18

WE WERE in the city, a city of deep brown and faded yellow stones and clay. Three years had passed. It had to be so. All I knew was that we were in a huge crowd of people, robed and veiled and ragged¡ªthat I could smell the human sweat, and the heat of stagnant breath, and stench of human waste and camel dung overpoweringly, and that though no one took notice of us, I could feel the press around us, I could feel unwashed men shoving against me, and brushing in front of me, and the sand salted the air here within the walls of the city, within these narrow streets, just as it had salted the air of the desert.

People clustered in small rounded doorways, peeped from windows above. Soot mingled with the everlasting sand. Women drawing their veils around their faces cleaved to one another, pushing past us. Up ahead I could hear screams and shouting. Suddenly, I realized that the crowd was pressed so tight around us, I couldn't move.

Desperately I looked for Memnoch.

He was right beside me, watching all calmly, neither of us shining with any preternatural gleam among these drab and soiled humans, these everyday creatures of this early and harsh time.

"I don't want to do it!" I said, digging in my heels, shoved along by the crowd, yet resisting. "I don't think I can do it! I can't look, Memnoch, no, this is not required of me. No ... I don't want to go any farther. Memnoch, let me go!"

"Quiet," he said dourly. "We are almost to the place where He will pass."

With his left arm around me, clutching me protectively, he divided the crowd in front of us, effortlessly it seemed, until we emerged in the front line of those who waited at a broader thoroughfare as the procession advanced. The shouts were deafening. Roman soldiers moved past us, the garments soiled with grit, faces tired, bored even, dreary. Across the way, on the other side of the procession, a beautiful woman, her hair covered by a long white veil, threw up her hands and screamed.

She was looking at the Son of God. He had come into view. I saw the big crossbar of the crucifix first, on his shoulders sticking out on either side of Him, and then His hands, bound to the beam, dangling from the ropes, already dripping with blood. His head was bowed; the brown hair was matted and dirty and covered over with the crude black crown of spiking thorns; spectators were pressed to walls on either side of Him, some taunting Him, others silent.

There was barely room for Him to walk with his burden, His robes torn, His knees bruised and bleeding, but walk He did. The stench of urine was overpowering from the nearby walls.

He trudged towards us, face hidden, then fell, one knee going down into the stones of the street. Behind Him I saw others carrying the long post of the cross which would be planted in the ground.

At once the soldiers beside Him pulled Him up. They steadied the crossbar on his shoulders. His face was visible, not three feet from where we stood, and He looked at us both. Sunburnt, cheeks hollow, mouth open and shuddering, dark eyes wide and fixed on us, He looked, without expression, without appeal. The blood poured down from the black thorns sticking into His forehead; it ran in tiny streams into His eyelids and down His cheeks. His chest was naked under the open rag of robe which He wore, and it was covered with the ripe, red stripes of the lash!

"My God!" Again I had lost all volition; Memnoch held me  upright as we both stared into God's face. And the crowd, the crowd went on screaming and cursing, and shouting and pushing; little children peeped through; women wailed. Others laughed; a great horrid stinking multitude beneath the relentless sun that sent its rays amongst the close urine-stained walls!

Closer He came! Did He know us? He shuddered in His agony, the blood ran down his face into his shivering lips. He gave a gasp as if He would strangle, and I saw that the robe over His shoulders, beneath the rough wood of the beam, was soaked with blood from the scourging. He could not endure another instant, and yet they pushed Him, and He stood directly before us, eyes down, face wet with sweat and the blood swimming in it, and then slowly He turned and looked at me.

I was weeping uncontrollably. What did I witness? A brutality unspeakable in any time and place, but the legends and prayers of my childhood fired with grotesque vitality; I could smell the blood. I could smell it. The vampire in me smelled it. I could hear my sobs, I threw out my arms. "My God!"

Silence fell over the whole world. People shouted and pushed, but not in the realm in which we stood. He stood there staring at me and at Memnoch, stepped out of time and holding the moment in its fullness, in its agony, as He looked at us both.

"Lestat," He said, His voice so feeble and torn I could scarce hear it. "You want to taste it, don't you?"

"Lord, what are you saying?" I cried, my words so full of tears I could scarce control them.

"The blood. Taste it. Taste the Blood of Christ." And a terrible smile of resignation came over him, almost a grimace, his body convulsing beneath the immense beam, and the blood trickling freshly as if with each breath He took the thorns tore deeper into his face and the stripes on His chest began to swell into seams through which the blood leaked.

"No, my God!" I cried out, and I reached for Him and felt His fragile arms, bound to the huge crossbar, His aching, thin arms beneath the torn sleeves, and the blood blazed in front of me.

