Piazetta San Marco in Moonlight by Friedrich Paul Nerly

@manichaeisms | continued from here

Armand did not speak for the longest of moments. His mind reeled, torn as he considered her most generous offer. He was caught between his natural curiosity and his instincts, which told him that he was not meant to remember all that he had forgotten – his memory was broken for a reason. It was a condition of loving so much vice, of being such a damned creature. And to send Jane into a time that he could not, himself, remember was irresponsible. He did not know what she would see. He could not protect her.

But she did not need to be protected. 

“The monks in the blyzhni pechery beneath the Kyievo-Pechers'ka Lavra,” he said, “it’s the earliest memory I can recall – I was with them in Kiev as a child.” He could remember the smell of the dirt and the monks who buried themselves there, and the candles which hardly lit the labyrinth that was the caves. It was impossibly dark and damp, and cold. He paused.  

He could remember snow. “I was kidnapped in the winter and I was taken to Constantinople. It must have been in the 1480’s – the Ottomans had control of the Christian capital.” It had been the event of the era, spoken of often in Venice where he had ultimately ended up.

“I was sold to a Venetian brothel,” though he could remember nothing of this – he knew only because Marius had told him, “I was then purchased, and subsequently freed, by Marius de Romanus. Marius will be easy to find – he was known in Venice.” He could remember his time spent in Venice more vividly than he could remember any other moment in his human life, “I lived in Marius’s palazzo near la Piasa San Marco,” he told her, “and I died there.”

“As a vampire, I know I ended up somehow in Paris, but that is it. I can remember nothing else.”

Venice's Piasa San Marco

Venice's Piasa San Marco

Venice's Piasa San Marco