A snort escaped the other as he raised his own goblet to his lips. “I’m only pointing out a fact, signore.” there was a mocking in the mention of the title.
Riccardo watched the stranger for a long moment before setting his glass down on the table before him. He was Italian, the way the language rolled from his tongue meant no mistaking that -- though something was rather off. From the energy radiating throughout the room, Riccardo guessed the boy must be as old as Marius himself; however, the sheer attitude made him seem nothing more than a petulant child.
Still smiling, the little Venetian leaned closer, the tips of his fangs just visible beneath his full lips. “Do you take issue with where I lay my eyes?”
“No, signore -- but you may sour grapes with that tone of yours.” His tone is light, accompanied by a glowing smile; but the jab at the strangers attitude remains.
“A love so strong he couldn’t allow me to grow old and die. A love that waited patiently until I was strong enough to be born to darkness.” - Armand, IwtV.
This is just sort of a master post of all the lines/short scenes in The Vampire Armand pertaining to Riccardo. It gets super tedious to go back and dig through the novel to find one specific line, so I just threw it all together here! This post is mostly for me, but if you find it useful you’re more than welcome to use it!!
**The list currently only goes from Chapter 2 - Chapter 4, but I’ll be sorting through the rest of the book later
CHAPTER 2
"Amadeo," he said in this private tongue of confidence, leaning over the bed, his hair dry now and beautifully brushed, his hands softened with powder. "You have me forever. Let the boys feed you, dress you." You belong to me, to Marius Romanus, now.
He turned to them and gave them their commands in the soft singing language.
And you would have thought from their happy faces that he had given them sweets and gold.
"Amadeo, Amadeo," they sang as they gathered around me. They held me so that I couldn't follow him. They spoke Greek to me, fast and easily, and Greek for me was not so easy. But I understood.
Come with us, you are one of us, we are to be good to you, we are to be especially good to you. They dressed me up hastily in castoffs, arguing with one another about my tunic, was it good enough, and these faded stockings, well, it was only for now! Put on the slippers; here, a jacket that was too small for Riccardo. These seemed the garments of kings.
"We love you," said Albinus, the second in command to Riccardo, and a dramatic contrast to the black-haired Riccardo, for his blond hair and pale green eyes. The other boys, I couldn't quite distinguish, but these two were easy to watch.
"Yes, we love you," said Riccardo, pushing back his black hair and winking at me, his skin so smooth and dark compared to the others. His eyes were fiercely black. He clutched my hand and I saw his long thin fingers. Here everyone had thin fingers, fine fingers. They had fingers like mine, and mine had been unusual among my brethren. But I couldn't think of this.
To comfort me, to distract me, the boys took up their brushes and quickly astonished me with pictures that ran like a stream out of their quick applications of the brush.
A boy's face, cheeks, lips, eyes, yes, and reddish-golden hair in profusion. Good Lord, it was I... it was not a canvas but a mirror. It was this Amadeo. Riccardo took over to refine the expression, to deepen the eyes and work a sorcery on the tongue so I seemed about to speak. What was this rampant magic that made a boy appear out of nothing, most natural, at a casual angle, with knitted brows and streaks of unkempt hair over his ear?
It seemed both blasphemous and beautiful, this fluid, abandoned fleshly figure.
Riccardo spelled the letters out in Greek as he wrote them. Then he threw the brush down. He cried:
"A very different picture is what our Master has in mind." He snatched up the drawings.
There were booksellers offering the new printed books, of which the other apprentices told me eagerly, explaining the marvelous invention of the printing press, which had only lately made it possible for men far and wide to acquire not only books of letters and words but books of drawn pictures as well.
Venice already had dozens of small print shops and publishers where the presses were hard at work producing books in Greek as well as Latin, and in the vernacular tongue-the soft singing tongue- which the apprentices spoke amongst themselves.
They let me stop to glut my eyes on these wonders, these machines that made pages for books.
But they did have their chores, Riccardo and the others-they were to scoop up the prints and engravings of the German painters for our Master, pictures made by the new printing presses of old wonders by Memling, Van Eyck, or Hieronymus Bosch. Our Master was always in the market for them.
One of the boys bought me a small wonder because I stared at it. It was a ticking watch. I couldn't grasp the theory of it, this tiny ticking thing, all encrusted with jewels, and not all the hands pointed at the sky would teach me. At last with a shock I realized: It was, beneath its filigree and paint, its strange glass and bejeweled frame, a tiny clock!
I closed my hand on it and felt dizzy. I had never known clocks to be anything but great venerable things in bell towers or on walls.
"I carry time now," I whispered in Greek, looking to my friends.
"Amadeo," said Riccardo. "Count the hours for me."
