The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles #6)

The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles #6) Page 4

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HE SAID that I must go to the brothels, learn what it meant to couple properly-not merely in play, as we did among the boys.

Venice had many such places, very well run and devoted to pleasure in the most luxurious environment. It was firmly held that such pleasures were little more than a venial sin in the eyes of the Christ, and the young men of fashion frequented these establishments without hiding it.

I knew of a house of particularly exquisite and skilled women, where there were tall, buxom, very pale-eyed beauties from the North of Europe, some whose blond hair was' almost white, deemed to be somewhat different from the shorter Italian women's which we saw every day. I don't know that difference was such a high priority with me, as I'd been somewhat dazzled by the beauty of Italian boys and women since I had come. Swan-necked Venetian girls in their fancy cushion-head dresses with abundant translucent veils were very nearly irresistible to me. But then the brothel had all kinds of women, and the name of the game was to mount as many as I could.

My Master took me to this place, paid for me, a fortune in ducats, and told the buxom enchanting mistress that he would collect me in a matter of days.

Days!

I was pale with jealousy and on fire with curiosity, as I watched him take his leave-the usual regal figure in his familiar crimson robes, climbing into the gondola and giving me his clever wink as the boat took him away.

I spent three days, as it turned out, in the house of the most voluptuous available maidens in Venice, sleeping late in the morning, comparing olive skin to blond skin and indulging myself in leisurely examinations of the nether hair of all beauties, distinguishing the more silken from the wiry and more tightly curled.

I learned little niceties of pleasure, such as how sweet it was to have one's nipples bitten (lightly, and these weren't vampires) and to have the hair under one's arms, of which I had just a little, tugged affectionately at the appropriate moments. Golden honey was painted on my nether parts only to be licked away by giggling angels.

There were other more intimate tricks, of course, including bestial acts which were strictly speaking crimes but which were in this house merely various extra accouterments to overall wholesome and tantalizing feasts. All was done with grace, the steamy hot perfumed baths came frequently in large deep wooden tubs, flowers floating on the surface of the rose-tinted water, and I lay back sometimes at the mercy of a bevy of soft-voiced women who cooed over me like birds in the eaves as they licked me like so many kittens and combed my hair around their fingers to make curls.

I was the little Ganymede of Zeus, an angel tumbled out of Botticelli's more ribald paintings (many of which by the way were in this brothel, having been rescued from the Bonfires of the Vanities erected in Florence by the adamant reformer Savonarola, who had urged the great Botticelli to just. . . burn up his beautiful work!), a little cherub fallen off the ceiling of a Cathedral, a Venetian prince (of which there were none in the Republic technically) delivered into their hands by his enemies to be rendered helpless with desire.

I grew hotter in desire. If one had to be human for the rest of one's life, this was great fun, tumbling among Turkish cushions with nymphs such as most men only glimpse through magical forests in their dreams. Each soft and downy cleft was a new and exotic envelope for my romping spirit.

The wine was delicious and the food quite marvelous, including sugared and spiced dishes from the Arabs, and being altogether more extravagant and more exotic than the fare served by my Master at home.

(When I told him, he hired four new chefs.)

I wasn't awake, apparently, when my Master arrived to collect me, and I was spirited home by him, in his mysterious and infallible manner, and found myself again in my bed.

I knew I wanted only him when my eyes opened. And it seemed the fleshy repasts of the last few days had only made me more hungry, more inflamed and more eager to see if his enchanted white body would respond to the more tender tricks I'd learned. I threw myself on him when he finally came in behind the curtains, and I unloosed his shirt and sucked his nipples, discovering that for all their disturbing whiteness and coldness they were soft and obviously intimately connected in a seemingly natural way to the root of his desires.

He lay there, graceful and quiet, letting me play with him as my women teachers had played with me. When he finally gave me the blood kisses, all memories of human contact were obliterated, and I lay helpless as always in his arms. It seemed our world then was not merely one of the flesh, but of a mutual spell to which all natural laws gave way.

Towards morning on the second night, I sought him out where he was painting by himself in the studio, the scattered apprentices fallen asleep like the unfaithful Apostles in Gethsemane.

He wouldn't stop for my questions. I stood behind him and locked my arms around him and, climbing on tiptoe, I whispered my questions in his ear.

"Tell me, Master, you must, how did you gain this magic blood inside you?" I bit his earlobes and ran my hands through his hair. He wouldn't stop painting. "Were you born into this state, am I so wrong about this as to suppose that you were transformed ..."

"Stop it, Amadeo," he whispered, and continued to paint. He worked furiously on the face of Aristotle, the bearded, balding elder of his great painting, The Academy.

"Is there ever a loneliness in you, Master, that pushes you to tell someone, anyone, to have a friend of your own mettle, to confide your heart to one who can comprehend?"

He turned, startled for once by my questions.

"And you, spoiled little angel," he said, lowering his voice to maintain its gentleness, "you think you can be that friend? You're an innocent! You'll be an innocent all of your days. You have the heart of an innocent. You refuse to accept truth that doesn't correspond with some deep raging faith in you which makes you ever the little monk, the acolyte-."

I stepped backwards, as angry as I'd ever been with him. "No, I won't be such!" I declared. "I'm a man already in the guise of a boy, and you know it. Who else dreams of what you are, and the alchemy of your powers? I wish I could drain a cupful of your blood from you and study it as the doctors might and determine what is its makeup and how it differs from the fluid that runs through my veins! I am your pupil, yes, your student, yes, but to be that, I must be a man. When would you tolerate innocence? When we bed together, you call that innocence? I am a man."

He burst into the most amazed laughter. It was a treat to see him so surprised.

"Tell me your secret, Sir," I said. I put my arms around his neck and laid my head on his shoulder. "Was there a Mother as white and strong as you were who brought you forth, the God-Bearer, from her celestial womb?"

He took my arms and moved me back away from him, so that he could kiss me, and his mouth was insistent and frightening to me for a moment. Then it moved over my throat, sucking at my flesh and causing me to become weak and, with all my heart, willing to be anything he wished.

"Of the moon and the stars, yes, I'm made, of that sovereign whiteness which is the substance of clouds and innocence alike," he said. "But no Mother gave birth to me, you know that's so; I was a man once, a man moving on in his years. Look-." He lifted my face with both hands and made me study his face. "You see here remnants of the lines of age which once marked me, here at the corners of my eyes."

"Merely nothing, Sir," I whispered, thinking to console him if this imperfection troubled him. He shone in his brilliance, his polished smoothness. The simplest expressions flashed in his face in luminescent heat.

Imagine a figure of ice, as perfectly made as Pygmalion's Galatea, thrown into the fire, and sizzling, and melting, and yet the features all wondrously intact still... well, such was my Master when human emotions infected him, as they did now.

He crushed my arms deliciously and kissed me again.

"Little man, manikin, elf," he whispered. "Would you be so for eternity? Haven't you lain with me often enough to know what I can and cannot enjoy?"

