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If they had dug deep enough, they might had found the bodies. Not even the monks had ventured beyond their old walls back then, they hadn’t looked for old pagans under the mountain. Why should they care for the lost souls hidden under dirt and old dried blood?
Afterall, no one knew what came first: man’s greed or man’s zeal. The mines under this town ran deep, and the bodies of the ones that never got to see sunlight again piled underneath. The river deep down in its ravine, flowing under the mountain and back out again, was the only witness. Built on bones, this city. As so many others in this Old World.
I wanted to claw my way down into the dirt, deep into the mountain. How many could I find? In my own unique timelessness… who knew?
The cloud passed and the moonlight filled the valley, painting against the dark horizon the tall tower of the Church of Saint James and, further off, the spike of Saint Mary’s. The only sound was the wind, running down towards the river that eventually disappeared underground. How would the wind sound as the water dropped down into darkness? Would it sing, mournful and low, or would it create a symphony mirroring the colorful sound it drew as it passed through the leaves of the forest?
I closed my eyes, trying to remember the sound of water underground. Had the fountain of Les Innocents drawn its water from a cavity in the ground? Why couldn’t I remember the sound of running water under it?
“ Kutná Hora ,” a low whisper came from my side, “ kutná as in ‘robe’.”
I opened my eyes, fixing them upon the low horizon beyond Saint Mary’s, where I knew our destination lay.
“ Kutná Hora was the name this town was given, after a monk threw his robe down upon three silver pieces he found on the ground… in a half delirious state,” I whispered low, knowing for certain he could hear me over the sound of the wind.
I felt a soft hand coming to rest on my lower back, its pressure more human than the night around us. I turned my head surreptitiously, catching a glimpse of my companion’s profile in the moonlight. He was as white as bleached bone, but the softness of his skin was so visible it felt almost surreal to think of him as another undead being. His expression was blank, somewhat absent. It was the same expression he had carried since we had departed from Paris.
I had not left much behind, but the being next to me had. In Paris, he had left his mortal innocence.
“Louis,” I whispered his name to the wind, “Let me show you something.”
Not a trace of recognition passed through his face. It was almost as he hadn’t heard me, which I knew to be false. His mind was open to me, utterly and unabashedly unlocked. He didn’t know how to guard it, and for years he hadn’t cared to learn how to safeguard his thoughts. I had tried to teach him to lock his mind, to keep it private, but in the end it had been easier to guard it for him. My own powers were strong enough to cover us both.
Louis nodded slowly, eyes brushing the landscape one last time. He turned to me in a painfully slow manner and I let myself savor his movement with my gaze. Such a gentleman, this undead thing. Such a tragic little soul trapped in a body that could never die.
How it made me want to weep.
“Lead the way, Armand,” soft French tilt to his words, “I have nowhere else to be.”
I looked into his green eyes for a moment, trying to commit to memory the way they shone under the full moon. His dark hair proved a delicious contrast to them, falling against his face and framing them. His sadness had etched a line into his brow that the blood still hadn’t smoothed over. Such a sweet countenance, one I had learned to appreciate from the moment I set my eyes on it.
Even in Louis’ current numbness, in his indifference, I felt the pull towards him. The pull towards my own misery mirrored in his.
I took a long breath in, letting him see it. I didn’t need to do it, but I would humor my companion if only for the sake of it.
I turned on my heels and walked slowly, letting him trail behind me in his slow mortal walk. We walked past Saint Barbara’s Cathedral, the one whose first stone had been set before I even came into this world through my mortal mother. It stood half finished, its late changes not yet complete.
Humans could be so convoluted, letting themselves fall into a trap of their own making. Through greed and poisonous whispers, they could even pause belief. Or at least long enough to abandon the construction of their places of worship. The only places that resembled what they so longed for.
I heard Louis’ thoughts drifting around me and I pushed them away for a moment, focusing on each step ahead. But the thoughts were loud and complex enough to draw me to them. The cathedral had awakened in him memories of prayer and faith. He was thinking of his brother, the pious one, the same one he had seen fall to his death from the top of the stairs. The moment I read that thought in his mind, I simultaneously felt Louis’ guilt grip me with force, strangling me.
Louis’ mood had been dark for some time now, but this intense guilt wasn’t too common. Something had stirred in him as we arrived in this old town. He would not feed tonight, the mere act of taking a human life would be too conflicting for him. He would spend another night without sustenance.
I walked a little faster, making my way through dark alleys paved in stone, trying to push Louis’ guilt out of my mind. There were no gas lights in this town, it lay too far away from a big city or a trading post for it to matter. Somewhere to the west the city of Prague was filled with light in this same moment, setting the river under Charles Bridge on fire. But in this town of darkened mines and old walls of stone, not one lamppost stood.
