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"And this made sense, of course. They'd wait till Damien de Wilde was off doing whatever such counts or dukes did, and then they'd meet, do their dance around the fountain, and make love.

Wynken bedded each of the women in turn; or sometimes they celebrated various patterns. All this is recorded more or less in the books.

Well, they got caught.

"Damien castrated and stabbed Wynken in front of the women and put them to rout. He kept the remains! Then, after days of interrogation, the frightened women were bullied into confessing to their love for Wynken and how he had communicated through the books; and the brother took all those books, all twelve of the books of Wynken de Wilde, everything this artist had ever created, you understand¡ª"

"His immortality," I whispered, "Exactly, his progeny! His books! And Damien had them buried with Wynken's body in the castle garden by the fountain that appears in all the little pictures in the books! Blanche could look out on it every day from her window, the place in the ground where Wynken had been laid to rest. No trial, no heresy, no execution, nothing like that. He just murdered his brother, it was as simple as that. He probably paid the monastery huge amounts of money. Who knows if it was even necessary? Did the monastery love Wynken? The monastery is a ruin now where tourists come to snap pictures. As for the castle, it was obliterated in the bombing of the First World War. "

"Ah. But what happened after that, how did the books get out of the coffin? Do you have copies? Are you speaking of. . . . "

"No, I have the originals of every one. I have come across copies, crude copies, made at the behest of Eleanor, Blanche's cousin and confidante, but as far as I know they stopped this practice of copies. There were only twelve books. And I don't know how they surfaced. I can only guess. "

"And what is your guess?"

"I think Blanche went out in the night with the other women, dug up the body, and took the books out of the coffi

n, or whatever poor Wynken's remains had been placed in, and put everything back right the way it was. "

"You think they'd do that?"

"Yes, I think they did it. I can see them doing it, by candlelight in the garden, see them digging, the five women together. Can't you?"

"Yes. "

"I think they did it because they felt the way I do! They loved the beauty and the perfection of those books. Lestat, they knew they were treasures, and such is the power of obsession arid such is the power of love. And who knows, maybe they wanted the bones of Wynken. It's conceivable. Maybe one woman took a thigh bone and another the bones of his fingers and, ah, I don't know. "

It seemed a ghastly picture suddenly, arid it put me in mind, without a second's hesitation, of Roger's hands, which I had chopped off sloppily with a kitchen knife and dumped, wrapped in a plastic sack. I stared at the image of these hands before me, busy, fretting with the edge of the glass, tapping the bar in anxiety.

"How far back can you trace the journey of the books?" I asked.

"Not very far at all. But that's often the case in my profession, I mean antiquities. The books have turned up one, maybe two at a time. Some from private collections, two from museums bombed during the wars. Once or twice I've paid almost nothing for them. I knew what they were the minute I laid eyes on them, but other people didn't. And understand, everywhere I went I put out the search for this sort of medieval codex. I am an expert in this field. I know the language of the medieval artist! You have to save my treasures, Lestat . You can't let Wynken get lost again. I'm leaving you with my legacy. "

"So it seems. But what can I do with these, and all the other relics, if Dora will have no part of it?"

"Dora's young. Dora will change. See, I still have this vision¡ªthat maybe somewhere in my collection¡ªforget about Wynken¡ªthat maybe somewhere among all the statues and relics is a central artifact that can help Dora with her new church. Can you gauge the value of what you saw in that flat? YOU have to make Dora touch those things again, examine them, catch the scent of them! You have to make her realize the potency of the statues and paintings, that they are expressions of the human quest for truth, the very quest that obsesses her. She just doesn't know yet. "

"But you said Dora never cared for the paint and the plaster. "

"Make her care. "

"Me? How! I can conserve all this, yes, but how am I to make Dora love a work of art? Why would you even suggest such a thing, I mean¡ªmy having contact with your precious daughter?"

"You'll love my daughter," he said in a low murmur.

"Come again?"

"Find something miraculous in my collection for her. "

"The Shroud of Turin?"

"Oh, I like you. I really do. Yes, find her something that's significant, something that will transform her, something that I, her father, bought and cherished, that will help her. "

"You're as insane dead as you were alive, you know it? Are you still racketeering, trying to buy your way into salvation with a hunk of marble or a pile of parchment? Or do you really believe in the sanctity of all you've collected?"

"Of course I believe in the sanctity of it. It's all I believe in! That's my point, don't you see? It's all you believe in too . . . what glitters and what is gold. "

"Ah, but you do take my breath away. "