The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles 6)

"Pretend, and grow strong with each pretense," he whispered in my ear. "Rather, draw close and be loving and love, without the luxury of complete honesty. For love can bridge all. "

Chapter 13

13

IN THE FOLLOWING MONTHS, I learned more than I can ever recount here. I studied vigorously, and paid attention even to the government of the city, which I thought basically as tiresome as any government, and read voraciously the great Christian scholars, completing my time with Abelard, Duns Scotus and other thinkers whom Marius prized.

Marius also found for me a heap of Russian literature so that for the first time I could study in writing what I had only known from the songs of my uncles and my Father in the past. At first I deemed this too painful for a serious inquiry, but Marius laid down the law and wisely. The inherent value of the subject matter soon absorbed my painful recollections and a greater knowledge and understanding was the result.

All of these documents were in Church Slavonic, the written language of my childhood, and I soon fell into reading this with extraordinary ease. The Lay of lgor's Campaigns delighted me, but I also loved the writings, translated from the Greek, of St. John Chrysostom. I also reveled in the fantastical tales of King Solomon and of the Descent of the Virgin into Hell, works which were not part of the approved New Testament but which were very evocative of the Russian soul. I read also our great chronicle, The Tale of-Bygone Years. I read also Orison on the Downfall of Russia and the Tale of the Destruction of Riasan.

This exercise, the reading of my native stories, helped me to put them in perspective alongside the other learning which I acquired. In sum, it lifted them from the realm of personal dreams.

Gradually, I saw the wisdom of this. I made my reports to Marius with more enthusiasm. I asked for more of the manuscripts in Church Slavonic, and I soon had for reading the Narrative of the Pious Prince Dovmont and His Courage and The Heroic Deeds of Mercurius of Smolensk. Finally, I came to regard the works in Church Slavonic to be a pure pleasure, and I kept them for the hours after official study when I might pour over the old tales and even make up from them my own mournful songs.

I sang these sometimes to the other apprentices when they went to sleep. They thought the language very exotic, and sometimes the pure music and my sad inflection could make them cry.

Riccardo and I, meantime, became close friends again. He never asked why I was now a creature of night like the Master. I never sounded the depths of his mind. Of course I would do it if I had to for my safety and for Marius's safety, but I used my vampiric wits to gloss him in another way, and I always found him devoted, unquestioning and loyal.

Once I asked Marius what Riccardo thought of us.

"Riccardo owes me too great a debt to question anything I do," Marius answered, but without any haughtiness or pride.

"Then he is far better bred than I am, isn't he? For I owe you the same debt and I question everything you say. "

"You're a smart, devil-tongued little imp, yes," Marius conceded with a small smile. "Riccardo was won in a card game from his drunken Father by a beastly merchant who worked him night and day. Riccardo detested his Father, which you never have. Riccardo was eight years old when I bought him for the price of a gold necklace. He'd seen the worst of men whom children don't move to natural pity. You saw what men will do with the flesh of children for pleasure. It's not as bad. Riccardo, unable to believe that a tender little one could move anyone to compassion, believed in nothing until I wrapped him in safety and filled him with learning, and told him in terms on which he could count that he was my prince.

"But to answer you more in the way you ask the question, Riccardo thinks that I am a magician, and that with you I've chosen to share my spells. He knows that you were on death's door when I bestowed on you my secrets, and that I do not tease him or the others with this honor, but regard it rather as something of dire consequence. He doesn't seek after our knowledge. And will defend us with his life. "

I accepted this. I didn't have the need in me to confide in Riccardo as I had with Bianca.

"I feel the need to protect him," I said to my Master. "Pray he should never have to protect me. "

"So I feel also," said Marius. "I feel this for them all. God granted your Englishman a great mercy that he was not alive when I came home to find my little ones slain by him. I don't know what I would have done. That he had injured you was bad enough. That he had laid out two child sacrifices at my door to his pride and bitterness, this was even more despicable. You had made love to him, and you could fight him. But they were innocents who stood in his path. "

I nodded. "What did happen to his remains?" I asked.

"Such a simple thing," he said with a shrug. "Why do you want to know? I can be superstitious too. I broke him into fragments and scattered those fragments to the wind. If the old tales are true that his shade will pine for the restoration of his body, then his soul wanders the winds. "

"Master, what will become of our shades if our bodies are destroyed?"

"God only knows, Amadeo. I despair of knowing. I have lived too long to think of destroying myself. My fate is perhaps the same fate of the whole physical world. That we could have come from nothing and return to nothing, this is entirely possible. But let us enjoy our illusions of immortality, as mortals enjoy theirs. "

Good enough.

My Master was absent from the palazzo twice, when he went on those mysterious journeys which he wouldn't explain to me any more now than he had before.

I hated these absences, but I knew that they were tests of my new powers. I had to rule within the house gently and unobtrusively, and I had to hunt on my own and make some account, upon Marius's return, of what I had done with my leisure time.

After the second journey, he came home weary and uncommonly sad. He said, as he had said once before, that "Those Who Must Be Kept" seemed to be at peace.

"I hate it what these creatures are!" I said.

"No, never say such a thing to me, Amadeo!" he burst out. In a flash I'd seen him more angry and uncomposed than ever in our lives. I'm not sure I'd ever seen him really angry in our lives.

He approached me and I shrank back, actually afraid. But by the time he struck me, hard across the face, he'd recovered himself, and it was just the usual brain-jarring blow.

I accepted it, and then threw him one exasperated searing glance. "You act like a child," I said, "a child playing Master, and so I must master my feelings and put up with this. "