A Matter of Taste

Chapter 9

I have observed as I grow older that my chronic need for the home earth grows gradually less intense. In the year in which I electronically set down these words, standing in close sight of the end of the twentieth century, I find that I can ordinarily manage with a mere couple of kilograms of that dear crumbly soil, sealed sanitarily in a plastic bag beneath my bottom sheet or mattress.

Even in 1492, the year in which I at last managed to reenter Italy, this diminution of my dependence on the homeland had begun. Also by that time, to my considerable relief, I no longer found it necessary to sleep for years at a stretch. Even naps whose duration stretched into months were becoming increasingly rare.

As the time of my departure for Italy drew near, I had no very clear idea of where my two surviving assassins were likely to be found. About two years had passed since any intelligence regarding either Bogdan or Basarab had reached me. Given the perilous nature of their profession, I considered it very doubtful whether they were still alive. Therefore I decided that my first Italian destination should be Florence.

Roughly a quarter of a century earlier, at the time of my last visit to that intriguing, prosperous, often dangerous but never boring city, I had made some good friends as well as some fierce enemies among its citizens. I thought that some of those friends might be able to help me now, even if they could hardly be expected to recognize, in my youthful-looking, blood-drinking, and nocturnal figure, the breathing condottiere they had once known as Signor Ladislao.

From the beginning I had realized that to locate the objects of my vengeance would probably require my appearance in society, at any and all levels, listening everywhere, questioning discreetly. I had done my best to practice playing the role of a breathing man, first in the market towns of my homeland and then in Bucharest. That I had spent most of my life up until that time in such a state was of course a considerable advantage. By the last decade of the fifteenth century, I had no doubt of my ability to take my place in any company as a more or less ordinary breathing human—at least for a short time, when sunlight was not a problem, eating and drinking not absolute requirements. And now, at last, all was in readiness. My only real worry was that one or both of my intended victims might have gone to the grave before I had a chance to get my hands on them.

During my breathing years, traversing the Alps had invariably been something of an ordeal, and in the month of March it was often not possible at all. Now, traveling almost without baggage, alternately in wolf-form and mist-form, I found the cold and snow of spring—in the mountains, still late winter—almost no impediment. On the southern slopes, whose descent brought me down into Lombardy, I paused in man-form at an inn and rejoiced to find that the trunk deposited there the year before in the name of Ladislao was still safe, kept faithfully awaiting my arrival.

From Lombardy, freshly equipped with money, clothing of Italian cut, and a small emergency supply of earth, I progressed by swift stages on to Florence, which city I found considerably transformed from the energetic metropolis I had known more than twenty years before. Now it seemed almost that a century of change had intervened; there was practically no one I knew left in the city. The people I did converse with were too distracted with their own problems to think about the Balkan mercenaries for whom I was so diligently searching.

Most disappointingly, I learned to my sorrow of the serious illness of Lorenzo the Magnificent, which was feared would be his last. Lorenzo had been a mere youth when I had seen him last, though already leader of the mercantile Medici clan, and more than anyone else the ruler of Florence. In the year of my return he was still only forty-one, and I had counted heavily on his friendship in my plan to obtain help.

Saddened to hear of Lorenzo's illness, I hastened on to seek him at his suburban villa at Careggi. It was early April when I arrived there, and the countryside in one of the seasons of its greatest beauty.

I had hoped to find the great man, if not recovering, at least not too ill to remember his former ally and friend, the ferocious mercenary Signor Ladislao, once sent here by the King of Hungary. Had Lorenzo been anything like his usual energetic self, with the unexcelled Medici intelligence network at his command, he could very likely have provided Ladislao's supposed son or nephew with vital information. But such, alas, was not to be.

I arrived at the villa about the time the Paduan doctors, at great expense, were feeding Lorenzo powdered pearls in wine, a concoction no more harmful, if considerably more expensive, than most of the other remedies of the time.

Not that I, a stranger to the attendants, was allowed in to see the sick man at once. While waiting in a shaded courtyard garden for my chance to speak to my old friend, I found a white-robed, black-cloaked friar tarrying somewhat impatiently, with the same expectation. We introduced ourselves, and thus I had the chance to converse briefly with the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, who had dropped by in hopes of being able to hear the potentate's confession and give him absolution.