I won him over, captive to me, for the last hour before he was off.

But the next night he dispatched me to a more clandestine and even more luxurious house of pleasure, a house which kept for the passions of others only young boys.

It was got up in Eastern style, and I think it blended the luxuries of Egypt with those of Babylon, its small cells made up of golden latticework, and colonnettes of brass studded with lapis lazuli holding up the salmon-colored drapery of the ceilings over tasseled couches of gilt wood and damask-covered down. Incense made the air heavy, and the lights were soothingly low.

The naked boys, well fed, nubile, smooth and rounded of limb, were eager, strong, tenacious, and brought to the games their own rampant male desires.

It seemed my soul was a pendulum that swung between the hearty pleasure of conquest and the swooning surrender to stronger limbs, and stronger wills, and stronger hands that tossed me tenderly about.

Captive between two skilled and willful lovers, I was pierced and suckled, pummeled and emptied until I slept as soundly as ever I had without the Master's magic at home.

It was only the beginning.

Sometime in my drunken sleep, I woke to find myself surrounded by beings that seemed neither male nor female. Only two of them were eunuchs, cut with such skill they could raise their trusty weapons as well as any boy. The others merely shared the taste of their companions for paint. All had eyes lined in black and shaded in purple, with lashes curled and glazed to give their expressions an eerie fathomless aloofness. Their rouged lips seemed tougher than those of women and more demanding, pushing at me in their kisses as if the male element which had given them muscles and hard organs had given them as well a virility to their very mouths. They had the smiles of angels. Gold rings decorated their nipples. Their nether hair was powdered with gold.

I made no protest when they overcame me. I feared no extreme, and even let them bind my wrists and ankles to the bed, so they could better work their craft. It was impossible to fear them. I was crucified with pleasure. Their insistent fingers would not even allow me to close my eyes. They stroked my lids, they forced me to look. They brought soft thick brushes down over my limbs. They rubbed oils into all my skin. They sucked from me, as if it were nectar, the fiery sap I gave forth, over and over, until I cried out vainly that I could give no more. A count was kept of my "little deaths" with which to taunt me playfully, and I was turned over and cuffed and pinioned as I tumbled down into rapturous sleep.

When I awoke I knew no time or worry. The thick smoke of a pipe rose into my nostrils. I took it and sucked on it, savoring the dark familiar smell of hemp.

I stayed there for four nights.

Again, I was delivered.

This time I found myself, groggy and in dishabille, barely covered by a thin torn cream-colored silk shirt. I lay on a couch brought from the very brothel, but this was my Master's studio, and there he sat, not far away, painting my picture obviously, at a small easel from which he took his eyes only to dart glances at me.

I asked the time of day and what night it was. He didn't answer.

"And so you're angry that I enjoyed it?" I asked.

"I told you to lie still," he said.

I lay back, cold all over, and hurt suddenly, lonely perhaps, and wanting like a child to hide in his arms.

Morning came and he left me, having said nothing else. The painting was a gleaming masterpiece of the obscene. I was in my sleeping posture cast down on a riverbank, a fawn of sorts, over which a tall shepherd, the Master himself, in priestly robes stood watch. The woods around us were thick and richly realized with the peeling tree trunks and their clustered dusty leaves. The water of the stream seemed wet to the touch, so clever was the realism of it, and my own figure appeared guileless and lost in sleep, my mouth half-open in a natural way, my brow obviously troubled by uneasy dreams.

I threw it on the floor, in a rage, meaning to smear it.

Why had he said nothing? Why did he force me to these lessons which drove us apart? Why his anger at me for merely doing what he had told me? I wondered if the brothels had been a test of my innocence, and his admonitions to me to enjoy all of it had been lies.

I sat at his desk, picked up his pen and scribbled a message to him.

You are the Master. You should know all things. It's unsupportable to be Mastered by one who cannot do it. Make clear the way, shepherd, or lay down your staff.

The fact was, I was wrung out from the pleasure, from the drink, from the distortion of my senses, and lonely just to be with him and for his guidance and his kindness and his reassurance that I was his.

But he was gone.

I went out roaming. I spent all day in the taverns, drinking, playing cards, deliberately enticing the pretty girls who were fair game, to keep them at my side as I played the various games of chance.

Then when night came, I let myself be seduced, ho-hum, by a drunken Englishman, a fair freckle-skinned noble of the oldest French and English titles, of which this one was the Earl of Harlech, who was traveling in Italy to see the great wonders and utterly intoxicated with its many delights, including buggery in a strange land.

Naturally, he found me a beautiful boy. Didn't everyone? He was not at all ugly himself. Even his pale freckles had a kind of prettiness to them, especially given his outrageous copper hair.

Taking me back to his rooms in an overstaffed and beautiful palazzo, he made love to me. It was not all bad. I liked his innocence and his clumsiness. His light round blue eyes were a marvel; he had wondrously thick and muscular arms and a pampered but deliciously rough-pointed orange beard.

He wrote poems to me in Latin and in French, and recited them to me with great charm. After an hour or two of playing the vanquishing brute, he had let on that he wanted to be covered by me. And this I had very much enjoyed. We played it that way after that, my being the conquering soldier and he the victim on the battlefield, and sometimes I whipped him lightly with a doubled-up leather belt before I took him, which sent us both into a tidy froth.

From time to time, he implored me to confess who I really was and where he might afterwards find me, which of course I wouldn't.

I stayed there for three nights with him, talking about the mysterious islands of England with him, and reading Italian poetry aloud to him, and even sometimes playing the mandolin for him and singing any number of the soft love songs I knew.

He taught me a great deal of rank gutter-tramp English, and wanted to take me home. He had to regain his wits, he said; he had to return to his duties, his estates, his hateful wicked adulterous Scottish wife whose father was an assassin, and his innocent little child whose paternity he was most certain of, due to its orange curly hair so like his own.

He would keep me in London in a splendid house he had there, a present from His Majesty King Henry VII. He could not now live without me, the Harlechs to a man had to have what they must have, and there was nothing for me to do but yield to him. If I was the son of a formidable nobleman I should confess it, and this obstacle would be dealt with. Did I hate my Father, perchance? His was a scoundrel. All the Harlechs were scoundrels and had been since the days of Edward the Confessor. We would sneak out of Venice this very night.

"You don't know Venice, and you don't know her noblemen," I said kindly. "Think on all this. You'll be cut to pieces for giving it a try."

I now perceived that he was fairly young. Since all older men seemed old to me, I had not thought about it before. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five. He was also mad.

He leapt on the bed, his bushy copper hair flying, and pulled his dagger, a formidable Italian stiletto, and stared down into my upturned face.

"I'll kill for you," he said confidentially and proudly, in the Venetian dialect. Then he drove the dagger into the pillow and the feathers flew out of it. "I'll kill you if I have to." The feathers went up into his face.

"And then you'll have what?" I asked.

There was a creaking behind him. I felt certain someone was at the window, beyond the bolted wooden shutters, even though we were three stories above the Grand Canal. I told him so. He believed me.

