated, most particularly I think in France. There were great cities in existence and Royal Courts which supported painting. There was much for me to study.

But I did not love the art which I saw.

I respected the works of Jan van Eyck, and Rogier van der Weyden, of Hugo van der Goes, and of Hieronymus Bosch and many other nameless masters whom I beheld, but their work did not delight me as did the work of the Italian painters. The Northern world was not as lyrical. It was not as sweet. It still bore the grotesque stamp of the work of purely religious art.

So I soon returned to the cities of Italy where I was richly rewarded for my wanderings with no end in sight.

I soon learnt that Botticelli had studied with a great master, Filippo Lippi, and that this one’s son, Filippino Lippi, was working with Botticelli right now. Other painters whom I loved included Gozzoli and Signorelli, and Piero della Francesca and beyond that so many that I do not want to mention their names.

But all during my study of painting, my little travels, my long nights of adoring attention to this or that wall, or this or that altarpiece, I did not let myself dream of bringing Botticelli to me, and I never lingered long near any place where he was.

I knew that he prospered. I knew that he painted. And that was quite enough for me.

But an idea had come to brew in me—an idea as strong as the earlier dream of seducing Botticelli had been.

What if I were to reenter the world again, and to live in it as a painter? Oh, not a working painter who took commissions, that would be nonsense, but an eccentric gentleman who chose to paint for his own pleasure, admitting mortals to his house to dine at his table and drink his wine.

Had I not done so in a bumbling way in the ancient nights before the first sack of Rome? Yes, I had painted my own walls with crude, hasty images, and I had let my good-natured guests laugh at me.

Oh yes, a thousand years had passed since then, more in fact, and I could no longer easily pass for human. I was too pale and too dangerously strong. But was I not more clever now, more wise, more practiced with the Mind Gift, and more willing to mask my skin with whatever emollients were required to dim its preternatural gleam?

I was desperate to do it!

Of course it would not be in Florence. That was far too close to Botticelli. I would attract his notice and were he to set foot under my roof, I would be driven to extremes of pain. I was in love with the man. I could not deny it. But I had another, most marvelous choice.

It was the gorgeous and glittering city of Venice which drew me with its indescribably majestic palaces, their windows open to the constant breezes of the Adriatic, and its dark winding canals.

It seemed I should make a new and spectacular beginning there, purchasing for myself the finest house available, and acquiring a bevy of apprentices to prepare my paints for me, and the walls of my own house which would eventually receive my best efforts after I had done some panels and canvases to once again learn my craft.

As for my identity I would be Marius de Romanus, a man of mystery and incalculable wealth. Simply put, I would bribe those I had to bribe to obtain the right to remain in Venice, and thereafter spend freely among those who came to know me in the smallest capacity, and give generously to my apprentices who would be recipients of the finest education I could obtain for them.

Understand please that in this time the cities of Florence and Venice were not part of one country. Far from it. Each was a country unto itself. And so being in Venice I was quite removed from Botticelli, and would be subject to very important laws which the citizens of Venice were required to obey.

Now as to the matter of my appearance I intended to be careful in the extreme. Imagine the effect upon a mortal heart were I to reveal myself in all my coldness, a blood drinker of some fifteen hundred years in age with purely white skin and flashing blue eyes. So the matter of emollients was no small thing.

Renting rooms in the city, I purchased from the perfume shops the very finest tinted salves I could find. Then to my skin I applied these ointments, carefully inspecting the results in the finest mirrors which could be had. I soon made a blending of salves which was most perfect for not only darkening my cold complexion, but for bringing back to visibility in it the finest little wrinkles or lines.

I myself had not known that these lines of human expression still remained to me, and I was most happy to discover them, and I rather liked the image that I presented to the glass. As for the perfume, it was pleasing, and I realized that once settled in my own house, I could have the proper salves made for me and have them always on hand.

It took some months to complete my entire plan.

