lives." The priest stared at his father in amazement. So did I.
  Ursula said nothing. Then she kissed me on the cheek. "Let's leave them now," she 
whispered. "There is no more Santa Maddalana. Let's go."
  I looked up, around the darkened room of the Inn. I looked at the old barrels. I looked 
in haunted perplexity and appalling sorrow at all things that humans used and touched. I 
looked at the heavy hands of the priest, folded on the table before me. I looked at the 
hair on his hands, and then up at his thick lips and his large watering and sorrowful 
eyes.
  "Will you accept this from me?" I whispered. "This secret, of angels? That I saw them! 
I! And you, you see what I am, and you know therefore that I know whereof I speak. I saw 
their wings, I saw their halos, I saw their white faces, and I saw the sword of Mastema 
the powerful, and it was they who helped me sack the castle and lay waste to all the 
demons save for this one, this child bride, who is mine."
  "Child bride," she whispered. It filled her with delight. She looked at me, musingly, 
and hummed a soft, old-fashioned air, one of those threads of songs from her times.
  She spoke to me in an urgent persuasive whisper, squeezing my arm as she did:
  "Come, Vittorio, leave these men in peace, and come with me, and I'll tell you how 
indeed I was a child bride." She looked at the priest with renewed animation. "I was, you 
know. They came to my father's castle and purchased me as such, they said that I must be 
a virgin, and the midwives came and brought their basin of warm water, and they examined 
me and they said I was a virgin, and only then did Florian take me. I was his bride."
  The priest stared fixedly at her, as if he could not move if he wanted to move, and the 
old man merely glanced up again and again, cheerfully, nodding as he listened to her, and 
went on playing with his cards.
  "Can you imagine my horror?" she asked them. She looked at me, tossing her hair back 
over her shoulder. It was in its ripples again from the plaits in which she'd had it 
bound earlier. "Can you imagine when I climbed onto the couch and I saw who was my 
bridegroom, this white thing, this dead thing, such as we look to you?"
  The priest made no answer. His eyes filled slowly with tears. Tears!
  It seemed a lovely human spectacle, bloodless, crystalline, and such an adornment for 
his old soft face, with its jowls and fleshy mouth.
  "And then to be taken to a ruined chapel," she said, "a ruined place, full of spiders 
and vermin, and there before a desecrated altar, to be stripped and laid down and taken 
by him and made his bride."
  She let go of my arm, her arms forming a loose embracing gesture. "Oh, I had a veil, a 
great long beautiful veil, and a dress of such fine flowered silk, and all this he tore 
from me, and took me first with his lifeless, seedless stone-hard organ and then with his 
fang teeth, like these very teeth which I have now. Oh, such a wedding, and my father had 
given me over for this." The tears coursed down the priest's cheeks.
  I stared at her, transfixed with sorrow and rage, rage against a demon I had already 
slaughtered, a rage that I hoped could reach down through the smoldering coals of Hell 
and find him with fingers like hot tongs. I said nothing. She raised her eyebrow; she 
cocked her head.
  "He tired of me," she said. "But he never stopped loving me. He was new to the Court of 
the Ruby Grail, a young Lord and seeking at every turn to increase his might and his 
romance! And later, when I asked for Vittorio's life, he couldn't refuse me on account of 
our vows exchanged on that stone altar so long ago. After he let Vittorio leave us, after 
he had him cast down in Florence, certain of Vittorio's madness and ruin, Florian sang 
songs to me, songs for a bride. He sang the old poems as though our love could be 
revived."
  I covered my brow with my right hand. I couldn't bear to weep the blood tears that flow 
from us. I couldn't bear to see before me, as if painted by Fra Filippo, the very romance 
she described. It was the priest who spoke.
  "You are children," he said. His lip trembled. "Mere children."
  "Yes," she said in her exquisite voice, with certainty and a small accepting smile. She 
clasped my left hand in hers and rubbed it hard and tenderly. "Children forever. But he 
was only a young man, Florian, just a young man himself."
  "I saw him once," said the priest, his voice thick with his crying but soft. "Only 
once."
  "And you knew?" I asked.
  "I knew I was powerless and my faith was desperate, and that around me were bonds that 
I could not loose or break."
  "Let's go now, Vittorio, don't make him cry anymore," said Ursula. "Come on, Vittorio. 
Let's leave here. We need no blood tonight and cannot think of harming them, cannot 
even..."
  "No, beloved, never," I said to her. "But take my gift, Father, please, the only clean 
thing which I can give, my testimony that I saw the angels, and that they upheld me when 
I was weak."
  "And won't you take absolution from me, Vittorio!" he said. His voice rose, and his 
chest seemed to increase in size. "Vittorio and Ursula, take my absolution."
  "No, Father," I said. "We cannot take it. We don't want it."
  "But why?"
  "Because, Father," said Ursula kindly, "we plan to sin again as soon as we possibly 
can."
  
  
  14
  THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
  
  SHE didn't lie.
  We journeyed that night to my father's house. It was nothing for us to make that 
journey, but it was many miles for a mortal, and word had not reached that forlorn 
farmland that the threat of the night demons, the vampires of Florian, was gone. Indeed, 
it is most likely that my farms were still deserted because ghastly tales were given out 
by those who had fled Santa Maddalana, traveling over hill and valley, mouth to mouth. It 
didn't take me long to realize, however, that the great castle of my family was occupied. 
A horde of soldiers and clerks had been hard at work. As we crept over the giant wall 
after midnight, we found that all the dead of my family had been properly buried, or 
placed in their proper stone coffins beneath the chapel, and that the goods of the 
household, all of its abundant wealth, had been taken away. Only a few wagons remained of 
those which must have already started their progress south. The few who slept in the 
offices of my father's steward were keepers of the accounts of the Medici bank, and on 
tiptoe, in the dim light of a star-studded sky, I inspected the few papers they had left 
out to dry.
  All of the inheritance of Vittorio di Raniari had been collected and catalogued, and 
was being taken on to Florence for him, to be placed in safety with Cosimo until such 
time as Vittorio di Raniari was twenty-four years of age and could thereby assume 
responsibility for himself as a man.
  Only a few soldiers slept in the barracks. Only a few horses were quartered in the 
stables. Only a few squires and attendants slept in proximity to their Lords.