"I come from a family of murderous beasts," I lied. "They'll follow you to the ends of the Earth if you think of taking me out of here; they'll dismantle your castles stone by stone, chop you in half and cut out your tongue and your private parts, wrap them in velvet and send them to your King. Now calm down."

"Oh, you bright, saucy little demon," he said, "you look like an angel and hold forth like a tavern knave in that sweet crooning mannish voice."

"That's me," I said gaily.

I got up, dressed hastily, warning him not to kill me just yet, as I would return as soon as I possibly could, longing to be nowhere but with him, and kissing him hastily, I made for the door.

He hovered in the bed, his dagger still tightly clutched in his hand, the feathers having settled on his carrot-colored head and on his shoulders and on his beard. He looked truly dangerous.

I'd lost count of the nights of my absence.

I could find no churches open. I wanted no company.

It was dark and cold. The curfew had come down. Of course the Venetian winter seemed mild to me after the snowy lands of the north, where I'd been born, but it was nevertheless an oppressive and damp winter, and though cleansing breezes purified the city, it was inhospitable and unnaturally quiet. The illimitable sky vanished in thick mists. The very stones gave forth the chill as if they were blocks of ice.

On a water stairs, I sat, not caring that it was brutally wet, and I burst into tears. What had I learned from all this?

I felt very sophisticated on account of this education. But I had no warmth from it, no lasting warmth, and it seemed my loneliness was worse than guilt, worse than the feeling of being damned.

Indeed it seemed to replace that old feeling. I feared it, being utterly alone. As I sat there looking up at the tiny margin of black Heaven, at the few stars that drifted over the roofs of the houses, I sensed how utterly terrible it would be to lose both my Master and my guilt simultaneously, to be cast out where nothing bothered to love me or damn me, to be lost and tumbling through the world with only those humans for companions, those boys and those girls, the English lord with his dagger, even my beloved Bianca.

It was to her house that I went. I climbed under her bed, as I'd done in the past, and wouldn't come out.

She was entertaining a whole flock of Englishmen, but not, fortunately, my copper-haired lover, who was no doubt still stumbling around in the feathers, and I thought, Well, if my charming Lord Harlech shows up, he won't risk shame before his countrymen in making a fool out of himself. She came in, looking most lovely in her violet silk gown with a fortune of radiant pearls around her neck. She knelt down and put her head near mine.

"Amadeo, what's the matter with you?"

I had never asked for her favors. To my knowledge no one did such a thing. But in my particular adolescent frenzy, nothing seemed more appropriate than that I should ravage her.

I scrambled out from under the bed and went to the doors and shut them, so the noise of her guests would leave us alone.

When I turned around she knelt on the floor, looking at me, her golden eyebrows knotted and her peach-soft lips open in a vague wondering expression that I found enchanting. I wanted to smash her with my passion, but not all that hard, of course, assuming all the while that she'd come back together again afterwards as if a beautiful vase, broken into pieces, could pull itself together again from all the tiniest shards and particles and be restored to its glory with an even finer glaze.

I pulled her up by the arms and threw her down on her bed. It was quite an affair, this marvelous coffered thing in which she slept alone, as far as all men knew. It had great gilded swans at its head, and columns rising to a framed canopy of painted dancing nymphs. Its curtains were spun gold and transparent. It had no winter aspect to it, like my Master's red velvet bed.

I bent down and kissed her, maddened by her sharp, pretty eyes which stared coolly at me as I did it. I held her wrists and then, swinging her left wrist over with her right, entrapped both her hands in one so that I was free to rip open her fine dress. I ripped it carefully so that all the little pearl buttons flew off the side of it, and her girdle was opened and underneath was her fine whalebone and lace. This I broke open as if it were a tight shell.

Her breasts were small and sweet, far too delicate and youngish for the brothel where voluptuousness had been the order of the day. I meant to pillage them nevertheless. I crooned against her, humming a bit of a song to her, and then I heard her sigh. I swooped down, still clutching her wrists firmly, and I sucked hard at her nipples in quick order and then drew back. I slapped her breasts playfully, from left to right until they turned pink.

Her face was flushed and she had her little golden frown still, the wrinkles almost incongruous in her smooth white forehead.

Her eyes were like two opals, and though she blinked slowly, near sleepily, she didn't flinch.

I finished my work on her fragile clothes. I ripped open the ties of her skirt and pushed it down away from her and found her splendidly and daintily naked as I had supposed she would be. I really had no idea what was beneath the skirts of a respectable woman in the way of obstacles. There was nothing except the small golden nest of her pubic hair, all feathery beneath her very slightly rounded little belly, and a dampness gleaming on her inner thighs.

I knew at once she favored me. She was hardly helpless. And the sight of the glittering down on her legs drove me mad. I plunged into her, amazed at her smallness and the way that she cringed, for she was not very well used, and it hurt her just a little.

I worked her hard, delighting to see her blush. My own weight I held up above her with my right arm, because I wouldn't let go of her wrists. She tossed and turned, and her blond tresses worked themselves out of her pearl and ribbon coif, and she became moist all over and pink and gleaming, like the inner curve of a great shell.

At last I couldn't contain myself any longer, and it seemed when I would give up the timing, she gave herself up to the final sigh. I spent with it, and we rocked together, as she closed her eyes, turned blood red as if she were dying and tossed her head in a final frenzy before going limp.

I rolled over and covered my face with both my arms, as if I were about to be slapped.

I heard her little laughter, and she did slap me suddenly, hard on my arms. It was nothing. I made as if I were weeping with shame.

"Look what you've done to my beautiful gown, you dreadful little satyr, you secret conquistador! You vile precocious child!"

I felt her weight leave the bed. I heard her dressing. She sang to herself.

"What's your Master going to think of this, Amadeo?" she asked.

I removed my arms and looked to find her voice. She dressed behind her painted paneled screen, a gift from Paris, if I recalled, given her by one of her favorite French poets. She appeared quickly, clothed as splendidly as before in a dress of pale spring green, embroidered with the flowers of the field. She seemed a very garden of delight with these tiny yellow and pink blooms so carefully made in rich thread over her new bodice and her long taffeta skirts.

"Well, tell me, what is the great Master going to say when he finds out his little lover is a veritable god of the wood?"

"Lover?" I was astonished.

She was very gentle in her manner. She sat down and began to comb out her tousled hair. She wore no paint and her face was unmarred by our games, and her hair came down around in a glorious hood of rippling gold. Her forehead was smooth and high.

"Botticelli made you," I whispered. I often said this to her, because she was so like his beauties. Indeed everyone thought so, and they would bring her small copies of this famous Florentine's paintings from time to time.

I thought on it, I thought on Venice and this world in which I lived. I thought on her, a courtesan, receiving those chaste yet lascivious paintings as if she were a saint.

Some echo came to me of old words that I had been told long ago, when I knelt in the presence of old and burnished beauty, and thought myself at the pinnacle, that I must take up my brush and I must paint only "what represented the world of God."

