of these demons whose purpose was unknown to me, whose purpose lay beyond anything of which I could conceive.
"Why do this to us?" I whispered.
"To punish you!" came a gentle whisper. "To punish you for all your vain and blasphemous deeds, for the worldly and Godless life you've lived. What is Hell to this, young one?"
Ah, so the executioners of the mortal world said a thousand times when they led heretics to the stake. "What are the fires of Hell to this brief suffering?" Oh, such self-serving and arrogant lies.
"Do you think so?" came the whisper. "Lay a caution on your thoughts, young one, for there are those who can pick your mind barren of all its thoughts. There may be no Hell for you, child, but there will be suffering eternal. Your nights of luxury and lasciviousness are over. The truth awaits you now."
Once again, I retreated into my deepest mental hiding place. I had no body anymore. I lay in the Monastery, in the earth, unfeeling of my body. I put my mind at work on the tone of the voices near me, such sweet and pitiable voices. I picked out the boys by name and slowly made a count of them. Over half our little company, our splendid cherubic company, was in this abominable prison.
I did not hear Riccardo. But then, when our captors had finished their abuse for a while, I did hear Riccardo.
He intoned a litany in Latin, in a raw and desperate whisper. "Blessed be God." The others were quick to answer. "Blessed be His Holy Name." And so on it went, the prayers, the voice gradually becoming weak in the silence until Riccardo alone prayed.
I did not give the responses.
Yet on he went, now that his charges mercifully slept, praying to comfort himself, or perhaps merely for the glory of God. He moved from the litany into the Pater Noster, and from then into the comforting age-old words of the Ave which he said over and over, as if making a rosary, all alone, as he lay imprisoned in the bottom of the ship.
I spoke no words to him. I did not even let him know that I was there. I couldn't save him. I couldn't comfort him. I couldn't even explain this terrible fate which had befallen us. I couldn't above all reveal what I had seen: the Master perishing, the great one gone into the simple and eternal agony of fire.
I had slipped into a shock near to despair. I let my mind recover the sight of Marius burning, Marius a living torch, turning and twisting in the fire, his fine fingers reaching heavenward like spiders in the orange flame. Marius was dead; Marius was burned. There had been too many of them for Marius. I knew what he would have said if he had come to me a comforting specter. "There were simply too many of them, Amadeo, too many. I couldn't stop them, though I tried."
I slipped into tormented dreams. The ship bore on through the night, carrying me away from Venice, away from the ruin of all that I believed in, all that I held dear.
I awoke to the sounds of singing and to the smell of the earth, but it was not Russian earth.
We were no longer at sea. We were imprisoned on land.
Still bound in the net, I listened to hollow preternatural voices chanting with a villainous gusto the awful hymn, Dies Irae, or Day of Wrath.
A low drum carried on the zesty rhythm as if it were a song for dancing rather than a terrible lament of the Final Days. On and on went the Latin words speaking of the day when all the world would be turned to ashes, when the great trumpets of the Lord would blast to signal the opening of all graves. Death itself and nature would both shudder. All souls would be brought together, no soul able anymore to hide anything from the Lord. Out of His book, every sin would be read aloud. Vengeance would fall upon everyone. Who was there to defend us, but the Judge Himself, Our Majestic Lord? Our only hope was the pity of Our God, the God who had suffered the Cross for us, who would not let His sacrifice be in vain.
Yes, beautiful old words, but they issued from an evil mouth, the mouth of one who did not even know their meaning, who tapped at his eager drum as if ready for