“What is it? What can I do for you?” I asked. I tried to cloak my 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 force.”
“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 thing. 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 it 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.
Mael 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 Mael and 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 and goddesses whose forms were so familiar to my mind.
These creatures had no names for me. They might have come from any verse in Ovid, or from the writing of Lucretius, or indeed from the blind poet, Homer. It was no matter to me. I lost myself in depicting uplifted arms and graceful throats, in painting oval faces and garments blowing gently in the breeze.
One wall I divided with painted columns, and around these I painted vines. Another wall, I worked with stiff borders of stylized greenery. And the third wall I allotted into small panels in which I would feature various gods.
Meantime, the house grew crowded with the ever noisy party, and some of my favorite drunkards drifted inevitably into the library and watched me at work.
I knew enough to slow my pace somewhat so as not to scare them with my unnatural speed. But otherwise, I took no notice, and only when one of the lyre players came in to sing for me did I realize how mad the house must seem.
For there were people dining and drinking everywhere now, and the master of the house in his long tunic stood painting a wall, the proper work for craftsmen or artists, not Patricians you understand, and there seemed no decent boundary of any kind.
I began to laugh at the absurdity of it.
One of the young guests marveled at my talent.
“Marius, you never told us. We never imagined.”
“Neither did I,” I said dully, going on with my work, watching the white paint disappear beneath my brush.
For months I went on with my painting, even moving into the banquet room where the guests cheered me on as I worked. Whatever I accomplished it did not please me and it certainly did not amaze them.
They thought it amusing and eccentric that a rich man should decorate his own walls. And all the drunken advice I received did not amount to very much. The learned men knew the mythic tales I depicted and they enjoyed them, and the young men tried to get me in arguments which I refused.
It was the spacious garden I loved to paint above all, with no painted frame to set it apart from our world with its dancing figures and bending laurels. It was the familiar garden. For I imagined that I could escape into it with my mind.
And during that time I did not risk attending to the chapel. Rather I painted all the rooms of my house.
Meantime, the old gods whom I painted were fast disappearing from the Temples of Rome.
At some point or other, Constantine had made Christianity the legal religion of the Empire, and now it was the pagans who couldn’t worship as they chose.
I don’t think Constantine himself was ever in favor of forcing anybody in religious matters. But that’s what had come about.
So I painted poor old Bacchus, the god of wine, with his cheerful followers, and the brilliant Apollo chasing the desperate and lovely Daphne who turned into a laurel tree rather than allow the godly rape.
On and on I worked, happy with mortal company, thinking, Mael and Avicus, please do not search my mind for secrets.
But in truth all during this time I could hear them very near me. My mortal banquet parties puzzled them and frightened them. I could hear them approach my house and then go away every night.
Finally the inevitable night came.
They stood at my gate.
Mael was for coming in without permission, and Avicus kept him back, begging me with the Mind Gift to admit them once more.
I was in my library, painting it over for the third time, and the dinner party that night, thank the gods, had not spilled over into the room.
I put down my brush. I stared at my unfinished work. It seemed another Pandora had emerged in the unfinished Daphne and it struck a tragic chord in my heart that Daphne had eluded her lover. What a fool I’d been to escape mine.
But for a long self-indulgent moment I looked at what I had painted—this unearthly creature with her rippling brown hair.
You understood my soul, I thought, and now others are coming only to sack my heart of all its riches. What am I to do? We argued, yes, you and I, but it was with loving respect, was it not? I cannot endure without you. Please come to me, from wherever you are.
But there was no time for my solitude. It suddenly seemed rather precious, no matter how much of it I had had in the past years.
I closed off my happy human guests from the library, and then silently, I told the blood drinkers that they might come in.
Both were richly dressed, and their swords and daggers were encrusted with jewels. Their cloaks were fixed at the shoulder with rich clasps and even their sandals were ornamented. They might have been preparing to join the opulently clad citizens of the new capital, Constantinople, where great dreams were still being realized though Constantine was now dead.
It was with mixed feelings that I gestured for them to sit down.
However much I wished that I had allowed Mael to perish, I was drawn to Avicus—to his keen expression and the friendly way in which he regarded me. I had time to observe now that his skin was a lighter brown than it had been, and that its dark tone gave a rather sculpted quality to his strong features, especially his mouth. As for his eyes they were clear and held no cunning or lie.
Both remained standing. They looked anxiously in the direction of the mortal banquet room. Once again, I urged them to be seated.
Mael stood, quite literally looking down his hawk nose at me, but Avicus took the chair.
Mael was still weak and his body emaciated. Quite obviously, it would take many nights of drinking from his victims before the damage done him would be completely healed.
“How have things been with you?” I asked, out of courtesy.
And then out of private desperation I let my mind envision Pandora. I let my mind completely recall her in all her splendid details. I hoped thereby to send the message of her to both of them, so that she, wherever she was, might receive this message somehow, a message which I, on account of the blood I had given her in her making, could not send on my own.
I don’t know that either received any impression of my lost love.
Avicus answered my question politely but Mael said not one word.
“Things are better for us,” said Avicus. “Mael heals well.”
“I want to tell you certain things,” I commenced without asking whether or not they wanted such knowledge. “I don’t believe from what happened that either of you know your own strength. I know from my own experience that power increases with age, as I am now more agile and strong than I was when I was made. You too are quite strong, and this incident with the drunken mortals need not have ever taken place. You could have gone up the wall when you were surrounded.”