There was no tumult in me, only a great mixing of currents, as I watched her braid her hair again, stringing the fine ropes of pearls in with it, and the pale green ribbons, the ribbons themselves sewn with the same pretty little flowers that decorated her gown. Her breasts were blushing, half-covered beneath the press of her bodice. I wanted to rip it open again.

"Pretty Bianca, what makes you say this, that I'm his lover?"

"Everyone knows it," she whispered. "You are his favorite. Do you think you've made him angry?"

"Oh, if only I could," I said. I sat up. "You don't know my Master. Nothing makes him lift his hand to me. Nothing makes him even raise his voice. He sent me forth to learn all things, to know what men can know."

She smiled and nodded. "So you came and hid under the bed."

"I was sad."

"I'm sure," she said. "Well, sleep now, and when I come back, if you're still here, I'll keep you warm. But need I tell you, my rambunctious one, that you will never utter one careless word of what happened here? Are you so young that I have to tell you this?" She bent down to kiss me.

"No, my pearl, my beauty, you needn't tell me. I won't even tell him."

She stood and gathered up her broken pearls and wrinkled ribbons, the remnants of the rape. She smoothed the bed. She looked as lovely as a human swan, a match for the gilded swans of her boatlike bed.

"Your Master will know," she said. "He's a great magician."

"Are you afraid of him? I mean in general, Bianca, I don't mean on account of me?"

"No," she said. "Why should I fear him? Everyone knows not to anger him or offend him or break his solitude or question him, but it's not fear. Why do you cry, Amadeo, what's wrong?"

"I don't know, Bianca."

"I'll tell you then," she said. "He has become the world to you as only such a great being can. And you are out of it now arid longing to return to it. A man such as that becomes all things to you, and his wise voice becomes the law by which everything is measured. All that lies beyond has no value because he doesn't see it, and he doesn't declare that it is valuable. And so you have no choice but to leave the wastes that lie outside his light and return to it. You must go home."

She went out, closing the doors. I slept, refusing to go home.

The next morning, I breakfasted with her, and spent all day with her. Our intimacy had given me a radiant sense of her. No matter how much she talked of my Master, I had eyes only for her just now, in these quarters of hers which were perfumed with her and full of all her private and special things.

I will never forget Bianca. Never.

I told her, as one can do with a courtesan, all about the brothels to which I'd been. Perhaps I remember them in such detail because I told her. I told her with delicate words, of course. But I told her. I told her how my Master wanted me to learn everything and had taken me to these splendid academies himself.

"Well, that's fine, but you can't linger here, Amadeo. He's taken you to places where you'll have the pleasure of much company. He may not want you to remain in the company of one."

I didn't want to go. But when nightfall came, and the house filled with her English and French poets, and the music started, and the dancing, I didn't want to share her with all the admiring world.

For a while I watched her, confusingly conscious that I had had her in her secret chamber as none of these, her admirers, had or might have, but it gave me no solace.

I wanted something from my Master, something final and conclusive and obliterating, and maddened by this desire, suddenly fully aware of it, I got drunk in a tavern, drunk enough to be nervy and nasty, and I went blundering home.

I felt bold and defiant and very independent for having stayed away from my Master and all his mysteries for so long.

He was painting furiously when I returned. He was high on the scaffold, and I figured he was attending to the faces of his Greek philosophers, working the alchemy by which vivid countenances came out of his brush, as though uncovered rather than applied.

He wore a bedraggled gray tunic that hung down to his feet. He didn't turn to look at me when I came in. Every brazier in the house it seemed had been crammed into the room to give him the light he wanted.

The boys were frightened at the speed with which he covered the canvas.

I soon realized, as I staggered into the studio, that he wasn't painting on his Greek Academy.

He was painting a picture of me. I knelt in this picture, a boy of our time, with my familiar long locks and a quiet suit of clothing as if I had taken leave of the high-toned world, and seemingly innocent, my hands clasped in prayer. Around me were gathered angels, gentle-faced and glorious as they always appeared, only these had been graced with black wings.

Black wings. Great black feathery wings. Hideous they seemed, the more I looked upon this canvas. Hideous, and he had almost completed it. The auburn-haired boy seemed real as he looked unchallengingly to Heaven, and the angels appeared avid yet sad.

But nothing therein was as monstrous as the spectacle of my Master painting this, of his hand and brush whipping across the picture, realizing sky, clouds, broken pediment, angel wing, sunlight.

The boys clung to one another, certain of his madness or his sorcery. Which was it? Why did he so carelessly reveal himself to those whose minds had been at peace?

Why did he flaunt our secret, that he was no more a man than the winged creatures he painted! Why had he the Lord lost his patience in such a manner as this?

Suddenly in a rage, he threw a pot of paint at the far corner of the room. A splatter of dark green disfigured the wall. He cursed and cried in a language none of us knew.

He hurled the pots down, and the paint spilt in great shiny splashes from the wooden scaffold. He sent the brushes flying like arrows.

"Get out of here, go to your beds, I don't want to see you, innocents. Go. Go."

The apprentices ran from him. Riccardo reached out to gather to him the smaller boys. All hurried out the door.

High up on the scaffold, he sat down, his legs dangling, and merely looked at me as I stood beneath him, as if he didn't know who I was.

"Come down, Master," I said.

His hair was disheveled and matted here and there with paint. He showed no surprise that I was there, no start at the sound of my voice. He had known I was there. He knew all such things. He could hear words spoken in other rooms. He knew the thoughts of those around him. He was pumped full of magic, and when I drank from that magic, I reeled.

"Let me comb your hair out for you," I said. I was insolent, I knew it.

His tunic was stained and filthy. He'd wiped his brush on it over and over again.

One of his sandals fell with a clatter to the marble. I picked it up.

"Master, come down. Whatever I said to worry you, I won't say it again."

He wouldn't answer me.

Suddenly all my rage came up in me, my loneliness to have been separated from him for days on end, obeying his injunctions, and now to come home and find him staring at me wild and unconfiding. I would not tolerate his staring off, ignoring me as if I weren't there. He must admit that I was the cause of his anger. He must speak.

I wanted suddenly to cry.

His face became anguished. I couldn't watch this; I couldn't think that he felt pain as I did, as the other boys did. I was in wild revolt.

"You frighten everyone selfishly, Lord and Master!" I declared.

Without regarding me, he vanished in a great flurry, and I heard his footsteps rushing through the empty rooms.

I knew he had moved with a speed men couldn't master. I hurried after him, only to hear the bedroom doors slammed shut against me, to hear the lock slid closed before I reached out to grab the latch.

"Master, let me in," I cried. "I went only because you told me to." I turned around and around. It was quite impossible to break these doors. I pounded on them with my fists and kicked them. "Master, you sent me to the brothels. You sent me on damnable errands."

After a long time, I sat down at the foot of the door, my back against it, and wept and wailed. I made a riotous amount of noise. He waited until I stopped.

"Go to sleep, Amadeo," he said. "My rages have nothing to do with you."

