AN: Once upon a time, I wrote stories about the Volturi. Once long ago I planned this very fic in which Carlisle was in Volterra with Aro. And once I even imagined Aro alive in the time of Jesus Christ, with Jesus. (That one earned me several cocked eyebrows from good friends.) I appreciate that this sounds incredibly blasphemous and many of you will now race to denounce me in your comments public and private, but believe me when I say that I mean no offense. I am Jewish, and like many of my tribe, curious about the others. As a Jew, I do not believe that Jesus was anything more than a great man and I find myself asking repeatedly, "Why did this one take, stick through the ages, when none of the others did?" I know what your response will be if you are a believer! And we will simply have to agree to disagree on that point.

This is a provocative topic, I know. But in the era when people write everything from incest to bestiality, I find my attempts to make sense of those past events that led to the religious strife of today rather innocuous. So I am taking my favorite vehicles, Aro and Carlisle, on a little trip through history to study the man who has had such a tremendous impact on the world as we know it.

Here, then, in the great tradition of Jewish prayer from which came the Catholic Divine Offices, is his song.

Note on format: I originally intended this as a comprehensive fic but quickly realized that while some things would only work well in the present tense, others had to be in the past. I toyed with various ideas on how best to resolve the problem and then said, screw it, I'll just do drabbles again. It worked so well for Ivo! So please do not be surprised by the changes of tense. Each "chapter" will be a Prayer - Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, and the Night Office, sometimes referred to as Vigils, which will be a series of nocturns. Following the Liturgy of the Hours, I am starting with the nocturns and will end with them as well. Full circle and all that.

I don't own Carlisle or Aro or any of these others.

Happy reading!

~Pace is the trick

For Steph, who was the real creator

A Song (for Him)

Matins

He finds them with little trouble. He's an awkward young vampire and his blunders entertain them. Demetri spots him first, hailing his arrival as the court jester.

"A new friend in town," he reports in his most amused tone. "He was walking and reading - " and here, dear reader, you must imagine the expression on his face at Carlisle with his nose in a book! "- and almost stepped out into the sun."

Aro tsks. He's heard much of the vampire who shuns his own kind.

"Shall I bring him to you or wait and see what he does next?" It's been so long since they have had genuine comedy in their ranks.

"Bring him, bring him," Aro trills with an airy wave of his royal hand. "Let us see what we make of the vampire who is not."

Caius snarls in disdain, utterly unamused.

o0o0o0o0o

It's the third night in Italy when Carlisle makes their acquaintance. Demetri and Felix drop from the roof in front of him. Carlisle looks mildly surprised. (Everything about him is mild, indeed the antithesis of a vampire.) But that in itself is notable. Vampires are never surprised. Their heightened senses make them keenly aware of others in their presence. How he could have missed...

Felix is astonished.

"Welcome, fortunate Friend," Demetri drawls. "And what brings you to our little corner of the world?" The High Court of vampire society is hardly a "little corner" but this is lost on Carlisle.

"I'm looking for Aro," he says earnestly and the two others commence to howl like fiends possessed, heads flung back, teeth bared, the roar rushing from their vocal chords to ricochet off the ancient stone walls of the alley way. The noise is deafening but the locals attribute it to a seasonal gale though the city lies far from the sea. One of the many contradictions of this strange place that no mere mortal dares to question.

Now it is Carlisle's turn to be surprised. He can't imagine he's said anything that entertaining. "I was told he lived here," he stammers, now very uncertain of himself.

"You've come to the right place," Felix finally manages.

Demetri is still struggling to compose himself.

o0o0o0o0o

Aro is positively gleeful and can scarcely remain seated. He smells him – that odd wrong scent of animal blood in the immortal vessel. It makes others curl their noses but Aro is far too interested to be repulsed. He loves anomalies. His tiny restless feet tap a pattern on the floor which Marcus recognizes as a little-known piece by Alessandro Striggio, he of the Medici court.

The Volturi walk in the highest of circles.

"My Lord," Demetri gives an exaggerated bow while Carlisle is still spellbound by the opulence surrounding him. It literally surpasses anything he has ever seen before and he has been in some pretty places. The grandeur puts contemporary mankind's feeble attempts to shame. No museum in the world can hold the multitude of treasure scattered with deliberate carlessness about the room. He feels as if – dare he think it? – he has stepped into Heaven, where only the greatness of mankind is found.

Demetri looks pointedly at Carlisle from his bent position but Carlisle and Aro have already spotted one another. Throwing ceremony aside, Aro reaches eagerly for him, his movement still swift for all his 3000 years.