I wanted to say that this prodigious discovery meant something, something personal. It was a message to me from some other too hastily and perilously forgotten world. Time was not time anymore and never would be. The day was not the day, nor the night the night. I couldn't articulate it, not in Greek, nor any tongue, nor even in my feverish thoughts. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. I squinted into the brilliant sun of Italy. My eyes clapped upon the birds who flew in great flocks across the sky, like tiny pen strokes made to flap in unison. I think I whispered foolishly, "We are in the world."
"We are in the center of it, the greatest city of it!" Riccardo cried, urging me on into the crowds. "We shall see it before we get locked up in the tailor's, that's for damned sure."
But first it was time for the sweetshop, for the miracle of chocolate with sugar, for syrupy concoctions of unnameable but bright red and yellow sweets.
One of the boys showed to me his little book of the most frightening printed pictures, men and women embraced in carnality. It was the stories of Boccaccio. Riccardo said he would read them to me, that it was in fact an excellent book to teach me Italian. And that he would teach me Dante too.
On that first day, an everlasting love for Venice was born in me. It seemed singularly devoid of horrors, a warm home even for its well-dressed and clever beggars, a hive of prosperity and vehement passion as well as staggering wealth.
And in the tailor shop, was I not being made up into a prince like my new friends?
Look, had I not seen Riccardo's sword? They were all noblemen.
"Forget all that has gone before," said Riccardo. "Our Master is our Lord, and we are his princes, we are his royal court. You are rich now and nothing can hurt you."
"We are not mere apprentices in the ordinary sense," said Albinus. "We are to be sent to the University of Padua. You'll see. We are tutored in music and dance and manners as regularly as in science and literature. You will have time to see the boys who come back to visit, all gentlemen of means. Why, Giuliano was a prosperous lawyer, and one of the other boys was a physician in Torcello, an island city nearby.
"But all have independent means when they leave the Master," explained Albinus. "It's only that the Master, like all Venetians, deplores idleness. We are as well off as lazy lords from abroad who do nothing but sample our world as though it were a dish of food."
I sang new words in unison with Riccardo. The great state of Venice was called the Serenissima. The black boats of the canals were gondolas. The winds that would come soon to make us all crazy were called the Sirocco. The most high ruler of this magical city was the Doge, our book tonight with the teacher was Cicero, the musical instrument which Riccardo gathered up and played with his plucking fingers was the lute. The great canopy of the Master's regal bed was a baldaquin trimmed each fortnight with new gold fringe.
At dancing and fencing, I excelled. My favorite partner was Riccardo, and I fast realized I was close to this elder in all skills, even surpassing Albinus, who had held that place until I came, though now he showed me no ill will.
These boys were like my brothers to me.
Now and then, on the most rare occasions, the Master himself appeared there to collect me and Riccardo(**from Bianca’s house), always causing a minor sensation in the portego, or main salon. He would never take a chair. He stood always with his hooded cloak over his head and shoulders. But he smiled graciously to all the entreaties put to him, and did sometimes offer a tiny portrait that he had done of Bianca.
We made a choir now and then, all the boys together, and presented the Master with our own compositions and sometimes our own dances as well.
In the hot afternoon, we played cards when we were supposed to be napping. Riccardo and I slipped out to gamble in taverns. We drank too much once or twice. The Master knew it and put a stop to it at once. He was particularly horrified that I'd fallen drunk into the Grand Canal, necessitating a clumsy and hysterical rescue. I could have sworn he went pale at the account, that I saw the color dance back from his whitening cheeks.
He whipped Riccardo for it. I was full of shame. Riccardo took it like a soldier without cries or comment, standing still at a large fireplace in the library, his back turned to receive the blows on his legs. Afterwards, he knelt and kissed the Master's ring. I vowed I'd never get drunk again.
I got drunk the next day, but I had the sense to stagger into Bianca's house and climb under her bed, where I could fall asleep without risk. Before midnight the Master pulled me out. I thought, Now I'll get it. But he only put me to bed, where I fell asleep before I could apologize. When I woke once it was to see him at his writing desk, writing as swiftly as he could paint, in some great book which he always managed to hide before he left the house.
When others did sleep, including Riccardo, during the worst afternoons of summer, I ventured out and hired a gondola. I lay on my back in it staring skyward, as we floated down the canal and to the more turbulent breast of the gulf. I closed my eyes as we made our way back so that I might hear the smallest cries from the quiet siesta-time buildings, the lap of the rank waters on rotting foundations, the cry of seagulls overhead. I didn't mind the gnats or the smell of the canals.
I could wander from the Latin class to the Greek class. I could leaf through the erotic sonnets and read what I could until Riccardo came to the rescue and drew a circle of laughter around his reading, for which the teachers had to wait.
