Vittorio, the Vampire

  THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

  SHE didn't lie.

  We journeyed that night to my I father's house. It was nothing for us to I make that journey, but it was many miles for a mortal, and word had not reached that forlorn farmland that the threat of the night demons, the vampires of Florian, was gone. Indeed, it is most likely that my farms were still deserted because ghastly tales were given out by those who had fled Santa Maddalana, traveling over hill and valley, mouth to mouth.

  It didn't take me long to realize, however, that the great castle of my family was occupied. A horde of soldiers and clerks had been hard at work. As we crept over the giant wall after midnight, we found that all the dead of my family had been properly buried, or placed in their proper stone coffins beneath the chapel, and that the goods of the household, all of its abundant wealth, had been taken away. Only a few wagons remained of those which must have already started their progress south.

  The few who slept in the offices of my father's steward were keepers of the accounts of the Medici bank, and on tiptoe, in the dim light of a star-studded sky, I inspected the few papers they had left out to dry.

  All of the inheritance of Vittorio di Raniari had been collected and catalogued, and was being taken on to Florence for him, to be placed in safety with Cosimo until such time as Vittorio di Raniari was twenty-four years of age and could thereby assume responsibility for himself as a man.

  Only a few soldiers slept in the barracks. Only a few horses were quartered in the stables. Only a few squires and attendants slept in proximity to their Lords.

  Obviously the great castle, being of no strategic use to Milanese or German or French or Papal authority, or to Florence, was not being restored or repaired, merely shut down.

  Well before dawn, we left my home, but before going, I took leave of my father's grave.

  I knew that I would come back. I knew that soon the trees would climb the mountain to the walls. I knew that the grass would grow high through the crevices and cracks of the cobblestones. I knew that things human would lose all love of this place, as they had lost their love of so many ruins in the country round.

  I would return then. I would come back.

  That night, Ursula and I hunted the vicinity for the few brigands we could find in the woods, laughing gaily when we caught them and dragged them from their horses. It was a riotous old feast.

  'And where now, my Lord?" my bride asked me towards morning. We had again found a cave for shelter, a deep and hidden place, full of thorny vines that barely scratched our resilient skin, behind a veil of wild blueberries that would hide us from all eyes, including that of the great rising sun.

  "To Florence, my love. I have to go there. And in its streets, we'll never suffer hunger, or discovery, and there are things which I must see with my own eyes/'

  "But what are those things, Vittorio?" she asked.

  "Paintings, my love, paintings. I have to see the angels in the paintings. I have to ... face them, as it were."

  She was content. She had never seen the great city of Florence. She had, all her wretched eternity of ritual and courtly discipline, been contained in the mountains, and she lay down beside me to dream of freedom, of brilliant colors of blue and green and gold, so contrary to the dark red that she still wore. She lay down beside me, trusting me, and, as for me, I trusted nothing.

  I only licked the human blood on my lips and wondered how long I might have on this earth before someone struck off my head with a swift and certain sword.

  15

  THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

  THE city of Florence was in an uproar. "Why?" I asked.

  It was well past curfew, to which I no one was paying much attention, and there was a huge crowd of students congregated in Santa Maria Maggiori—the Duomo— listening to a lecture by a humanist who pleaded that Fra Filippo Lippi was not such a pig.

  No one took much note of us. We had fed early, in the countryside, and wore heavy mantles, and what could they see of us but a little pale flesh?

  I went into the church. The crowd came out almost to the doors.

  "What's the matter? What's happened to the great painter?"

  "Oh, he's done it now," said the man who answered me, not even bothering to look at me or at the slender figure of Ursula clinging to me.

  The man was too intent on looking at the lecturer, who stood up ahead, his voice echoing sharply in the overwhelming large nave.

  "Done what?"

  Getting no answer, I pushed my way a little deeper into the thick, odiferous human crowd, pulling Ursula with me. She was still shy of such an immense city, and she had not seen a Cathedral on this scale in the more than two hundred years of her life.

  Once again I put my question to two young students, who turned at once to answer me, fashionable boys both, about eighteen, or what they called then in Florence giovani, being the most difficult of youths, too old to be a child, such as I was, and too young to be a man.

  "Well, he asked for the fairest of the nuns to pose for the altarpiece that he was painting of the blessed Virgin, that's what he did," said the first student, black-haired and deep-eyed, staring at me with a cunning smile. "He asked for her as a model, asked that the convent choose her for him, so that the Virgin he painted would be most perfect, and then..."

  The other student took it up.

  ".. . he ran off with her! Stole the nun right out of the convent, ran off with her and her sister, mind you, her blood-kindred sister, and has set up his household right over his shop, he and his nun and her sister, the three of them, the monk and the two nuns . . . and lives in sin with her, Lucrezia Buti, and paints the Virgin on the altarpiece and does not give a damn what anyone thinks."

