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Paul stretched out his naked body under the woolen blanket. The sharp delicious autumn air kissed the tip of his nose making it feel wonderfully cold. Better than the smell of aspen leaves and of pines was the sweet smell of bacon and eggs frying, and coffee percolating. He peered out of his half closed eye lids at the violet and pink sky of a fine dawn. There was nothing like camping outside in the fall.
"Well, mon ami are you ready for breakfast?" Jamie asked, putting a branch to the fire.
"It was my turn to cook," Paul pretended to grumble, pulling the covers over his head.
"I'm a better cook," Jamie teased, pushing the onions, herbs, and potatoes around the frying pan, "You mon ami, you surpass me in many things, mais not cooking."
"What do I surpass you in?" Paul said, stretching lazily, wiggling his toes.
"Sleeping in. Amongst other things. Don't get up. I'll bring breakfast to you."
"Would you mind bringing me my knack sack? I want to write a letter. I've been meaning to do it for a long time."
"Oui, here it is," Jamie said, handing it to him.
Paul smiled up at Jamie's gray hair and his wrinkled face. Only a week ago Jamie had tuned sixty-eight.
Opening the small box filled with writing equipment which they used to record nature sightings in their journals, Paul wrote:
My dear Fere Louis:
I write this to you through I know I will never sent it to you. From a letter I received from dear Henri he has informed me you are traveling with the very vampire who tried to kill Jamie and myself. Over the years the news I have heard of you has dismayed and amazed me. It is said you created a vampire child! A child, Louis who wasn't even of the age of reason yet. You did this to keep your lover, Lestat? Mais brother, this is the worst of reasons to bring a child in this world, n'est-ce-pas? Then I hear you and your child almost murdered Lestat!! Then as if that was not enough, you go to the theater of vampires and slaughter everyone there for the murder of your child, except for the vampire who actually ordered the kill???? Then you ran off with him?????!!!
I can not judge you. I do not know the state of your sanity after all. I am not intimate with the details of the remarkable events of your life. I can not judge you, nor would I want to judge you even if I could. I've learned to accept the impossibility of a man living against his nature. You are no longer mortal, mais believe me, I still think of you as my fere. And I think of you often, mais, I have learned to put Jamie first. I will NOT risk his well being by getting in contact with you. Jamie and I have learned in order to be together we must be selfish and hold on to each other for dear life in a world which often seems like its dearest desire is to tear us apart. No life means more to me than his.
We lived with Henri and Bianca for three yeas. In which time we leaned Italian, and also Jamie started to go to the university here in Venice. I started to for to divinity school, mais my ardor for the Catholic faith burned out. I instead joined Jamie and the university and became a potion and pill pusher. Oui, I became a doctor,
Jamie and I were very happy while going to school. Most people paid us little attention except for young men who were attracted to my fairness, and desirous for Jamie's darkness. We had many an indecent proposal from these young men who would follow us with hisses, suggestions, and cat calls. Finally they resorted to becoming our friends once they realized the prudish fellows we are.
So we went through years grinding away at books, going to parties, and for the most part enjoying just spending time together, and in the company of Bianca, and Henri.
After a while, much to their distress, we moved out. The glamour of Bianca's and Henri's things were starting to close in on Jamie. He felt as if every expensive piece of furniture, every painting, and sculpture was crouching ready to leap up at him. Luxury and pomp wears on Jamie's poor nerves. I think he really just wanted a place of our own. We moved to our simple flat, and we were extremely pleased with it. Save for a bed, simple bits of furniture, a few paintings which were gifts, we decorated the place lovingly with books.
After we received our degrees Jamie came up with the notion of joining the Austrians in their war against France, I did my best to explain to him why we couldn't do this. He told me what better place to learn how to be a surgeon than on the battlefield. So it was off to four years of war. The sights I saw of men being blown up to bits, salvaged to pieces from saber wounds, and artillery shells broke my heart. Jamie and I did our best for the soldiers. We wrote letters for them to loved ones and encouraged them to live, or to die well in peace. Times like this I wish I had carried out my first impossible wish to be a priest. After we came back from the war, as you know, Napoleon got his bloody desire to be king of Italy. He enforced the Napoleonic code which was based on two ideas; that all men are equal under the law, and all people have a right to property except for women. All the privileges the church and the upper classes enjoyed especially the one of being exempt from taxes was abolished. In this equality under the law became created in Italy, but not for women and men of color. Napoleon still kept to the concept of the enslavement of the colored people. And here I must say I feel all the enlightened philosophers, the Voltaires, the Rousseaus, the revolutionaries to be limited in their hearts and minds. Their claims of being men of reason, the very philosophers who believed because man's intelligence could solve all problems so they readily and foolishly believed in Caglostiro, a man who claimed to be able to turn pebbles to diamonds, crones into lovely maidens, even believing Mary Toft could give birth to rabbits, these incredulous men of our age can not imagine a white boy being in love with a yellar boy. I fully believe in the long run it will not be the philosophers who will bring about the down fall of slavery, mais rather men who are well aquatinted with God.