Savonarola was a small man, with a thick-lipped, worried-looking face; during our single brief meeting, I never saw him smile. His nose was huge enough to provoke taunts—had it been set upon another's face. I think everyone who ever met this man understood at first glance that he was to be taken seriously.

Around us in the flower garden, bees prospered among early blooms, and stone fountains splashed and played. What did we talk about? It is hard to remember a sermon after so many centuries. Savonarola was of course concerned for my immortal soul—he took that attitude with everyone he met. Also he was absolutely fearless regarding his own safety in this world. I do recall that when the subject of the upper hierarchy of the Church in Rome came up, the impetuous monk openly expressed his great contempt for all of them, the Pope included, condemning in the strongest terms the thousand corruptions that most of them practiced. Fortunately for the Dominican, Pope Innocent was soon to die, and Alexander, his successor, had at least one virtue—he was as thick-skinned as the bull that bestrode his family coat of arms, as far as personal insults or accusations were concerned.

My turn came first to see Lorenzo—most likely because I had already hinted to the steward of a bribe. As soon as this potential offer had been discreetly realized, I was admitted for a brief visit to the dying man.

Lorenzo the Magnificent, pale and diminished as dying men are wont to be, showed little interest in my presence as he received me in his sunlit, ornate bedroom. Though still comparatively young, he was much changed from the robust youth of more than twenty years ago that I remembered. No one at the villa except Lorenzo himself was at all familiar to me, and apparently none of them remembered Signor Ladislao. Even Lorenzo's memory, as he lay dying, was certainly imperfect, and I was not sure whether he truly grasped my identity or not. We each had something to say about art, and toward the last he looked at me as if he did remember me.

And perhaps he did. For on turning over the name of Ladislao, he did finally recall that the man had come from far-off Wallachia. And, this leader of the Medici, dying as he was, beginning to perceive everything from the viewpoint of eternity, was not greatly impressed by the fact that I had not aged in more than twenty years.

Lorenzo, speaking automatically as it were, the mercantile instincts of the Medici still in control, asked me a question or two on politics, having to do with who was ruling in my homeland now, and I gave him such answers as I could. Political ambition had become the least of my concerns. I suppose I must have realized that I, in my present mode of mainly dusk-to-dawn existence, punctuated by trancelike sleeps sometimes extending over weeks or months, was in no condition to rule anything. However, my ignorance of current events in Wallachia was of little moment, for Lorenzo's gaze remained for the most part fixed upon eternity and he paid scant attention to my answers.

Even from the viewpoint of eternity, I was accepted as a man, and this was pleasing. Ever since the beginning of my trans-Alpine journey, my confidence in my ability to appear among breathing humans and be accepted as one of themselves had grown almost daily. So far I had confined my appearances in society mainly to the hours of darkness, though for some time now—as at Careggi—I had been able to demonstrate to my own satisfaction that daylight, at least of the dim and indirect variety, was not necessarily unbearable to my kind.

Only now and then, as I had moved across the Alps and into Italy, did I encounter anyone who appeared to suspect that there was something really extraordinary about me. No one in the suburban villa, with the possible exception of the Dominican, fit into this category; and the worthy Savonarola had much else on his mind.

I was still at Careggi when Lorenzo the Magnificent died, more peacefully than any great man has a right to expect, on the ninth of April, 1492.

As soon as the head of the House of Medici was dead, Savonarola hurried back to Florence to begin his campaign to take over and reform the city, and I moved on to Rome in search of the traitor Basarab, to whose whereabouts I thought I had received some clue.

But let Basarab go, for the moment. Ultimately he proves unimportant. It was in Rome, a city I had visited only briefly during my breathing days, that I had my first contact with the Borgias.

Lucrezia, whose illegitimate father Rodrigo Borgia was soon to become Pope Alexander VI, was in that year only twelve years old and living in a Roman household that also included one or two of her father's distant female relatives, and one of his mistresses, though not her mother. Lucrezia's brother Cesare was just seventeen, and already had been consecrated—if that is the correct word—Bishop of Pamplona. In September of the following year, 1493, his father was to make him a Cardinal…

(The tape here contains a fairly lengthy pause.)

