Inky blackness, and the coffin splintering under me so that my right hand closed on a crumbling skull. I felt the sharpness of other bones under my chest. Gabrielle spoke as if in a trance:
"Yes. Away from the light. "
"We're safe," I whispered.
I pushed the bones out of the way, making a nest of the rotted wood and the dust that was too old to contain any smell of human decay.
But I did not fall into the sleep for perhaps an hour or more.
I kept thinking over and over of the stable boy, mangled and thrown there in that fancy red velvet frock coat. I had seen that coat before and I couldn't remember where I had seen it. Had it been one of my own? Had they gotten into the tower? No, that was not possible, they couldn't have gotten in. Had they had a coat made up identical to one of my own? Gone to such lengths to mock me? No. How could such creatures do a thing like that? But still . . . that particular coat. Something about it. . .
Chapter 7
7
I heard the softest, loveliest singing when I opened my eyes. And as sound can often do, even the most precious fragments, it took me back to childhood, to some night in winter when all my family had gone down to the church in our village and stood for hours among the blazing candles, breathing the heavy, sensual smell of the incense as the priest walked in procession with the monstrance lifted high.
I remembered the sight of the round white Host behind the thick glass, the starburst of gold and jewels surrounding it, and overhead the embroidered canopy, swaying dangerously as the altar boys in their lace surplices tried to steady it as they moved on.
A thousand Benedictions after that one had engraved into my mind the words of the old hymn.
O Salutaris Hostia
Quae caeli pandis ostium
Bella premunt hostilia,
Da robur, fer auxilium . . .
And as I lay in the remains of this broken coffin under the white marble slab at the side altar in this large country church, Gabrielle clinging to me still in the paralysis of sleep, I realized very slowly that above me were hundreds upon hundreds of humans who were singing this very hymn right now.
The church was full of people! And we could not get out of this damned nest of bones until all of them went away.
Around me in the dark, I could feel creatures moving. I could smell the shattered, crumbling skeleton on which I lay. I could smell the earth, too, and feel dampness and the harshness of the cold.
Gabrielle's hands were dead hands holding to me. Her face was as inflexible as bone.
I tried not to brood on this, but to lie perfectly still.
Hundreds of humans breathed and sighed above. Perhaps a thousand of them. And now they moved on into the second hymn.
What comes now, I thought dismally. The litany, the blessings? On this of all nights, I had no time to lie here musing. I must get out. The image of that red velvet coat came to me again with an irrational sense of urgency, and a flash of equally inexplicable pain.
And quite suddenly, it seemed, Gabrielle opened her eyes. Of course I didn't see it. It was utterly black here. I felt it. I felt her limbs come to life.
And no sooner had she moved than she grew positively rigid with alarm. I slipped my hand over her mouth.
"Be still," I whispered, but I could feel her panic.
All the horrors of the preceding night must be coming back to her, that she was now in a sepulcher with a broken skeleton, that she lay beneath a stone she could hardly lift.
"We're in the church!" I whispered. "And we're safe. "
The singing surged on. "Tantum ergo Sacramentum, Veneremur cernui. "
"No, it's a Benediction," Gabrielle gasped. She was trying to lie still, but abruptly she lost the struggle, and I had to grip her firmly in both arms.
"We must get out," she whispered. "Lestat, the Blessed Sacrament is on the altar, for the love of God!"