I walked faster, pushing Louis forward with a quick pull and driving him out of his thoughts. We came into a small square, where the old Gothic fountain stood. It was almost as old as I was.
The sound of the running water stopped Louis in his tracks. I looked back at him, stopping mid step to try to read the thoughts in his face instead of directly from the source. His eyes were wide, his hands clutched behind him. He looked stricken.
I looked back towards the fountain, but I knew what he had seen. I had smelled her from the moment we walked in front of the cathedral.
Her hair was golden but under the moonlight it appeared to have been woven in silver thread. She was bent in half, reaching towards the fountain water to cup it in her hand. She still hadn’t seen us, oblivious to our presence. Her profile was etched against the old stone, white as milk but with high color on her cheeks. She had probably come from a house nearby, woken by a nightmare.
I didn’t need to read Louis' thoughts to see what he saw. This young woman was what I had once seen projected from a mind so conflicted, it had dragged me into her conflict. This was the vision that mind had conjured once, desperate to escape the prison that she inhabited.
The young woman drinking from the fountain was Claudia, if Claudia had lived to grow up.
I projected my mind toward Louis and I worked my way inside it. His pain must not take hold. He was still young enough to get lost in grief if he wasn’t careful. I plucked the strings I knew so intimately, finding the core of his being deep inside his mind. In here his longing lived alongside his guilt, and all the varieties of him were laid open to me, unable to resist. It had always been easy for me to influence Louis’ thoughts and actions. I didn’t need to overuse my psychic powers with this one. He was an open book ready to be shuffled.
I drove him toward the calm waves of his being. I let the shroud fall over him and let the spell direct his actions. His steps echoed, moving slowly away towards the street that sloped down to the old town.
I didn’t even make sure he had turned his back on us before I took her life from her. I didn’t need to look at Louis to know he would not turn back.
I had made him walk away, I had taken his pain and his shock and his numbness from him, as surely as I had taken the last breath off this virgin’s lips.
I held her in my arms, golden hair spilling beyond my grasp and into the low basin of the medieval fountain. Her blue eyes were open, devoid of life now. She looked calm, as I had made her feel in the last moments of her life. I held her as I felt the last warmth leave her breast, and I held her still as I saw her skin begin to pale, resembling the color of her simple white dress.
What a grotesque thing death was. So repetitive.
I saw her white teeth shining under the moon and I tilted my head to stare at her more closely. Slowly, I put two of my fingers inside her half open mouth. Such small teeth, like the ones only young children have. With a simple turn of the wrist, I plucked one of her milk teeth from her dead skull and held it out into the moonlight. This was a maiden’s tooth, immaculate. She had been well fed, well cared for. She had probably been loved. How many young men had swooned over her? How many had wished to take from her everything that made her pure?
I smiled to myself as I admired the tooth. She would rest now under the earth, along with them all, field hands and princes alike. The worms held no preference for virgins.
I let her fall against the pavestones, not even caring as I heard her skull crack against them. Let them think she had slipped on spilled water from the fountain. Let them mourn her innocence.
I cut my finger with a glassy nail and reached down to seal her skin, erasing my plunder of her. I arranged her hair around her, letting it fan out against the darkened stones. I stood up and looked down at her, tilting my head to grasp the full picture. She was an image to be eternalized in painting, tragically beautiful under the moonlight. This is what Lestat should have done to Claudia… what Marius should have…
I turned my back on her and walked down the sloping street, letting the sound of the flowing fountain etch her memory into me. I knew I would never forget her, not her soft gasp as I took her and not her last soft exhalation. The memory of what could have been. The remembrance of what should have happened.
I catched up to Louis in a heartbeat, crossing the space between us in a swift movement. He was on the road outside town by now, the Cathedral of Assumption of Our Lady rose before us. He hesitated in his step, frightened at my sudden apparition by his side. He would never get used to the power we could hold. Seeing it in another made him self-aware, and in turn, drew him to self-loathing.
“You were gone for a moment,” he whispered as he kept walking, slowing his pace as though I still needed to catch up to him. In truth, it had always been the other way around.
“I walked her home,” I whispered, looking at him with curiosity.
He frowned, confused at my words. He couldn’t recall her anymore. I had worked his mind too thoroughly for him to remember her. Still, he nodded, not wanting to show his confusion.
I smiled to myself as we crossed the path that led to the cathedral, walking down the nave from the outside. Sweet sad Louis. Always so modest.
“Come,” I whispered, “He is waiting for us. He is lighting the candles.”
Louis frowned again but followed along, walking a bit faster as I picked up the pace. I took a small path between the wilderness, not wanting to approach through the main road. This had been my little secret for a while, one of many of my secret projects. I was not expecting Louis to find it as beautiful as I did, but I wished for him to see it.