On thinking the matter over, it strikes me that the reader whose native habitat is the late twentieth century may require some preparation before being thrown into intimate association with the Borgia family. At the time when I set down these words, people have grown accustomed to an altogether different type of news emanating from the Vatican from that provided by jolly fat Rodrigo and his contemporaries. Here in the later nineteen hundreds we are accustomed to hear from Rome of stately ecumenical councils, of the celebration of religious feasts, of theological wrangles. An occasional canonization or—a serious matter—the solemn process by which some educator may be deprived of his full teaching authority. Now and then, every few years perhaps, a whiff of banking scandal, subtle and indirect. Once in a great while—no more often than that, the Lord be thanked!—someone takes a shot at the Pope.

I must warn the reader that, five centuries ago, matters were considerably different. The news from the heart of Rome often concerned questions rather—how shall I say it?—rather more fundamental. Moral issues were then more starkly drawn. The Popes of the Renaissance, trying to defend their lands and cities as energetically as any other temporal monarchs of the time, were, with occasional gentle exceptions, more likely to hire assassins than to suffer at their hands. Among the Sacred College of Cardinals, only a few men seemed capable of remembering the holy calling that must once have influenced them to become priests.

I was, as I have written elsewhere, quiescent in my tomb (or in a temporary sepulcher at least) at the time of the supposed transfusion of Pope Innocent VIII with the blood of several children, in an effort to keep life in his own aging, failing body. So I cannot comment intelligently on the truth of that most scandalous rumor. If true, it was an outrage, but hardly incredible given the morals prevailing at the time among the upper hierarchy in Rome—Savonarola, you did not exaggerate.

In any event, Innocent died in Rome on 25 July of 1492, and in early August, for various political and financial reasons the conclave elected as his successor in office a Spanish Cardinal, Rodrigo Borgia. This man, as I have already mentioned, was the illegitimate father of both Cesare and Lucrezia, along with half a dozen other offspring of less historical importance. The new Pope, taking the name of Alexander VI, assumed the chair of St. Peter on 26 August; and whether the transfusion rumor involving his predecessor was true or not, Alexander was certainly no improvement. In Rodrigo Borgia, all authorities concur, the papacy attained its all-time nadir.

As long as I am setting the events of the Renaissance in perspective, there are a few other matters that should be mentioned. The selection of a new Pope was not the only momentous event of the month. On 3 August, half an hour before sunrise, all unbeknownst to me at the time, and unremarked by the vast majority of my contemporaries, an itinerant navigator named Christopher Columbus set sail from the port of Palos, Spain, on his first trans-Atlantic expedition in search of the lands of the Great Khan. The seventeen-year-old youth Cesare Borgia at about the same time quietly left his school in Perugia and made his way to Rome to see what might happen to his father in the conclave. Also that year, in Spain, by order of the Inquisitor General Tomas Torquemada, all Jews were given three months either to accept Christianity or emigrate. Farther north, England's Henry VII, following in the footsteps of his illustrious grandfather, was first fighting and then making peace in France. At the University of Cracow, in Poland, a young student who would eventually be known to the world as Copernicus was hard at work. And near me in Italy, although I did not know it then, Leonardo da Vinci was making his first sketch of a flying machine.

However great a claim the doings of Popes and Cardinals might have had on the popular attention, they were but little on my mind when I arrived in Rome. My search for Basarab, and of course for Bogdan as well, still ruled my mind and soul. The dusty roads and the clerical conflicts of Italy passed by me almost unobserved, except as they might lead me to a likely gathering place for foreign mercenaries.

I rode alone, and traveled most of the time at night, having decided that any human attendants were almost certain to be more trouble than they were worth. Some of my devoted band of followers in Romania had volunteered to come with me, but I had discouraged them. Could you have met them, good reader, you would understand why.

Having been only once molested by bandits—the encounter, at dusk, was brief indeed, and afterward I recovered a purse that one of the highwaymen had dropped—I reached Rome in due course. The Eternal City, then excited as it always was by papal turnover, was at least as much transformed as Florence had been since I had seen it last. A new bridge had quite recently been thrown across the Tiber, and the municipal water supply had been restored to a level of quality unknown since the time of the Caesars. Much of this civic improvement was the work of Sixtus IV, one of those Popes who had come and gone whilst I lay sleeping; the same man who in his spare time had once tried to arrange the murder of Lorenzo de' Medici, as a means of settling some political dispute.