"The Blood of God, Lestat," He whispered. "Think of all the human blood that has flowed into your lips. Is my blood not worthy?  Are you afraid?"

Sobbing, I cupped His neck with both hands, my knuckles against the crossbar, and I kissed His throat, and then my mouth opened without will or struggle and my teeth pierced the flesh. I heard Him moan, a long echoing moan that seemed to rise up and fill the world with its sound, and the blood flooded into my mouth.

The cross, the nails driven through His wrists, not His hands, His body twisting and turning as if in the last moments, He would escape, and His head bashed down on the crossbar, so that the thorns went into His scalp, and then the nails through His feet, and His eyes rolling, the pound and the pound of the hammer, and then the Light, the immense Light rising as it had risen over the balustrade of Heaven, and filling the world, and obliterating even this warm, solid, luscious glut of blood that sank into me. The Light, the light itself and the being within it, In His Image! The light receded, swift, soundless, and leaving behind a long tunnel or path, and I knew the path was straight from Earth to the Light.

Pain! The Light was disappearing. The separation was unspeakable!

A swift blow struck my entire body with full force.

I was flung back into the crowd. Sand stung my eyes. The screams rose all around me. The blood was on my tongue. It flowed from my lips. Time pressed in with suffocating heat. And He was before us, staring at us, and tears spilled down out of His eyes, through the blood that already covered Him.

"My God, my God, my God!" I cried, swallowing the last of the blood; I sobbed.

The woman across the way blazed into visibility. Suddenly her voice rose above the babble and the cursing, the horrid cacophony of coarse and feelingless humans everywhere struggling to witness.

"My God!" she screamed, and her voice was like a trumpet. She stepped into his path.

She stood before Him and drew the fine white veil from her hair, and put it up with both hands before His face.

"Lord, God, this is Veronica," she cried. "Remember Veronica.  Twelve years I suffered a flow of blood, and when I touched the hem of your garment, I was healed."

"Unclean, filth!" came the cries.

"Lawbreaker, blasphemer!"

"Son of God, you dare!"

"Unclean, unclean, unclean!"

The cries grew frantic. People reached out for her, yet seemed loath to touch her. Pebbles and stones rained in the air towards her.  The soldiers were undecided, baffled, and belligerent.

But God Incarnate, shoulders bent under the beam, only looked at her, and then He said, "Yes, Veronica, gently, your veil, my beloved, your veil."

The white cloth, virgin and fine, she spread over His face, to blot the blood, the sweat, to soothe, to comfort, His profile clear beneath its whiteness for an instant, and then, as she meant to wipe gently, the soldiers drew her back and she stood, holding up the veil for all to see in both hands.

His Face was on it!

"Memnoch, look!" I cried. "Look at the veil of Veronica!"

The face had been transferred, flawlessly and perfectly, sealed into the cloth as no painter could have rendered it, as if the veil had taken the perfect print of Christ's countenance like a modern camera, only even more vivid, as if a thin layer of flesh had made the flesh in the picture, and blood had made the blood, and the eyes had blazed into the cloth their duplicates, and the lips had left their incarnate imprint as well.

Everyone nearest it saw the likeness. People shoved and pushed against us to see it. Screams rose.

The hand of Christ slipped loose from the rope that bound it to the crossbar, and reached out and took the veil from her, and she fell on her knees crying, her hands to her face. The soldiers were stupefied, confused, shoving at the crowd with their elbows, snarling at those who pressed in.

Christ turned and handed the veil to me.

"Take it, keep it! Hide it, take it with you!" He whispered.

I grasped the cloth, terrified that I might damage or smear the image. Hands reached for it. I closed it tight against my chest.

"He's got the veil," someone shouted. I was shoved backwards.

"Get the veil!" An arm struggled to snatch it from me.

Those who lunged towards us were blocked suddenly by those who came from behind to see the spectacle and shoved us thoughtlessly out of their path. We were pushed backwards by the sheer swell, tumbling through the filthy ragged bodies, through the din and the shouts and the curses.

All sight of the procession was gone; the cries of "the veil" were hopelessly distant.

I folded it, tight, and turned and ran.

I didn't know where Memnoch was; I didn't know where I was going. I ran down the narrow street and through another and another and another, people streaming by me, indifferent to me, on the way to the crucifixion, or simply trudging their accustomed path.

My chest burnt from my running, my feet were bruised and torn, I tasted His blood again and saw the Light in a blinding flash. Unable to see, I clutched the cloth. I lifted it and shoved it inside my robe and clutched it tight there. No one would get it. No one.