  There was jostling and pushing in the crowd about us. Men told us to be quiet. The students were choking on their laughter.

  "If he didn't have Cosimo," said the first student, lowering his voice in an obedient but mischievous whisper, "they'd string him up, I mean her family, the Buti, would at least, if not the priests of the Carmelite Order, if not the whole damned town."

  The other student shook his head and covered his mouth not to laugh out loud.

  The speaker, far ahead, advised all to remain calm and let this scandal and outrage be handled by the proper authorities, for everyone knew that nowhere in all of Florence was there a painter any greater than Fra Filippo, and that Cosimo would tend to this in his own time.

  "He's always been tormented," said the student beside me.

  "Tormented," I whispered. "Tormented." His face came back to me, the monk glimpsed years ago in Cosimo's house in the Via Larga, the man arguing so fiercely to be free, only to be with a woman for a little while. I felt the strangest conflict within, the strangest darkest fear. "Oh, that they don't hurt him again."

  "One might wonder," came a soft voice in my ear. I turned, but I saw no one who could have spoken to me. Ursula looked about.

  "What is it, Vittorio?"

  But I knew the whisper, and it came again, bodiless and intimate, "One might wonder, where were his guardian angels on the day that Fra Filippo did such a mad thing?"

  I turned in a mad frantic circle, searching for the origin of the voice. Men backed away from me and made little gestures of annoyance. I snatched up Ursula's hand and made for the doors.

  Only when I was outside in the piazza did my heart stop pounding. I had not known that with this new blood I could feel such anxiety and misery and fear.

  "Oh, run off with a nun to paint the Virgin!" I cried out under my breath.

  "Don't cry, Vittorio," she said.

  "Don't speak to me as if I were your little brother!" I said to her, and then was full of shame. She was stricken by my words, as if I'd slapped her. I took her fingers and kissed them. "I'm sorry, Ursula, I am sorry."

  I pulled her along beside me.

  "But where are we going?"

  "To the house of Fra Filippo, to his workshop. Don't question me now."

  Within momen
ts we had found our way, echoing and clattering down the narrow street, and we stood before the doors that were shut up and I could see no light, save in the third-story windows, as though he had had to flee to that height with his bride.

  No mob was gathered here.

  But out of the darkness there came suddenly a handful of filth heaved at the bolted doors, and then another and then a volley of stones. I stepped back, shielding Ursula, and watched as one passerby after another slunk forward and hurled his insults at the shop.

  Finally, I lay against the wall opposite, staring dully in the darkness, and I heard the deep-throated bell of the church ring the hour of eleven, which meant surely that all men must vacate the streets.

  Ursula only waited on me and said nothing, and she noted it quietly when I looked up and saw the last of Fra Filippo's lights go out.

  "It's my doing," I said. "I took his angels from him, and he fell into this folly, and for what did I do it, for what, that I might possess you as surely now as he possesses his nun?"

  "I don't know your meaning, Vittorio," she said. "What are nuns and priests to me? I have never said a word to wound you, never, but I say such words now. Don't stand here weeping over these mortals you loved. We are wedded now, and no convent vow or priestly anointment divides us. Let's go away from here, and when by light of lamps you want to show me the wonders of this painter, then bring me, bring me to see the angels of which you spoke rendered in pigment and oil."

  I was chastened by her firmness. I kissed her hand again. I told her I was sorry. I held her to my heart.

  How long I might have stood with her there, I don't know. Moments passed. I heard the sound of running water and distant footsteps, but nothing of consequence, nothing which mattered in the thick night of crowded Florence, with its four- and five-story palaces, with its old half-broken towers, and its churches, and its thousands upon thousands of sleeping souls.

  A light startled me. It fell down upon me in bright yellow seams. I saw the first, a thin line of brilliance. It cut across her figure, and then there came another, illuminating the alley-like street beyond us, and I realized that the lamps had been lighted within Fra Filippo's shop.

  I turned just as the bolts inside were made to slide back with a low, grating noise. The noise echoed up the dark walls. No light shone above, behind the barred windows.

  Suddenly the doors were opened and slapped back softly, soundlessly almost, against the wall, and I saw the deep rectangle of the interior, a wide shallow room filled with brilliant canvases all blazing above candles enough to light a Bishop's Mass.

  My breath left me. I clutched her tightly, my hand on the back of her head as I pointed.

  "There they are, both of them, the Annuncia-tions!" I whispered. "Do you see the angels, the angels who kneel, there, and there, the angels who kneel before the Virgins!"

  "I see them," she said reverently. 'Ah, they are more lovely even than I supposed." She shook my arm. "Don't cry, Vittorio, unless it's for beauty's sake, only for that."

  "Is that a command, Ursula?" I asked. My eyes were so clouded I could scarce see the poised flat kneeling figures of Ramiel and Setheus.

  But as I tried to clear my vision, as I tried to gather my wits and swallow the ache in my throat, the miracle I feared more than anything in this world, yet craved, yet hungered for—that miracle commenced.