I approached Rome in an optimistic state of mind. By this time my Italian had regained some fluency, and I had achieved, as I thought, a fair amount of skill in asking questions. Alas, the answers were no better than before. The clue I had picked up at Careggi seemed worthless. No one with whom I spoke had heard of Bogdan, at least for the past several years; and at first no one had heard of Basarab, either.

And then, someone had. The first clue came by chance, in a conversation I overheard in a tavern frequented by soldiers. What they were saying confirmed what I had heard at the villa of Lorenzo, and put me definitely on what I thought was the right track.

My search led me first near the Vatican, and then directly into it. Understand that I am not speaking of the great church-and-single-palace complex that we see today, in 1492 Michelangelo and others had not yet begun the great rebuilding of St. Peter's and its hundred corollary projects of renewal. Nor—let me emphasize again—were the Pope's temporal domains limited to the miniature quaint city-state, a few scant acres in extent, familiar to the twentieth century. Rather all of Rome, and a large part of central Italy besides, more or less acknowledged His Holiness as temporal as well as spiritual ruler. More presently about that "more or less."

The area of Rome closely surrounding the Vatican complex was thick with private palaces, elaborate houses and gardens, many of them belonging to Cardinals. The clues that I had hoped would set me properly on Basarab's trail soon led me in among these mansions.

But the trail was cold, and I began to realize the fact; and on one summer night I allowed myself to be temporarily distracted from my fruitless search by the voice of a young woman, singing with beautiful sadness beyond a garden wall.

Silently crossing over the high stone wall and prowling through the gardens that it enclosed, I soon encountered a pretty maid standing utterly alone, leaning with her back against a tree and singing softly to herself. Judging from the girl's clothing she was a servant of some kind, perhaps a slave—oh, yes, Rome tolerated chattel slavery at the time. And there was something odd in the girl's behavior, as if she might be under the influence of drink.

Whatever the cause of her being here, at this hour, alone, I considered the situation my good fortune. Appearing at a little distance before her in the moonlight, I greeted her in my kindliest and most reassuring manner— ah, I can do such things more smoothly now, but I did not do them too clumsily, even then. Of course I was lusting for the girl's blood, and the fact that she seemed somewhat the worse for wine meant little to me one way or the other.

I spare you the details of the conquest; but it will come as no surprise to you to hear that I was soon able to taste what I desired, there in that fragrant midnight garden. This maid's blood had a certain tang, a surprising flavor, that was then completely new to me. Perhaps I should add here, parenthetically, that drug-laden gore is ordinarily a matter of indifference to even the most discriminating vampire. On imbibing it for the first time, he or she will very likely realize that a new and special flavor has been encountered. But to the trained palate there is already an almost infinite variety of human tastes. These depend of course upon the variations in individual body chemistry, as well as upon what the breathing partner has recently had to eat or drink.

Certain substances in particular convey their own strong flavors to the blood, and to the one who tastes it. Yes, as you might imagine, garlic is one of them. Of course if some more subtle substance is ingested by the breather along with one of these, then the taste of the more subtle substance, be it drug or whatever, is almost certain to be well disguised.

Almost none of these various flavors, or substances, make much difference one way or another to most vampires. They will not, as a rule, affect the blood's palatability. The spirochetes of syphilis, brought back from the New World by the intrepid explorers on the ships of Columbus, are of no more concern to the blood-drinker than the molecules of alcohol or the harsh dissonance of cocaine. We are immune to all these substances. They are not going to do us any substantial harm, or, for that matter, bestow upon us any particular pleasure, any more than merely leaden bullets are going to rend our flesh. For us, usually, the flavors in the blood alone are there, often interesting, sometimes mildly attractive.

However, we are not entirely beyond the reach of chemistry. And much in my story depends upon that fact.

But to return to that first of my nights in the gardens of Rome. To my chagrin, the somewhat tipsy maid and I were interrupted in our dalliance before we were quite finished. The light of distant torches played upon my face, and youthful voices, secure in the certainty of power and position, were raised in merriment. The voices approached, beginning to call a woman's name; and she who still lay in my arms stirred half-consciously at the sound.

