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"In Egypt you saw the Great Mother, I saw her in your heart when I drank your blood. "

I went rigid with shock and fury.

I thought I should kill him. He has been good only for learning¡ª how to put together again blood drinkers who had been dismembered¡ª and it was time now to finish what the drunkards only started earlier this night. But I said and did nothing.

Oh, how cold was my heart.

Avicus was dreadfully disappointed and disapproving.

"Marius, I thank you," he said, sad and weary as he walked me to the gate. "What could I have done if you had refused to come to us? I owe you an immense debt. "

"There is no Good Mother," I told him. "I bid you farewell. "

As I hurried back over the rooftops of Rome, towards my own house, I resolved in my soul that I'd told them the truth.

Chapter 7

7

I WAS VERY SURPRISED the next night to find the walls of my library completely painted over. I had forgotten that I'd given such a command to my slaves. As soon as I saw all the pots of fresh paint in any number of colors, I then remembered what I had told them to do.

Indeed, I couldn't think of anything but Mael and Avicus and must confess I was more than fascinated by the mixture of civilized manners and quiet dignity which I found in Avicus and not at all in Mael.

Mael would always be for me a barbarian, unlettered, unrefined, and above all fanatical, for it was due to his fanatic belief in the Gods of the Grove that he had taken my life.

And realizing that the only way I could escape my thoughts of the pair was to paint: the newly prepared walls, I set to work at once.

I took no notice of my guests who were already dining of course, and of those going and coming through the garden and the open gate.

Realize, if you will, that by this time I did not have to hunt for blood that often, and though I was still much too much the savage in this respect, I often left it till late in the evening or early in the morning, or did not hunt at all.

So to the painting, I went. I didn't stand back and take stock of what I meant to do. Rather I went at it fiercely, covering the wall in great glaring patches, making the usual garden which obsessed me, and the nymphs and goddesses whose forms were so familiar to my mind.

These creatures had no names for me. They might have come from any verse in Ovid, or from the writing of Lucretius, or indeed from the blind poet, Homer. It was no matter to me. I lost myself in depicting uplifted arms and graceful throats, in painting oval faces and garments blowing gently in the breeze.

One wall I divided with painted columns, and around these I painted vines. Another wall, I worked with stiff borders of stylized greenery. And the third wall I allotted into small panels in which I would feature various gods.

Meantime, the house grew crowded with the ever noisy party, and some of my favorite drunkards drifted inevitably into the library and watched me at work.

I knew enough to slow my pace somewhat so as not to scare them with my unnatural speed. But otherwise, I took no notice, and only when one of the lyre players came in to sing for me did I realize how mad the house must seem.

For there were people dining and drinking everywhere now, and the master of the house in his long tunic stood painting a wall, the proper work for craftsmen or artists, not Patricians you understand, and there seemed no decent boundary of any kind.

I began to laugh at the absurdity of it.

One of the young guests marveled at my talent.

"Marius, you never told us. We never imagined. "

"Neither did I," I said dully, going on with my work, watching the white paint disappear beneath my brush.

For months I went on with my painting, even moving into the banquet room where the guests cheered me on as I worked. Whatever I accomplished it did not please me and it certainly did not amaze them.

They thought it amusing and eccentric that a rich man should decorate his own walls. And all the drunken advice I received did not amount to very much. The learned men knew the mythic tales I depicted and they enjoyed them, and the young men tried to get me in arguments which I refused.

It was the spacious garden I loved to paint above all, with no painted frame to set it apart from our world with its dancing figures and bending laurels. It was the familiar garden. For I imagined that I could escape into it with my mind.

And during that time I did not risk attending to the chapel. Rather I painted all the rooms of my house.