A terrible wailing came from my lips. I looked upwards. The sky shifted; the blue sky over Jerusalem, the sand-filled air shifted; the whirlwind had mercifully surrounded me, and the Blood of Christ sank into my chest and my heart, circling my heart, the Light filling my eyes, both my hands pressed tight to the folded veil.

The whirlwind carried me in silence and stillness. With all my will I forced myself to look down, to reach inside my robe, which was not my robe now, but my coat and my shirt¡ªthe suit I'd worn in the snows of New York, and under the cloth of my vest, next to my shirt, I felt the folded veil! It seemed the wind would tear off my clothes! It would rip the hair from my head. But I clutched tight to the folded cloth that lay safe against my heart.

Smoke rose from the earth. Cries and screams again. Were they more terrible than the cries surrounding Christ on the road to Calvary?

With a hard, shattering blow, I struck a wall and a floor. Horses went by, the hooves barely missing my head, sparks flying from the stones. A woman lay bleeding and dying before me, her neck obviously broken, blood pouring out of her nose and ears. People fled in all directions. Again the smell of excrement mixed with blood.

It was a city at war, the soldiers looting and dragging the innocents from out of archways, screams echoing as if off endless ceilings, the flames coming so close they singed my hair.

"The veil, the veil!" I said, and felt it with my hand, secure, still tucked between my vest and shirt. A soldier's foot came up and kicked the side of my face hard. And I went sprawling on the stones.

I looked up. I wasn't in a street at all. I was in a huge domed church, with gallery upon gallery of Roman arches and columns. All around me, against the glitter of gold mosaics, men and women were being cut down. Horses were trampling them. The body of a child struck the wall above me, the skull crushed and the tiny limbs dropping like debris at my feet. Horsemen slashed at those fleeing, with broadswords hacking through shoulders and arms. A violent explosion of flames made it as light as midday. Through the portals men and women fled. But the soldiers went after them. Blood soaked the ground. Blood soaked the world.

All around and high above, the golden mosaics blazed with faces which seemed now transfixed in horror as they beheld this slaughter.  Saints and saints and saints. Flames rose and danced. Piles of books were burning! Icons were smashed into pieces, and statuary lay in heaps, smoldering and blackened, the gold gleaming as it was eaten by the flames.

"Where are we!" I cried out.

Memnoch's voice was right beside me. He was sitting, collected, against the stone wall.

"Hagia Sophia, my friend," he said. "It's nothing, really. It's only the Fourth Crusade."

I reached out with my left hand for him, unwilling to let go of the veil with my right.

"What you see is the Roman Christians slaughtering the Greek Christians. That's all there is to it. Egypt and the Holy Land have for the moment been forgotten. The Venetians have been given three days to loot the city. It was a political decision. Of course they were all here to win back the Holy Land, where you and I have lately been, but the battle wasn't in the cards, and so the authorities have let the troops loose on the town. Christian slaughters Christian. Roman against Greek. Do you want to walk outside? Would you like to see more of it? Books by the millions are being lost now forever.

Manuscripts in Greek and Syriac and Ethiopian and Latin. Books of God and books of men. Do you want to walk among the convents where the nuns are being dragged out of their cells by fellow Christians and raped? Constantinople is being looted. It's nothing, believe me, nothing at all."

I lay against the ground, crying, trying to close my eyes and not see, but unable not to see¡ªflinching at the clang of the horses' hooves so perilously close, choking on the reek of the blood of the dead baby who lay against my leg heavy and limp like something wet from the sea. I cried and cried. Near me lay the body of a man with his head half severed from his neck, the blood pooling on the stones.

Another figure tumbled over him, knee twisted, bloody hand grasping for anything that would give him purchase, and finding only the naked pink child's body which he threw aside. Its little head was now nearly broken off.

"The veil," I whispered.

"Oh, yes, the precious veil," he said. "Would you like a change of scenery? We can move on. We can go to Madrid and treat ourselves to an auto-da-fe, do you know what that is, when they torture and burn alive the Jews who won't convert to Christ? Perhaps we should go back to France and see the Cathars being slaughtered in the Languedoc? You must have heard those legends when you were growing up. The heresy was wiped out, you know, the whole heresy. Very successful mission on the part of the Dominican Fathers, who will then start on the witches, naturally. There are so many choices.

Suppose we go to Germany and see the martyrdom of the Anabaptists. Or to England to watch Queen Mary burn those who had turned against the Pope during the reign of her father, Henry. I'll tell you an extraordinary scene that I have often revisited. Strasbourg, 1349. Two thousand Jews will be burned there in February of that year, blamed for the Black Death. Things like that will happen all over Europe...."