We came through the east door of the enclosure. I felt Louis stop behind me as we crossed the threshold and let the old iron door close behind us. The moon was shining down on us, unobstructed by clouds. All around the small walled space, open trenches reeked of old death.
I kept walking, slowly making my way between the open graves and the discarded bodies that lay heaped between them. So many had been buried in this cemetery. Enough to have crowded this sacred ground like ants upon a hill. Most were old enough to have no features to their form, lost in time to decay. But there were some recent enough to still have skin in their bones, hair attached to their skulls. But I cared not for these. My commission had been for the ones unnamed, the one lost to time.
The ones abandoned in a hallowed ground.
I walked around the little church, following the scent of blood, wax and sweat. I knew Louis was following. He would do anything to get away from the sight of death around him. We came to the front of the church and I felt my companion hesitate. He had finally caught the scent of a mortal.
“He is under my protection. We won’t harm him,” I whispered as I came to stand in the darkened threshold, looking back at him, “Come, Louis. I’ll share this secret with you if you’ll allow it.”
Green eyes bore down on me, gaze filled with a sorrow that spoke of more experience than he carried. For a moment I saw him as he was. A pained being, drowning in grief for so many lives lost. He was still grieving his own mortal death, his own detachment from it all. And he grieved for what he had considered his own child. I could still see him clutching a yellow dress with a numb expression on his face.
“Come,” I extended my hand to him, “In here… no one is forgotten.”
He slowly took my hand, hesitant. I guided him inside, and felt him shudder as we entered the small vestibule that was just the landing for the descending steps that plunged down into the cold.
I kept my hold on his hand as I heard him gasp, looking around like a mortal might. I saw the succession of images in his mind, the slow examination of his surroundings. There was enough moonlight falling from the open door to etch the forms against the stone. They were all around us, enclosed in this small space. From floor to ceiling, some even half-stacked against the lintel of the door behind us.
“Armand…” I heard Louis say my name as though he was calling upon every god in existence, “What… what is this?”
I dropped his hand, and it fell against his side as though he had no control of his extremities. His face was shock itself. This was the first raw expression I had seen in him for years.
I felt a sharp pain in me, for once feeling pity for the being next to me. No one deserved to experience pain for the sake of pain itself.
“It’s a memorial,” I whispered low, enjoying the way my voice echoed around us, “A place to honor. A place for remembrance.”
He turned to me in a swift movement, confusion clouding his gaze. He opened his mouth to say something, but was stopped short by a voice drifting in from below the steps.
“Memento mori, můj princi, ” the voice echoed and reverberated, crashing against the ceiling.
Louis jumped next to me, a mortal expression of fright that I found endearing.
“Memento mori, řezbář,” I answered in a voice loud enough for the woodcarver to hear.
I walked the few steps towards the stairs and motioned for Louis to follow. He did so hesitantly, looking around as he did so. As we came to the bottom of the stairs, we were welcomed by the soft light of the candles upon the crude stone altar.
And what a spectacle this was. I understood Louis’ shock for I felt some myself.
By the entry, where Louis had stood so shocked, the sight was not so aggravating as it was down here, in the coldness of the earth around the stones. I looked up and found myself almost weeping blood tears.
I heard Louis’ audible gasp behind me and I felt him approach me slowly. His soft hand came around me and held me from behind as I stood rooted to the ground, looking up at the creation I had commissioned. I held back my blood tears, not wishing to scare the woodcarver to death. I still needed him to complete my vision. If he was capable of creating this kind of beauty, I would honor him until he took his last mortal breath.
“It’s… it’s not unlike…” Louis whispered against my ear, voice low enough so the mortal could not hear.
“It’s redemption ,” I whispered back, closing my eyes at the mere thought of the word.
I could still see it in the darkness behind my eyelids, this wondrous creation. It was etched into me, seared forever into my mind. I had envisioned something but this mortal had exceeded my own vision. If anything was sacred on this earth, it was this breath of life through eternal creation. This surrender to form.
I opened my eyes again, wanting to drink in every last detail.
Each and every bone had been used, as I had commissioned. All the open graves outside the church had been the paint and this ceiling of stone had been the canvas. Above us lay a candelabrum of memory, a chandelier of eternal life.
A light out of death. A church of bones created for the ones lost to pain and suffering, yet still loved after all this time.
I looked around, head spinning with the shadows that every candle cast upon it all. Four pillars of bones marked every corner of the space. Thigh bone upon thigh bone created four perfect pyramids that were encased by the bleached skulls without name or face. The windows let in the moonlight and the warmth of the candlelight mixed with the blue hues of the moon. The bones around glowed, coming to life under it. Every arch was punctuated with a wreath of bones. Skulls created the ripples in them, hip bones lay above them, creating a halo for the dead.