“Oh, leave off with this!” said Mael suddenly.
I was aghast at this rudeness. I merely shrugged.
“I saw things,” said Mael in a small hard voice, as though the confidential manner of it would make his words all the more important. “I saw things when I drank from you which you could not prevent me from seeing. I saw a Queen upon a throne.”
I sighed.
His tone was not as venomous as it had been before. He wanted the truth and knew he could not get it by hostile means.
As for me I was so fearful that I dared not move or speak. Naturally I was defeated by this news from him, dreadfully defeated, and I didn’t know what chance I had of preventing everything from becoming known. I stared at my paintings. I wished I had painted a better garden. I might have mentally transported myself into a garden. Vaguely I came to thinking, But you have a beautiful garden right outside through the doors.
“Will you not tell me what you found in Egypt?” Mael asked. “I know that you went there. I know that the God of the Grove wanted to send you there. Will you not have that much mercy as to tell me what you found?”
“And why would I have mercy?” I asked politely. “Even if I had found miracles or mysteries in Egypt. Why would I tell you? You won’t even be seated under my roof like a proper guest. What is there between us? Hatred and miracles?” I stopped. I had become too heated. It was anger. It was weakness. You know my theme.
At this, he took a chair beside Avicus and he stared before him as he had done on that night when he told me how he’d been made.
I saw now as I looked at him more closely that his throat was still bruised from his ordeal. As for his shoulder, his cloak covered it but I imagined it to be the same.
My eyes moved to Avicus and I was surprised to see his eyebrows knit in a strange little frown.
Suddenly he looked to Mael and he spoke.
“The fact is, Marius can’t tell us what he discovered,” he said, his voice calm. “And we mustn’t ask him again. Marius bears some terrible burden. Marius has a secret which has to do with all of us and how long we can endure.”
I was dreadfully aggrieved. I’d failed to keep my mind veiled and they had discovered all but everything. I had little hope of preventing their penetration into the sanctum itself.
I didn’t know precisely what to do. I couldn’t even consider things in their presence. It was too dangerous. Yes, dangerous as it was, I had an impulse to tell them all.
Mael was alarmed and excited by what Avicus had said.
“Are you certain of this?” he asked Avicus.
“Yes,” Avicus answered. “Over the years my mind had grown stronger. Prompted by what I’ve seen of Marius, I’ve tested my powers. I can penetrate Marius’s thoughts even when I don’t want to do it. And on the night when Marius came to help us, as Marius sat beside you, as he watched you heal from your wounds as you drank from me, Marius thought of many mysteries and secrets, and though I gave you blood, I read Marius’s mind.”
I was too saddened by this to respond to anything said by either of them. My eyes drifted to the garden outside. I listened for the sound of the fountain. Then I sat back in my chair and looked at the various scrolls of my journal which lay about helter-skelter on my desk for anyone to pillage and read. Oh, but you’ve written everything in code, I thought. And then again, a clever blood drinker might decipher it. What does it all matter now?
Suddenly I felt a strong impulse to try to reason with Mael.
Once again I saw the weakness of anger. I had to put aside anger and contempt and plead with him to understand.
“This is so,” I said. “In Egypt, I did find things. But you must believe me that nothing I found matters. If there is a Queen, a Mother as you call her, and mind you, I don’t say she exists, imagine for the moment that she is ancient and unresponsive and can give nothing to her children any longer, that so many centuries have passed since our dim beginnings that no one with any reason understands them, and the matter is left quite literally buried for it matters not one jot.”
I had admitted far more than I intended, and I looked from one to the other of them for understanding and acceptance of what I’d said.
Mael wore the astonished expression of an innocent. But the look on the face of Avicus was something else.
He studied me as if he wanted desperately to tell me many things. Indeed his eyes spoke in silence though his mind gave me nothing and then he said,
“Long centuries ago, before I was sent to Britain to take up my time in the oak as the god, I was brought before her. You remember I told you this.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I saw her!” He paused. It seemed quite painful for him to relive this moment. “I was humiliated before her, made to kneel, made to recite my vows. I remember hating those around me. As for her, I thought she was a statue, but now I understand the strange words that they spoke. And then when the Magic Blood was given me, I surrendered to the miracle. I kissed her feet.”
“Why have you never told me this!” begged Mael. He seemed more injured and confounded than angry or outraged.
“I told you part of it,” said Avicus. “It’s only now that I see it all. My existence was wretched, don’t you understand?” He looked to me and then to Mael, and his tone became a little more reasonable and soft. “Mael, don’t you see?” he asked. “Marius is trying to tell you. This path in the past is a path of pain!”
“But who is she and what is she?” Mael demanded.
In that fatal instant my mind was decided. Anger did move me and perhaps in the wrong way.
“She is the first of us,” I said in quiet fury. “That is the old tale. She and her consort or King, they are the Divine Parents. There’s no more to it than that.”
“And you saw them,” Mael said, as if nothing could make him pause in his relentless questioning.
“They exist; they are safe,” I said. “Listen to what Avicus tells you. What was Avicus told?”
Avicus was desperately trying to remember. He was searching so far back that he was discovering his own age. At last he spoke in the same respectful and polite voice as before.