Of Love and Evil - By Anne Rice Page 0,34

not been contaminated by their intercourse with these Jews.”

“Fr. Piero, silence,” said the old man. “This was not witchcraft, this was envy! And I did not see what I did not want to see. Now leave me, all of you. Leave me to be alone to mourn my son whom I took from his mother’s arms. Vitale, take your patient to his bed. He will recover now.”

“But the demon, does it not still rage?” the priest demanded. No one was listening to him.

I stared down at the dead man. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. I knew they were all going out, except for the old man, and I must go out as well. Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off his lifeless body. I thought of angels, but without words. I appealed to an unseen realm, intermingled with our own, beings of wisdom and compassion who might be surrounding the soul of this dead man now, but no comforting images came to mind, no words. I had failed. I had failed this one, though I might have saved another. Was that all I had been meant to do? Save the one brother and drive the other to destroy himself? It was inconceivable. And it was I who had driven him to this, most certainly.

I looked up and saw old Pico in the gateway gesturing for me to hurry. All the others had gone out.

I bowed and went behind Signore Antonio and out of the orangery, and into the larger courtyard.

I was dazed. I think perhaps Fr. Piero was there, but I didn’t really look at those standing about.

I saw the open doorway to the street, with the dim silhouettes of a couple of servants keeping watch there, and I moved towards the door and then went through it.

No one questioned me. No one seemed to notice me.

I walked numbly into the crowded piazza and for one moment stared up at the darkening grayish sky. How perfectly solid and real was this world into which I’d been plunged, with its crowded stone houses, built slap against one another, and their random towers. How real the walls of the palazzos opposite, somber and brown, and how real the noises of this motley crowd, with their carefree conversation, and bursts of laughter.

Where was I going? What did I mean to do? I wanted to pray, to go into a church and fall on my knees and pray, yet how could I do this with the yellow patch on my clothes? How could I dare to make the Sign of the Cross, without someone thinking I was mocking my own faith?

I felt lost and knew only that I was wandering away from the houses to which I’d been sent. And when I thought of the soul of the dead man, going now to the utter unknown, I was desperate.

CHAPTER NINE

I STOPPED. I FOUND MYSELF IN A NARROW MUDDY LANE, overcome with the stench of the filth flowing into the gutters. I thought again of trying to reach a church, a place where I could go down on my knees in the shadows and pray to God for help with this, but then again the thought of the round yellow badge on the left side of my chest stopped me.

People passed me on both sides, some politely giving me room, others shouldering me out of their path, while others milled at the open cookshops and bakery shops. The fragrances of roasting meat and baked bread mingled with the stench.

I felt suddenly too weak in spirit to go further, and finding a narrow margin of wall between a fabric merchant’s open stall and a bookseller, I slipped my lute around into my arms, and then holding it like a baby, I leaned back and rested and tried to find above the narrow margin of the sky.

The light was dying fast. It was getting chilly. Lamps burned in the shops. A torchbearer made his way through the street with two smartly dressed young men behind him.

I realized I had no idea what month of the year it was here, and if it corresponded in some way to the late spring weather I’d left behind. But the Mission Inn, and my beloved Liona, seemed utterly remote, like something I’d dreamed. That I’d ever been Lucky the Fox, a paid assassin, seemed unreal as well.

Again, I prayed for Lodovico’s soul. But the words seemed meaningless suddenly, in the face of my failure, and then I heard a voice say