Impossible. A lie! I was infuriated and insulted, and hurt and cold! This whole house was damnably cold.

"Then let your peace and calm have to do with me, Sir!" I said. "Open the damned door."

"Go to bed with the others," he said quietly. "You belong with the others, Amadeo. They are your loved ones. They are your kind. Don't seek the company of monsters."

"Ah, is that what you are, Sir?" I asked contemptuously and crossly. "You that can paint like Bellini or Mantegna, who can read all words and speak all tongues, who has love without end and patience to match it, a monster! Is that it? A monster spreads the roof over our head and feeds us our daily supper from the kitchens of the gods! Oh, indeed, a monster."

He didn't answer.

I was further enraged. I went down to the lower floor. I took a great battle-ax from the wall. It was one of many weapons on display in the house which I'd scarcely ever noticed. Well, it was time for it, I thought. I've had enough of this coldness. I can't stand it. I can't stand it.

I went upstairs and heaved the battle-ax at the door. Of course it went through the brittle wood, shattering the painted panel, cracking through the old lacquer and the pretty yellow and red roses. I pulled it back and smashed it into the door again.

This time the lock was broken. I kicked the shattered frame with my foot and it fell back.

In utter amazement he sat in his large dark oak chair looking at me, his hands clutching the two lion's head arms. Behind him loomed the massive bed with its rich red baldaquin trimmed in gold.

"How dare you!" he said.

He stood before me in an instant, took the ax and hurled it with ease so that it crashed into the stone wall opposite. Then he picked me up and threw me towards the bed. The entire bed shivered, baldaquin and draperies as well. No man could have made me span that distance. But he had done it. With arms and legs flying, I landed on the pillows.

"Despicable monster!" I said. I turned over, steadied myself and drew up on my left side, glaring at him, one knee crooked.

He stood with his back to me. He had been about to close the inner doors of the apartment, which had been open before and therefore were not broken. But he stopped. He turned. A playful expression came over him.

"Oh, what a vile temper we have for such an angelic countenance," he said mildly.

"If I'm an angel," I said, drawing back from the edge of the bed, "paint me with black wings."

"You dare knock down my door." He folded his arms. "Need I tell you why I will not tolerate such from you, or from anyone?"

He stood gazing at me with raised eyebrows.

"You torture me," I said.

"Oh, indeed, how and since when?"

I wanted to bawl. I wanted to say, "I love only you."

Instead I said, "I detest you."

He couldn't help but laugh. He lowered his head, his fingers curled under his chin, as he stared at me.

Then he extended his hand and snapped his fingers.

I heard a rustling from the rooms beyond. I sat up petrified with amazement.

I saw the long switch of the teacher come slithering along the floor as if a wind had sent it hither, and then it twisted and turned and rose and dropped into his waiting hand.

Behind him, the inner doors slammed shut and the bolt slipped into place with a loud metallic clatter.

I drew back in the bed.

"It's going to be a pleasure to whip you," he said, smiling sweetly, his eyes almost innocent. "You may chalk it up as another human experience, rather like cavorting with your English lord."

"Do it. I hate you," I said. "I'm a man and you deny it."

He looked superior and gentle but not amused.

He came towards me, and grabbed at my head, and threw me face down on the bed.

"Demon! "I said.

"Master," he replied calmly.

I felt the nudge of his knee in the small of my back and then down came the switch across my thighs. Of course I wasn't wearing anything but the thin stockings that fashion decreed, so I might as well have been naked.

I cried out in pain and then shut my mouth tight. When the next few blows came, walloping my legs, I swallowed all noise, furious to hear myself make a careless impossible groan.

Again and again, he brought the switch down, whipping my thighs and then my lower legs as well. Enraged, I struggled to get up, pushing vainly on the covers with the heels of my hands. I couldn't move. I was pinioned by his knee, and he whacked away without the slightest deterrent.

Suddenly as rebellious as I'd ever been, I decided to play games with this. I'd be damned if I'd lie there crying, and the tears were coming up in my eyes. I closed my eyes shut, gritted my teeth and decided that each blow was the divine color red and that I liked, and that the hot crashing pain I felt was red, and that the warmth swelling up in my leg after was golden and sweet.

"Oh, that's lovely! "I said.

"You make a fool's bargain, little boy!" he said.

He whipped me harder and faster. I couldn't keep my pretty visions. It hurt, it bloody hurt.

"I'm not a boy!" I cried.

I felt a wetness on my leg. I knew I was bleeding.

"Master, you mean to disfigure me?"

"There's nothing worse than for a fallen saint to be a horrid devil!"

More blows. I knew I was bleeding from more than one place. I would surely be bruised all over. I wouldn't be able to walk.

"I don't know what you mean! Stop!"

To my astonishment, he did. I curled my arm up under my face and I sobbed. I sobbed for a long moment, and my legs burned as if the switch were still hitting them. It seemed the blows were being laid on over and over, but they weren't. I kept hoping, Let this pain die away to something warm again, something tingling and nice, the way it felt the first couple of times. That would be all right, but this is terrible. I hate it!

Suddenly I felt him cover me. I felt the sweet tickling of his hair on my legs. I felt his fingers as he grabbed the torn cloth of the stockings and ripped it, tearing it off both my legs very quickly, leaving them bare. He reached up under my tunic and tore loose the remnants of the hose.

The pain throbbed, grew worse, then a little better. The air was cool on my bruises. When his fingers touched them, I felt such terrible pleasure that all I could do was moan.

"You going to break down my door again?"

"Never," I whispered.

"You going to defy me in any way in particular?"

"Never in any way ever."

"Further words?"

"I love you."

"I'm sure."

"But I do," I said sniffling.

The stroking of his fingers on my hurt flesh was insupportably delicious. I didn't dare raise my head. I pressed my cheek against the scratchy embroidered coverlet, against the great picture of the lion stitched into it, and I sucked in my breath and let my tears flow. I felt calm all over; this pleasure robbed me of any control of my limbs.

I closed my eyes, and there came his lips on my leg. He kissed one of the bruises. I thought I would die. I would go to Heaven, that is, some other higher more delicious Heaven even than this Venetian Heaven. Beneath me, my groin was alive with thankful and desperate and isolated strength.

The burning blood flowed over the bruise. The slightly rough stroke of his tongue touched it, lapped at it, pressed it, and the inevitable tingling made a fire in my closed eyes, a blazing fire across a mythical horizon in the darkness of my blind mind.

To the next bruise he went, and there came the trickles of the blood and the lap of his tongue, and the hideous pain departed and there was nothing but a throbbing sweetness. And as he went to the next, I thought, I cannot bear this, I will simply die.

He moved fast, from bruise to bruise, depositing his magical kiss and the stroke of his tongue, and I quivered all over and moaned.

"Some punishment!" I suddenly said with a gasp.

It was a dreadful thing to say! Instantly, I regretted it, the sassiness of it.

But his hand had already come down with a fierce slap on my backside.

