The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (383 page)

“Giovanni Longo, one of the bravest Genoese ever to captain a ship, stayed in that city during the entire siege,” cried the red-haired man. “That’s courage. I’ll put money on a man like that.”

“I don’t know why,” cried the dancer again, the same one as before. He broke from the circle long enough to declare, “He lost the battle, and besides, your Father had plenty enough sense not to bank on any of them.”

“Don’t you dare!” said the red-haired man. “Here’s to Giovanni Longo and the Genoese who fought with him.” He grabbed the pitcher, all but knocking it over, showered wine on his goblet and the table, then took a deep gulp. “And here’s to my Father. May God have mercy on his immortal soul. Father, I have slain your enemies, and I’ll slay those who make of ignorance a pastime.”

He turned, jammed his elbow into my Master’s clothes and said, “That boy of yours is a beauty. Don’t be hasty. Think this over. How much?”

My Master burst out laughing more sweetly and naturally than I’d ever heard him laugh.

“Offer me something, something I might want,” said my Master as he looked at me, with a secretive, glittering shift of his eyes.

It seemed every man in the room was taking my measure, and
understand, these were not lovers of boys; these were merely Italians of their time, who, fathering children as was required of them and debauching women any chance they got, nevertheless appreciated a plump and juicy young man, the way that men now might appreciate a slice of golden toast heaped with sour cream and the finest blackest caviar.

I couldn’t help but smile. Kill them, I thought, slaughter them. I felt fetching and even beautiful. Come on, somebody, tell me I make you think of Mercury chasing away the clouds in Botticelli’s
Primavera
, but the red-haired man, fixing me with an impish playful glance, said:

“Ah, he is Verrocchio’s
David
, the very model for the bronze statue. Don’t try to tell me he is not. And immortal, ah, yes, I can see it, immortal. He shall never die.” Again he lifted his goblet. Then he felt of the breast of his tunic, and pulled up out of the powdered ermine trim of his jacket a rich gold medallion with a table diamond of immense size. He ripped the chain right off his neck and extended this proudly to my Master, who watched it spin on the dangle in front of him as if it were an orb with which he was to be spellbound.

“For all of us,” said the black-haired man, turning and looking hard at me. There was laughter from the others. The dancers cried, “Yes, and for me,” “Unless I go second with him, nothing” and “Here, to go first, even before you.”

This last was said to the red-haired man, but the jewel the dancer tossed at my Master, a carbuncle ring of some glittering purple stone, I didn’t know.

“A sapphire,” said my Master in a whisper, with a teasing looking to me. “Amadeo, you approve?”

The third dancer, a blond-haired man, somewhat shorter than anyone present and with a small hump on his left shoulder, broke free of the circle and came towards me. He took off all his rings, as if shearing himself of gloves, and tossed them all clattering at my feet.

“Smile sweetly on me, young god,” he said, though he panted from the dance and the velvet collar was drenched. He wobbled on his feet and almost turned over but managed to make fun of it, twirling heavily back into his dance.

The music thumped on and on, as if the dancers thought it meet to drown out the very drunkenness of their Masters.

“Does anybody care about the siege of Constantinople?” asked my Master.

“Tell me what became of Giovanni Longo,” I asked in a small voice. All eyes were on me.

“It’s the siege of … Amadeo, was it?… Yes, Amadeo, that I have in mind!” cried the blond-haired dancer.

“By and by, Sir,” I said. “But teach me some history.”

“You little imp,” said the black-haired man. “You don’t even pick up his rings.”

“My fingers are covered with rings,” I said politely, which was true.

The red-haired man immediately went back into the battle. “Giovanni Longo stayed for forty days of bombardment. He fought all night when the Turk breached the walls. Nothing frightened him. He was carried to safety only because he was shot.”

“And the guns, Sir?” I asked. “Were they so very big?”

“And I suppose you were there!” cried the black-haired man to the redhead, before the redhead could answer me.

“My Father was there!” said the redhead man. “And lived to tell it. He was with the last ship that slipped out of the harbor with the Venetians, and before you speak, Sir, mind you, you don’t speak ill of my Father or those Venetians. They carried the citizenry to safety, Sir, the battle was lost …”

“They deserted, you mean,” said the black-haired man.

