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"Just please, stay away from him." He strokes my cheek with histhumb.
Then he's gone. I'm standing alone at my door, my body still so in need of release even if my mind is now so confused over these brothers. I go right to my bed and snuggle under mycovers.
I wonder whether one day we'll be lovers. I want it to be so, whenever he's ready. Whatever the hell thatmeans…
* * *
Chapter 9
"If I knowwhat love is, it is because ofyou."
HermanHesse
I wake in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep. My sleep is still all out of whack and so I get up and make a pot of decaf blackberry tea and take the manuscript – or what's left of it – and sit wrapped in a blanket on mycouch.
I wonder what Michel's torn out of this document – what was it that he felt was so bad he didn't want me to read it? Was it worse than the chapter I didread?
I turn the pages to where I left off last night. Michel had just consented to be turned and drank the blood he needed to become a vampire – with Julien'shelp.
The next page starts a new chapter. The picture at the top of the page is an image made of the original and is of a black-cowled Death rising up out of the midst of a fiery pit. Beside Death, angels weep, their tears dripping down their faces. The title of the page isLacrimosa – Day ofTears.
The words at the top of the page are of those from the funeral mass, part of theDies Irae, first in Latin and the translated toEnglish:
Lacrimosa dies illa(Ah! That day of tears andmourning!)
Sounds like the content will be intense. I sip my tea and hope what's in this section isn't too graphic, but read onanyway.
"The subjugation of Michel," reads the translation, "provides Marguerite with endlessamusement."
Michel'ssubjugation…
I feel like a filthy voyeur taking pleasure in reading the intimate and tragic details of his life and death – and resurrection. Still I read on, surprised that Michel's left this partin.
* * *
"By turningMichel so soon after my father's death, she denied him the right to attend our father's funeral mass and so he is forced to return to the Basilica that evening where he kneels alone with his grief at the front of the sanctuary while monks chant Agnus Dei – Lamb ofGod.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world, have mercy uponus.
I fear there is no mercy for either of us. I refuse to kneel beside him as he wishes me to, having forsaken the Church when it sided with the King of France against myfather.
But standing here in the shadows, listening to the chanting, I feel such a great loss. It's not my father I miss – he was an old drunkard who beat Michel and me mercilessly, treating both of us as a burden to be borne rather than sons to father. I miss the Church – I miss Mass and the connection I felt to a God I now have trouble believing in. Strangely, Michel mourns our father, whom he betrayed for his beloved Church. Perhaps neither of us perceived what we were losing when we chosesides.
Now, we've lost itall.
Michel cannot take up his position as Bishop of Carcassonne, and has had to relinquish his vows, so the Bishophood has passed to another loyal servant. I had to compel the Deacon to allow us into the Basilica and the monks to chant so that Michel could say his goodbyes to our father's corpse as it lies in the sanctuary. It was the least I could do for him considering the hell Marguerite has put himthrough.
Despite it all, he wears his vestments, perhaps to keep alive his belief that in spite the humiliation Marguerite subjects him to, he is still a priest, beloved of God, called to the Church, and that his suffering on this earth will ensure he is welcomed intoHeaven.
But he is as undead and damned as the rest ofus.
After my father is buried, we say our goodbyes to Carcassonne and our father's residence and leave, following the Crusaders as they make their way across the Languedoc in search of heretics to burn and estates torob.
* * *
It istwo years before we return to the region, but to a vampire, two years is like a week to a mortal. Two years of traveling across France finds us in a small village outside of Toulouse where the fighting is fresh and there's ripe picking among the fallen and few to ask questions when bodies turn up drained of their blood. Battlefields are notorious and the weapons leave terrific wounds that bleed freely. Exsanguinated corpses are all toocommon.
Marguerite is still the same, and she has finally won. Michel is now her servant in body and I fear, soul. He no longer fightsher.
