Blood And Gold (The Vampire Chronicles 8)

The music was intoxicating. The walls were ablaze with fine paintings, though none as magical as what I had seen in the Sistine Chapel, and the crowd was huge and sumptuously dressed.

Quickly, I fell into conversation with the young scholars, the ones who were talking hotly of painting as well as poetry and I asked my dumb question: Who had done the magnificent frescoes in the Sistine Chapel which I had just beheld?

"You've seen these paintings?" said one of the crowd to me. "I don't believe it. We haven't been allowed in to see them. Describe to me again what you saw. "

I laid out everything, very simply as though I were a schoolboy.

"The figures are supremely delicate," I said, "with sensitive faces, and each being, though rendered with great naturalness, is ever so slightly too long. "

The company around me laughed good naturedly.

"Ever so slightly too long," repeated one of the elders.

"Who did the paintings?" I said, imploringly. "I must meet this man. "

"You'll have to go to Florence to meet him," said the elder scholar. "You're talking about Botticelli, and he's already gone home. "

"Botticelli," I whispered. It was a strange almost ridiculous name. In Italian it translates to "little tub. " But to me it meant magnificence.

"You're certain it was Botticelli," I said.

"Oh, yes," said the elder scholar. The others with us were also nodding. "Everyone's marveling at what he can do. That's why the Pope sent for him. He was here two years working on the Sistine Chapel. Everyone knows Botticelli. And now he's no doubt as busy in Florence as he was here. "

"I only want to see him with my own eyes," I said.

"Who are you?" asked one of the scholars.

"No one," I whispered. "No one at all. "

There was general laughter. It seemed to blend rather bewitchingly with the music around us, and the glare of so many candles.

I felt drunk on the smell of mortals, and with dreams of Botticelli.

"I have to find Botticelli," I whispered. And bidding them all farewell I went out into the night.

But what was I going to do when I found Botticelli, that was the question. What was driving me? What did I want?

To see all of his works, yes, that much was certain, but what more did my soul require?

My loneliness seemed as great as my age and it frightened me.

I returned to the Sistine Chapel.

I spent the remainder of the night perusing the frescoes once more.

Before dawn a guard came upon me. I allowed it to happen. With the Spell Gift I gently convinced him that I belonged where I was.

"Who is the figure here in these paintings? " I asked, "the elder with the beard and the gold light streaming from his head? "

"Moses," said the guard, "you know, Moses the prophet. It all has to do with Moses, and the other painting has to do with Christ. " He pointed. "Don't you see the inscription? "

I had not seen it but I saw it now. The Temptation of Moses, Bearer of the Written Law.

I sighed. "I wish I knew their stories better," I said. "But the paintings are so exquisite that the story doesn't matter. "

The guard only shrugged.

"Did you know Botticelli when he painted here?" I asked.