“I mean slipped out carrying the helpless refugees after the Turks had won. You call my Father a coward? You know no more about manners than you know about war. You’re too stupid to fight with, and too drunk.”

“Amen,” said my Master.

“Tell him,” said the red-haired man to my Master. “You, Marius De Romanus, you tell him.” He took another slobbering gulp. “Tell him about the massacre, what happened. Tell him how Giovanni Longo fought on the walls until he was hit in the chest. Listen, you crackbrained fool!” he shouted at his friend. “Nobody knows more about all of it than Marius De Romanus. Sorcerers are clever, so says my whore, and here is to Bianca Solderini.” He drained his glass.

“Your whore, Sir?” I demanded. “You say that of such a woman and here in the presence of drunken disrespectful men?”

They paid no mind to me, not the red-haired man, who was again draining his goblet, or the others.

The blond-haired dancer staggered over to me. “They’re too drunk to remember you, beautiful boy,” he said. “But not I.”

“Sir, you stumble at your dance,” I said. “Don’t stumble in your rounds with me.”

“You miserable little whelp,” said the man, and fell towards me, losing his balance. I darted out of the chair to the right. He slipped over the chair and fell to the floor.

There was uproarious laughter from the others. The two remaining dancers gave up their patterned steps.

“Giovanni Longo was brave,” my Master said calmly, surveying everything and then returning his cool glance to the red-haired man. “They were all brave. But nothing could save Byzantium. Her hour had come. Time had run out for the Emperors and chimney sweeps. And in the holocaust that followed, so much was irretrievably lost. Libraries by the hundreds were burnt. So many sacred texts with all their imponderable mysteries went up in smoke.”

I backed away from the drunk attacker, who rolled over on the floor.

“You lousy little lapdog!” the sprawling man shouted at me. “Give me your hand, I tell you.”

“Ah, but Sir,” I said, “I think you want more than that.”

“And I’ll have it!” he said, but he only skidded and fell back down again with a miserable groan.

One of the other men at table—handsome but older, with long thick wavy gray hair and a beautifully lined face, a man who had been gorging himself in silence on a greasy joint of mutton—looked up at me over the joint and at the fallen, twisting man who struggled to get to his feet.

“Hmmm. So Goliath falls, little David,” he said, smiling up at me. “Mind your tongue, little David, we are not all stupid giants, and your stones are not for throwing just yet.”

I smiled back at him. “Your jest is as clumsy as your friend, Sir. As for my stones, as you put it, they’ll stay right where they are in their pouch and wait for you to stumble in the way of your friend.”

“Did you say the books, Sir,” asked the red-haired man of Marius, completely oblivious to this little exchange. “The books were burnt in the fall of the greatest city in the world?”

“Yes, he cares about books, this fellow,” said the black-haired man. “Sir, you better look to your little boy. He’s a goner, the dance has changed. Tell him not to mock his elders.”

The two dancers came towards me, both as drunk as the man who had fallen. They made to caress me, simultaneously becoming with great odoriferous and heavy breathing a beast with four arms.

“You smile at our friend rolling around on the ground?” one of them asked, sticking his knee between my legs.

I backed up, barely escaping the rude blow. “Seemed the kindest thing I could do,” I answered. “Being that my worship was the cause of his fall. Don’t plunge into such devotions, yourself, Sirs. I haven’t the slightest inclination to answer your prayers.”

My Master had risen.

“I tire of this,” he said in a cold, clear voice that echoed through the tapestries off the walls. It had a chilling sound to it.

All looked at him, even the struggling man on the floor.

“Indeed!” said the black-haired man, looking up. “Marius De Romanus, is it? I’ve heard of you. I don’t fear you.”

“How merciful for you,” said my Master in a whisper with a smile. He placed his hand on the man’s head and the man whipped himself back and away, almost falling off the bench, but now he was most definitely afraid.

The dancers took their measure of my Master, no doubt trying to gauge whether he would be easy to overwhelm.

One of them turned on me again. “Prayers, Hell!” he said.

“Sir, mind my Master. You weary him, and in weariness he is a perfect crank.” I snatched back my arm as he meant to take it.

I backed away even further, into the very midst of the boy musicians so that the music rose about me like a protective cloud.