"I didn't mean it," I said. "I mean, I didn't mean it to sound so ungrateful. I mean, I'm sorry I said it!" But there was another slap as hot as the first.

"Master, have pity on me. I'm mixed up!" I cried.

His hand lay on me, on the warm surface that he had slapped, and I thought, Oh, now he's going to beat me till I'm unconscious.

But his fingers only gently clasped the skin, which was not broken, only warm as the first welts from the switch had been.

I felt his lips again on the calf of my left leg, and the blood, and his tongue. The pleasure moved all through me, and helpless, I let the air escape my lips in a rosary of sighs.

"Master, Master, Master, I love you."

"Yes, well, that's not so unusual," he whispered. He didn't stop his kissing. He lapped at the blood. I writhed under the weight of his hand on my backside. "But the question is, Amadeo, why do I love you? Why? Why did I have to go into that stinking brothel and look upon you? I am strong by nature ... whatever my nature ..."

He greedily kissed a large bruise on my thigh. I could feel his sucking at it, and then the tongue lapping it, eating the blood, and then his blood coming down into it. The pleasure sent shock after shock through me. I saw nothing, though I thought that my eyes were now open. I struggled to make certain that my eyes were open, but nothing came visible, only a golden haze.

"I love you, I do love you," he said. "And why? Quick-witted, yes, beautiful, yes, and inside you, the burnt-up relics of a saint!"

"Master, I don't know what you're saying to me. I was never a saint, never, I don't claim to be a saint. I'm a wretched disrespectful and ungrateful being. Oh, I adore you. It's so delicious to be helpless and at your mercy."

"Stop mocking me."

"But I don't," I said. "I want to speak, the truth, I want to be a fool for the truth, a fool for-. I want to be a fool for you."

"No, I don't guess you do mean to mock me. You mean it. You don't realize the absurdity of it."

He had finished his progress. My legs had lost any shape they possessed in my mist-filled mind. I could only lie there, my whole body vibrating from his kisses. He laid his head on my hips, against the warm place that he had smacked with his hand, and I felt his fingers come up under me and touch the most private part of me.

My organ hardened in his fingers, hardened with the infusion of his searing blood, but all the more with the young male in me who had so often mingled pleasure with pain at his will.

Harder and harder I grew, and bucked and pumped beneath his head and shoulders as he lay on my backside, as he held tight to the organ, and then into his slippery fingers I gave forth in violent unsurpassed spasms a great gush.

I rose on my elbow and looked back at him. He was sitting up, staring at the pearly white semen that clung to his fingers.

"Good God, is that what you wanted?" I asked. "To see the viscous whiteness in your hand?

He looked at me with anguish. Oh, such anguish.

"Doesn't it mean?" I asked, "that the time has come?"

The misery in his eyes was too much for me to question him anymore.

Drowsy and blind, I felt him turn me over and rip off my tunic and jacket. I felt him lift me and then came the sting of his assault into my neck. A fierce pain gathered itself around my heart, slackening just when I feared it, and then I sank down beside him into the perfumed cleft of the bed; and against his chest, warm under covers that he pulled up over us, I slept.

It was still thick and heavy night when I opened my eyes. I had learnt with him to feel the coming of morning. And morning was not yet really near.

I looked around for him. I saw him at the foot of the bed. He was dressed in his finest red velvet. He wore a jacket with slashed sleeves and a heavy tunic with a high collar. This cloak of red velvet was trimmed in ermine.

His hair was thoroughly brushed and very slightly oiled so that it gave off its most civilized and artful shimmer, swept back from his clean straight hairline and turning in mannered curls on his shoulders. He looked sad.

"Master, what is it?"

"I have to go for a few nights. No, it's not out of anger at you, Amadeo. It's one of those journeys I have to make. I'm long overdue for it."

"No, Master, not now, please. I'm sorry, I beg you, not now! What I-."

"Child. I go to see Those Who Must Be Kept. I have no choice in this."

For a moment I said nothing. I tried to understand the denotation of the words he'd spoken. His voice had dropped, and he had said the words halfheartedly.

"What is that, Master?" I asked.

"Some night perhaps I'll take you with me. I'll ask permission . . ." His voice trailed off.

"For what, Master? When have you ever needed anyone's permission for anything?"

I had meant this to be simple and candid, but I knew now it had an impertinent sound.

"It's all right, Amadeo," he said. "I ask permission now and then from my Elders, that's all. Who else?" He looked weary. He sat beside me and leaned down next to me and kissed my lips.

"Elders, Sir? You mean Those Who Must Be Kept - these are creatures like you?"

"You be kind to Riccardo and the others. They worship you," he said. "They wept for you the whole time you were away. They didn't quite believe me when I told them you were coming home. Then Riccardo spied you with your English lord and was terrified I'd break you in little pieces, yet afraid the Englishman would kill you. He has quite the reputation, your English lord, slamming down his knife on the board in any tavern he chooses. Do you have to consort with common murderers? You have a nonpareil here when it comes to those who take life. When you went to Bianca, they didn't dare to tell me, but made fancy pictures in their minds so I couldn't read their thoughts. How docile they are with my powers."

"They love you, my Lord," I said. "Thank God that you forgive me for the places I went. I'll do whatever you wish."

"Good night then." He rose to go.

"Master, how many nights?"

"Three at most," he said over his shoulder. He made for the door, a tall gallant figure in his cloak.

"Master."

"Yes."

"I'll be very good, a saint," I said. "But if I'm not will you whip me again, please?"

The moment I saw the anger in his face I regretted this. What made me say such things!

"Don't tell me you didn't mean it!" he said, reading my mind and hearing the words before I could get them out.

"No. It's just I hate it when you go. I thought maybe if I taunted you, you wouldn't."

"Well, I will. And don't taunt me. As a matter of policy, don't taunt me."

He was out the door before he changed his mind and returned. He came towards the bed. I expected the worst. He was going to slap me and then not be around to kiss the bruise.

But he didn't.

"Amadeo, while I'm gone, think on it" he said.

I was sobered, looking at him. His very manner made me reflect before I uttered a word.

"On everything, Sir?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. Then he came again to kiss me. "Will you be this forever?" he asked. "This man, this young man, that you are now?"

"Yes, Master! Forever, and with you!" I wanted to tell him that there was nothing I couldn't do that a man could do, but this seemed most unwise, and also it would not seem true to him.

He laid his hand fondly on my head, pushing my hair back.

"For two years, I've watched you grow," he said. "You've reached your full height, but you're small, and your face is a baby's face, and for all your good health, you're slight and not the robust man yet that you are surely meant to be."

I was too enthralled to interrupt him. When he paused, I waited.

He sighed. He looked off as if he couldn't find words.

"When you were gone, your English lord drew his dagger on you, but you weren't afraid. Do you remember? It wasn't two days ago."

"Yes, Sir, it was stupid."

"You could easily have died then," he said with a raise of his eyebrow. "Easily."