He seizes Carlisle's hand and closes his eyes in rapture. "Ahhhhhhhhh!" he exclaims, breathless, as if engaged in sexual intercourse. And then his eyes snap open and he peers with an intensity that burns the little man before him. "Welcome! Welcome, Carlisle Cullen, to Volterra."

He's introduced to the others. Marcus and Caius do not rise, Caius doesn't even return the greeting. Marcus inquires placidly about England and France, he has friends there but doesn't travel anymore. Carlisle admits that he hasn't met many other vampires, just one or two strays in the woods.

Marcus is baffled. This is unlike anything he has ever heard before. For a vampire not to stay with others? Where then did he stay? Who was his sire? How could he have been so negligent in young Carlisle's education? Had he been improperly reared? One of the wild ones who somehow got away after changing? But he is so civilized, this young Englishman. And how came he to know their secret location if not through the proper channels?

"A human friend told him of us," Aro purrs happily. It fits so nicely. The human will, of course, be killed for this transgression – for how could a mere human know another's integrity - but it is such an appropriate introduction he is beside himself with joy. "When he was studying medicine in France."

"Medicine?" Caius knows of these things and they have had alchemists in the court but the way it is phrased somehow makes him certain that what Aro means is human medicine.

"Our Dr. Cullen is a minister to the poor!" Aro can't get over his good fortune. He could spend eternity with this enigma.

"I've been working in rural areas," Carlisle's Italian is catching on but it still has a heavy accent and he hasn't quite mastered the emphasis so he winds up stressing the wrong syllable. "Introducing hygiene to miners."

You could literally knock Marcus and Caius over with the plume of Aro's pen. Felix and Demetri are once again in stitches. The rest of the assembly is uncertain whether to take their cue from Aro, who adores the new arrival, or join in merriment of what is the most pitiful excuse for a vampire they have ever seen. As a result, they stand frozen, which further alarms poor Carlisle. He now thinks he has fallen in with madmen. Having spent some time in a human asylum, this is not unfamiliar to him. But vampires are stronger than humans. And that makes his position here vulnerable. He is very grateful the leader appears to like him, even if this man may be the maddest of them all.

"Mad, mad, yes we are all mad," Aro chants happily but he sends a stern glance of warning to his brothers. Marcus sighs and goes back to looking at his hands, the lines of which have been his old friends these many lonely years. Caius looks out to the crowd in the hall and cocks an eyebrow so that they are clear on his assessment of Aro's new favorite.

"Come with me, Carlisle Cullen, come with me," Aro beckons in his very best English, a soft enunciation of sounds so sharp for Romantic speakers.

And Carlisle has no choice but to follow.

o0o0o0o0o

His rooms are exquisite – a bed fit for a king (Aro tells him it belonged to Louis XIV) and carpets from the palaces of Turkish sultans. ("That one," Aro points to the other end of the cavernous room, "belonged to Mehmed the Conquerer." Carlisle is suitably impressed. This pleases his host, who longs for someone to share his admiration for history and art.)

The paintings are all originals. DaVinci and such. Little throw-away sketches that have been lovingly framed and preserved for posterity.

There are ancient wooden and stone tools, an entire wall from an Egyptian temple. Gold urns and etched pottery and even painted animal hides. Weavings of grasses and silks. Barely any room to walk.

And then there is the reading material. "Not much here," Aro says dismissively. "You must see the Library."

"Library?" He is all eyes.

o0o0o0o0o

Imagine that you have studied in every great library in the Old World. London, Paris, Vienna. Imagine that you held in your very hands the original papers of the greatest thinkers of your time (the year is 1720, for the record).

Now just imagine discovering something that makes all of that pale by comparison.

The obligatory Greeks. Homer's Margites. But so much more! The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. The Book of the Battles of HaShem. Writings referenced but discarded, viewed perhaps as dangerous or non-essential for the canon.

Carlisle's superior brain is unable to take it all in.

On the far wall is a wooden cross. It is simply enormous, isolated there away from anything else, and Carlisle can't decide its purpose. It might just be a mockery of all that he believes in, vampire humor for his source of strength and right. Still, he cannot but ask. It simply can't be overlooked.

Aro slyly watches, waiting for the little one to find his voice.

"And wherever did you find that?" Carlisle finally manages.

"That," Aro drawls in a seductive tone, "is a most remarkable story. About a man I once knew in the Holy Lands."

o0o0o0o0o