I didn't mind that I couldn't paint as well as Riccardo and the others, that I was half the time content to hold the pots for them, to wash the brushes, to wipe clean the mistakes that had to be corrected. I did not want to paint. I did not want to. I could feel my hands cramp at the thought of it, and there would come a sickness in my belly when I thought of it.
But by the time he returned that night my fever was bad again. I did not dream so much as I wandered, half asleep, half awake, through terrible dark corridors unable to find a place that was either warm or clean. There was dirt beneath my fingernails. At one point, I saw a shovel moving, and saw the dirt, and feared the dirt would cover me, and I started to cry.
Riccardo kept watch, holding my hand, telling me it would soon be nightfall, and that the Master would surely come.
CHAPTER 3
Sometimes Riccardo played the lute for us and sang those melodies he'd learned from his teacher, or even the wilder ribald tunes he'd picked up in the streets. He sang mournfully of love and made us weep over it. The Master watched him with loving eyes.
I had no jealousy. I alone shared the Master's bed.
Sometimes, he even had Riccardo sit outside the bedroom door and play for us. Obedient Riccardo never asked to come inside.
CHAPTER 4
Suddenly in a rage, he threw a pot of paint at the far corner of the room. A splatter of dark green disfigured the wall. He cursed and cried in a language none of us knew.
He hurled the pots down, and the paint spilt in great shiny splashes from the wooden scaffold. He sent the brushes flying like arrows.
"Get out of here, go to your beds, I don't want to see you, innocents. Go. Go."
The apprentices ran from him. Riccardo reached out to gather to him the smaller boys. All hurried out the door.
"You be kind to Riccardo and the others. They worship you," he said. "They wept for you the whole time you were away. They didn't quite believe me when I told them you were coming home. Then Riccardo spied you with your English lord and was terrified I'd break you in little pieces, yet afraid the Englishman would kill you...” -Marius
“When had it happened that arterial blood was not enough, and he must rip out the heart and suck it dry also? When had it started that he had to lick the most vicious wounds for the little juice they would yield? He could exist without this, yet he couldn’t resist it, and so he sought—or so he told himself—to make the very most of it when he feasted” - Prince Lestat, chapter 8, Marius and Flowers
What a poor thing the child was. He was so timid and confused, and despite all of the love that the boys offered him, he still seemed unsure. Long fingers soothed him and a flurry of voices offered reassurance, each child doing his best to try and make their new brother feel welcome. All of the attention, however, seemed to be making the boy cower away from them. Eventually Riccardo dismissed Albinus and the others, leaving him alone with the frightened young angel to hopefully get him to relax. He was trembling, his brown eyes wide as he regarded Riccardo as though he were the enemy. A name spilled from his lips, and the elder realized that the child was searching for his Master.
“The Master is not here,” he cooed gently, wondering if the wild little thing could even understand him. “He will return for you when the sun sets, but for now you are with me.” Dark hands were offered out slowly, and Riccardo stepped forward, gently cupping Amadeo’s pale face. To the Italian, this little cherub seemed frightfully exotic--so smooth and marbelesque with his white skin and his hair of fire. He wondered if there were lands full of children as beautiful as this, or if this boy was a rare gem even amongst his own kin.
After a moment of silence, Amadeo seemed to relax; enough that Riccardo thought it safe to go on and lead him into the bath. Their walk there went without complication, but as soon as the child saw the water, his face lit up pink as though someone had just bid him the most sinful compliment. Riccardo’s brow lifted but he did not question it, instead peeling himself out of his tights and his shirt, gesturing for Amadeo to do the same. A long pause ensued and the silent child did not move. Riccardo gave a sympathetic sigh as he pulled the boy closer and began to remove his shirt for him. “What a poor dear you are. I’m sure I was just as overwhelmed as you the week that I arrived here; but do not worry, fratello. Soon you will make a wonderful prince, just like the rest of us.”
Amadeo seemed to listen but not to hear, and again the Italian wondered if the exotic little darling could even understand him. He decided not to dwell on it for the moment, and instead ushered him into the water before him. They sank down until the water was at their chests, and Riccardo gave a loud groan as the heat soaked into his tired muscles. Dancing and sparring and posing for paintings, it had all taken a toll on his lithe body; and baths were a rare treat for him--especially baths without the company of a dozen other children.
But this bath was not for him. It was for Amadeo. Riccardo turned his attention to the other and was surprised to see that blush back upon his cheeks, his entire face lit up as though something has embarrassed him. Again, Riccardo tried not to question it, but he couldn’t help but wonder what the Master had done that made the child so embarrassed to bathe. Deciding it was probably best not to know, Riccardo focused solely on beginning to wash that head of red hair, keeping an eye on his flushed cheeks the entire time. What a strange boy this Amadeo was turning out to be.