"Sir, please open up these mysteries to me," I said. "Tell me how you came to your powers. Entrust these secrets to me. Lord, make it so that I can be with you forever. I don't care anything for my own judgment of such things. I yield to yours."

"Ah, yes, you yield if I fulfill your request."

"Well, Sir, that is a form of yielding, to give myself up to you, your will and your power, and yes, I would have it and be like you. Is that what you promise, Master, is that what you hint at, that you can make me like you? You can fill me with this blood of yours that makes a slave out of me, and it will be accomplished? It seems at times I know this, Master, that you can do it, and yet I wonder if I know it only because you know it, and you are lonely to do it to me."

"Ah!" He put his hands to his face, as though I had displeased him totally.

I was at a loss.

"Master, if I offended, hit me, beat me, do anything to me but don't turn away. Don't cover your eyes that would look on me, Master, because I can't live without your gaze. Explain it to me. Master, take away what divides us; if it be only ignorance then take away that."

"Oh, I will, I will," he said. "You are so clever and deceiving, Amadeo. You would be the fool for God all right, as you were told a long time ago that a saint should be."

"You lose me, Sir. I am no saint, and a fool, yes, because I conjecture it's a form of wisdom and I want it because you prize wisdom."

"I mean that you appear simple, and out of your simplicity comes a clever grasp. I am lonely. Oh, yes, I am lonely, and lonely to tell my woes if nothing else. But who would burden one so young as you with my woes? Amadeo, what age do you think I am? Gauge my age with your simplicity."

"You have none, Sir. You neither eat nor drink, nor change with time. You need no water to wash you clean. You are smooth and resistant to all things of nature. Master, we all know this. You are a clean and fine and whole thing."

He shook his head. I was distressing him when I wanted just the opposite.

"I have done it already," he whispered.

"What, my Lord, what have you done?"

"Oh, brought you to me, Amadeo, for now-." He stopped. He frowned, and his face was so soft and wondering that it made me ache. "Ah, but these are just self-serving delusions. I could take you, with a heap of gold, and plant you down in a distant city where-."

"Master, kill me. Kill me before you do this, or make sure your city is beyond the compass of the known world, because I will journey back! I will spend the last ducat of your heap of gold to journey here and beat on your doors."

He looked wretched, more a man than I'd ever seen him, in pain and trembling as he looked off, deep into the endless dark divide that separated us.

I clung to his shoulder and kissed him. There was a stronger, more virile intimacy due to my crude act of hours ago.

"No, no time for such comforts," he said. "I have to be gone. Duty calls me. Ancient things call to me, things which have been my burden for so very long. I am so weary!"

"Don't go tonight. When the morning comes, take me with you, Master, take me to where you conceal yourself from the sun. It is from the sun that you must hide, isn't it, Master, you who paint blue skies and the light of Phoebus more brilliantly than those who see it, you never see it-."

"Stop," he begged me, pressing his fingers about my hand. "Stop your kisses and your reason, and do as I say."

He took a deep breath, and for the first time in all my life with him, I saw him take a handkerchief from his coat and pat the moisture on his own forehead and his lips. The cloth was faintly red. He looked at it.

"I want to show you something before I go," he said. "Dress yourself, quickly. Here, I'll help you."

I was fully dressed for the cold winter night in less than a few minutes. He put a black cape over my shoulders, and gave me gloves trimmed in miniver, and put a black velvet cap on my head. The shoes he chose were black leather boots, which he never wanted me to wear before. To him the ankles of the boys were beautiful, and he did not favor boots, though he did not mind if we wore them by day when he could not see.

He was so troubled, so distressed, and all his face, despite its blanched cleanliness, was so infused with it, that I couldn't keep from embracing him and kissing him, just to make his lips part, just to feel his mouth locking onto mine.

I closed my eyes. I felt his hand cover up my face and cover my eyelids.

There was a great noise around me, as of the flapping of the wooden doors, and the flying about of the broken fragments of that door I'd shattered, and of draperies billowed and snapped.

The cold air of outside surrounded me. He set me down, blind, and I knew my feet were on the quay. I could hear the water of the canal near me, lapping, lapping, as the winter wind stirred it and drove the sea into the city, and I could hear a wooden boat knocking persistently against a dock.

He let slip his fingers, and I opened my eyes.

We were far from the palazzo. I was abashed to see us at such a distance, though I was not really surprised. He could do wonders, and so he let me know this now. We were in back alleyways. We stood on a small landing by a narrow canal. I had never ventured into this mean district where workmen lived.

I saw only the back porches of houses, and their ironclad windows, and a general squalor and blindness, and a rankness as refuse floated on the water of the dipping, splashing winter-blown canal.

He turned and drew me with him away from the water's edge, and for a moment I couldn't see. His white hand flashed out. I beheld one finger pointed and then I beheld a man sleeping in a long rotted gondola that had been drawn up out of the water and set on workmen's blocks. The man stirred and threw back his covering. I saw his hulking fussing shape as he grumbled and cursed at us that we dared to disturb his sleep.

I reached for my dagger. I saw the flash of his blade. The white hand of the Master, glowing like quartz, seemed only to touch the man's wrist and send the weapon flying and rolling on the stones. Befuddled and enraged, the man charged my Master in a great clumsy bid to knock my Master off his feet.

My Master caught him easily, as if he were no more than a great swaddling of evil-smelling wool. I saw my Master's face. His mouth opened. There came two tiny sharp teeth, like daggers unto themselves, as he bit down into the man's throat. I heard the man cry out, but only for an instant, and then his stinking body went still.

Astonished and enthralled, I watched as my Master closed his smooth eyes, his golden eyelashes seeming silvery in the dimness, and I heard a low wet sound, barely audible but horribly suggestive of the flow of something, and that something had to be the man's blood. My Master pressed himself ever more closely to his victim, his plainly visible white fingers coaxing the life fluid from the dying body, as he gave off a long sweet savoring sigh. He drank. He drank, and there was no mistaking it. He even twisted his head a little as if to bring the last draught all the more quickly, and at this the man's form, now seemingly frail and plastic, shuddered all over, as if the man had gone into a final convulsion, and then was still.

The Master drew himself up and ran his tongue over his lips. There was not a drop of blood to be seen. But the blood was visible. It was visible inside my Master. His face took on a florid gleam. He turned and looked at me, and I could make out the vivid flush of his cheeks, the ruddy glister of his lips.

"This is where it comes from, Amadeo," he said. He shoved the corpse towards me, the filthy clothes brushed all against me, and as the heavy head fell back in death, he pushed it even closer so that I had to look down at the doomed man's coarse and lifeless face. He was young, he was bearded, he was not beautiful, and he was pale and he was dead.

A seam of white showed beneath each limp and expressionless eyelid. A greasy spittle hung from his decaying yellowed teeth, his breathless and colorless mouth.

I was speechless. Fear, loathing, these things had no part in it. I was simply amazed. If I thought, I thought it was wondrous.

In a sudden fit of seeming anger, my Master hurled the man's body to his left and out into the water where it fell with a dull splashing and bubbling sound.