"I know the history," I cried, trying to catch my breath. "I know!"

"Yes, but seeing it is a little different, isn't it? As I said, this is small potatoes. All this will do is divide Greek and Roman Catholics forever.

"And as Constantinople weakens, then the new People of the Book, the Moslems, will pour past the weakened defenses into Europe. Do you want to see one of those battles? We can go directly to the twentieth century if you like. We can go to Bosnia or Herzegovina, where Moslems and Christians are fighting now. Those countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina, are names on the lips of people today in the streets of New York.

"And while we are considering all the People of the Book¡ªMoslems, Jews, Christians¡ªwhy not go to southern Iraq and listen to the cry of the starving Kurds whose marshes have been drained and whose people are being exterminated? If you want, we could just concentrate on the sack of holy places¡ªmosques, cathedrals, churches. We could use that method to travel right up to the present time.

"Mind you, not one suggestion I've made has involved people who don't believe in God or Christ. People of the Book, that's what we're talking about, the Book which starts with the One God and keeps changing and growing.

"And today and tonight, documents of inestimable value go up in flames. It is the unfolding of Creation; it is Evolution; it is sanctified suffering on somebody's part surely, because all these people you see here worship the same God."

I made no answer.

Mercifully his voice stopped, but the battle didn't. There was an explosion. The flames roared so high that I could see the saints on the very dome. In one flash the entire magnificent scope of the basilica blazed around me¡ªits great oval, its rows upon rows of columns, the great half-arches supporting the dome above. The light dimmed, exploded again, as cries rang out with renewed vigor.

Then I closed my eyes and lay still, ignoring the kicks and the feet that even ran over me, crushing down on my back for a moment as they moved on. I had the veil and I was lying there, still.

"Can hell be worse than this?" I asked. My voice was small and I didn't think he could hear me over the noise of battle.

"I actually don't know," he said, in the same intimate tone as if whatever bound us together carried our messages between each other effortlessly.

"Is it Sheol?" I asked. "Can souls get out?"

He didn't answer.

"Do you think I would wage this battle with Him on any terms if souls couldn't?" he asked, as if the very idea of an eternal hell offended him.

"Get me out of here, please," I whispered. My cheek was resting on the stone floor. The stench of the manure of the horses was mingled with urine and blood. But the cries were the worst. The cries and the incessant clatter of metal!

"Memnoch, get me out of here! Tell me what this battle is about between you and Him! Tell me the rules!"

I struggled to sit up, drawing my legs in, wiping at my eyes with my left hand, the right still clutching the veil. I began to choke on the smoke. My eyes burned.

"Tell me, what did you mean when you said you needed me, that you were winning the battle? What is the battle between you and Him! What do you want me to do? How are you his adversary! What in the name of God am I supposed to do!"

I looked up. He sat relaxed, one knee up, arms folded, face clear one moment in a flash of flame and pale the next. He was soiled all over, and seemed rather limp and in a strange misery of ease. His expression was neither bitter nor sarcastic, only thoughtful¡ªfixed with an enduring expression just as the faces on the mosaics were fixed as they bore lifeless witness to the same events.

"So we pass so many wars? We leave behind so many massacres?  We have passed over so much martyrdom," he said. "But then you do not lack imagination, Lestat."

"Let me rest, Memnoch. Answer my questions. I am not an angel, only a monster. Please let's go."

"All right," he said. "We'll go now. You've been brave, actually, just as I thought you would be. Your tears are plentiful and they come from the heart."

I didn't answer. My chest was heaving. I held on to the veil. I put my left hand over my ear. How could I move? Did I expect him to take us in the whirlwind? Had I limbs any longer that would obey commands?

"We'll go, Lestat," he said again. I heard the wind rising. It was the whirlwind, and the walls had already flown backwards. I pressed my hand against the veil. I heard his voice in my ear:

"Rest now."

The souls whirled around us in the dimness. I felt my head against his shoulder, the wind ripping at my hair. I closed my eyes and I saw the Son of God enter a great vast dark and gloomy place. The rays of Light emanated from his small distinct figure in all directions, illuminating hundreds of struggling human forms, soul forms, ghost forms.

"Sheol," I struggled to say. But we were in the whirlwind, and this was an image against the blackness of my closed eyes only. Again the Light grew brighter, the rays merging in one great blaze as if I were in its very presence, and songs rose, louder and clearer, drowning out the wailing souls around us, until the mingling of wail and song became the nature of the vision and the nature of the whirlwind. And they were one.