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Chapter 25

25

WHEN I AWOKE the pain was excruciating. I lay for an hour or more without moving. I listened to the voices of Venice. I listened to the movement of the waters beneath my house and all around it, and through the canals and into the sea.

I listened for Santino's miscreants, in quiet dignified terror that they might yet be abroad in search of me. But they were gone completely, at least for now.

I tried to lift the marble lid of the sarcophagus and I couldn't do it. Once again, with the Mind Gift I pushed against it, and then, with the aid of my feeble hands I was able to push it aside.

Most strange and wondrous, I thought, that the power of the mind was greater than the power of the hands.

Slowly, I managed to rise from this cold and handsome grave which I had fashioned for myself, and I did at last, after great effort, sit on the cold marble floor, seeing the glint of the golden walls through a bit of light that seeped into the chamber around the edges of the upper door.

I felt a terrible agony and weariness. A sense of shame overcame me. I had imagined myself invulnerable, and oh, how I had been humbled, how I had been dashed against the stones of my own pride.

The taunts of the Satan worshipers came back to me. I remembered Amadeo's cries.

Where was he now, my beauteous pupil? I listened but I heard nothing.

I called to Raymond Gallant once more, though I knew it was in vain. I pictured him traveling overland to England. I called his name aloud so that it resounded off the walls of the golden chamber, but I could not find him. I knew that I would not find him. I did it only to be certain that he was far beyond my reach.

And then I thought of my precious and fair Bianca. I sought to see her as I had last night, through the minds of those around her. I sent the Mind Gift wandering to her fashionable rooms.

Into my ears there came the sound of playful music; and at once I saw her many regular guests. They drank and talked as though my house had not been destroyed, or rather as if they knew nothing of it, and I had never been one of them; on they went as the living do, after a mortal is taken away.

But where was Bianca?

"Show me her face," I whispered, directing the mysterious Mind Gift by the sheer simplicity of my voice.

No picture came to me.

I shut my own eyes, which gave me exquisite pain, and I listened, hearing the hum of the entire city, and then begging, begging of the Mind Gift that it give me her voice, her thoughts.

Nothing, and then at last I hit upon it. Wherever she was, she was alone. She was waiting for me, and there were none around her to look upon her, or talk to her, and so I must find her in her silence or solitude, and at last I sent out my call to her.

Bianca, I am living. I am monstrously burnt as I've told you. As you once nursed Amadeo, can you extend your great kindness to me?

Scarcely a moment passed before I heard her distinct whisper.

"Marius, I can hear you. Only direct me. Nothing will frighten me. I will bind up your burnt skin. I will bind up your wounds. "

Oh, this was wondrous comfort, but what was I planning here? What did I mean to do?

Yes, she would come, and would bring to me fresh garments with which I could conceal my miserable flesh, and perhaps even a hooded cloak that my head should be concealed, and even a Carnival mask for my face.

Yes, all that was most true, she would do it, but what then when I found I could not hunt in this miserable state? And what if, hunting somehow, I discovered that the blood of one or two mortals meant nothing to me, that my injuries had been too great?

How then should I depend upon this tender darling to assist me? How deep into the horrors of my debility should I allow her to come?

Again I heard her voice.

"Marius," she pleaded with me. "Tell me where you are. I'm in your house, Marius. It is much destroyed but not entirely. I wait for you in your old bedchamber. There is clothing here that I have gathered for you. Can you come?"

For a long while I did not answer her, not even to comfort her. I thought upon it in so far as one can think when one is feeling such pain. My mind was not my mind. Of that, I was certain.

And it did seem to me that in this great distress I could betray Bianca. I could betray her utterly were she to allow. Or I might only take from her some mercy, and leave her finally with a mystery which she would never understand.

The betrayal would be the more simple thing, obviously. The alternative, to take her mercy and leave her with a mystery, that would demand immense self-control.