Symphony for Sybelle. That might as well be the name of this confession. And having done my best for Sybelle, I do my best for you as well.

Is this not enough of the past? Is this not enough prologue to the moment in New York when I saw Christ's Face in the Veil? There begins the final chapter of my life of late. There is nothing more to it. You have all the rest, and what must needs come now is but the brief harrowing account of what has brought me here.

Be my friend, David. I didn't mean to say such terrible things to you. My heart aches.

I need you just to tell me that I may rush on. Help me with your experience. Isn't this enough? May I go on? I want to hear Sybelle's music. I want to talk of beloved rescuers. I can't measure the proportions of this story. I only know I am ready... I have reached the far side of The Bridge of Sighs.

Ah, but it's my decision, yes, and you wait to write what I will say.

Well, let me go now to the Veil.

Let me go now to the Face of Christ, as if I were walking uphill in the long-ago snowy winter in Podil, beneath the broken towers of Vladimir's City, to seek within the Monastery of the Caves the paint and the wood on which to see it take form before me: His Face. Christ, yes, the Redeemer, the Living Lord once more.

PART THREE

APPASSIONATA

Chapter Seventeen

I didn’t want to go to him. It was winter, and I was contented in London, haunting the theatres to see the plays of Shakespeare, and reading the plays and the sonnets the whole night long. I had no other thoughts just now but Shakespeare. Lestat had given him to me. And when I'd had a bellyful of despair, I'd opened the books and begun to read.

But Lestat was calling. Lestat was, or so he claimed, afraid.

I had to go. The last time he'd been in trouble, I hadn't been free to rush to his rescue.

There is a story to that, but nothing as important as this one which I tell now.

Now I knew that my hard-won peace of mind might be shattered by the mere contact with him, but he wanted me to come, so I went.

I found him first in New York, though he didn't know it and he couldn't have led me into a worse snowstorm if he'd tried. He slew a mortal that night, a victim with whom he'd fallen in love, as was his custom of late-to pick these celebrities of high crimes and horrid murders-and to stalk them before the night of the feast.

So what did he want of me, I wondered. You were there, David. You could help him.

Or so it seemed. Being his fledgling you hadn't heard his call directly, but he'd reached you somehow, and the two of you, such proper gentlemen, came together to discuss in low, sophisticated whispers Lestat's latest fears.