He snatched me up, and I saw the windows falling past me. I almost screamed as we rose above the roofs. His hands clamped over my mouth. He moved so swiftly it was as if something propelled him or thrust him upwards.

We spun round or so it must have been, and when I opened my eyes we stood in a familiar room. Long golden curtains settled around us. It was warm here. In the shadows I saw the glinting outline of a golden swan.

It was Bianca's room, her private sanctuary, her very own room.

"Master!" I said in fear and revulsion, that we should come like this, into her chamber, without so much as a word.

From the closed doors a tiny seam of light laid itself out upon her parqueted floor and its thick Persian carpet. It laid itself upon the deep-carved feathers of her swan bed.

Then came her footsteps hastily, emerging from an airy cloud of voices, so that she might investigate alone the noise she heard.

The cold wind swept into the room from the open window as she opened her doors. Against the draught she slammed them shut, such a fearless creature, and she reached out with unerring accuracy and raised the wick of her nearby lamp. The flame rose and I saw her staring at my Master, though she had seen me as well, for sure.

She was herself, as I had left her a world of hours ago, in gold velvet and silk tissue, her braid coiled about the back of her head to weigh down her voluminous tresses which fell in their rippled splendor over her shoulders and down her back.

Her small face was quick with questioning and alarm.

"Marius," she said. "How now, my Lord, do you come here like this, into my private room? How now, you come by the window, and with Amadeo? What is this, jealousy of me?"

"No, only I would have a confession," my Master said. His very voice trembled. He held me tight by my hand as if I were a mere child as he approached her, his long finger flying out to accuse her . . . "Tell him, my darling angel, tell him what lies behind your fabulous face."

"I don't know what you mean, Marius. But you anger me. And I order you out of my house. Amadeo, what do you say to this abuse?"

"I don't know, Bianca," I murmured. I was totally in fear. Never had I heard my Master's voice tremble, and never had I heard anyone address him so familiarly by name.

"Get out of my house, Marius. Go now. I speak to the honorable man in you."

"Ah, and how then did your friend Marcellus go, the Florentine, the one you were told to lure here with your clever words, the one whose drink you laced with enough poison to kill twenty men?"

My damsel's face grew brittle but never really hard. She seemed a porcelain princess as she appraised my angry, trembling Master.

"What is this to you, my Lord?" she asked. "Have you become the Grand Council or the Council of Ten? Take me up before the courts on charges, if you will, you stealthy sorcerer! Prove your words."

There was a great high-strung dignity to her. She craned her neck and raised her chin.

"Murderess," my Master said. "I see it now within the solitary cell of your mind, a dozen confessions, a dozen cruel and importunate acts, a dozen crimes-."

"No, you cannot judge me! A magician you might be, but you are no angel, Marius. Not you with your boys."

He dragged her forward, and once again I saw his mouth open. I saw his deadly teeth.

"No, Master, no!" I ripped loose of his slack neglected hand and flew at him with my fists, crashing my body between hers and his and pounding on him with all my might. "You can't do it, Master. I don't care what she's done. You seek these reasons for what. Call her importunate? Her! And what is it with you?"

She fell backwards against her bed and struggled up onto it, her legs bent. She drew back into the shadows.

"You are the Fiend from Hell himself," she whispered. "You are a monster, and I have seen it. Amadeo, he'll never let me live."

"Let her live, my Lord, or I die with her!" I said. "She's no more than a lesson here, and I will not see her die."

My Master was wretched. He was dazed. He pushed me away from him, steadying me so that I didn't fall. He moved towards the bed, but not in pursuit of her. He sat down beside her. She recoiled ever deeper against the headboard, her hand reaching out vainly for the sheer gold drapery as if it could save her.

She was wan and small, and her fierce blue eyes remained fixed and wide.

"We are killers together, Bianca," he whispered to her. He reached out.

I rushed forward, but only to be stopped casually by his right hand, and with his left he smoothed her few tiny loose curls back from her forehead. He rested his hand on her as if he were a priest giving a blessing.

"Of rude necessity, Sir, all of it," she said. "What choice after all did I have?" How brave she was, how strong like fine silver suffused with steel. "Once given the commissions, what am I to do, for I know what is to be done and for whom? How clever they were. It was a brew which took days to kill its victim far from my warm rooms."

"Call your oppressor here, child, and poison him, instead of those he points out."

"Yes, that ought to do it," I said hastily. "Kill the man who put you up to it."

She seemed in truth to think on this and then to smile. "And what of his guards, his kinsmen? They would strangle me for the grand betrayal."

"I'll kill him for you, sweet," said Marius. "And for that, you'll owe me no high crimes, only your gentle forgetfulness of the appetite you have seen tonight in me."

For the first time, her courage seemed to waver. Her eyes filled with clear pretty tears. A tiny weariness showed itself in her. She hung her head for a moment. "You know who he is, you know where he lodges, you know that he is in Venice now."

"He's a dead man, my beautiful lady," my Master said.

I slipped my arm around his neck. I kissed his forehead. He kept his eyes on her.

"Come, then, cherub," he said to me while he still looked at her. "We'll go to rid the world of this Florentine, this banker, who uses Bianca to dispatch those who have given him accounts in secret."

This intelligence amazed Bianca, but once again she made a soft, knowing smile. How graceful she was, how devoid of pride and bitterness. How these horrors were cast aside.

My Master held me fast to him with his right arm. He reached inside his jacket with his left and took out of it a large beautiful pear-shaped pearl. It seemed a priceless thing. He gave it to Bianca, who took it only with hesitation, watching it drop into her lazy, open hand.

"Let me kiss you, darling princess," he said.

To my astonishment, she allowed it, and he covered her now with feathery kisses, and I watched her pretty golden eyebrows pucker, and I saw her eyes become dazzled, and her body go limp. She lay back on her pillows and then fell into a fast sleep.

We withdrew. I thought I heard the shutters close behind us. The night was wet and dark. My head was pressed to my Master's shoulder. I couldn't have looked up or moved if I wanted to.

"Thank you, my beloved Lord, that you didn't kill her," I whispered.

"She is more than a practical woman," he said. "She is unbroken still. She has the innocence and cunning of a duchess or a queen."

"But where do we go now?"

"We are there, Amadeo. We are on the roof. Look about you. Do you hear the din below?"

It was tambourines and drums and flutes playing.

"Ah, so, they will die at their banquet," my Master said thoughtfully. He stood at the edge of the roof, holding to the stone railing. The wind blew his cloak back, and he turned his eyes up to the stars.

"I want to see it all," I said.

He shut his eyes as if I'd struck him a blow.

"Don't think me cold, Sir," I said. "Don't think me tired and used to things brutal and cruel. I am only the fool, Sir, the fool for God. We don't question, if memory serves me right. We laugh and we accept and we turn all life into joy."

"Come down with me, then. There are a crowd of them, these crafty Florentines. Oh, but I am so hungry. I have starved myself for a night such as this."