  Out of the very fabric of the canvas, they appeared simultaneously, my silk-clad blond-haired angels, my haloed angels, to unravel from the tight weave itself. They turned, gazing at me first and then moving so that they were no longer flat profiles but full robust figures, and then they stepped out and onto the stones of the shop.

  I knew by Ursula's gasp that she had seen the same vivid series of miraculous gestures. Her hand went to her lips.

  Their faces bore no wrath, no sadness. They merely looked at me, and in their sweet soft looks was all the condemnation I have ever understood.

  "Punish me," I whispered. "Punish me by taking away my eyes that I can never see your beauty again."

  Very slowly, Ramiel shook his head to answer no. And Setheus followed with the same negation. They stood side by side in their bare feet, as always, their abundant garments too light for movement on the heavy air, as they merely continued to gaze.

  "What then?" I said. "What do I deserve from you? How is it that I can see you and see your glory even still?" I was a wreck of childish tears again, no matter how Ursula stared at me, no matter how she tried with her silent reproach to make the man of me.

  I couldn't stop myself.

  "What then? How can I see you still?"

  "You'll always see us," Ramiel said softly, tonelessly.

  "Every time you ever look at one of his paintings, you will see us," said Setheus, "or you will see our like."

  There was no judgment in it. There was merely the same lovely serenity and kindness that they had always bestowed on me.

  But it was not finished. I saw behind them, taking dark shape, my own guardians, that solemn ivory pair, draped in their robes of shadowy blue.

  How hard were their eyes, how knowing, how disdainful yet without the edge which men lend to such passions. How glacial and remote.

  My lips parted. A cry was there. A terrible cry. But I dared not rouse the night around me, the infinite night that moved out over the thousands of slanted red-tile rooftops, out over the hills and the country, out under the numberless stars.

  Suddenly the entire building began to move. It trembled, and the canvases, brilliant and shimmering in their bath of burning light, were glittering as if shaken by a tremor of the very earth itself.

  Mastema appeared suddenly before me, and the room was swept backward, broadened, deepened, and all those lesser angels were swept back from him as if by a soundless wind that cannot be defied.

  The flood of light ignited his immense gold wings as they spread out, crowding the very corners of the vastness and pushing it even to greater breadth, and the red of his helmet glared as if it were molten, and out of his sheath, he drew his sword.

  I backed up. I forced Ursula behind me. I pushed her back against the damp cold wall and imprisoned her there, behind me, as safe as I could make her on the face of the earth, with my arms stretched back to hold her so that she could not, must not, be taken away.

  "Ah," said Mastema, nodding, smiling. The sword was uplifted. "So even now you would go into Hell rather than see her die!"

  "I would!" I cried. "I have no choice."

  "Oh, yes, you have a choice."

  "No, not her, don't kill her. Kill me, and send me there, yes, but give her one more chance ..."

  Ursula cried against my shoulders, her hands clinging to my hair, catching hold of it, as if by means of it she'd be safe.

  "Send me now," I said. "Go ahead, strike off my head and send me to my judgment before the Lord that I may beg for her! Please, Mastema, do it, but do not strike her. She does not know how to ask to be forgiven. Not yet!"

  Holding the sword aloft, he reached out and grabbed my collar and jerked me towards him. I felt her fly against me. He held me beneath his face, and glowered down at me with his beaming eyes.

  "And when will she learn, and when will you?"

  What could I say? What could I do?

  "I will teach you, Vittorio," said Mastema in a low, seething whisper. "I will teach you so that you know how to beg forgiveness every night of your life. I will teach you."

  I felt myself lifted, I felt my garments blown by the wind, I felt her tiny hands clinging to me, and the weight of her head on my back.

  Through the streets we were being dragged, and suddenly there appeared before us a great crowd of idle mortals issuing from a wine shop, drunken and laughing, a great jumble of swollen, natural faces and dark breeze-tossed clothes.

  "Do you see them, Vittorio? Do you see those upon whom you feed?" Mastema demanded.

  "I see them, Mastema!" I said. I groped for her hand, trying to find her, hold her, shield her. "I do
see them, I do."

  "In each and every one of them, Vittorio, there is what I see in you, and in her—a human soul. Do you know what that is, Vittorio? Can you imagine?"

  I didn't dare to answer.

  The crowd spread out over the moonlighted piazza, and drew closer to us, even as it loosened.

  "A spark of the power that made all of us is within each of them," cried Mastema, "a spark of the invisible, of the subtle, of the sacred, of the mystery—a spark of that which created all things."

  'Ah, God!" I cried out. "Look at them, Ursula, look!"

  For each and every one of them, man, woman, it did not matter old or young, had taken on a powerful hazy golden glow. A light emanated from and surrounded and embraced each figure, a subtle body of light shaped to the very form of the human being who walked in it, unheeding of it, and the entire square was full of such golden light.