And this was largely because I had fallen in love with one particular palazzo, a house of great beauty, its facade covered in glistering marble tiles, its arches in the Moorish style, and its immense rooms more luxurious than anything I had ever beheld in all my nights, and even my long ago days. The lofty ceilings amazed me. We had known nothing like them in old Rome, at least not in a private house. And on top of the immense roof was a carefully arranged roof garden from which one could view the sea.

Once the ink was dry upon the parchment, I set out to purchase for myself the finest furnishings imaginable—coffered beds, desks, chairs, tables, all the usual appointments including gold-threaded draperies for every window—and I set to the task of managing all this a clever and genial old man named Vincenzo, a creature of extremely solid health, whom I had bought almost as if he were a slave from a family who had no more use for him and kept him about in shameful neglect because he had once educated their sons.

I saw in Vincenzo just the sort of governor I would need for all the apprentices I meant to buy from their Masters, boys who would bring some skill already learnt to the tasks they had to do for me. I was also pleased with the fact that the man was already old which meant I did not have to be tormented by the spectacle of youth dying in him. Rather I could pride myself, perhaps foolishly, on visiting upon him a rather splendid old age.

How did I find the creature? I went about reading minds to discover what I wanted.

I was now more powerful than ever. I could find the Evil Doer effortlessly. I could hear the secret thoughts of those who sought to cheat me or those who loved the mere sight of me. And the latter was a dangerous thing.

Why dangerous, you might ask? The answer is that I was now more than ever susceptible to love, and when seen with loving eyes I knew it and I slowed my pace.

What a strange mood would descend upon me while walking in the arcade along San Marco if someone should be looking at me admiringly. I would turn about, taking my time, and double back perhaps, and only reluctantly move away, rather like a bird in some northern clime enjoying the warmth of the sun on its wings.

Meantime, with gold in his hands, Vincenzo was sent to buy fine clothes for himself. I would make a gentleman of him, in so far as the sumptuary laws allowed.

And seated at my new desk in a spacious bedchamber floored in marble with windows open to the winds off the canal, I wrote out lists of those additional luxuries which I desired.

I wanted a lavish old Roman-style bath built for me in this bedchamber, so that I could enjoy the warm water whenever I wished. I wanted shelves for my books, and a finer chair for this desk. Of course there should be another library. What was a house to me if it did not possess a library? I wanted the finest clothing, the fashionable hats and leather shoes.

I drew pictures to guide those who would carry out my designs.

These were heady times. I was a part of life once more and my heart was beating to a human pace.

Hailing a gondola at the quais, I traveled the canals for hours looking up at the spectacular facades which made up the waterways of Venice. I listened to the voices everywhere. I lay back sometimes on my elbow and gazed up at the stars.

At various goldsmith shops and painters’ workshops I chose my first gathering of apprentices, taking every opportunity to select the brilliant ones who were for various reasons among the wronged, and neglected, and abused. They would show me profound loyalty and untapped knowledge, and I sent them off to their new home with gold coins in their hands.

Of course I procured clever assistants because those were necessary, but I knew I would be very successful with the poorlings. Force was not required.

Meantime, it was my wish that my boys should be educated for the university—not a customary thing with a painter’s apprentice—so I chose tutors for them and arranged for these men to come to my house in the daylight hours to perform instruction as required.

The boys would learn Latin, Greek, philosophy, the newfound and much valued “classics,” some mathematics and whatever they needed to proceed in life. If they excelled in painting and they chose it, they could of course forget the university and follow the painter’s path.

Finally I had a houseful of healthy and noisy activity. There were cooks in the kitchen, and musicians teaching my boys to sing and play the lute. There were dancing instructors and there were fencing matches over the marble floors of the great salons.

But I did not open my doors to the populace as I had done in long ago Rome.

I was too wary to do such a thing in Venice, too unsure of my ruse, too uncertain of what questions my mad painting might arouse.

No, I need only have my young male assistants, I fancied, both to keep me company and to help me, for there was much to be done preparing the walls for my frescoes and covering my panels and canvases with the proper varnishes for my work.

As it turned out, there was not much for anyone to do for some weeks, for during that period I wandered the local workshops and studied the painters of Venice as I had studied the painters of Florence not long before.