After the war, I made myself wealthy by being a physician to the fashionable class in Venice. My finances makes it more than affordable for Jamie and I to do work with the poor. Bianca introduced me to many of my patrons in the setting of her salon.
Later Bianca made the acquaintance of Madam Jeanne Fracois de Chantal, a royalist who is a refugee from Napoleon's empire.
Madam became fast friends with Bianca . The two of them with other like women of society and lower class women too, formed an order to meet the needs of widowed and lonely women in fail health. Bianca learned in this company the power a woman can do with her hands for other women. I'm afraid it reformed her. The poor have become interesting to her, and she has surrendered herself to the church. To her determent. As this has caused a breech in her relationship between her former lovers, Pandora and Mairus, yet, she says she has never felt more powerful. I dare say she is in love with madam Jeanne. She has sworn to Madam not to cause here death or her rebirth. And for Madam's sake she limits her diet to those on their death bed, for the most part. They share a lovely companionship full of caresses and kisses. Madam's aging face holds bittersweet beauty for the eyes of Bianca, more sweet than bitter.
As for Henri sigh, Henri still is Henri. I'm afraid he tends to take on hopeless cases. Fledglings who do not love him back. All women for some reason. I wonder about him, I do!
After years of living in Venice my love informed me he was tired of civilization and wanted to emigrate to Canada. In vain and in tears I reminded him of Marie Joseph Anglique a slave, whose master was going to sell her to the sugar cane fields where slaves die young. Marie ran away, covering her escape by setting fire to her owner's house. She was captured, tortured, paraded though the streets, then hung.
Jamie listened to my spoiled whinings, reminded me that happened years ago, and then dropped the subject, I could tell he was wilting more and more in Venice. So I took his hand and begged him to move to Canada with me.
It was the best thing for us. In Montreal slavery is more or less abolished thanks to the British controlled courts which are hostile to slavery. This is not so for French cultured Quebec which still insists on keeping their institution of slavery.
We trapped animals for their fur for a while, and later when we decided we wanted to stay we bought a farm, At first the settlers, our neighbors both white and colored, looked down upon us with disdain. We even has a skunk skin nailed to our door. Mais, when they discovered my skill with medicine, and Jamie's skills at not only surgery on people, mais animals too, they first learned to respect us, then later to tolerate us. And some to even love us, many a young girl even in our ripe old bachelor hood tried with pies and dinners to catch us for husbands. We were always discrete about our relationship. Sometimes, I think the settlers loved us more for the care Jamie took to their livestock and horses then for the care he took of their sons and daughters. You would not recognize me if you saw me, I am old now, my hair is white, my nose it droops, and my skin is red.
I can not do justice to the beauty out here, the way the moon dips to touch the crowing points of the evergreen trees. The wild calls of all sorts of animals. The cleanliness of the air. I thought I would die from departing the rich salons of Venice. I was so wrong. Here is freedom for both Jamie and I.
I do not understand how men, women, and children can provoke hatred from others by something as innocent as skin color, nationality, or sexual orientation. I guess we all can be provocateurs.
I love you mon fere. Do I regret not taking the dark gift? Non, I feel whatever happens for Jamie and I death will be just a start of our new and wondrous adventures. There will always be a Jamie and Paul.
Adieu, mon Fere, I hope for you happiness.
Your fere:
Paul de Pointe duc Lac
Carefully, Paul crumbled the letter, tossing it to the fire.
"What was that you threw away?" Jamie asked.
"Nothing," Paul said, watching the paper burn.
Postscript By Henri:
Jamie died at the age of seventy-two from a hunting accident. Paul lived for two more years. Even in his last days Paul de Pointe du Lac was busy with his doctors' practice. He was a respected man in his parish and community as was Jamie. Paul never married.
He died of old age. He willed the deed of his farm to his Church, The Church of Saint Mary. The property became the site of an orphanage for young girls. Montreal legend has it that if a young girl or a young boy stands on the bank of the river running through what was once their property, with their back to the running waters, holding a mirror to the river, a lit candle at their feet, if they take a bite of an apple, all this to be done at midnight, and if they see two ghostly figures riding on the ghosts of horses reflected in the mirror. They are assured to fall in love and stay in love forever.
The end | 