Presently, through the darkened garden, which had seemed such a secure setting for romance at this time of night, there approached a sturdy, stalwart youth of seventeen or so. Dressed in black velvet, he was handsome and strong as a young Greek god, already with a good start on his beard. Accompanying him was a girl no older than twelve, also wearing the garments and speaking in the accents of the upper classes. From the familiar and demanding way in which she addressed the young man I was certain that she could only be his sister.

They called each other Cesare and Lucrezia, names that meant nothing to me then; but the name they called out loudly and most often was that of the maid I had just embraced.

They saw her at last, now lying alone, stretched out wantonly upon the grass. And they saw me as well, though I had already started to retire from the scene.

Now it may sometimes be unsafe to interrupt a gentleman of passionate nature in the midst of his amorous endeavors. The danger is compounded when the gentleman happens to be a vampire. But on this occasion I was willing to beat a meek retreat.

The truth was that, very suddenly, and almost for the first time since the wounds of my assassination had finally healed, I did not feel at all well. The onset of the malaise had been so abrupt that I could only suppose it must be connected in some way with the blood I had just taken.

One of my most immediate problems was that I found myself frozen in man-form, almost as if the sun had suddenly arisen. Therefore the two adolescents were able to see me in the moonlight as I went over the wall, and they were impressed with my agility. The boy was armed with a sword, and after briefly examining the maid they decided to follow me. A nearby tree, next to the wall, made the job easier.

From what I could overhear of the remarks that passed between my reckless pursuers, as I staggered toward the horse I had left tethered nearby, I deduced that Lucrezia must have been carrying out some kind of a devilish medical or chemical experiment, and that the maid had been its subject. But my head was spinning; science did not interest me particularly—it would not, for many years—and I did not pay close attention.

Besides, though daybreak was still far off, my illness had been suddenly compounded by an overwhelming urge to sleep. All I could think of was my nearest earth. Remounting my horse and clinging with some difficulty to his back, I turned him in the direction of the nearest of my earth boxes. Naturally I had memorized the locations of all such deposits put into place during the decades of my preparation.

The particular box I was now seeking had been concealed, if the reports brought back by my most trustworthy lieutenants were to be credited, deep in a subterranean Etruscan ruin that lay then on the outskirts of Rome, and for all I know lies there still, now buried beneath the city itself.

My goal was not far away in ordinary reckoning, but it made for a long ride that night in my condition, and attaining it was one of the most difficult experiences of a busy and interesting life. All my will and determination were required simply to stay awake. I was forced to ride slowly to keep myself from being thrown out of the saddle. At some point during the ride I became aware that the two young people had somehow obtained mounts and were still following me.

I was too sick, too weary unto death, to fight or even to run from them. At long last I realized, by certain landmarks, that my desired earth, or the place where my earth should be, was close ahead. It was all that I could do to dismount without falling, drive my horse away, and drag myself into the cavity in the ground.

A natural crevice in the earth, somewhat wider than a human body, emitted a faint smell of sulphur. The appearance of this crevice, from the vantage point of its grassy lip, suggested a bottomless abyss. In the minds of imaginative people of the time, hell might well lie at the bottom of such a hole, and none of the shepherds who were wont to tend their flocks nearby were likely to explore it. But twenty feet or so was the extreme depth to which the man-sized passageway descended. There was an enlarged chamber at that level, containing an Etruscan sarcophagus, some ancient, broken pottery, and very little else—except my precious trove of Transylvanian soil, spread out on a kind of earthen shelf.

I dragged myself to the place where I could obtain rest, and there collapsed. I had just time, before lapsing into unconsciousness, to overhear a few more words from my pursuers, who had reached the opening above.

Whoever the two precocious children were, if I correctly understood what they were saying, they had followed me deliberately, excited by the prospect of being able to see what secondary effect the poison in the young girl's blood would have upon a vampire.

Vampiro. That word, uttered in upper-class Italian, was the last I thought I heard, though of course in my drugged state I could hardly be sure. Fighting to the last to stay awake and on guard, I was nevertheless overcome.