But the centerpiece… the centerpiece was nothing but a miracle. Four lines of skulls met in the center of the space, where the altar would be inside a cathedral. These four lines met another four lines of skulls that created a cross. Down from the very center of it all hung the chandelier. The main body of it was made of vertebrae, with details spilling out of it made with femurs, tibias, sternums, ribs. Every bone in a human body was here, honored and cared for. Respectfully arranged to hold the weight of existence itself.
I felt Louis’ breath against the crown of my head. He was mesmerized by it, too. This time I didn’t need to pull him to it. His own nature held him in awe, as did mine.
“I trust it was to your satisfaction, my prince,” the woodcarver said from the shadows around the altar. I had almost forgotten he was here.
“Yes, my dear artist,” I whispered, letting the wonder seep into my voice, “You will never know hunger again.”
I felt Louis’ hand retreat, and I heard him turn around and begin to explore, looking at the pyramids of bones behind us, and the wreaths of bones decorating the small entry space on the top of the stairs.
“Is the general pleased, too?” the woodcarver asked, looking behind me.
It took Louis a moment to realize he was being addressed, unsure of what story I had shared with the mortal.
“Indeed I am,” he answered in flowing Czech, “But… doesn’t it bother you to…?”
He let the words trail, unsure of how to voice his thoughts. The silence fell upon the small church.
“If I may, sir,” he looked at me, searching for approval to speak. I granted it swiftly.
“These men and women speak to me,” he said softly, looking to the ground, “They have no living being that mourns for them. Their loved ones have joined them under the earth already. It is an honor to ask for their last memories. It is an honor to grant them a space inside this sacred ground.”
“Don’t we all deserve that?” I whispered, turning to look at Louis, “God loves outside of time itself.”
I turned back to the mortal. As I approached him I felt Louis tense behind me. I reached into my pocket and handed him the milk tooth of the girl I had killed by the fountain, the one I had devoured in spirit, blood and memories.
“Put this by the altar,” I whispered to him, taking this mortal’s mind by a thread, “Work every day to bleach the bones around this church. Make your art with their memories. Honor their pain. Do not let them be forgotten.”
The woodcarver stood rooted to the ground, held there by my mind. I turned around and walked back to Louis, who was looking at me with an expression I had never seen in him. I went up the stairs and out of the church.
Dawn was slowly approaching.
I stopped by the stone entrance to the cemetery, not wishing to read Louis’ thoughts. I felt him behind me, his presence heavy and somewhat more certain than before.
“How long?” I heard his soft voice behind me, “How long will you make him replace the bones after they fall to dust so they don’t forget them?”
I turned around and found him close to me, barely a handwidth away. I turned my head up, looking up into his soft face. He was crying.
“For as long as it takes,” I said in a whisper.
I felt his arms envelop me and I let myself fall against his chest. This was the first time Louis had shown tenderness in years. My upturned face fell against his neck and I relished in the cold softness of his undead flesh. How I loved this tortured immortal. I loved him for his capacity to deny his own brutality and for his miserable submissiveness. I loved his pain and his despair as much as I loved my own.
“Not even if we part, Armand,” he whispered in my ear, voice ardent with a repressed feeling I knew nothing of, something he kept too close to his chest, “Not even if we part will I ever forget you. You will never be forgotten.”
I clutched at him, drawing him closer to me.
How dreadful… that two sorrowful beings like ourselves could love each other. I felt like weeping again. But as before, no tears came to me. I was too numbed to our tragedy to weep for us.
But Louis wept for us both as the dawn approached.
In the end, I had to carry him behind this hallowed ground, shaky and nearly fading. I quickly dug our simple graves in the ground, ignoring the thought of us sleeping outside the consecrated circle of grace around the church.
And as I helped Louis go into the ground, for a moment highly conscious of the image of him going down into the earth, I felt him clutch at my hand desperately. With his last energy, he looked at me and in that look I saw what I had seen centuries ago, in the eyes of another.
A love beyond the grave. A love worth remembering.
A love never to be forgotten.
I helped Louis cover himself with dirt, encasing him in darkness. When he was finally deep into his grave, I stood over the upturned earth, feeling his thoughts drift into sleep.
“Memento mori, Louis,” I whispered as I crouched to touch the earth, “ Remember you will die . If not in body, then in spirit. None of us get to live forever without paying for it every night.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, letting the soft wind caress my hair. I heard a soft song in the distance, a choir somewhere deep in the monastery beyond the church. Old songs, old beliefs. The same lies in another tongue.
At that moment, my mind was set. We would leave this Old World for the New. I was weary enough of old songs, I longed for oblivion.
I dug my grave with care, matching my work to the rhythm of the monk’s choir in the distance.
Let this Old World keep its Old Death. It was time to stop remembrance and start anew.