I could see panic in their faces, yet they played all the faster, ignoring the sweat on their brows.

“Sweet, sweet, gentlemen,” I said. “I like it. But play a requiem, if you will.”

They gave me desperate glances but no other regard. The drum beat on and the pipe made its snaky melody and the room throbbed with the strumming of the lutes.

The blond-haired man on the floor screamed for help, as he absolutely couldn’t get up, and the two dancers went to his aid, though one shot his watchful darts at me.

My Master looked down at the black-haired challenger and then pulled him straight up from the bench with one hand and went to kiss his neck. The man hung in my Master’s grip. He froze like a small tender mammal in the teeth of a great beast, and I almost heard the great draught of blood run out of him as my Master’s hair shivered and fell down to cover the fatal repast.

Quickly, he let the man drop. Only the red-haired fellow observed
all this. And he seemed in his intoxication not to know what to make of it. Indeed he raised one eye, wondering, and drank again from his filthy sloppy cup. He licked the fingers of his right hand, one by one, as if he were a cat, as my Master dropped his black-haired companion facedown on the table, indeed, right into a plate of fruit.

“Drunken idiot,” said the red-haired man. “No one fights for valor, or honor, or decency.”

“Not many in any event,” said my Master looking down at him.

“They broke the world in half, those Turks,” said the red-haired man, still staring at the dead one, who surely stared stupidly at him from the smashed plate. I couldn’t see the dead man’s face, but it excited me tremendously that he was dead.

“Come now, gentlemen,” said my Master, “and you, Sir, come here, you who gave my child so many rings.”

“Is he your son, Sir?” cried the blond humpback, who was finally on his feet. He pushed his friends away from him. He turned and went to the summons. “I’ll father him better than you ever did.”

My Master appeared suddenly and without a sound on our side of the table. His garments settled at once, as if he had only taken a step. The red-haired man did not even seem to see it.

“Skanderbeg, the great Skanderbeg, I raise a toast to him,” said the red-haired man, to himself apparently. “He’s been dead too long, and give me but five Skanderbegs and I’d raise a new Crusade to take back our city from the Turks.”

“Indeed, who wouldn’t with five Skanderbegs,” said the elderly man further down the table, the one nibbling and tearing at the joint. He wiped his mouth with his naked wrist. “But there is no general like unto Skanderbeg, and there never was, save the man himself. What’s the matter with Ludovico? You fool!” He stood up.

My Master had put his arm around the blond one, who pushed at him, quite dismayed that my Master was immovable. Now as the two dancers offered my Master pushes and shoves to free their companion, my Master again planted his fatal kiss. He lifted the chin of the blond one and went right for the big artery in the neck. He swung the man around and appeared to draw up the blood from him in one great draught. In a flash, he closed the man’s eyes with two white fingers and let the body slip to the floor.

“It is your time to die, good Sirs,” he said to the dancers who now backed away from him.

One of them pulled his sword.

“Don’t be so stupid!” shouted his companion. “You’re drunk. You’ll never—.”

“No, you won’t,” said my Master with a little sigh. His lips were more pink than I had ever seen them, and the blood he’d drunk paraded in his cheeks. Even his eyes had a greater gloss, and a greater gleam.

He closed his very hand over the man’s sword and with the press of his thumb snapped the metal, so that the man held only a fragment in his hand.

“How dare you!” cried the man.

“How did you is more to the point!” sang out the red-haired man at the table. “Cracked in half, is it? What kind of steel is that?”

The joint nibbler laughed very loud and threw back his head. He tore more meat from the bone.

My Master reached out and plucked from time and space the wielder of the broken sword, and now to bare the vein, broke the man’s neck with a loud snap.

It seemed the other three had heard it—the one who ate the joint, the wary dancer and the man with the red hair.

It was the last of the dancers whom my Master embraced next. He caught the man’s face in his hands as if it were love, and drank again, grasping the man’s throat so that I saw the blood just for an instant, a veritable deluge of it, which my Master then covered with his mouth and his bent head.

I could see the blood pump into my Master’s hand. I couldn’t wait for him to raise his head, and this he did very soon, sooner even than he had left his last victim, and he looked at me dreamily and his countenance was all afire. He looked as human as any man in the room, even crazed with his special drink, as they were with their common wine.