“I’m glad he was kind to you.”
“He was very kind. And very wise.”
“What year did you go to Paris?”
“Twelve sixty-nine.”
“How old were you?”
“Just turning nineteen.”
“So young,” she mused.
He smiled. “I’ve kept my true age a secret, but I will tell you. I was born in 1250.”
“And you became a vampyre in 1274?”
“Yes.”
Raven touched his face. “So young. So beautiful.”
He closed his eyes as she tenderly traced his eyebrows and his jaw.
“I’m so much older than you.” Her voice sounded regretful.
He opened his eyes. They shone in amusement.
“Have you been alive for eight centuries?”
“You were only twenty-four when you were changed. I’m thirty.”
“Actually, I was twenty-three. I was changed in March but my birthday is in November.” He pressed his lips to the side of her hand, as it rested against his cheek. “I didn’t realize I would have to wait seven hundred years to find my soul mate.”
She smiled, withdrawing her hand. “I didn’t think my soul mate would be a younger man.”
He laughed and the sound echoed about the dark library. “Age should mean nothing to us. What matters is that we’ve found one another. Finally.”
“I agree. Your eyes look old sometimes, but your face always looks young.”
“It’s part of the curse—trapped in a body that never ages while our mind slowly decays.”
She shuddered. “That’s morbid.”
He rubbed his thumb against his lower lip. “That is my reality. But I was telling you about my time in Paris. I lived, worked, and studied with my fellow Dominicans. My days and nights were structured around prayer, time at the university, and Mass. I was respected for my ability to reason and my facility with languages. I became an assistant to a friar called Reginald, who was the confessor and assistant of my teacher. When they were transferred to Naples, I went with them.”
“When was that?”
“Twelve seventy-two.” He pulled away, running his fingers through his hair once again. “My teacher helped me regain my faith in God. I found comfort in the Mass. I began to believe that Alicia’s death, while unjust, served a holy purpose, because it enabled me to find my vocation. I prepared for the priesthood, surrounded by intellectual and spiritual titans, working in the service of a saint.”
Raven watched William’s expression change. “What happened?”
“What always happens—injustice and evil eat away at goodness. The teacher I was serving became ill. At the time, we weren’t sure what was wrong with him, but he grew feeble. A couple of months later, we were on our way to a church council and he hit his head. This seemed to worsen his condition. We brought him by donkey to a monastery in Fossanova, about a hundred kilometers from Rome. He rested for a few days and then, against all our prayers, against all our hopes, he died.”
Raven took William’s hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry.”
“Today his death would have been preventable. We would have taken him to the hospital and they’d have scanned his brain and found the injury.”
“Or you could have helped him as you helped me.”
William shook his head. “He was a saint. He would have chosen death rather than taken the alchemy I could have offered him.”
“You loved him.”
“Yes.” William’s gray eyes burned in the darkness. “When I needed wisdom, I went to him. When I struggled with doubt and guilt, I went to him. He was my brother, my friend, and my teacher.”
“He was your Father Kavanaugh,” she whispered.
“Hardly. He was a saint, not a killer.”
William turned toward the window, facing away from her. “He died in the morning. We were all in shock. It happened so suddenly, we weren’t prepared. Two of us thought we saw an angel standing over the body, poised to take his soul to paradise.”
“Was it an angel?”
“It wasn’t a demon. Now that I am well acquainted with darkness, I can state with certainty the being was good. He certainly wasn’t the black angel Guido da Montefeltro speaks of in Dante’s Inferno. But it doesn’t matter. The angel wasn’t there for us; he was there for our teacher. And our teacher was already dead.
“We cared for his body, preparing it for burial. We turned his papers and books over to Friar Reginald, who’d been cataloging them. We divided his possessions. There were several crosses, one of which had been a gift from his wealthy sister. That cross came to me, along with a couple of other smaller ones.
“I didn’t tell the others, but I prayed for a miracle—a resurrection. I spent hours prostrate in front of the high altar in the church, begging God to raise my teacher from the dead. By nightfall, I was crazed with grief. I left the monastery in a daze, still clutching the belongings of my friend.
“I climbed a nearby hill and stood at the top, in utter despair. How could God have let such goodness die? How could he take my teacher from me, when I had so much to learn? When I’d already lost so much?”
William cursed in Latin, the blasphemy echoing inside the library.
“He was too young to die. His writings were unfinished. His work wasn’t done. It was such a waste. So unjust.
“I’d fled York when Alicia was murdered. Now that my teacher was dead, where could I go? The thought of staying with the Dominicans, of devoting my life to a God who wouldn’t even bother intervening to save a saint, was repugnant to me.